Medicine and Science from The BMJ

In this interview from Preventing Overdiagnosis 2017 (preventingoverdiagnosis.net) Stacy Carter, associate professor at Sydney Health Ethics - and the author of a recently written BMJ essay the ethical aspects of overdiagnosis, joins us to talk about how the cultural context of medicine seeps into our decision making processes and affects how people conceptualise the risks of too much medicine. Re...

This week the annual Preventing over diagnosis conference is happening in Quebec, Canada. The conference is put together with a wide range of partners, including The BMJ, and aims to tackle the some of the problems of Too Much Medicine. To kick off our content for the conference, this week we’ve published an article looking at some of the drivers - and hence potential solutions for over diagnosis....

Loss of a loved one can be very painful. When seeking support, some people turn to their doctor. Because of their pivotal role in the community, physicians can provide excellent support for bereaved people and can often direct them to additional resources. Katherine Shear, a physician, and Stephanie Muldberg, a bereaved mother, join us to discuss how grief can play out in the consultation, and exp...

If you’ve listened to more than one of our podcasts, you’ll probably be aware of the problem of the opacity of clinical trial data - trials which are conducted by never see the light of day, or results within those trials which are never published. Pharmaceutical companies have their own policies on what they are willing to make public, when, and for the first time a new audit, published on bmj.co...

Mike Richards is well known in the UK - former Cancer Tzar, he now heads up the Care Quality Commission - regulator of all health and social care services, and therefore the body responsible for inspecting hospitals and GP practices. In this interview, BMJ’s head of news and views, Rebecca Coombes went to the CQC’s headquarters in London, and spoke to Mike Richards - who defends the record of hosp...

It’s been 10 years since electronic cigarettes hit the shelves in a big way - and since there controversy has reigned about their health effects - are they less unhealthy than smoking traditional tobacco cigarettes, and will they increase nicotine dependence? Its to that last point that new research, published on BMJ.com is looking into - specifically, do e-cigarettes help people quit tobacco? Pro...

The increase in life expectancy in England has almost “ground to a halt” since 2010 and austerity measures are likely to be a significant contributor. In this podcast Michael Marmot, director at University College London’s Institute of Health Equity, joins us to discuss what might be causing that drop off, and why a decrease in early life chances is particularly problematic. Read more about the re...

The BMJ has been campaigning for an end to “too much medicine” - the pernicious effect of marketing on the range of tests and treatments that doctors offer patients - tests and treatments which are motivated by the financial reward to the system, than the health of the individual. A new analysis on BMJ.com takes a look at what’s happening in the the first part of that - testing. New biomarkers for...

Earlier this year, the WannaCry ransomeware attack took control of computers in 40 NHS trusts, blocking access to the data held on them. This wasn’t the first time that NHS computers had been infected by malware, but it brought the danger of cyber attack into the consciousness of doctors and patients. In this podcast we hear from two people who have been thinking hard about cyber security in the N...

The FDA faces perpetual criticism that it is too slow in it’s approval process for getting drugs to market, but one former FDA employee Tom Marciniak, and one professor, Victor Serebruany from Johns Hopkins University have analysed that process and disagree. Tom Marciniak has been a commentator on the approval process, both critical of industry and the FDA in The BMJ - and in this interview he tal...

Twenty years ago the statistician Doug Altman railed against, “The Scandal of Poor Medical Research,” in an editorial in The BMJ. 10 years later, Iain Chalmers and Paul Glaziou calculated that costs $170 billion annually in wasted research grants. In this podcast, recorded at Evidence Live, we spoke to Altman and Chalmers about their campaigns to improve the design, conduct, and reporting of clini...

The Alzheimer’s society, in the UK, predicts that if the rates of dementia remain constant there’ll be 1.7 million people in the country living with the condition by 2050. We also know that things like improvements in cardiovascular health are changing those rates. New research published on bmj.com attempts to model what the outcomes of those changing factors might be, and Sara Ahmadi - Abhari, a...

