David’s blog

Your Worst Horror The week of January 22 to 27 a series of stories of the death of a 14 year old young woman (MR) horrified many people in Britain.  This was first item on the BBC news for several days and on the front page of newspapers like the Guardian pushing Brexit, the US […]

Fifty years ago today, January 19, Jan Palach died.  He had set fire to himself 3 days earlier in Wenceslas Square in Prague in protest against the Soviet occupation of Czechoslovakia. The spot was close to Charles University where Jan Hus had begun a resistance to religious oppression 5 centuries before that helped ignite the […]

There has been increasing brouhaha about Fake News of late. In the general media, Facebook are apparently going to introduce panels of reviewers to take down posts that contain fake material. In the academic media, doctors are told not to believe what they hear in the media about the adverse effects of drugs – See […]

Seven weeks ago in the wake of Peter Gøtzsche’s dismissal by the Rigshospitalitet, I wrote to Ellen Trane Nørby the Danish Minister for Health.  The letter is HERE.  She replied on December 11 – See HERE. The response below was sent yesterday, along with the hard copies noted and link to the Welsh Senate proceedings. December 17th […]

My Virus Writing Pharmageddon in 2008 – 4 years before it was published, I described the effects of a virus which is destroying medicine – a clinical immuno-deficiency virus. In this domain there is another factor not found with tobacco or industrial chemicals that isolates doctors who attempt to bring the hazards of a drug […]

In recent years under Amar Jesani the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics has emerged as one of the few venues willing to engage with pressing bioethical issues without fear of whether pharmaceutical companies or governments might be offended. Amar approached me a week ago to comment on the Goetzsche Affair.  I borrowed a phrase invented […]

Editorial Note: The image that was here  will be repeated and explained next week Who will Rid me of … Events from Washington to London and elsewhere surrounding the gruesome death of Jamal Khashoggi at the hands of the Saudi hierarchy link well with the difficulties everyone of us has when things go wrong on […]

Editorial:  There were no plans to write a part 5 to a 4-part series but this account by David Hammerstein, a Cochrane board member, clamors to be spread.  One more point to mention is if what Cochrane is doing now is junk, then the NICE and all other guidelines are also junk.  So there is […]

Editorial Note: This is the fourth in a sequence of posts on the possible disintegration of the Cochrane enterprise.  The most recent being the Valley of Death.  Archie Cochrane was one of a group of British doctors who came back from World War II committed to social medicine, some of whom like Richard Doll, who […]

Editorial: Part 3 of this Cochrane sequence follows on from last week’s Data Based Medicine. While the histories of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) celebrate a first use of randomization in 1947, and there was some use of RCTs, primarily in mental health, in the mid-1950s, RCTs were a minority interest until 1962 and might have […]

Editorial Note: This post continues a sequence that began with Cochrane Cock-up.  It centers on treatment efficacy. A third post will center on safety where Cochrane has failed even more comprehensively than on efficacy. A fourth will feature some of the protagonists. The Cochrane Collaboration took shape around two foundational ideas.  One was that randomized […]

Editorial Note: The Akathisia theme of recent weeks will move over to RxISK for the moment to leave room for some posts about an astonishing meltdown in Cochrane centered on the HPV vaccine. The Cochrane Collaboration began a quarter of a century ago aimed at trying to pull together the best available evidence on treatments.  […]

  This post by Johanna Ryan is part of a series on DH and RxISK centered on Billiam James’s .Akathisia Anthem Pamela Wible, M.D. has been one of the leading voices speaking out about physician suicide.  She has done a lot of good, too, by being open about the abuse of doctors by the system […]

The idea of managing lethal epidemics by imposing a quarantine flourished in Italy in the fourteenth century.  In their efforts to control the plague, Italian towns regularly put blocks on trade particularly maritime traffic from affected areas. This seemed sensible and may have worked to some extent. But if you don’t know what is in […]

Editorial Note: This post follows last weeks In the Name of the BBC.  There will probably be two more posts on Hostile Environments and The Anti-Facts Brigade.  The titles and this photograph come from the movie In the Name of the Father – a compelling 1993 move about the Guildford Four which comes complete with […]

A recent BBC File on Four program on Antidepressants in Children, presented by Paul Connolly, has drawn disparaging comments on posts here. Here is some background detail.  I was interviewed for the program.  My messages were as follows: That the trials of Prozac in children were identical to the trials of other SSRIs and other […]

Editorial: This post comes from a Belgian colleague. Belgium’s best-selling pop singer Stromae has been talking about his drug-induced illness all over the media since last year. He claims the anti-malaria drug Lariam (mefloquine) made him instantly psychotic and caused long-term anxiety problems which have already persisted for 3 years after stopping the drug, and […]

Editorial Note:  This post from Leemon McHenry celebrates Marion Lilley and the International Journal of Risk and Safety in Medicine.  It has a direct link to the issues in the last two posts on suicide in children and how and why we hide problems – The Spectre of Dissent. Most people trust that medical and […]

A little over a year ago, the British Minister for Health, Jeremy Hunt, said children’s mental health was the greatest failing of the NHS. Teenagers, primarily girls, are being seen by family doctors and referred to the secondary mental health services.  The waits are so long, they attempt suicide by the time they get seen.  […]

There were relatively few comments on The Thalidomide Catastrophe.  There were however more people getting in touch directly.  Some said they were going to buy the book.  Here are some more reasons to think about buying. The Once and Future Nightmare Many seem to think thalidomide is an old story they more or less know […]

Editorial Note: This is adapted from a piece by Martin Johnson who with colleagues has just published The Thalidomide Catastrophe.  This is available as of today on Amazon and at Onwards and Upwards.  This is one of the great books about what the twentieth century was all about.  A must buy, costing almost nothing.  Child […]