When paradigms shift it’s always disconcerting. Thomas Samuel Kuhn published The Structure of Scientific Revolutions in 1962 and it’s become a decisive text on the nature of science. He used […]
Columnists
David Lock: Avastin and Lucentis—It’s time for NHS commissioners to act rationally by limiting the choices for wet AMD patients
The news that a Cochrane Review has concluded that Avastin (bevacizumab) is as safe as Lucentis (ranibizumab) to treat patients with wet age related macular degeneration (“wet AMD”), along with other […]
Richard Smith: Patients harmed by misdiagnosed preferences
Linda is 58 and has been diagnosed with breast cancer. She would have preferred not to have surgery but was convinced by her surgeon that it would be the best […]
Desmond O’Neill: Ageing, astronauts, and organists in Rotterdam
“Le frime” is an almost untranslatable French word for doing something that seems superfluous for the fun of it. It is as good a term as any for the opening ceremonies […]
The BMJ Today: The complexity of medical jargon
Up to this day, I’m still often asked by friends when I am going to become a specialist, considering I am “just” a GP. It remains difficult for lay people […]
Richard Smith: Is it time to stop using the word poverty in Britain?
Is poverty yet another word that is so misunderstood we should stop using it—at least in Britain? John Lanchester, a friend of mine, argued so in the Observer. Can he possibly […]
William Cayley: My Chief Complaint
My chief complaint . . . is with the chief complaint. One of the hallowed concepts in medical history taking and documentation is the “chief complaint.” Supposedly a way to […]
David Oliver: Tails of the unexpected—could the NHS learn from vets?
As I sit at my keyboard, I am looking at my calm and contented 3 year old calico cat, Tilly. Apart from the shaved area on her flank, you wouldn’t […]
Richard Smith: Is global health too medicalised?
When I teach young doctors in Amsterdam about responding to NCD (non-communicable disease) in low and middle income countries, I ask them how they would allocate 100 units of resource. […]
Richard Smith: Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, live
When Simon Stevens, chief executive of NHS England, was buying his Sunday papers a few weeks ago he encountered an elderly woman complaining that her newspaper didn’t contain the television […]