Courtesy of the Daily Mail. “An early warning test for Alzheimer’s that can be taken online in 15 minutes has been developed by British scientists. It can spot signs of the debilitating brain disease in people as young as 50. The computer-based interactive quiz provides an instant result and could help delay or prevent the condition […]
Continue Reading →NMT Medical liquidates
and so, I hope, farewell to the libel case against Peter Wilmshurt.
Continue Reading →“Setting an example?” – BMA news article on screening misses the point.
I wish I could link to this article, which is published as a feature in BMA News, a supplement that comes with the BMJ. It’s worrying. “Professor (Erica) Frank, research chair in preventative medicine and population health at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada, has spent more than 20 years examining the relationship […]
Continue Reading →Is there any need for a listening exercise?
…and I wonder how much this will be costing in expenses. The Coalition is launching a ‘listening exercise‘ into their reforms of the NHS, staffed mainly by management and academics. But have they not already being paying attention? What more do they want? We have already heard from the Chair of the RCGP (who is […]
Continue Reading →Commissioning is bad for patients
I don’t know what the point is of getting rid of one layer or managers (in PCTs) only to replace them with doctors – how many hours have GPs already spent on commissioning palava in England? Whenever the NHS and politicians interact there is a consistent problem. No one ever values the core aspects of […]
Continue Reading →Prostate cancer screening: how will this be reported?
I’d love to do a study of column inches of negative trials versus positive ones. This Swedish study in the BMJ, published on the 31st March, found that over 20 years of screening, in almost 1500 men, there was no change in death rate from prostate cancer whether you had prostate cancer screening or not. As […]
Continue Reading →Preventative measures for breast cancer, and how we view risk
The Lancet has run a Consensus Statement about preventing breast cancer. They say “Many risk factors have been established for breast cancer, the most informative of which are family history of the disease, especially at a young age, increased mammographic breast density, some menstrual and reproductive factors, and proliferative benign disease. Various models have been […]
Continue Reading →Panic about nuclear apocalypse overshadows Japan’s real plight
Article in the BMJ, toll free link, here.
Continue Reading →Herbal medicines, the MHRA, and insight
Press release the other day: 100th traditional herbal registration granted The number of herbal products registered under the Traditional Herbal Registration (THR) scheme hit the 100 mark today increasing consumer choice for safe herbal products across the UK. The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency’s (MHRA) THR scheme has been designed so that the public […]
Continue Reading →Iatrogenesis: telling patients about radiation risks
The BMJ carries a good editorial today about the risks of radiation as used in clinical practice, and suggests that we should be informing patients about the dangers as well as being careful about the use of it. But the biggest issue for me is not consent for radiation as used to investigate potentially serious […]
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