Ray’s latest feature in the British Medical Journal is The Greening of Medicine – exposing healthcare’s unhealthy carbon footprint and how to make medicine cleaner and greener.
The story inspired this BMJ Front Cover
Time for Sunshine in Medicine’s dark corners
November 22, 2011 – 7:09 am
In Ray’s latest monthly column for the Medical Journal of Australia he argues its time for full disclosure of all financial relationships between our health professionals and drug and device makers. Evert speaking fee, every trip away and every free lunch.
Rather than tinkering with codes of ethics, a new law like the United State’s Sunshine Act is whats needed. Here you can read the full text of the column
Former Drug Company Insider Speaks Out
October 15, 2011 – 11:24 pm
Former pharmaceutical saleswoman, Petra Helesic
At ABC Radio National’s Background Briefing program, listen to Petra Helesic describe how she marketed medicines to Australian doctors for more than a decade, and the debate over the need for more transparency about the secret payments that regularly flow from companies to leading specialists
Is Your Mum on Drugs?
August 29, 2011 – 8:55 am
After rescuing her elderly mother from a case of over-drugging, Johanna Trimble decided enough was enough, and she’s since become an influential patient advocate in Canada where she lives.
“I really wanted to do something about the epidemic of overmedication of our elders” says Johanna Trimble, in Ray’s latest column for the British Medical Journal.
You can read Johanna’s compelling story here
The seductive, dangerous magic of numbers
August 21, 2011 – 10:38 pm
In Ray’s latest feature article for the British Medical Journal he explores medicine’s obsession with relying on “proxy” measures of health – things like cholesterol or bone mineral density numbers.
As the article explains, “…the grand assumption that helping a person’s numbers will automatically improve their health, is a delusion as dangerous as it is seductive.”
Yale University Professor Harlan Krumholz says we’re all being far too “cavalier” in our reliance on numbers, and evidence-based medicine architect Professor Gordon Guyatt calls for a new approach that focuses on improving people’s health, not their numbers.
You can read the BMJ feature for free here
Pharmaville – the latest fad in on-line gaming
July 6, 2011 – 11:59 pm
In Ray’s latest column in the British Medical Journal, we learn about Pharmaville, an idea for a new web-based social networking game, where players develop and sell medicines to make life perfect, where dubstep plays in the strip clubs, and where those found guilty of misleading the public face the possibilty of mild professional censure. You can read the BMJ column here
We need to be wary about new disease definitions – BMJ editor
May 12, 2011 – 11:37 pm
The editor of the British Medical Journal, Dr Fiona Godlee warns of the need to be wary of new definitions of disease, and calls on doctors to make their patients more aware of debates around where we draw the line between health and illness.
Dr Godlee’s editorial ‘Who should define disease?‘ is well worth a read [Reference: BMJ 2011; 342:d2974]
And you can see here the fantasic BMJ cover May 14 2011 which is based on Ray’s latest BMJ article, detailed below
A new way to decide who’s healthy and who’s sick
May 4, 2011 – 7:10 am
In Ray’s latest article in the British Medical Journal, he exposes how many of the panels which draw the line between health and sickness comprise experts with financial ties to drug companies.
The article contains explosive comments from the psychiatrist who chaired the taskforce which wrote the DSM IV – the globally influential psychiatrists’ manual of diseases – and it explores ways in which fresh new independent panels might be put together.
An interview with Ray about the BMJ feature can be seen here at The Conversation, discussing how doctors with financial ties to drug companies, may have – in their enthusiasm to treat us – classified far too many healthy people as being sick.
And Ray’s short ABC Health Report presentation on the topic can be heard here
Power to the people
April 12, 2011 – 5:23 am
In his latest column for the British Medical Journal, ‘Power to the People’, Ray discusses calls for more citizen engagement in debates about health care, the sector which eats ever-bigger slices of public expenditure
Feeling lazy? Take the test
April 1, 2011 – 12:01 am
Do you ever feel lazy? You may have Motivational Deficiency Disorder, the condition uncovered five years ago today. One in five people suffer from this disorder and many don’t know they have it. This scientifically validated new test (p^0.3) will only take 30 seconds: it could save your life.*
Take the test
1. Have you ever felt lazy or apathetic? Yes/No
2. Do you have a family history of laziness? Yes/No
3. Do you ever feel tired on a Monday morning? Yes/No
4. Have you ever considered hiring someone to clean the gutters? Yes/No
5. Are you breathing? Yes/No
If you answered yes to just one question – you should see your doctor today!
You can also view a short video here
*Argos L, Henry D, Cassels A, et. al., Journal of Motivational Medicine, 2011 April 1;4:78-92
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