I have just been to a breakfast conversation on genetics and health care. I am not at my best early on, but as the LSE had assembled an impressive list […]
Columnists
Julian Sheather asks: What’s wrong with medical humanities?
I want to speak of a certain dread – call it a patient’s dread. I speak from experience. In my early twenties I went under the knife a handful of […]
Richard Smith: Trying to redefine health
Last week about 30 of us spent 36 hours in The Hague discussing whether we could produce a new definition of health—and eventually deciding that we couldn’t. But we had […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Immunisation in Bangladesh: who takes priority?
The team and I have a new project. We are embarking on a multi-country study that is looking at the Impact of Measles Eradication Activities on Immunization Services and Health […]
Richard Smith on scaling up to defeat childhood obesity
Some three million children in Britain are obese, and treating childhood obesity is far from easy. To have any chance of responding adequately to the epidemic of obesity we need […]
Richard Smith: Dead philosophers can make you laugh
Perhaps I should have realised from the title, but when I began to read The Book of Dead Philosophers I didn’t expect it to be funny. In fact Simon Critchley’s stories […]
Richard Smith: can the internet transform public services?
Slowly but surely the internet is transforming industries—finance, travel, music, entertainment—but so far it has had little impact on public services. But can it transform public services and if so […]
Tracey Koehlmoos on fear and swine flu in Bangladesh
They were waiting for me when I returned to Dhaka in late July. My office is not easily found, so the small group of older gentlemen must have been determined […]
Richard Smith is expelled from the Royal College of Physicians
I’ve just been thrown out of the Royal College of Physicians, which has moderately excited me—probably just as much as when I became a fellow. My sin is not paying […]
Richard Smith on health research in rural China
The differences between rural and urban China are stark. Beijing, Shanghai, and other major cities are filled with new buildings, best illustrated by those built for the Olympics, whereas rural […]