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Column: Can Viagra work for women?

Sex sells. I suppose this is why the results of a study entitled ”Sildenafil Treatment of Women with Antidepressant Associated Sexual Dysfunction” were reported with great enthusiasm around the world after they were published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (Jama). Yet the study is interesting for a number of reasons. Rest of […]

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Should pharmaceutical firms make cancer drugs more affordable?

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence is proposing that four drugs licensed for the treatment of renal cancer are not to be funded; they are not, we are told, ‘cost effective’. Charities, doctors groups and patients are reported today as condemning the situation with strong criticism of NICE. However, there are surely other criticisms due. If the […]

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The latest wonder drug

The problem with so many ‘wonder drugs’ is that one is prone to wonder drug fatigue. So is the new prostate cancer drug, abiraterone, lauded on so many front pages today the real thing? “Cancer drug could save the lives of 10,000  a year” says the Times, and it’s a big ‘could’.  It’s a bit unusual for a study containing only 21 patients […]

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Channel 4 and the ‘cervical cancer vaccine’

I am always dubious about being interviewed (I prefer asking the questions.) I worry about how able I am to say what I mean to say, and often realise there was a better way of saying what I was trying to –  but half an hour after I’ve left the building. A piece I wrote last year about the ‘cervical cancer vaccine’ […]

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