Nestlé, one of the world’s largest food companies, sells 1.2 billion products a day. This gives it huge potential for good or ill in a world where a billion people […]
Columnists
Julian Sheather: Should doctors treat violent or abusive patients?
During the years I have been talking to doctors about medical ethics, I have often heard it said that when push comes to shove, the rights dice are loaded in […]
Richard Smith: The NHS and the private sector: a 70 year conversation
We’ve been having this conversation since at least 1945, said a member of the audience at this week’s Cambridge Health Network meeting on partnerships between the NHS and the private […]
Desmond O’Neill: A sad day for human rights in Ireland
It is perhaps stating the obvious that the best mode for exercising human rights is while still alive: as the Vikings stated rather bluntly in their eddaic saga Hávamál, “there […]
Pritpal S Tamber: We don’t know what the NHS is for
Last week the people of Leeds successfully halted the NHS’ plans to reform children’s heart services, which included moving surgery to a neighbouring city. It was a great victory for […]
Paul Glasziou: Can’t buy me love … but can money buy me clinical quality?
When the Beatles claimed that they “don’t care too much for money, money can’t buy me love,” they did not provide scientific references. While we might hope that statements of […]
Richard Smith: Research and the Arab Spring
The Arab world, despite its proud intellectual history and some of its countries being among the richest in the world, produces little research. Now the Arab Spring has shaken the […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: Beating on the glass ceiling
In July 2012, Anne Marie Slaughter, who is a professor at Princeton, resigned from her high profile position as the director of policy planning for the US State Department in […]
Pritpal S Tamber: How digital health will humanise care
I have always been troubled by the “disconnect” between clinical practice and real life. Clinical evidence recommends a standard intervention, according to research, but it often flounders in the messy […]
Julian Sheather: On living to be a hundred
A gamesome piece by Garrison Keillor in this month’s Prospect on, dare I say it, the prospect of living to be 100 and what it might mean to him. It […]