David’s blog

Editorial Note: This post will be an easy and obvious read if you’re Irish.  If you’re not, with Google or whatever it should be accessible and indeed the little bit of extra effort may make it a more rewarding read.  There is a warning below in respect of one item you might choose to Google. […]

The picture shows Franz Mesmer magnetising a patient.  In between his hands and her head and heart there is a set of little slivers of  metal, capable of being magnetised – shown by the fact they are all lined up the same way.  The therapist was able to influence magnetic fields and could realign bits […]

Jose Mario Bergoglio in Chile 2018: To believe in us you have to have Faith, but for me to believe in you you have to bring me proof Over 150 years ago, describing most of the medicines then available as junk, Oliver Wendell Holmes came up with one of the most famous phrases about medical […]

January 28 2019. Open letter to David Haslam, NICE Dear David, Our paths nearly crossed at an IAPT meeting in London in 2016 but you opted not to speak in a session that had me covering “Some Questions for NICE” – a lecture covering issues that have given rise to this letter. We brushed by […]

The recent moral panic around the Death of MR and the involvement of Instagram and Facebook in her death and maybe that of others is intriguing. Worthy of John Le Carre – at his Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy best. This may be a cynical attempt by the old media – the BBC or NBC, the […]

Dead Contact Following last week’s post Are Old or New Media to Blame for Suicide, I had the following email from papyrus: Ged.Flynn@papyrus.co.uk David I’d be happy to have a discussion with you. Perhaps you could contact me. Many thanks Ged Ged is apparently a little more senior within the organisation than Chris. Ged you can […]

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 […]