Public health workers, struggling with a new covid-19 variant, cannot be expected to deal with a chaotic end of the Brexit transition too […]
Columnists
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Medical mistletoe
In our recent survey of harms at Christmas, Robin Ferner and I did not discuss the harms that might arise from having seasonal plants in the vicinity, other than Christmas […]
Working from home during covid—whose TEAM(S)™ are you on?
We have all been living La Vida Lockdown, but let’s face it, we have never seen more of our co-workers’ homes. Those who might never invite us in now have […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Massage and malaria
Three words reflecting two types of Chinese therapies can be found among the biomedical words first cited from 1979 in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (Table 1)—tui na, a form […]
Martin McKee: “NHS” Test and Trace under fire—a system flawed by design
Test and trace has been hampered by a failure to draw on international experience and a lack of engagement with public health professionals says Martin McKee […]
Nick Hopkinson: Man’s 4th Best Hospital—a powerful reminder of the moral hazards that await if we don’t look out for each other
My copy of The House of God, Samuel Shem’s 1978 novel of medical training, disillusion, and resistance, has a quote from Cosmopolitan on the cover; a “bawdy cult classic—Catch-22 with […]
Could Slovakia’s mass testing programme work in England?
What is happening in Slovakia and what lessons might it hold for the UK? […]
Andy Cowper: Four key things you may have missed this week
The obvious excitement of the news that the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency has approved the Pfizer/BioNTech vaccine for covid-19 for rollout in the UK, coupled with the minor-key […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Calcium connections
Some of the biomedical words first cited from 1978 in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) (Table 1) are connected with calcium—nimodipine, calmodulin, and alfacalcidol. Table 1. Biomedical words (n=28) in […]
Richard Smith: Is cancer still the best way to die?
I was asked to write the piece below by George Lundberg, who was the editor of JAMA when I was editor of The BMJ. He has a blog where he […]