Medicine and Science from The BMJ

The US military’s Operation “Epic Fury” highlighted the devastating cost of using artificial intelligence for rapid military planning. Thomas Adamkiewicz, associate professor at Morehouse School of Medicine, and Zulfiqar Bhutta, Robert Harding Inaugural Chair in Global Child Health at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, to discuss why international humanitarian law is lagging dangerously behind technology, and why we urgently need a new era of legal frameworks to govern AI use in war.

 

Direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising of prescription medicines is strictly illegal everywhere in the world except for the United States and New Zealand. Deborah Cohen, investigative journalist, joins us to explain how global social media platforms are making borders porous, allowing Hollywood celebrities and high-profile influencers to broadcast drug endorsements directly into the feeds of UK citizens.

 

Finally, Between 2020 and 2023, the UK government allocated £1.7 billion specifically intended for frontline doctor training. However, a deep-dive investigation has revealed that a staggering £400 million of that funding is completely unaccounted for - David Hutchison, paediatrics registrar, and Jonathan De Oliveira, GP trainee, join us to describe what they found.

Reading List

AI warfare demands a new era of humanitarian law

Bad influencers: How social media imported US-style drug advertising to the UK

“Black hole” of medical student funding

The heated debate on prostate cancer screening boils down to one question: should men be routinely screened?

Two recent position statements from the UK’s national screening committee published in the BMJ show that screening decisions are steeped in complexity. 

The benefits of screening may be easier to grasp, but the harms of overdiagnosis and overtreatment are given less attention. Can we close the divide between the public and academic discourse?

 

Guest: Sian Taylor-Phillips is professor of population health at the University of Warwick and a member of the UK national screening committee.

 

Further Reading:

UK National Screening Committee position statement on surrogate outcomes in cancer screening trials

Prostate cancer screening: Committee rejects calls for mass testing programme despite pressure

More interviews from the BMJ on our Youtube channel.

New estimates of Global Patterns in Neonatal, Child, and Adolescent Mortality have been published - and while there has been a huge improvement, those gains are in danger - and we’re seeing worrying trends.

 

Kate Strong, a Scientist at the World Health Organization and Lucia Hug, a specialist in statistics and monitoring for UNICEF, join us to explain the data - and why they are worried about our ability to measure this in the future.

 

Helen Sharman is the first British Astronaut to make it to space - this week she was at the Royal College of GPs giving the General Medical Council's annual Marx lecture. She joins us to discuss how research in space might impact healthcare on Earth, and what the NHS can learn from cosmonaut teamwork. 

 

Finally, The government and doctors in England are not getting on well - we’ve had a series of strikes from the resident doctors, GPs are in dispute about the imposition of a new contract, and now consultants are being polled on industrial action.  BMA Consultants Committee co-chairs Shanu Dutta and Helen Neary explain why.

 

Reading list

 

Neonatal, Child, and Adolescent Mortality

Global, regional, and national levels and trends in under 5, infant, and neonatal mortality during 1990-2024 with scenario based projections to 2030

Global, regional, and national levels and trends in older child, adolescent, and youth (5-24 years) all cause mortality from 1990 to 2024: modelling study

Systematic estimates of global causes of neonatal and under 5 mortality in 2000-24: secondary data analysis using bayesian multinomial logistic regression

Estimates of global causes of death for children and adolescents aged 5-19 in 2000-24: secondary data analysis using bayesian multinomial logistic regression

 

Full interview on YouTube:

Why NHS Senior Doctors in England Are Considering Strike Action

Does healthcare have a moral emergency?

In this episode of the Medicine and Science podcast, Kamran Abbasi sits down with healthcare leaders Maureen Bisognano, president emerita of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and Bob Klaber, director of strategy at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, to discuss why they're calling the lack of humanity in medicine an emergency.

We ask why this dangerous imbalance between the rational (efficiency, data, and metrics) and the relational (human connection, empathy, and listening) has developed in modern medicine. We also learn how simple changes, like asking "What matters to you?" instead of just "What's the matter?, can help us put the humanity back into healthcare.

 

Reading list

Read the BMJ Article: Healthcare's moral emergency: reconnecting healthcare with its mission and purpose

Michael West on workforce kindness

Amy Edmondson on psychological safety

Len Berry on cancer care & kindness

It has been a tumultuous time in UK health politics. UK Health Minister ,Wes Streeting, has freshly resigned. What does this mean for his newly introduced NHS Modernization Bill as it heads through Parliament?

Together with Hugh Alderwick, Director of Policy and Research at the Health Foundation, we unpack the bill's sweeping centralization of power, the abolition of NHS England, and the contentious role for US tech firm Palantir in the new NHS.

And, we explore a major milestone for women's healthcare. A condition affecting an estimated 170 million women globally has officially been renamed from Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) to Polyendocrine Metabolic Ovarian Syndrome (PMOS). Rachel Morman, Chair of the PMOS charity Verity, joins us to explain why dropping "cysts" from the name is a vital step toward recognizing this as a complex, multi-system condition, and how this co-designed change will fundamentally reshape diagnosis, treatment, and future research.

Further reading:

Health Bill brings NHS management back into government

PMOS: What's in a name? Everything

PCOS name change to PMOS must be managed to avoid confusing patients, says expert