The new one should focus on fixing academic medicine

Everybody in Britain should be grateful if the Academy of Medical Sciences that was launched this week can preserve and promote academic medicine—for it approaches a parlous state. But we don't need yet another body of old men with chains around their necks that dines, processes, and professes and offers a further source of advice to government that it can take or leave to suit its own ends. The academy must target its efforts and aim to be effective not grand.

A Martian—or even an American—might be surprised that after 50 years of unresolved debate about the need for an academy of medicine Britain suddenly has not one but two. The cognoscenti will understand well the difference between the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and the Academy of Medical Sciences, but few ordinary doctors and almost no members of the public will. Medical students …