Ray’s latest column in the British Medical Journal celebrates a fantastic song by one of Australia’s great bands, and the potential healing power of music. Here you can read the full text of Times like these you need some One Four Five
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How to stop investing in useless or dangerous healthcare
February 20, 2012 – 2:46 am
In a column in the latest Medical Journal of Australia Ray explores the challenges of “disinvesting” in useless or dangerous health care. A healthy dose of disinvestment can be read here
The Greening of Medicine
January 26, 2012 – 7:43 am
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 [...]
Former Drug Company Insider Speaks Out
October 15, 2011 – 11:24 pm
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. [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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