Medicine and Science from The BMJ

Who actually owns our health data once it is stored in the cloud? And how do we balance the global push for open medical research with the need to protect local populations from data extraction? Kamran Abbasi sits down with Trudi Lang, Professor of Global Health Research at the University of Oxford and David Strain, Associate Professor of Cardiometabolic Health at the University of Exeter. Togethe...

Two NHS maternity reviews have been published over the past few weeks. The biggest ever conducted, involving nearly 2500 families, investigated services at Nottingham university hospitals NHS trust. It was led by senior midwife, Donna Ockenden, and its findings on poor and avoidable harm to babies and mothers have reverberated throughout UK healthcare. This was followed immediately by publication...

Australia has been in the vanguard of legislation to try and reduce the influence of social media on children and young people - their ban for under 16s was introduced on the 10th of December 2025, to great fanfare, and a lot of interest around the world. But how effective are these bans at keeping children away from social media? New research just published on BMJ.com has looked at that question...

The US military’s Operation “Epic Fury” highlighted the devastating cost of using artificial intelligence for rapid military planning. Thomas Adamkiewicz, associate professor at Morehouse School of Medicine, and Zulfiqar Bhutta, Robert Harding Inaugural Chair in Global Child Health at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, to discuss why international humanitarian law is lagging dangerously behi...

The heated debate on prostate cancer screening boils down to one question: should men be routinely screened? Two recent position statements from the UK’s national screening committee published in the BMJ show that screening decisions are steeped in complexity.  The benefits of screening may be easier to grasp, but the harms of overdiagnosis and overtreatment are given less attention. Can we close...

New estimates of Global Patterns in Neonatal, Child, and Adolescent Mortality have been published - and while there has been a huge improvement, those gains are in danger - and we’re seeing worrying trends.   Kate Strong, a Scientist at the World Health Organization and Lucia Hug, a specialist in statistics and monitoring for UNICEF, join us to explain the data - and why they are worried about our...

Does healthcare have a moral emergency? In this episode of the Medicine and Science podcast, Kamran Abbasi sits down with healthcare leaders Maureen Bisognano, president emerita of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and Bob Klaber, director of strategy at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, to discuss why they're calling the lack of humanity in medicine an emergency. We ask why this dange...

It has been a tumultuous time in UK health politics. UK Health Minister ,Wes Streeting, has freshly resigned. What does this mean for his newly introduced NHS Modernization Bill as it heads through Parliament? Together with Hugh Alderwick, Director of Policy and Research at the Health Foundation, we unpack the bill's sweeping centralization of power, the abolition of NHS England, and the contentio...

Twitter was launched 20 years ago, followed quickly by the iPhone and Instagram. Today, nearly 60% of the world’s population uses social media. Medical experts are sounding the alarm on the potential for these platforms to cause systemic harm. This past year has seen large events in the legal and public health battle against tech giants, with millions of dollars awarded in damages to child victims...

The BMA has released their long awaited review of the Cass report. The original report looked at the provision of NHS gender identity services for children and young people, and involved a review of the science underpinning those services. It also set out a plan to improve care for gender diverse young people.  We talk with David Strain of the BMA’s board of science to discuss their findings, and...

The new trade deal struck between the UK and US came into force in April.  The deal will double the amount that the NHS spends on new medicines, by the end of 2036 (from 0.6 - 0.6% of GDP).  increase the threshold that the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) sets for drug approvals - which will allow more to be approved, but will also allow companies to charge more for their p...

A blockbuster MS drug undergoes FDA re-evaluation. We explore the story of Ocrelizumab, a treatment for primary progressive multiple sclerosis, following a patient petition that highlighted internal disagreements among agency reviewers regarding its efficacy. We look to Sweden, where new research involving sibling pairs separated by adoption investigates how early-life environments shape long-term...

Covid 19 was the last Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC). Our guests in this podcast think that the Trump Administration should be declared the next one. Joining Kamran Abbasi are, Fatima Hassan,  human rights lawyer and Director of the Health Justice Initiative in South Africa, and Matthew Herder, Director of the Health Justice Institute at Dalhousie University in Canada exp...

