Cyril Chantler—paediatric nephrologist, medical school dean, NHS manager, former chair of Great Ormond Street, and much else—is quite possibly the wisest man in the NHS. So we should play close […]
Richard Smith
Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Richard Smith: Advice to the NEJM on dealing with old influential articles with undisclosed COIs
At the end of last year JAMA Internal Medicine published a study that showed that the authors of two highly influential papers published in the New England Journal of Medicine […]
Richard Smith: Journals, surgeons, and sexist language
Much to my amusement and countering the stereotype of surgeons, the Annals of Surgery has “following an uproar” retracted a paper that used only male pronouns to describe surgeons. It’s counter to […]
Richard Smith: Humanity is dying—it’s time to switch to palliative care
We should accept that humanity is dying and switch from cure to palliation—just as wise patients do at the end of their lives. This is the core of an argument from […]
Richard Smith: The rotavirus story—countering the commonest cause of diarrhoea
“I’m not talking to you about Ebola or Zika virus but about a virus that everyone in this room has had and everyone of your children and probably all children […]
Richard Smith: What is science for?
Robert Boyle, Ireland’s most famous scientist, thought that the first aim of science was to develop practical applications to make life better. Earlier in his life he wrote in ecstatic […]
Richard Smith: How to advise a friend frightened by a medical headline?
A friend is frightened by reading the headline “Chemotherapy may spread cancer and trigger more aggressive tumours, warn scientists” in the Daily Telegraph. A close friend of hers has had […]
Richard Smith: Impressions of Devi Shetty’s hospital city—bringing surgery to the masses
I’m standing with Devi Shetty, a cardiac thoracic surgeon in his surgical gear, between two paediatric intensive care units with around 40 cots. All the cots are full apart from […]
Richard Smith: Giving medical students patient contact through online consultation
Medical students arrive at medical school hungry to have contact with patients, but it can be unfair to unleash on patients students who know nothing of medicine and until yesterday […]
Richard Smith: Has my mother been given “the gift of forgetting?”
This morning I read the line “The gift of forgetting” in a poem by Wisława Szymborska. Immediately I asked myself if it is a gift to forget, and quickly—and somewhat […]