..and other fairy tales. From the Conservative party manifesto “putting patients in charge of making decisions about their care” is the choral refrain, and yet this week has seen a new Health and Social Care Bill which, bottom line, seeks to interrupt and decimate relationships between patients, GPs and hospital specialists by putting numerous other messy […]
Continue Reading →Aspirin: don’t believe the hype. It’s still not a miracle drug
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 →Selling health to the public
for the BMJ, article here.
Continue Reading →Healthcare charities and the uselessness of GPs (again)
..and so, again and again, that GPs are in some way ‘undertrained’. We aren’t specialists – we are generalists. It’s a different job, with different skills. But it’s a myth to repeat that just because a GPs doesn’t have specialist training somehow means that the doctor is incompetent or lacking in training. GP training consists […]
Continue Reading →Peter Wilmshurst, free speech and libel
An article in TheHeart.org – Dr Wilmshurst is now being threatened with libel over a radio interview he did a year ago. I interviewed Dr Wilmshurst for the FT at around the same time. It was a shortish interview, discussing the reasons why he’d spoken out about the research he’d been involved with and the […]
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 →Will GP commissioning help patients get better?
I think not. I’ve spent a bit of time reading the new White Paper and associated fluff, I conclude that there are possibly two good things in it. I’ll get to them. But, oh, the jargon! And the rest of it! What on earth does ‘equity and excellence: liberating the NHS’ actually mean? I’m really […]
Continue Reading →The moral of the whale and the dolphin
If you are ever thinking of a tattoo, read Northern Doctor first.
Continue Reading →Chiropractic ‘checks’ for children
I am aware of several clinics offering these with the promise of easing colic, even asthma: or preventing problems allegedly caused by birth……so well played, to the journal of Chiropractic and Osteopathy, which concludes, after reviewing the evidence, that a lack of evidence for chiropractic in children has been noted since the 1940s, and almost […]
Continue Reading →H1N1 vaccinations and the WHO
I’m preparing for the Cheltenham Science Festival on Wednesday – and this video feature from the BMJ/Bureau of Investigative Journalism is outstanding. Do watch, if you are interested in the conflicts of interest the WHO might not have told you about when issuing guidelines for dealing with H1N1. I am up for defending myself for not […]
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