The coalition programme for government states: “We will create a cancer drugs fund to enable patients to access the cancer drugs their doctors think will help them, paid for using […]
Columnists
Julian Sheather: Politics, genital mutilation, and the slow death of serious debate
Asked his opinion on the political issues of the day, Saul Bellow, the American novelist, would sometimes say that he was in favour of all the good things and opposed […]
Richard Smith on the joy of walking
My wife hates walking. For her it means trudging through the rain and mist, cold, exhausted, wet to her underwear, and with five miles still to go to a smelly […]
Tracey Koehlmoos: We are human: the homeless in Bangladesh
When the little woman in red arrived at the dissemination seminar of the Urban Partnerships for Poverty Reduction Programme (UPPR), I was dually impressed by her small size and that […]
Douglas Noble on the World Health Assembly
I recall when I first attended a medical science teaching committee meeting at St Andrews University in 1995. I was overawed by the complexity of running a medical curriculum, bringing […]
Martin McShane: The money
I was at a conference, struggling with one of those sharp sticks on which a bit of chicken was impaled whilst holding a plate of food in the other hand, […]
Julian Sheather: Pain and its uses
I am a terrible coward. I flee pain as the gazelle flees the lion. On a bad day I am living proof of Jeremy Bentham’s universal dictum: that the sole […]
Richard Smith: Where are the women leaders?
At the end of my class on leadership at Warwick Medical School comes a dreadful moment. I’ve enjoyed myself and am packing up, when the only student left, a woman, […]
Martin McShane: Trust
Decades after it was introduced, the impact of fundholding still resonates. Many GPs hanker after the influence it brought, the way it made the big providers in the system sit […]
Julian Sheather: Should we pay drug addicts to be sterilised?
Barbara Harris is a concerned American. After adopting four children from a crack-addicted mother, she tried to change the law in California. She wanted to make it mandatory for every […]