Peter Gøtzsche, a Danish physician and researcher, has written a book arguing that 97% of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good. Allen Frances, emeritus professor of psychiatry at Duke […]
Richard Smith
Richard Smith was the editor of The BMJ until 2004.
Richard Smith: Transparency for better decisions—still a long way to go
We may like to think with websites that allow us to compare prices and get feedback on books, plays, and restaurants that transparency is empowering us, but is the balance […]
Richard Smith: On being misunderstood, exploited, and abused
A friend has pointed out to me that I am listed as an “exemplary professional” on the website of the Alliance for Human Research Protection. Others on the list include […]
Richard Smith: What will the post journal world look like?
SMACCDUB is the conference of young critical care doctors, with a few mature ones thrown in for the mix, and the most energetic I’ve been to in a long time, […]
Richard Smith: Depression—a description of the near indescribable
I’ve never been depressed. I’ve been down, sad, blue, but never depressed. But many family and friends, people I love, have been depressed. Some have tried to describe it to […]
Richard Smith: Returning health to the people
For the first two million years of humans there were no doctors. People were born, flourished, became sick, suffered, and then died without doctors. Probably there were healers who danced, […]
Richard Smith: A foretaste of the end of the NHS
When the NHS began in 1948 dental care was free at the point of delivery, but charges appeared as early as 1951. My current experience with dental services gives me […]
Richard Smith: Ugandan health—what should be the priorities?
Uganda, like all low income countries, has formidable health problems and limited resources. If you were the health minister in Uganda what would be your priorities? This question was in […]
Richard Smith: The deeper causes of the doctors’ strike—a thought experiment
I’m on my way to walk among bluebells, but my mind is on junior doctors engaging in a total strike, not providing even emergency care, for the first time in […]
Richard Smith: The NHS is a fiction, but what’s the story?
Ask somebody “What is the NHS?” and they are likely to answer to “The people who work in it, the buildings they work in, and the tools they use to […]