NEJM 27 Feb 2014 Vol 370 799 I’ve reached the age when people look back and sigh and cluck about the way the world has changed since they were children. […]
US healthcare
Colin Brewer: Is addiction a disease?
Last November, The Spectator held a debate on the proposition that drug addiction is not a disease. Former BMJ columnist Theodore Dalrymple was one of the proposers (I was invited […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—24 February 2014
NEJM 20 Feb 2014 Vol 370 699 This week, the NEJM is big on bevacizumab. Amongst the crowd of mabs, this is one of the best known: Avastin is a […]
William Cayley: We have met the enemy
“We have met the enemy and he is us.” (Pogo) Manica Balasegaram makes a number of excellent points in his recent post, but his conclusion that “the system is broken” […]
Joanne Csete: Why the US needs to change its drug policy
As the world mourns the loss of the exceptional talents of Philip Seymour Hoffman, perhaps one fitting tribute to his passing from a suspected drug overdose would be to focus […]
Desmond O’Neill: Transport and health
The Goldfinch, the eagerly awaited third novel of Donna Tartt, featured on many of our Christmas reading lists. As I devoured this wonderful repositioning of the Dickensian novel into the […]
William Cayley: It’s not just the patient’s story that matters
Each patient’s story matters. It tells us who the patient is, and how he or she came to the present point or predicament. The story gives nuance, meaning, perspective, and […]
Suchita Shah: Why are pharmacies in Massachusetts selling tobacco?
In the wake of the 50th US Surgeon General’s report on smoking and health, published last week, and in the spirit of Lewis Carroll, whose birthday it was this week, […]
Simon Nicholas Williams and Kimberly Dienes: Universal mental health checks in schools—some responses to the critics
A recent BMJ article by one of the authors of this post (SW), argued the need for universal mental health checks in schools. This personal view stemmed from a wider […]
“e-Patient Dave” deBronkart: 15 year old’s video raises the question—who gets to say what “patient centred” is?
An impromptu in hospital video by a 15 year old took healthcare social media by storm last week. Posted on Forbes.com on Thursday, by the evening it was in the […]