A forum on healthcare policy and professional issues, by Glasgow-based GP and FT Weekend columnist Margaret McCartney
From the category archives:
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I am getting quite bored of the homeopathy debate. It should have moved on a bit, really. So here is the state of play today: James Le Fanu in today’s Telegraph says the BMA, who have recently voted for NHS funding for homeopathy to be withdrawn, aren’t listening to patients but are instead [...]
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Sometimes, it is easy to recognise a good idea. Oral rehydration solution, a simple sugar and salt formula, costs about 10 cents per packet. Since its development in the 1970s, it has saved millions of people, mainly in the developing world, from dying of diarrhoea. It could well have saved those in Zimbabwe who, in [...]
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When I was at medical school, hormone replacement therapy was not just the treatment of choice for the flushes and sweats of menopause. It was also thought to reduce the risk of heart attacks, strokes, dementia, colon cancer, bone and even teeth loss.
Yet over the past few years new research has made many doctors reluctant [...]
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There is an interesting study this week in the BMJ. The study was a mailed survey to US internists and rheumatologists about their use of placebo treatments. The response rate wasn’t great (57%) but about half said they regularly prescribed placebo treatments. Most also said they thought it was ethically permissible.
Placebos do work and the placebo [...]
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