Luis Buñuel, filmmaker, surrealist, iconoclast, moralist, and revolutionary, thought a lot about death. “Sometimes,” he wrote in 1982, a year before he died at 83, “I think the quicker the […]
Richard Smith
Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Richard Smith: Treating cardiovascular disease as well as we treat TB and HIV
Globally, about 70% of people diagnosed with tuberculosis and about 40% of those with HIV are treated, but less than 20% of those who have had heart attacks or strokes receive […]
Richard Smith: What is RRI and was I the wrong Richard Smith?
“I’d like to introduce Richard Smith, who is professor of philosophy at Durham University, an expert on epistemology, and chair of several European committees, who will speak on conflict of […]
Richard Smith: No case for retracting Lancet’s Gaza letter
In 1973 about 280 000 scientific articles were published, but there were no retractions. When I became an editor in 1979, retractions were rare and of little interest to anybody. […]
Richard Smith: Leapfrogging to universal health coverage
Low and middle income countries have the chance to create health systems that will perform much better than those in high income countries. Copying health systems that look increasingly unsustainable […]
Richard Smith: The joy of a hernia repair
I had a hernia repair recently, but the day turned out to be one of the pleasantest I’ve had in a long time. Can that really be true? Oddly, I […]
Richard Smith: A tobacco company CEO writes to his marketing department
Dear all, I see a great opportunity for us. You won’t believe this, but I’m at a public health conference in Sousse in Tunisia. I’ve come with my twin brother, […]
Richard Smith: Improving health through the community in Tunisia
Tunisia, like all low and middle income countries, is having to respond to non-communicable disease after making good progress in reducing infectious disease and improving child and maternal health. Premature deaths […]
Richard Smith: Using data to improve care and reduce waste in health systems
Annual expenditure on healthcare in the United States is currently $2.8 trillion, and about a third of it is wasted, says the Institute of Medicine. The sum wasted is about […]
Richard Smith: Patients harmed by misdiagnosed preferences
Linda is 58 and has been diagnosed with breast cancer. She would have preferred not to have surgery but was convinced by her surgeon that it would be the best […]