One day we may know, but Boris Johnson is in no hurry, writes Martin McKee In May 2020, Sarah Wollaston, Mike Gill, and I called for a rapid inquiry into […]
Columnists
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . -omics
This week, as last week, in my pursuit of new biomedical words that have appeared in the last 50 years, I am investigating words first listed in the Oxford English […]
Giles Maskell: The curse of the priors
I used to joke that radiology is getting easier because as we carry out more and more imaging, soon everyone will have a previous scan with which to compare. The […]
Richard Smith: Eight-year-olds protest about climate change and the destruction of nature
Thomas Gomersall and four friends, all eight-years-old, recently organised a march to Islington Town Hall to call for action on the climate crisis. Later they organised a cake sale to […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Weighty words
As I observed in my last column, fewer and fewer new biomedical words can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) as we go through the 1990s (and indeed, […]
Julian Sheather: Heavy Light—a journey through madness
At some point over a long, agonising winter, the writer Horatio Clare went mad. Precisely the moment his hypomania tipped over into psychosis is not clear, but fuelled by cannabis, […]
Richard Smith: The cleansing power of the “perfect” death
If you’ve not seen “Blackbird,” a film that is now available on Amazon Prime, and plan to, then read no further. When I give talks on death I ask the […]
An open letter to the new president of the Academy of Medical Sciences on the future of the Academy
Dame Anne Johnson, professor of epidemiology and director of the Centre of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at University College London, became president of the Academy at the end of 2020 Dear […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . A difficult infection
Surveying new biomedical words listed in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) since 1970, I have found fewer examples each year. For example, the 1970 list contained 61 words and the […]
Julian Sheather: Covid-19 is also an environmental problem—why we must commit to one health
Pestilence and environmental upheaval are ancient bedfellows. It is likely that waves of the European black death were linked to Asiatic climate change. Fifteen years or so after successive climatic […]