Listen again http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rvpq5   References I used   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23539308 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3582015/ http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2010/9789241599979_eng.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3582015/#R1 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20040880 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140673611607496 http://jp.physoc.org/content/590/5/1077.long   http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0002914905001888   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20195181   http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23467903   http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6823/9/3/abstract/  

Inside Health tonight – measles. The  references I’ve used are below. Just over 80% of children in London have had two MMR vaccines by age 5. We need 95% coverage to prevent outbreaks. Many other areas in England are at similar perilous levels. Lots of people were misled by the MMR scare. There is no […]

This report from Price Waterhouse Coopers was produced for the DoH in January. It was greeted with all kinds of publicity around the claim that technology could save the NHS billions. One line in the report caught my eye a couple of months ago which I knew was wrong – it, together with reference 3.1 […]

Inside Health 2/4/13 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b019dl1b http://www.abstracts2view.com/sabcs11/viewp.php?nu=P3-09-02 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3017674/ http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23171320 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9538962 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22735163 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-789X.2011.00873.x/full   http://www.journals.elsevierhealth.com/periodicals/yjada/article/S0002-8223(95)00155-7/abstract

free link to editorial in the student BMJ here apr-sbmj-9

free link to pdf here Perils of overdiagnosis (2)

Free link to Head to Head debate in BMJ 

  Short analysis of the paper: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0058247 Basically: their definition of placebo is quite amazingly different from what is used elsewhere. Placebos are commonly thought of as a sugar pill or chalk tablet – a biologically inert substance which cannot directly treat the disorder it is offered for. This paper decided that these were ‘pure placebos’ and that lots […]

Free link to BMJ article here and with a correction; the app from Skin Analytics don’t compare moles to an online database but track changes in the moles over time.  Mea culpa.