Archive by Author

Is UK cancer survival so bad?

The idea that the UK is a bad place to get treated as cancer seems to have been accepted as truth by certain sections of the media. It just isn’t : I’ve been trying to say so for a while with no success whatsoever. Anyway this editorial in the BMJ looks at the reliablity of […]

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The Kings Fund on GP referral management centres

I’m not quite sure what I think of the King’s Fund: some of their papers seem to me to miss the point: academic distance from reality can be damaging. They have examined Referral Management Centres and concluded that they aren’t very good, which was obvious to GPs but lost on politicians. Quite interesting. What I […]

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Not I, Professor Field

Professor Field, outgoing chair of the college I spend a small fortune to be a member of, the Royal College of GPs, has been on the radio rather a lot today. The news is: he scribed a cross article for the Observer, saying that “…too many of us neglect our health and this is leading […]

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The origin of PMT

I’ve had some truly fascinating emails in response to this column on PMT. I had forgotten completely about this BMJ paper, from 1953, which you can view for free if you register. The first author is Katharina Dalton, who is famous for advocating progesterone to ‘treat’ PMT, and which is now recognised as being non […]

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Mixtard 30: Novartis gets it wrong

The Drugs and Therapeutics Bulletin is campaigning against Novartis’ decision to stop production of a particular type of insulin – one which has been around for years, is very reliable, and which is used by around 90,000 patients. Novartis say that the use of this insulin – Mixtard 30- is dropping: and that this type of insulin […]

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