There are times when, as a lawyer advising NHS bodies, I get close to advising that the law is unworkable. An example emerged the day when I had to deal […]
Columnists
Richard Smith: We need “disease” to make us healthy
Health, says the WHO, is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. But could it be that some sort […]
Richard Smith: A proposal for your retirement
Lots of my friends have recently retired or are retiring. None of them, as far as I know, have been on preretirement courses. They launch into retirement, which may be […]
David Lock on the landmark case concerning the future of Lewisham Hospital
The problem of how to tackle poor performing NHS trusts has dogged the NHS for many years. Companies that fail can be put into liquidation, factories close down, and people […]
Jim Murray: New fronts in the struggle for transparency
The European Court of Justice has struck down and ordered a rehearing of the cases for an interim injunction to stop the European Medicines Agency’s new transparency policy on clinical […]
Richard Smith on Larry Summers: an economist with glamour
I was once in a restaurant in London when Nicole Kidman brushed past my table. Six feet of silver glamour. The effect was very much more intense than shaking hands […]
Billy Boland: Live at the NHS Leadership Academy
It’s taken me a while to write about my first residential for the NHS Leadership Academy Bevan Programme. So much went on there, I’ve needed a bit of time to […]
Jim Murray: Transparency may help to reduce the misselling of medicines
Greater transparency on clinical trial results would help reduce off-label promotion—the promotion of medicines for uses for which they have not been approved. Looking at the US since 2004, I […]
Richard Smith: Should scientific fraud be a criminal offence?
At Britain’s first and only summit meeting on research misconduct in 2000, Alexander McCall Smith, a professor of medical law and ethics, argued that research misconduct (the gentlemanly phrase for […]
Desmond O’Neill: Food for thought
My knowledge of eating disorders stems less from my medical training than from vicarious insights into their ravages in the milieu of my teenage and young adult daughters. Yet not […]