A colleague recently asked me to point him to “an authoritative definition of ‘pharmaceutical industry’.” The term is one that few have tried to define, perhaps thinking that there is […]
Columnists
Richard Smith: What if everyone over 55 was offered a pill to prevent heart attacks and strokes?
The NHS, like other health systems, is facing huge financial pressure. Bold thinking is needed, and the King’s Fund, a British health think tank, has commissioned a series of articles […]
William Cayley: Happy to be healthy
Drawing on a variety of demonstrated correlations between happiness (or “wellbeing”) and health, John Appleby recently argued that “improving individual, and hence national, wellbeing might best be achieved through improving […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Nutraceuticals and functional foods
Deborah Cohen recently reported in The BMJ that George Freeman, the UK sciences minister, whose responsibilities include the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the National Institute for […]
Richard Smith: Doctors phishing for phools
In their influential book Phishing for Phools: The Economics of Manipulation and Deception two Nobel prize winners, George A Akerlof and Robert J Shiller, describe how businesses profit from exploiting […]
Richard Smith: Journals, fraud, science, and misaligned incentives
Journals, like the mass media, have a major part to play in exposing scientific fraud and other kinds of misconduct. In contrast, as I’ve argued many times, there are better ways […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . A ban to abandon
Recently, Trish Groves reported in The BMJ that some conference organisers would like to ban the use of Twitter and other social media at conferences. The main concern seems to […]
Richard Smith: What are the causes of health?
Ask doctors for the causes of heart failure or any disease, and answers will pour from them. Ask them about the causes of health or wellbeing, and they will go […]
Mary E Black: Stik—My NHS Homerton hero
What inspires me? People who think differently, public spaces that are beautiful, art in unexpected moments. So when an enormous blue painting of a sleeping baby appeared on an outside […]
Richard Smith: Why does prevention always come behind treatment of disease?
Why does prevention always come behind treatment of disease? Derek Yach, the chief health officer of Vitality, put this question to many people, and these are the answers he got […]