BMA chairman denies reports that he opposes copayments

Turning the BMA into print.

1 Beecher HK. Ethics and clinical research. N EnglJ Med 1966;274:1354-60.2 Anonymous. Experimental medicine [Editorial]. BMJ 1962;ii: 1108. 3 BearD AG, Billing BH, Sherlock S. Hepatic glucose output and hepatic insulin sensitivity in diabetes mellitus. Lancet 1951;ii:698. 4 Beecher HK. Experimentation on man. Springfield, Illinois: Thomas, 1959. 5 Southam CM. Hormotransplantation of human cell ...

Learning to Communicate with a SIDS Establishment that Denies the Cause of Sudden Infant Deaths

A high incidence, and most of the features, of ‘cot deaths’ were described 50 years ago. While avoidance of prone sleeping led to a significant reduction of SIDS incidence it remained the most frequent post-perinatal death. The consensus of the establishment is that the cause(s) is/are not understood. The toxic gas theory by Richardson, however, renders this consensus incorrect. While it (1) wa...

The first BMA Gold Medal.

The BMA in agony.

The BMA suffered agonies last week. And the chairman of its council, Dr Jeremy Lee-Potter, suffered even more. Why the agony and will anything be learnt? Even before the annual representative meeting (the supreme policy making body of the association) had opened in Inverness last week a whispering campaign had begun. It said that Dr Lee-Potter (attending his first such meeting as chairman of co...

A justice system that denies free will is not based on justice.

A recent article by Cashmore (1) addressed the ways in which the criminal justice system might be affected by not recognizing free will. The Oxford philosopher Bradley (2) examined this issue from a Darwinian perspective over 100 years ago. Like Cashmore (1), he found that the nonexistence of free will undermined the retributive principle of justice (2). Bradley (2) went on to note, however, th...