Last week my three boys and I were visiting friends on our first trip to Indonesia. Jakarta is enchanting…shiny, modern, glossy, and brimming with cultural charm: twisty roads, unique architecture, […]
Guest writers
John Garrow: Libel laws and patient protection
Professor A C Grayling has written about the recent, well publicised victory of Simon Singh in the appeal court (BMJ 2010;340:c1910). As almost everyone now knows, in a previous sitting […]
Emily Spry is back in Freetown
If you blinked, you probably missed it, but I’m back in Freetown after a short Easter jaunt to the UK to see my family and a few friends. I was […]
Joe Collier: The unseemly goings-on at the ACMD and how they might have been avoided
With seven members of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) resigning in the last few months, and its chair, Professor David Nutt, being sacked, there must be […]
Patrick Basham: Not smoke-free but snus-free
One advantage of spending so much of my time “on the road” is that I’ve had the opportunity to observe first-hand how many nations have opted for tobacco control policies […]
Douglas Noble: Easter and transplantation
Sally Slater last week celebrated the tenth anniversary of her life-saving heart transplant. Sally was only six when she had the operation and was pictured with Billie Piper after the […]
Siddharta Yadav: Politicizing medical education
Yesterday, I witnessed a doctor being beaten up at the Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital of Nepal. The doctor was exiting the hospital grounds when a group of people stopped him. […]
Guy Lloyd: Dix huit semaines, zut alors!
Will none of our great political parties do something real and meaningful (as opposed to eye catching and cosmetic) about the NHS? The horror of health poverty in the USA […]
Jeremy Sare: Mephedrone
It’s like old times really. Exactly five years ago, new drug laws being were being pushed through amid the febrile and shadowy atmosphere of a Parliament readying itself for a […]
Julian Sheather: The ghosts of medicine
I was at the Liverpool Medical Institution recently, judging a debating competition between medical students from Manchester and Liverpool. […]