Improved testing and new technologies must be part of a well thought out strategy, says Martin McKee […]
Columnists
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Medical fallacies
There are many types of fallacies and they are very common. The word comes from the Latin adjective fallax, deceitful or treacherous (of persons), misleading or deceptive (of things). The […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Laughter haters
Between 1532 and 1564 the French physician François Rabelais, initially using the anagrammatic pseudonym Alcofribas Nasier, published a scurrilous five-volume novel La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel, in which […]
Margaret McCartney: We need better evidence on non-drug interventions for covid-19
Non drug interventions should be based on evidence. We need to generate this to inform the covid-19 and future pandemics, argues Margaret McCartney […]
Mary Higgins: The return of medical students to clinical practice is filled with uncertainty
But somehow the challenges will be overcome, hopes Mary Higgins […]
Richard Smith: Relearning how to die
Kevin Toolis, author of the beautiful My Father’s Wake, would agree with the surgeon Atul Gawande that we have forgotten how to die. Toolis’s core argument is that his forebears […]
Mary Black: Covid-19 heroes—putting faces to the numbers
I count things for a living—trend lines go up, go down, and I check that the story of those lines makes sense. I look for patterns: what are we missing […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Laughter
Comprehensive though the list of phobias in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is, it omits some, notably gelotophobia. Nor does it include gelotophilia, katagelasticism, or gelasmus. The IndoEuropean root KLEG […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word . . . Clowns
The most unusual entry from among the nearly 600 that were added to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) in March of this year was coulrophobia, defined in the dictionary as […]
Mary Higgins: Reflections can be quite painful to complete, but in that pain comes real learning
Pre-covid, Thursdays were academic days for me, where mid-afternoon I would often wander down to academic midwifery colleagues for a gentle gossip and check in. Each time I would pass […]