This year’s BMA Medical Book Awards were a great success, portraying the high standard and wide-range of medical literature available and recognising the talent of the individual winners. 641 excellent […]
Guest writers
Simon Chapman: Publishing horror stories: Time to euthanase paper based journals?
Every researcher has exasperating stories of the glacial pace of research publication. But as a former research journal editor of 17 years, I know that researchers’ ideas on what constitutes […]
Nell Crowden: More bravery needed among academics
The Clean Med Europe 2013 conference, , organised by the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare and Healthcare Without Harm, was much what I expected: buzzy conversation with brilliant contacts, inspiring speakers […]
Jane Parry: Heads: Hong Kong babies lose. Tails: the formula companies win
It’s been a busy couple of years in Hong Kong for the international baby formula companies. As soon as the Department of Health announced it had set up a Taskforce […]
Hazim Sadideen: Are surgical experts born or made?
There have been increasing levels of research around the concept of surgical expertise and its development. It’s an intriguing debate, a greater understanding of which will help to drive professional […]
Martin McKee: What on earth were the LibDems thinking? The tobacco industry and the party conference
Once, in a very different time long ago, no one would have seen anything wrong. An organisation purporting to represent Britain’s small shopkeepers set up stall at a party political […]
Marcus Müllner: A talk on relative effectiveness that I never gave
Yesterday I was invited by the European Parliament’s committee on the environment, public health and food safety (ENVI) to give a presentation on “Assessing the effectiveness of medicines in comparison […]
Saleyha Ahsan: Syrian frontline medicine is under fire
Two weeks ago we braced ourselves for US military strikes in Syria. I have been based in a northern Syrian hospital, working under the umbrella of non-governmental organisation Hand in […]
Richard Cook: Managing the decline
I was out cycling with a friend recently when he told me about the comments of an ex professional cyclist. When asked about how he enjoyed cycling after his retirement, […]
Marcus Müllner: Dealing with conflicts of interest in the regulatory decision making process
Conflicts of interest are a wonderful topic: Everybody has them, most believe they don’t, and the more you believe that, the stronger you value judgments about them. The European Medicines […]