Little 7 minute section on the placebo effect, acupunture, and ethics. Available on listen again on iplayer, here.
Continue Reading →Choices for screening and paternalism
Luisa Dillner wrote a statistically correct and informative article about breast screening in the Guardian recently; she has been replied to by Chris Askew, the chief executive of Breakthrough Breast Cancer. He makes a big mistake. In his first paragraph, he says “Breakthrough Breast Cancer hopes this will not discourage women from attending their breast-screening […]
Continue Reading →Commercialisation, post conception, and via your GP
Excellent article in the Guardian about the National Childbirth Trust. The NCT have found that some hospitals are paying 5K to allow access to companies to come on to antenatal wards to sell their wares; photographs of babies, free samples of nappies, etc. I have complained about this before, in my own antenatal care. I […]
Continue Reading →Freedom of information requests vs science research
Free link, and follow up in the BMJ to the newspaper headlines such as “Hundreds of preteen children treated for eating disorders”.
Continue Reading →“Better GP training needed to reduce maternal deaths”
Oh no it’s not. It’s all political. The headline is from the Herald. It originates from this BMJ editorial, whose first line is “Since the first report of the Confidential Enquiry into Maternal Deaths in 1952, the maternal death rate in the United Kingdom has decreased dramatically.” They say that “many doctors are unfamiliar with […]
Continue Reading →GENERIC PRESS RELEASE FROM (health charity)
I do feel slightly guilty about this, because there are some very good health charities out there. BMJ summer column. Dear [health journalist], As awareness day/week/month for [disease] is coming up fast—just the thing for those summer slow news days!—we have lots to offer you for features, comment, articles, photos! CELEBRITY! We are very happy […]
Continue Reading →We are in serious trouble over screening
BMJ summer column, here but cut and pasted till the login works below. We are in serious trouble over screening. For all that medicine has cringed at paternalism and “doctor knows best,” has wrung its collective hands, and promised to do better, screening is still the last great preserve of unethical practice. If you are […]
Continue Reading →DVT, uncertainty and hospitals
You and Yours today had a feature about thrombosis. They suggest on their website that “hospitals are failing to risk assess patients for DVT resulting in thousands dying needlessly”. The mortality issue around preventing DVT – blood clots – in hospitals is a very interesting one. NICE guidelines last year said that ” A note of […]
Continue Reading →Coalition loses it : the NHS really is for sale
“And in all these areas, the data will be updated regularly,” he said. Whitehall sources say that clinical audit data will show which GPs have never diagnosed a case of cancer, for example. The figures will be available from December. Information about individual GP practices will also be made available with patients able to judge […]
Continue Reading →The Surgical Checklist – twitter journal club
Quite excited about Twitter journal club, which is 8pm on Sunday @twitjournalclub The paper for TODAY(!) is “A Surgical Safety Checklist to Reduce Morbidity and Mortality in a Global Population“. At the time it was published ,in 2009 in the NEJM, I had concerns about it, here. A few other people did too, but criticisms […]
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