Coming up in this week’s episode: The 15th Strike: As the latest six-day walkout by resident doctors in England concludes, the BMJ's news team examines the state of the ongoing dispute over pay and training places. Iain Beardsell, consultant in emergency medicine in Southampton explain why he thinks reintroducing compassion could be the key to tackling the systemic issues facing emergency departme...

The BMJ published a negative result this week. A new trial focuses on a peer support intervention for improving breastfeeding rates in the UK, but finds no major improvement. We hear from the lead author who tells us what went wrong, and the insights that can still be drawn from apparent ‘failures’. Next we turn our eyes to shisha smoking in the UK. With shisha or “hookah” cafes on the rise, we ex...

The UK Covid Inquiry released Module Three of its findings this month. It lays out in startling detail the lived experiences of NHS staff and patients who bore through the pandemic. In the report’s words: ‘healthcare systems coped with the pandemic, but only just’. The BMJ speaks to Kevin Fong, anaesthetist lead for major incidence planning at UCL hospitals, to break down Module Three’s most impor...

The Gulf states are not large producers of pharmaceuticals or healthcare products - but the oil they supply, and the transport infrastructure they have built, are key components in a worldwide logistical network that underpin all of the pharmaceutical and other medical consumables we use. From critical NHS shortages like Bone Cement for orthopedic surgery, to persistent IV fluid supply crises plag...

The lure of health influencers and AI chat bots is strong. More and more people are placing trust in them to answer their health problems, misplaced trust - as we know these AIs can misinform. At the same time, people are struggling to access the NHS, and when they do doctors have little time or the right tools to unpick complicated science, and challenge misunderstandings. So in this roundtable,...

In this episode, Dr Katie Bramall, Chair of the BMA’s General Practitioners Committee, joins the podcast to discuss her concerns surrounding the new GP contract imposed by the UK government. GP contract overhaul: What's included and how has it been received? Helen Salisbury: Another imposed GP contract

As public health officials warn about rising emissions from urban wood burning, a BMJ investigation finds that just under a third of UK councils in high use areas have faced pressure from the stove industry to tone down or withdraw campaigns. Almost a third of UK children live in poverty. Leading expert Michael Marmot weighs in on the UK’s "steepest rise" in child poverty among OECD countries and...

In this episode, we investigate the alarming resurgence of measles across North America and the UK. While cases are falling across much of Europe and Asia, North America is seeing explosive outbreaks fueled by vaccine hesitancy and political shifts. We break down the 2026 crisis: Why London is the epicenter and how the UK lost its "Measles Elimination Status". An in-depth look at outbreaks in Onta...

In this week’s episode, we challenge long-held medical narratives, starting with how the healthcare system manages life after a cancer diagnosis. While medical advancements mean more people are surviving cancer than ever before, many patients report a "cliff-edge" experience where coordinated care effectively vanishes once primary treatment ends. We are joined by Dr. Rosalind Adam, an Academic GP...

The House of Lord's amendments to England and Wales assisted dying bill might be causing a constitutional crisis. Lords have tabled 1,277 amendments—which is a record for any equivalent bill in history - and over half of those came from just seven peers. This has led to accusations of "delaying tactics" or "filibustering" to run down the clock deliberately and run this bill off the road. Although...

Deborah Cohen's new book "How the internet hijacked our health" explores the profound impact of the internet on our wellbeing. In this conversation with BMJ Editor, Kamran Abbasi, they discuss the ways in which online information can both empower and mislead, the role of big tech in shaping our wellbeing and the complex and disturbing ways wellness influencers are becoming more trusted than the NH...

We’re 18 months into the Labour government, and their changes to the NHS are beginning to be felt. In the 10 year plan that they launched last year, they announced three planned shifts for the health service.  Firstly, they pledge to move care from hospitals to the community, an increased focus on prevention rather than sickness, and shift from analogue to digital with an improved NHS app where pa...