I’m an enthusiastic follower of the NHS Sustainable Development Unit, its director, David Pencheon, and its important mission of reducing NHS carbon emissions by 80% by 2050, but like all […]
Latest articles
Krishna Chinthapalli: The danger of sugar
Millions of years ago, plants were making fruits to disperse seeds. Once the seeds were ready to travel in animal stomachs, fruits concentrated more sugar and ripened. They became an […]
Jonny Martell: What they don’t teach at medical school
Tomorrow I’ll go to work and among other things, prescribe drugs. I’ve been told that they work and that they’re mostly safe. There’s plenty to encourage me in believing this: […]
Rej Bhumbra: Global surgery—global wellness
The Chinese phrase, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime,” is widely used, […]
Julian Sheather: On death, dying, and “Departures”
Dead bodies do not seem to have a place in the modern world. Death, dying, the dead—if they can be so unceremoniously bundled together—lie in our culture somewhere between the […]
Vijaya Nath: Revalidation: opportunity or challenge?
On 3 December 2012, the UK was the first nation, and the General Medical Council (GMC) the first regulatory body, to implement large scale changes to the regulation of its […]
Richard Smith: The editor thinks your paper is nonsense but will publish anyway
“If you want to get on in life, dear boy, don’t be too original. Originality is a curse. People won’t understand you. They’ll feel threatened. You may end up burnt […]
Desmond O’Neill: A grave beauty
When visiting a city for the first time, graveyards rarely feature high on my agenda. So, little did I suspect that a very beautiful graveyard would be one of the […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—28 January 2013
JAMA 23-30 Jan 2013 Vol 309 355 From time to time I like to shock my GP colleagues by saying that the most important part of any health system is […]
Iain H Wilson: Why pulse oximeters from Lifebox make such a difference
The first person I saw die accidentally from an anaesthetic accident was a kind, distinguished man in his sixties, scheduled for surgery to a large leg tumour. During anaesthesia his […]