Ben Goldacre’s excellent piece in the Guardian this weekend outlines clearly why it is that we can’t trust much of the data we have about pharmaceuticals. Data gets buried, the wrong questions get asked about what works, and we end up prescribing things that are later shown not to be useful, or even harmful. Meantime, […]

Free link to Statins for all? in the BMJ and a column on why Emma’s Diary should be ditched, here.

mammography screening This is the paper attracting the headlines. It would make an ideal paper for students to analyse if they fancied doing it with How to Read a Paper by Trish Greenhalgh. What we really have to ask is in what way this can be more authoritative than the Cochrane review on the subject. It’s not […]

For ease, here are all the articles I’ve written for the BMJ about Atos. Well enough to work http://www.bmj.com/content/342/bmj.d599 Atos and changes to disabled people’s benefits http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e1114 The disturbing truth about disability assessments http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/bmj.e5347?ijkey=hCXfT1z84M6BopW&keytype=ref with blogs on Atos adverts here Atos adverts tug at heartstrings and on plans to remove GPs from long term sickness […]

The Daily Telegraph reported yesterday that “Breast cancer screening ‘works and we should move on” – “Women should undergo breast cancer screening because it halves the chance of them dying of the disease, according to a new study that claims to draw a line under the controversy”. So simple? No! Here’s the paper. It’s a […]

ASA judgement, all my points upheld. http://www.asa.org.uk/ASA-action/Adjudications/2012/9/RSL-Steeper/SHP_ADJ_154343.aspx It upsets me to see helmets for deformational plagiocephaly sold at huge cost to parents.

  Here are some of the references I used for todays’  Inside Health on HIV testing. One thing I didn’t get a chance to talk about was how prevalence – the number of cases within a community – influences the false positive rate in the people being tested. The bottom line is that false positives […]

Atos are one of the sponsors of the Paralympics. I struggle to know why. Atos have the multimillion pound contract from the Department of Work and Pensions to assess people who are sick. There are multiple problems with their assessments, and they have never published the evidence, or audit standards for the work they do. […]

Inside Health, all about overdiagnosis. Hope you like http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01m0pq6 Here are some of the references I used : High blood pressure http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0012720/   http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/14651858.CD006742.pub2/abstract   http://www.hypertensionfoundation.org/PDInfo/JC5790-Moser.pdf   http://assign-score.com/estimate-the-risk/simd/   http://qintervention.org/   Pre diabetes   http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD005270/long-term-non-pharmacological-weight-loss-interventions-for-adults-with-prediabetes   http://www.bmj.com/content/344/bmj.e3564   http://www2.wpro.who.int/wpdd/downloads/diabetes_book.pdf   http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2006/9241594934_eng.pdf   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123928/   http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=193772   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1123928/   http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-08/aha-rie081612.php   http://www.diabetesresearchclinicalpractice.com/article/S0168-8227(07)00309-9/abstract   http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(12)60525-X/fulltext   Osteopenia […]

If any GPs would be free to visit this survey page; http://www.zoomerang.com/Survey/WEB22GH2CDF7BU I’d much appreciate your views on the insurance industry and paperwork. I’m giving a talk to a lot of people in the medical insurance industry at the end of the month and it would be useful to have your views UPDATE; the results […]