I am very excited to be getting a new bicycle – albeit one that is about 60 years old. She is simply beautiful; a Rudge Ladies Roadster. She is now being stripped, sorted, retyred, basketted and relit at the wonderful Common Wheel, which I’ve written about years ago here. Buying a bike in such a […]
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 →Breast screening challenged (again)
Surely we shall see some progress on proper information about breast screening soon? From this week’s BMJ: basically, improvements in breast cancer treatment, not access to breast screening, can explain improvements in mortality from the disease. This is important information for women who are deciding whether or not to have breast screening. As I’ve said […]
Continue Reading →The polypill, relative risks and press releases
free link to BMJ article here
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 →BMJ and that BJGP acupuncture paper
free link to my BMJ article here. I am wondering if this is the first time the Daily Mash has been quoted in the BMJ, along with the excellent DC, Northern Doctor, and the Quackometer. DC has done a good job with the follow up in the BJGP, which I don’t find satisfactory; see here, […]
Continue Reading →The NHS opened up to devastation
Guardian: “He pointed out that the former prime minister’s abnormal heart rhythms could today be treated by using the telephone to measure the heart beats and give an instant diagnosis, followed by a call from a nurse advising on whether the patient needed to “go to hospital or not”. “You could cut dramatically the number […]
Continue Reading →BMJ: the scam of integrative medicine
Here. (I will take down the text once have toll free link from bmj.) There’s been a shift in the world of alternative NHS medicine. I know, I know, alternative so called medicine is only medicine that doesn’t work: so how come it’s still chumming up with our evidence aware NHS? It’s not, you see, […]
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