The horsemeat scandal has triggered calls for the UK’s food safety watchdog to have stronger regulatory powers. The Food Standards Agency was stripped of its nutrition and labelling roles in […]
Editors at large
Domhnall MacAuley: Good news on UK primary care
Overwhelmed by the relentless tide of bad news stories about UK primary care? Well, this is a good news story. A webinar organised by The Commonwealth Fund (a US philanthropic […]
Tessa Richards: Preventing disease with plastic water bottles and esprit de corps
A mosquito buzzed idly against the window inside the coach. Was it carrying the dengue virus we wondered? And if it was, what is the chance of dying from dengue […]
Domhnall MacAuley: The surgeons who are not doctors
“The surgeons who are not doctors.” Reading this headline, I expected a story on training healthcare workers as surgical technicians in some under doctored developing country. But no, it was […]
Birte Twisselmann: Let’s hear it for music and poetry
“Representation of older people in arts, music, and literature,” a seminar held at the Royal Society of Medicine, got off to a shaky start because of noisy building work next […]
Readers’ editor: What do US physicians think of the BMJ?
This blog is the first in a series about you, our readers. Fiona Godlee, the BMJ’s editor in chief, suggested I write a regular blog explaining some of our policies […]
Domhnall MacAuley: The silent cost of caring
As he hung up his coat at the end of the morning, he stunned his nursing and junior colleagues: “I will be glad when I don’t have to do that […]
Krishna Chinthapalli: The danger of sugar
Millions of years ago, plants were making fruits to disperse seeds. Once the seeds were ready to travel in animal stomachs, fruits concentrated more sugar and ripened. They became an […]
Rej Bhumbra: Global surgery—global wellness
The Chinese phrase, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime,” is widely used, […]
Sophie Cook: Home visits in the snow
Even in the most auspicious weather conditions, urgent home visits are time consuming and on days when snow falls this creates another obstacle to negotiate in an already stressful on-call […]