This Week in BMJ | Editor's Choice | Press releases

439 Tobacco marketing: shackling the pied piper
Gerard Hastings, Lynn MacFadyen, Martine Stead

440 The challenge for Beijing: the 10th world conference on tobacco or health
Robert Beaglehole

441 Community institutional care for frail elderly people
David Black, Clive Bowman

442 The demographic timebomb
Veena Soni Raleigh

444 Children with obsessive compulsive disorder
Isobel Heyman

445 AMA endorses consumer products
US rules on paediatric testing of drugs
Cause of Huntington's chorea found
Police free to bug surgeries
Menstruation affects mammography
Doctors in Wales should speak Welsh
FDA tightens rules on advertising
Matthew Myers, antitobacco campaigner

449 Size at birth, maternal nutritional status in pregnancy, and blood pressure at age 17: population based analysis
Arie Laor, David K Stevenson, Jeoshua Shemer, Rena Gale, Daniel S Seidman

453 Management of chronic hepatitis C: clinical audit of biopsy based management algorithm
G R Foster, R D Goldin, J Main, I Murray-Lyon, S Hargreaves, H C Thomas

459 Are drug advertisements in Indian edition of BMJ unethical?
B Gitanjali, C H Shashindran, K D Tripathi, K R Sethuraman

460 Commentary: Advertising adversities
G G Christo, R Balasubramaniam

461 A randomised comparison of the EuroQol and Short Form-36 after stroke
Paul J Dorman, Jim Slattery, Barbara Farrell, Martin S Dennis, Peter A G Sandercock and the United Kingdom collaborators in the International Stroke Trial

462 Cognitive impairment in elderly people: population based estimate of the future in England, Scotland, and Wales
David Melzer, Margaret Ely, Carol Brayne

463 Drug points: Successful breast feeding while mother was taking cyclosporin
Y Thiru, D N Bateman, M G Coulthard

Generalised pruritus associated with amlodipine
S Orme, D da Costa

458 Correction: Intersalt revisited: further analyses of 24 sodium excretion and blood pressure within and across populations
Elliott and others

464 Withdrawal of long term diuretic medication in elderly patients: a double blind randomised trial
Edmond P Walma, Arno W Hoes, Colette van Dooren, Ad Prins, Emiel van der Does

469 Science, medicine, and the future: Osteoporosis
Stuart H Ralston

473 ABC of mental health: Mental health in a multiethnic society
Simon Dein

477 An "ecological" approach to the obesity pandemic
Garry Egger, Boyd Swinburn

480 How to read a paper: Papers that report drug trials
Trisha Greenhalgh

484 Intersalt data
Cross cultural studies such as Intersalt study cannot be used to infer causality J Le Fanu;
Data linking sodium intake to subsequent morbid and fatal outcomes must be studied M Alderman;
Conclusions drawn in paper "revisiting" Intersalt data are of questionable validity A Macnair;
Epidemiological studies should be designed to reduce correction needed for measurement error to a minimum N E Day;
Correction for regression dilution bias in Intersalt study was misleading G D Smith and A N Phillips;
Slow decremental change in dietary sodium load in whole populations is needed G Watt and J T Hart;
Science demands data sharing K Rennolls;
Reply to Rennolls's letter (exclusive to BMJ Internet version) P Elliott
Reply for Intersalt Steering and Editorial Committee (extended from BMJ paper versionP Elliott and others;
Collaborative efforts must be made to reduce sodium in dietR H Grimm;
Sodium contents of restaurant foods in United States are highB F Liebman and M F Jacobson;
Salt Institute has continued to distort evidence (exclusive to BMJ Internet version) G Macgregor

488 Women's autonomy in childbirth
A Holdcroft; R H Harwood

488 General anaesthesia does not usually affect the fetus
S Raftery

488 Prophylactic and empirical antifungal treatment in cancer complicated by neutropenia
C C Kibbler and others; P C Gøtzsche and H K Johansen

489 Cooperation between pharmacists and general practitioners benefits patients
C McCreedy

490 Cycling offers important health benefits and should be encouraged
M Hillman

490 Changes in population distribution of sense of coherence do not explain changes in overall mortality
G D Smith and M Egger

490 Treating hypothyroidism
G H Beastall and J A Thomson; J Cassar

491 Test sales do not have impact on prevalence of smoking by children
M Bagott and others

491 Internet is useful for information on rare conditions
O R Dearlove and others

492 B Chaudhuri, I G B Drybrough-Smith, R J Fallon, J K Hawkey, G Lowe-Jellicoe, H G Nicol

Soundings

493 Separate development
James Owen Drife

493 Hormones, women, and safety
Margaret Thomas

494 The anguish of teenage mental illness
John Pearce

495 New Ischemic Syndromes: Beyond Angina and Infarction
Ed Derek M Yellon, Shahbudin H Rahimtoola, Lionel H Opie
David E Newby

Management of Injuries in Children
John F T Glasgow, H Kerr Graham
Rosemary J Morton

496

Editor's choice

Marketing is all

To start with, Gerard Hastings and his colleagues provide a brief lesson in marketing as they dissect the way that the tobacco companies use the four marketing areas of product development, distribution, pricing, and promotion to hook young smokers and then keep them happy (p 439): the only way to counter the tobacco industry and its brands, they argue, is severely to restrict its activities on all these fronts. In an editorial to mark the Beijing conference Robert Beaglehole also argues in favour of legislation and regulation rather than the type of settlement just being reached in the United States with the tobacco companies: "The endorsement of the settlement by the American stock market is strong evidence that [the settlement] will not harm the industry" (p 440). In an interview, Matthew Myers, one of the negotiators of the deal, defends it yet concedes that it still needs much improvement (p 448).

At the other end of the world the Edinburgh Festival is in full swing, nurturing aspiring performers. Among them once was Phil Hammond, now a successful doctor-comedian, who this week describes in the Career Focus section how he gets on in his two careers. Comedy is not, admittedly, a mainstream career, but already Hammond has made it as president of the Association of Evidence Based Satire.

Finally, two tales of how even in the hard world of drugs marketing things can improve. In 1992 B Gitanjali and colleagues audited the advertisements in the local Indian edition of the BMJ and pointed out that many made misleading claims (p 459). In their accompanying commentary Glen Christo and R Balasubramaniam, editors of the edition, show how they responded to this criticism and radically changed the journal's policies. They now have a checklist and a committee to screen advertisements and have adopted the World Health Organisation's guidelines on ethical drug promotion (p 460). India, they say, has no regulatory body like the Food and Drug Administration and no strong watchdog bodies - yet, even in the United States, drug advertisements can be misleading. They also point out that readers have some responsibilities and need to be educated to recognise misleading promotional activities. On p 480 Trisha Greenhalgh helps them do just that, with her checklist for evaluating information provided by drug companies and her guidance on how to handle drug company representatives - who, she says, "do not tell nearly as many lies as they used to." Progress indeed.