Rapid Responses to:

EDITORIALS: Alison Tonks The joy of banning BMJ 2002; 325: 1436 [Full text]

Rapid Responses: Submit a response to this article

Rapid Responses published:

Late entries for 'mounting' and 'flawed'?

Ed Cooper   (20 December 2002)

Alternatives are In

Ron Law   (21 December 2002)

The joy of banning: another candidate.

Alexander SD Spiers   (15 January 2003)

Late entries for 'mounting' and 'flawed'? 20 December 2002
Ed Cooper, Consultant Pediatrician Newham General Hospital, London E13 Send response to journal: Re: Late entries for 'mounting' and 'flawed'?	If the responses are still coming in, could I have a late entry with mounting as in "there is mounting evidence that" and also flawed as in "the study, widely regarded as flawed"? These are mainly lobbyists' words and of course the idea is that you don't actually go and find the evidence and you are too intimidated to ask what the flaws in the opponents' studies are. The MMR "debate" (I suggest we give that one a warning before we actually ban it) has been the richest field for mounting and flawed. Let them be gone. Competing interests:   None declared
Alternatives are In 21 December 2002
Ron Law, Evidence-based researcher Beyond Alternative Solutions Send response to journal: Re: Alternatives are In	How revealing that when faced with concern being expressed regarding evidence of efficacy of the written language, the BMJ has resorted to the use of the word "alternative" in 40% of its responses. Perhaps Alternative is 'in' although many in the medical policitical world ar trying to ban it. Competing interests:   None declared
The joy of banning: another candidate. 15 January 2003
Alexander SD Spiers, Professor of Medicine - retired. Retired. Send response to journal: Re: The joy of banning: another candidate.	Editor - the BMJ's exercise on banning words (1) was an excellent idea, and Alison Tonks's Editorial on the subject (2) was a delight. I found that I shared almost all of the readers' opinions regarding words that should be banned - particularly "clients" for "patients". I believe that I might have originated the comment "only lawyers and prostitutes have clients" - I used it in Grand Rounds at the University of South Florida seven years ago, in January 1996. There is one particularly offensive expression that should feature in the Top Ten for banning: "ethnic cleansing". First, it is a term coined by the perpetrators, and at least as evil as the "final solution" used by the Nazis. Second, there are plenty of more direct and informative words to describe every aspect of the process, for example murder, mass murder, internment, expulsion, slaughter, genocide, firing squads, gas chambers. Third, the term "ethnic cleansing" implies that the victims of the process are filth, and if we use the term, we appear to endorse this contemptible racist view. Alexander SD Spiers, retired Professor of Medicine. 1 Competing interests:   None declared