During July 2009 during a brief visit to the US my three sons and I noticed that electronic cigarettes were being sold at kiosks in the mall. It seemed so […]
Columnists
Siddhartha Yadav: TedxChange’s millennium development goals webcast
Sitting in the comfort of my room and sipping a cup of tea, I listened to Melinda Gates and others this morning – live. The TedxChange was an event organized […]
Martin McShane: The boa constrictor of bureacracy
Another request for “urgent” reporting pinged into my inbox today. It is the third or fourth in as many days. At least two were asking for identical information from different […]
Julian Sheather: I want to be bipolar
Slouching around the internet recently I happened upon an article with a title that intrigued me – and one that I have shamelessly stolen for this blog. Where once the […]
Richard Smith on banks and vulnerable people
Banks are probably now our most unpopular institutions, more so than estate agents, local authorities, and the Press Complaints Commission. So perhaps I shouldn’t kick them when they are down, […]
Julian Sheather: Doctors’ religious beliefs and end of life care
Early on in my ‘career’ in ethics – I put the word in scare quotes not only because the idea that my rather shapeless crashing about should be dignified with […]
Richard Smith: Medicine needs to feel defeat
Defeat is a marvellous thing. It can refresh in a way that never happens after victory. Wouldn’t it be wonderful, I thought this morning as I awoke, if medicine were […]
James Raftery on bevacizumab for metastatic colorectal cancer
Roche’s bevacizumab (Avastin) is in the news again. This has a reasonable claim to be a wonder drug, but for macular degeneration, a disease for which Roche refuses to license […]
Julian Sheather: Medicine and nature
Synchronicity. The meaningful coincidence of causally unrelated events. It was the Swiss psychologist and all round weaver of the wind Carl Jung who coined the word. […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Good Health at Low Cost: the importance of political commitment
Almost any student of global public health will be familiar with the seminal work Good Health at Low Cost. In honor of the 25th anniversary of the release of the […]