A couple of quotes from this weeks’ BMJ. “Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK, called on the next government to add the test to the existing national bowel screening programme as one of its first priorities. “I think it is a no brainer,” he said. “This is the most important development in cancer […]

What a lot of media noise about a study just out in the Lancet on one-off bowel cancer screening using sigmoidoscopy, a test to examine the lower part of the bowel – usually in outpatients, with no sedation. It’s a well designed, large study, true.  But no wonder about the fuss, given the press release […]

continues. In yesterdays’ Daily Telegraph there is an enthusiastic large feature on how to spend 2,300 UK pounds upwards on having a what is billed as a full body check up. It’s depressing reading: scant attention is paid to the fact that this – including electrodes to the scalp to check ‘brain functions’ …’ a […]

This article from the NYTimes is an illuminating discourse into what US psychiatry is like. The author describes himself as a psychopharmacologist and clearly is used to treating symptoms with medication. For all the faults of the NHS, this kind of approach in psychiatry is rare. No wonder healthcare costs so much in the States. […]

See here :http://www.trialsjournal.com/content/11/1/43 . An examination of trials of medication for stroke which were completed but never published. This problem, the non-publication of trial data,  does not seem to go away. I quote: “Well designed clinical trials should be published because their results can benefit patients, justifying the risk to trial participants from experimental treatments. We […]

Drugs have quite rightly be subject to a lot of angst from cost-effectiveness viewpoints. The NHS is skint. Generics are cheaper than branded: some branded drugs are not well evidence based, as are some generics, and some doctors are not very good at prescribing cost effectively. I confess to being far more aware of the […]

This column likes evidence-based medicine. It is impossible to defend anything else: to pretend there is no need for evidence – or to ignore it – means ignoring the duty to ensure patients get the best possible care. It would be nice to think that medical research has now got its act together, after many […]

Many people will be aware of the high profile examples of research misconduct which have occured over the past few years – for example, the Korean cloning research which was found to be fake. But what about the research we don’t know is fake or doctored? A systematic review and meta-analysis of survey data has […]

There’s lots of it about, it seems: 160 cases in Greater Glasgow and Clyde, and all but 8 acquired it locally. And most are only mildly unwell. Our locally issued guidelines have changed subtly too: testing was, until recently, limited to those who had particular risk factors for H1N1 (symptoms starting within seven days of […]