In my early twenties I was felled by a bout of mental illness. It started with a panic attack. I was standing on the station at Leamington Spa waiting for […]
Guest writers
Phil Hilton on men’s health
So inevitably as a middle-aged family man with a home in the suburbs of North London I meet health professionals over dinner. ‘This is Peter, he’s a consultant anaesthetist…’ my […]
Olivia Roberts: “Lies, damn lies, and statistics”
The recently released World Health Organisation statistics on progress to meeting the health-related Millennium Development Goals reveal little progress in some areas. But closer analysis reveals some huge achievements and […]
Vidhya Alakeson on affordable health choices in the US
An audible gasp went around Washington last week when the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released its first estimate of the cost of healthcare reform: $1 trillion. The cost seemed all […]
Harvey Marcovitch on censorship, squeamishness, and same sex desire
Older readers will remember when the Medical Defence Union had a telegraphic address – Damocles. Younger readers may not know that he was another of those Greek mythological characters to […]
Tauseef Mehrali on meat free Mondays
My grandfather used to counsel my mother’s worries about my insatiable carnivorous tendencies as a child by suggesting that the only solution would be to ensure I gain a butcher […]
Ohad Oren: How can medical students adapt to their ever changing profession?
“Medicine is an ever-changing science” goes the familiar message on the opening page of most medical textbooks. Judging by the rapid pace at which textbooks expand, you have to wonder […]
Keith J Petrie and Kate Faasse: Monitoring public anxiety about flu
Greater monitoring of the web could provide a guide to public anxiety about flu outbreaks and social media could be used more intensively to provide relevant public health information to […]
Stephen Ginn on complementary therapy and disenfranchisement
I went to a debate on complementary medicine recently, hosted by the KCL Social Medicine Society. Despite being held on Guy’s Hospital Campus, a supposed stronghold of conventional medicine, the […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: The Colonel arrives with a bang in Bangladesh
On my way home from the centre where I work in Dhaka, Bangladesh, I drive through an area with four closely located private universities. Yesterday I was stuck in rush […]