To what extent are we sabotaging the future health and wellbeing of our children through ignorance, neglect, and misguided policy? And what can we do to redress this? Discuss. Discuss? […]
Latest articles
Magdalena Kincaid: Teaching basic surgical skills in Palestine – hopes for the future
The basic surgical skills course (BSS) for Palestinian surgical trainees finished today. Throughout the two days of practical sessions it seemed that time acquired an extensile quality: the tasks completed […]
Edzard Ernst: My evidence is better than yours
Humans tend to remember their pleasant and positive experiences and forget those events which were disagreeable or negative. We are not natural talents at coping with cognitive dissonance, and therefore […]
Richard Smith: Reducing the world’s blood pressure
What do you think is the risk factor that causes the most deaths globally? Until I saw the data I’d have answered tobacco. But in fact it’s high blood pressure. […]
Magdalena Kincaid: Surgical Teaching on the Mount of Olives – part 2
This morning we left the peaceful lutheran guesthouse in the grounds of the Augusta Victoria Hospital (AVH) to start set-up for the first day of the basic surgical skills course […]
Richard Smith: It’s hard, perhaps impossibly hard, to be a good doctor
How would you feel if your patient said to you: “I want you to be my Virgil, leading me through my purgatory or inferno, pointing out the sights as we […]
Richard Lehman’s journal review – 11 June 2012
JAMA 6 June 2012 Vol 307 2269 As I near my fifteenth year of writing comments on the medical journals every weekend, I sometimes envy columnists who can write their […]
Stephen Whitehead: Transparency in pharma and healthcare
Recently, at a joint ABPI/BMJ conference, the Ethical Standards in Health and Life Sciences Group (ESHLSG) published the latest in a series of collaborative documents: Clinical Trials Transparency-Principles and Facts. […]
Magdalena Kincaid: surgical teaching on the Mount of Olives – part 1
The car journey from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem lasts about an hour. There is an enveloping warmth in the air even at 2 am and it is eerily quiet. The […]
Tiago Villanueva: Mass gathering medicine
I won’t have the privilege of attending the Olympic and Paralympic Games, but I recently had the opportunity to attend a meeting with mass gathering medicine experts chaired by David […]