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
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
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
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?
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
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
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
