Reality is created by the language we use. Language creates reality rather than describing it; that is the consistent message from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Benjamin Lee Whorf, and John R Searle. […]
Columnists
Richard Smith: A proposal that could be implemented today and save 5000 lives
I’ve had a brainwave. It’s a proposal that could be implemented today and save the UK 5000 lives a year (at a rough guess.) The proposal is to stop all […]
Richard Smith: An open letter to creative friends
Dear creative friends, Might you be interested to try and depict in some way—in a novel, play, series of poems, popular book, or whatever—a sustainable and believable world and how […]
Richard Smith: Death festival, day three
I’m up early and off to the death festival for the third day with a very light heart, and we are straight into practicalities. […]
Tiago Villanueva: Do young Portuguese doctors still want to work in Portugal?
About 10 months ago I blogged that an exodus of doctors from Portugal would be a sign of Portugal’s worsening economic situation. Medicine has always offered one of the few stable and prosperous careers. Most […]
Martin McShane: Tipping point
The announcement last week of the design of the NHS Commissioning Board is critically important. It signals the end of the prolonged period of ambiguity which managers have experienced since […]
Richard Smith: Death festival: day two
The second day of the festival began with Jude Kelly, the artistic director of the Southbank Centre, explaining that the festival is about “reshaping our ability to look death in […]
Richard Smith: Death festival: day one
The Southbank Centre, London’s art centre on the South Bank of the Thames, is holding a festival of death. The aim is “to look death in the eye…to confront mortality […]
Richard Smith: What has feminism done for global health?
The Lancet, the leading journal for global health, has mentioned feminism only twice in its 189 years . The BMJ hasn’t mentioned it at all. So that looks like some […]
Muir Gray: How doctors working in systems could rescue healthcare
“We have nothing as bad as America’s worst, and nothing as good as America’s best,” wise words said to me by someone many years ago, and this principle has stood […]