At a meeting on the politics of marriage last week at the London School of Economics three protagonists of very different stripe—the founder of the Marriage Foundation, a feminist philosopher, […]
Columnists
Nick Hopkinson: Smoking in “The Crown”
A youthful Christine Keeler sits in custody refusing to answer questions, cigarette in hand. Season 2 of Netflix’s The Crown, culminates with the Profumo affair. It is 1963, six years […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Teleoanalysis
A meta-analysis is an analysis of analyses. Specifically, it is an analysis of the combined results of several studies, typically randomised clinical trials. However, other forms of evidence can be […]
Richard Smith: Doctors and patients heading in opposite directions
Doctors and patients are heading in opposite directions: patients increasingly have multiple conditions, while doctors are specialising not just in organ systems but in parts of organs. What are the […]
Muir Gray: We need to tackle the “fear of finding out”
In the midst of a blizzard of reports about the overuse of general practice it may seem inappropriate to highlight the problem of underuse, but many people are still presenting […]
Julian Sheather: Turkey attacks its medical profession
It doesn’t seem like much—hardly an offence. A national medical association calling attention to the public health consequences of armed conflict. Business as usual, surely? But not in Turkey. Not […]
Rachel Clarke: The Hadiza Bawa-Garba case is a watershed for patient safety
We need the GMC to set a powerful precedent by speaking up about the dangers of rota gaps, says Rachel Clarke […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Adrenaline and epinephrine
Most therapeutic medicines have at least three different names. The chemical name, whose form generally follows the rules issued by the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC). For […]
Richard Smith: The hypocrisy of medical journals over transparency
Medical journals generally favour transparency, but we’ve recently discovered that when there’s a trade-off between transparency and their financial interest they opt for the money. The International Committee of Medical […]
Kieran Walsh: How will we learn in the future?
I crashed a plane three times today. The first time I crashed into a tree, the second time into a river, and the third time into a bridge. But it […]