I wish all my readers a very Happy Valentine’s Day and though I am spending it in a rather sad and loser-like fashion, I hope y’all make a day out of it! I know this is the day when pink sappiness overrules our lives and the loveless ones like myself feel rather left out of a celebration we don’t understand much about (hey I have … Continue reading Valentine’s Day Kills!
Fiona Godlee has written a very interesting Editorial in the BMJ and this tweet of hers made me think on this issue: For a while in the 90s NEJM banned editorials and reviews from authors linked to industry. Should the BMJ try this? http://bit.ly/rczXJt — fiona godlee (@fgodlee) August 11, 2011 I oppose the blanket ban mainly on principle. I know that it sounds weird, … Continue reading Why the BMJ Should Not Follow NEJM Author Ban Policy
With the last Harry Potter movie in the piping (due for a global release this weekend), it is understandable if the Potter craze gets a little irked this time around. And in true keeping with my Pottermania, in this post, I am going to examine the effect the release of Potter books/movies has on us.
I am not the first one to question the impact of Potter on kids and nor will I be the last. In their seminal paper in the BMJ, Gwilym et al establishes beyond reasonable doubt that no matter what the Potter books may do, they reduce ER visits of kids (due to trauma). The authors worked on the premise that: Continue reading “Harry Potter and the Missing Trauma Cases”
The point-counter-point articles by Karim Khan and Trish Groves published on November 2010 caught my attention when the latter tweeted a link to her side of the story a couple of days ago: http://twitter.com/#!/trished/status/53044806108188672 At the outset of this post, let me make one thing clear: I know that open peer review is a good thing, and I support it. In fact, in the few … Continue reading The Open Reviews Debate
This journal has been in the piping for quite some time as it had already been declared in the BMJ Blogs. It went live quite some time ago (February 24th) but I just managed to procrastinate posting this till now! http://twitter.com/#!/BMJ_Open/status/40541838293078016 The new journal works on the principle of the author paying system, much like the PLoS journals. They have a steep article processing charge: … Continue reading BMJ Open: New Open Access Journal
In the lethal injections used to execute prisoners on the death row, one of the major components is an important anesthetic drug called sodium thiopental. Under a three drug protocol, sodium thiopental is used to anaesthetise the prisoner, then pancuronium bromide paralyses him, before potassium chloride is administered to cause a fatal heart attack. (1) Hospira was one of the few pharma houses still producing … Continue reading Death Drug on the Death Row
This news article in the BMJ, which is fast becoming my favorite medical reading, is disturbing, to say the least, on several levels. (1) But before I proceed any further I would like to draw your attention to three words in the title of the article: Baby Charnel House. So what exactly is a charnel house? By definition, as we all know, this means a … Continue reading Remembering Picasso, The House of Charnel, and A Medical Holocaust
