Quis Custodiet Ipsos Custodes?

I have waited a long time to write this blog. Since early in 2010, to be precise. In January 2010, a paper was published in a peer-reviewed journal that made some outrageous, untrue, and defamatory remarks about Dianthus Medical.

I have not blogged about it before, because such things are better dealt with in private. This is particularly true if legal action is pending, although in the end, despite the fact that the journal refused to correct the untrue statements published about us, I decided that the cost of mounting a libel action against the journal would be prohibitive. As one great legal mind once put it, “Justice is open to everyone, in the same way as the Ritz Hotel is”.

Rearranging the deckchairs in the NHS

Today, we find out what changes are likely to be made to the Health and Social Care Bill that is currently making its way through Parliament.

Much of the Bill as currently written, particularly the proposal to give GPs greater commissioning powers, including powers to commission from the private sector, has been controversial. It is therefore not surprising that a certain amount of negotiation is going to happen before the Bill becomes law.

Destruction of smallpox vaccine

This week, the World Health Organisation will be making a decision about whether to destroy remaining stocks of smallpox vaccine.

As I'm sure you know, smallpox was eradicated more than 3 decades ago, thanks to the success of a global vaccination campaign. Given that smallpox used to kill so many people, its eradication is in my opinion perhaps the greatest achievement of medical science ever. Even those who don't rate it quite that highly would probably put it in their top 10.

EMWA conference 2011

The EMWA conference in Berlin is nearly upon us, and I'm thoroughly looking forward to it. I've rather foolishly agreed to teach 3 workshops this time round (mainly about statistics), so I shall be working hard, but I'm sure it will be fun nonetheless. Always great to catch up with fellow medical writers from around Europe over a beer or two! Do come and say hello if you're going to be there.

ICR conference 2011

We'll be exhibiting at the ICR conference in Brighton on 21-22 March. Come and see us on stand 40!

If you can't make it, you can follow our news from the conference on Twitter. Follow us at @dianthusmed, or follow the hashtag #ICR2011.

World Homeopathy Awareness Week 2011

This week has been designated as “World Homeopathy Awareness Week” (WHAW). This is a rather odd title, as we shall see later, but the gist of it is that it is a PR exercise by the homeopathy community, designed to increase sales of their treatments.

Bias in papers about bias

I have just read a paper describing how Evil Big Pharma manipulates the medical literature so that they can make more money from selling their drugs, no matter what the science says. That paper made me grumpy.

Why?

Well, if you are going to write a scientific paper criticising someone for introducing bias into the scientific literature, would it be too much to ask that you should do it in an unbiased way? What makes me grumpy is when people write papers about how evil and biased the pharmaceutical industry is (and this is certainly not the first such paper), but then themselves distort the facts to make a point.

Appropriately intolerant reporting of quack allergy testing

Last week, the government's Chief Scientific Adviser, John Beddington, caused a bit of a stir when he called for scientists to be more intolerant towards pseudoscience.

Zinc and the common cold

Today's big health news story is a new Cochrane review that looked at zinc as a treatment for the common cold. The conclusion of the review is that taking zinc supplements within 24 hours of the onset of a cold can reduce the duration and severity of symptoms.

New podcast from the Institute of Clinical Research

The Institute of Clinical Research (ICR) have today launched a new monthly podcast, which looks at news from the world of clinical research, and I'm delighted to say that I was a co-presenter of the first episode, along with Andrew Smith from the ICR.