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BMJ No 7123 Volume 315 Saturday 20/27 December Christmas 1997 This Week in BMJ | Editor's Choice | Press releases
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Editorials 1633 An ethical code for everybody in health care 1634 Social suffering: relevance for doctors 1636 Choosing the best research design for each question 1637 Just what the doctor ordered - more alcohol and sex 1638 Festive cheer for all? 1639 New Labour, new NHS?
Papers 1641 Sex and death: are they related? Findings from the Caerphilly
cohort study 1644 The earth may move, but let's keep our feet on the ground 1645 Risk factors for winter outbreak of acute diarrhoea in France:
case-control study 1649 Death rates of characters in soap operas on British television:
is a government health warning required? 1652 Reliability of distance estimation by doctors and patients: cross
sectional study 1654 Births at Christmas are different: population based survey of
2 million deliveries 1655 Do you know your chocolates? Recognition survey among medical
staff of various grades 1656 Increasing handicaps in hospital medicine: two point cross sectional
study of golfing activity among doctors 1657 The colon in medicine: nothing to do with the intestinal tract
When I use a word ... 1658 Crosses and stars
General practice 1659 So many precious stories: a reflective narrative of patient based
medicine in general practice, Christmas 1996 1663 Do overweight people remove their shoes before being weighed by
a doctor? Consecutive study of patients in general practice
Clinical review 1664 One for the heart 1668 What's in a Gnome?
Education and debate 1669 Medicine as a profession: Hip, Hip, Hippocrates: extracts from
The Hippocratic Doctor 1671 Swearing to care: the resurgence in medical oaths 1674 Professionalism must be taught 1677 Medicine needs its MI5 1680 The BMJ and the 77 specialties of medicine 1682 How to do it: How to acquire a coat of arms 1685 A difficult case: Diagnosis made by hallucinatory voices 1686 History: Two hundred years since Malthus 1689 Sailors and star-bursts, and the arrival of HIV 1692 The electronic future: What might an online scientific paper look like in five years' time? Length - and other strengths From snapshot to movie Variation adds value to the author's logic Looking to the future: amazon.com and four trends It could fulfil our dreams "Papers" will still exist Something for everyone
The muses 1697 Illnesses and creativity: Byron's appetites, James Joyce's gut,
and Melba's meals and mÍesalliances Commentary: Ambivalence toward fatness and its origins 1704 How Renoir coped with rheumatoid arthritis 1708 La salle de garde: bastion of the French lunch hour for junior
doctors 1709 The hidden delight of psoriasis 1712 Books: Gimme five - books, that is
Poems 1718 A history
Rap 1720 BMJ rap
Soundings 1721 The session
Photofinish 1722 Photofinish
S2 Career Focus Classified supplement Tackling the midlife crisis
Editor's choiceFrom the deadly serious to the downright barmyThe Christmas issue is the usual cocktail of the deadly serious, the poignant, the speculative, the frivolous, and the downright barmy. Most of the material is submitted rather than commissioned, giving insight into what's on the medical mind. Last year it was death, this year it's hedonism: sex, drink, golf, chocolates, and overindulgence (p 1637). One subject that doesn't feature is religion, raising again the question whether we should rename the Christmas issue. The "midwinter issue" would strike a discordant note in the southern hemisphere, while the "end of the year issue" would sound exclusive to those who live by different calendars. Any suggestions? A serious note is struck by journalist Duncan Campbell, who argues that medicine needs an investigative agency that would use covert methods to detect doctors behaving unethically (p 1677). Four editorialists propose an ethical code to cover all those working in health care (p 1633). Brian Hurwitz and Ruth Richardson describe how medical oaths are enjoying a fin de siécle resurgence (p 1671), while John Fabre takes us back to the writings of Hippocrates (by not one person but many): "The dignity of a physician requires that he should look healthy, and as plump as nature intended him to be (p 1669)." Jennifer Dixon and Nicholas Mays comment on the British government's new plans for the health service and conclude that they amount to three things: "softening the harsher edge of the internal market ... involving all general practitioners in purchasing ... and strengthening central control over the quality of ... clinical care (p 1639)." The poignant is sparser than usual, but Ikechukwu Obialo Azuonye tells a remarkable tale of how a healthy woman heard voices telling her she had a brain tumour - and she did (p 1685). The speculative comprises several views on how the scientific "paper" will look in five years' time (p 1692). A competition invites you to make your prediction. Judgment will be in 2002, and the prize will be a 2003 subscription to the electronic version of one the five main general medical journals (if they still exist). The frivolous predominates and includes the excesses of Byron, James Joyce, and Nellie Melba (p 1697); colons (the literary kind) (p 1657); gluttony and lewdness in French hospitals (p 1708); mortality rates in soap operas (p 1649); and a BMJ rap written by a 7 year old (p 1720). Top of the barmy contributions are a president of a royal college wearing a gnome's hat (p 1668) and the vital question of whether fat people are more likely than those who are thinner to remove their shoes when being weighed (p 1663). Discuss this question with your loved ones before turning to the answer. It may ease the traditional Christmas tension.
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