The American journalist H R Mencken reputedly wrote that for every problem there’s an easy solution and it’s “neat, plausible, and wrong.” I say reputedly because I haven’t been able to check the original source—the BMA Library’s copy of The Divine Afflatus is out on loan.

The deep cleaning programme forced onto English hospitals might be a good example of such a solution. This week we publish a news story that suggests we should be looking again at overuse of antibiotics and the resulting problem of resistance (doi: 10.1136/bmj.39601.623808.4E), echoing the message of a report we published last week (doi: 10.1136/bmj.a175).

Could that be the answer, rather …