It wasn’t until I was a 16 year old sixth former in school that I discovered my problem with colour vision. When I experienced difficulties in practical biology and chemistry […]
Latest articles
Lifebox Q and A: Togo—facing the facts and making a difference
When people talk about the crisis of unsafe anaesthesia worldwide, there’s one particular publication that is frequently referenced—it’s too shocking to ignore. “Deaths associated with anaesthesia in Togo, West Africa,” […]
Kieran Walsh: “Fortunately…education produces no effect whatsoever”
One of the latest thoughts to emanate from authorities in medical education is that investments in education will produce a tangible return on investment. The theory goes a bit like […]
Richard Smith: The case for slow medicine
The characteristics of health systems are complexity, uncertainty, opacity, poor measurement, variability in decision making, asymmetry of information, conflict of interest, and corruption. They are thus largely a black box […]
Martin McKee: How should the United States respond to gun crime?
A few days ago a disturbed young man in Newtown, Connecticut, shot his mother before going to the primary school where she worked to murder 20 children, aged between six […]
Trish Groves: Get the gun out of the house
About 15 years ago I sat in on the superb Doctoring programme at UCLA that taught medical students the art of medicine through role play with actors. One scenario featured […]
Liz Wager: Discussing research misconduct with Dr Hwang
In a country where over half the population is called Kim, Park, or Lee, it probably shouldn’t have come as such a surprise to find myself talking about research misconduct […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review—17 December 2012
JAMA 12 Dec 2012 Vol 308 2349 The run-up to Christmas never finds me in the best of moods, and now it seems that the editor of JAMA is trying […]
Domhnall MacAuley: “Seven Deadly Sins” and Lance Armstrong
The sports medicine book of the year? No, not some worthy academic text or edited works of the great and the good (and, yes, I did one of these this […]
Desmond O’Neill: Graphic insights into Alzheimer’s disease
In my practice as a geriatrician, no syndrome is as interesting, intellectually stimulating, and simultaneously frustrating and rewarding as dementia. Ethical sensitivity, integrative neurology, a critical approach to neurobiology, and […]