“Doc, how’s my blood pressure? What about my cholesterol? How about my weight?” “There’s room for improvement,” I say. “How much do you exercise? How many fruits and vegetables do […]
Columnists
Richard Smith: Is the pharmaceutical industry like the mafia?
The piece that follows is my foreword to a new and fascinating book by Peter Gøtzsche, the head of the Nordic Cochrane Centre, entitled Deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How […]
Richard Smith: Time for science to be about truth rather than careers
Most scientific studies are wrong, and they are wrong because scientists are interested in funding and careers rather than truth. That was the chilling message delivered by the smiling, brilliant, […]
Richard Smith: A gamechanger for the polypill?
It is now some 15 years since the emergence of the idea and supporting evidence that combining antihypertensives and a statin into a single polypill and giving it to people […]
Desmond O’Neill: Elysium—an effective Trojan horse for Obamacare and the social gradient
“Just enjoy the film, dad, you don’t always have to write about it!” is a familiar refrain from my family on our sporadic outings to the movies. Yet cinema was […]
Siddhartha Yadav: A foreign medical graduate’s path to US residency
On 15 September 2013, thousands of doctors and doctors-to-be will flock to the Electronic Residency Application Service (ERAS) website to apply for a residency position in the United States. As […]
Richard Smith: A bad case of health
I’ve been puzzling for years over how to define health without making much progress, but I thought I might take a step forward by listening to a discussion on the […]
Tiago Villanueva: Am I happy about leaving Portugal and clinical medicine?
About a month ago, I left my family, friends, and comfort zone in Portugal to take up the job of BMJ editorial registrar at The BMJ‘s editorial office in London. […]
Liz Wager: Show us the data (part 2)
My last blog started with the observation that it’s impossible to investigate research fraud unless you have the raw data. While that may seem obvious, it leads logically onto another, […]
William Cayley: Resistance is futile (?)
Recent years have seen a lot of optimistic talk and writing about the “Patient Centered Medical Home”, the promise of population registries and electronic health records for preventing and managing […]