From yesterdays PM, Radio 4: Professor Peter Elwood, epidemiologist at Cardiff University: “I have always held that it is for the individual himself or herself to decide whether or not he or she would take aspirin – they should be told the risks or the benefits and it should be the patients or subjects value […]
Continue Reading →The myth of the male menopause
….an article at the BMJ, toll free here
Continue Reading →Breastlight….the never ending story….
apparantly the MHRA are still looking into whether or not this product should be allowable in current form. I am told that there may be restrictions placed on advertising it compared to what we have at the moment. However the final decision has not yet been reached. It’s November; the issue was raised in January; […]
Continue Reading →Slimmed down surgery
a piece on bariatric surgery provision on the NHS (or not) in the BMJ.
Continue Reading →The Crisis in Caring and dangerous inference
I note with gratitude DC’s digging of the College of Medicine arising from Prince Charles’ Foundation for Integrated Health. The College website, if looked at superficially and uncritically, may seem like a good thing – caring! sharing information with patients! recognising that targets can interfere with good clinical care! – in fact, all the same kind […]
Continue Reading →Early trial results and sex revolution overselling
I’m trying to get hold of the press release or poster or whatever it was from the American Society of Reproductive Medicine that triggered this Guardian article, here: ‘Contraceptive gel could offer alternative to pill’. It’s an opinion piece which says ‘As with the pill, though, these are hormone-based treatments that can have unpredictable consequences […]
Continue Reading →Compression only CPR works
..another study tells it like it is, this one, from JAMA. This isn’t the first bit of evidence that says so, either. Yet every year I have to go and be ‘refreshed’ in the finer points of CPR. We have to pay lots of this, and it is becoming silly – for the last three […]
Continue Reading →The scandal of poor diagnosis in dementia that’s not
New research is a ‘wake up call’ for GPs- at least, according to Professor Steven Field, who is quoted today in the Telegraph as saying that doctors are needing more training in recognising dementia symptoms. The paper is in the BMJ, here, and I am rather amazed at the conclusions that both Field and the […]
Continue Reading →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 […]
Continue Reading →The Fertility MOT
MOT fertility information leaflet Another press release offering a fertility ‘MOT’ from ‘fertility and pregnancy expert Zita West and her team’. The only problem is that the only real test of being able to get pregnant is trying to: plenty of couples with perfect hormonal tests struggle to get pregnant, and other couples with erratic […]
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