Covid19: Unless one gets everyone to act, policies may be ineffective or even backfire

One of the Conditions under Which Discontinuous Sterilization May Be Ineffective

Since the process of sterilization by heat forms the foundation for all bacteriological work, we might take it for granted that this subject had been pretty well exhausted. New phases, however, appear with new k~inds of work, and the discontinuous sterilization of large quantities of bouillon has been so unsatisfactory in my hands that I deem it worth while to present some facts upon this well-...

Why Even Good Defenses May be Bad

Review: atenolol may be ineffective for reducing cardiovascular morbidity or all-cause mortality in primary hypertension.

M e t h o d s Data sources: The Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, relevant textbooks, and researchers in hypertension. Study selection and assessment: Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that assessed the effect of atenolol (as the sole first-line drug in 1 of the treatment groups) on cardiovascular morbidity or mortality in patients with primary hypertension. Studies were also required to have predef...

Sequential analysis shows that β blockade in non-cardiac surgery is ineffective and may even be harmful.

Bolsin and colleagues state that “conclusive evidence has not emerged” on the use of perioperative β blockers. Sequential analysis is a tool for quantifying the amount of information, and it can therefore determine when firm evidence is reached in cumulative meta-analysis. We recently carried out a sequence analysis in which we examined the data from nine “secure” trials (10 529 patients) of pe...

It is not safe unless everyone is aware.

This is a letter in response to article http://dx.doi.org/10. 1093/qjmed/hcu227. The authors inform us that the standardization of cupping therapy will reduce the occurrence of adverse effects and help promote the therapy. Cupping therapy or blood-letting therapy has been used for many centuries by well-known people including George Washington and Mozart. Now the celebrities of our current age ...