Since being diagnosed with bilateral breast cancer 12 years ago, I have been told countless times that I am lucky to have survived. I hear this pronouncement with equal regularity […]
Latest articles
Beryl De Souza: Spirituality and compassion in medicine
Spirituality can be defined as “the aspect of humanity that refers to the way individuals seek and express meaning and purpose, and the way they experience their connectedness to the […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—22 February 2016
NEJM 18 Feb 2016 Vol 374 Testosterone, lust and rage 611 When the great poet WB Yeats reached the age of 67, he noticed a certain waning of his powers […]
Tony Delamothe: Dreaming at TED
Each year’s TED conference has a theme, and this year’s, in Vancouver, was Dream. The acronym TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, but the annual program of talks long […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Pro patria mori
Exactly a hundred years ago, on 19 February 1916, a British soldier, Captain Robert French, died in London after injuries sustained in battle. The following account is taken from his […]
Peter Buijs and Lode Wigersma on a Dutch medical appeal for nuclear disarmament
In September 2015, on the UN International Day for Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, a medical appeal for nuclear disarmament was presented in Amsterdam (see below). This declaration, signed with […]
Steve Ruffenach: Tech never forgets—does this make patients less keen to share?
The poet Thomas Moore wrote, “The heart that has truly loved never forgets.” Rocker Bob Seeger crooned, “Rock and Roll never forgets.” And indeed it was well over five years […]
Richard Smith: Systems thinking is essential for responding to obesity (and much else)
The recent discovery of gravitational waves allows a whole new way of seeing the Universe. With some similarities the recognition that the world is much more complicated and unpredictable than […]
Jamie Hartmann-Boyce: Nicotine replacement therapy—the evolution of an evidence base
What is “an evidence base?” And when does it become solid? Though it’s reassuring to think of an evidence base as fixed, in reality it’s a shape shifter—changing as new […]
Huw Green: Schizophrenia—what doesn’t exist?
Jim van Os provides an excellent summary of why many clinicians and researchers (especially the latter) have become frustrated with the imprecision of the term schizophrenia. Among scientists, calls to abandon […]