Two articles published on the bmj.com aim to help doctors treat patients who request support with their gender identity. Firstly a practice pointer on how to refer to gender clinic, and secondly a What Your Patient Is Thinking article about trans people's experiences in the healthcare system. In this podcast, two of the authors of that patient experience article, Emma-Ben and Reubs, join us to dis...

Findings from a range of prospective cohort studies based around the world indicate that higher intelligence in children is related to a lower risk of all cause mortality in adulthood - and now a new study, published on bmj.com, is trying to dig into that association further, with a whole population cohort and data on cause specific mortality. Ian J Deary, professor of differential psychology at t...

"Too many research studies are poorly designed or executed. Too much of the resulting research evidence is withheld or disseminated piecemeal. As the volume of clinical research activity has grown the quality of evidence has often worsened, which has compromised the ability of all health professionals to provide affordable, effective, high value care for patients.” Evidence is in crisis, and Carl...

Stress is one of the leading causes of work absence, recently overtaking back-pain, and an increasing part of a GPs workload. However good quality evidence about how to deal with stress is hard to come by. Alexis Descatha, an occupational/emergency practitioner, at the University hospital of Poincaré, gives some practical advice on what to do when you suspect stress is the underlying cause of a co...

Air pollution is a truly damaging environmental insult to the human body. The numbers of premature deaths, in the UK alone, that can be attributed to it are calculated to be 40,000 a year. Yet despite this, action to tackle the problem - as with the other huge environmental issue of our time, climate change - is distinctly lacking. Robin Russel-Jones dermatologist and chair of Help Rescue the Plan...

The 2014 west African Ebola epidemic shone a harsh light on the health systems of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone. While decades of domestic and international investment had contributed to substantial progress on the Millennium Development Goals, national health systems remained weak and were unable to cope with the epidemic. Margaret Kruk associate professor of global health at the Harvard TH C...

A new study on BMJ.com, examines the effect of moderate drinking on brain structure. We know that heavy drinking has a deleterious effect on our brains, and is linked to dementias. However, for sometime it’s been thought that moderate drinking is actually protective. Anya Topiwala, clinical lecturer in old age psychiatry at the University of Oxford, joins us to discuss the association between alco...

The rapid changes in the global environment have led many scientists to conclude that we are living in a new geological epoch—the Anthropocene—in which human activities have become the dominant driving force transforming the Earth’s natural systems. A recent joint publication by the World Health Organization and Convention on Biological Diversity articulated the myriad connections between biodiver...

We're creating a manifesto for better evidence. The centre for Evidence Based Medicine at the University of Oxford, and the BMJ, are asking what are the problem with medical evidence, and how can we fix them? In this third discussion we went to Scotland, to find out what the people who create policy think about the issues with evidence synthesis, and how the information they create is being used i...

Available data suggest about 50% of delirium is hypoactive; this and the mixed motor subtype account for 80% of all cases of delirium. It can be more difficult to recognise, and is associated with worse outcomes, than hyperactive delirium. In this podcast, Christian Hosker, consultant liaison psychiatrist at the Leeds Liaison Psychiatry Service outlines when to suspect hypoactive delirium, how to...

Each individual’s grief process is unique, when confronted with the death of a loved one, most people experience transient rather than persistent distress - however 10% of bereaved individuals, with an increased risk following the death of a partner or child and loss to unnatural or violent circumstances, experience prolonged grief disorder. In this podcast, Paul Boelen, a professor of psychiatry...

NHS hospitals must be willing to dispose of surplus land to help convince the Treasury to invest in new premises that are fit for purpose, the head of a major government review has urged. Robert Naylor, former chief executive of University College London Hospitals, who was asked by the health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, to produce a review of NHS property and estates - and in this interview we asked h...

The BMJ publishes a lot of educational articles, and in an attempt to help you with your CPD, we have put together this round-up. Our authors and editors will reflect on the key learning points in the articles we discuss, and explain how they may change their practice in light of that new understanding. In this month's round up we're discussing: Addiction to exercise http://www.bmj.com/content/357...