Minerva

It's part of a vascular surgeon's job to advise smokers to stop smoking, and 98% of members of the Vascular Surgical Society of Great Britain and Ireland do give advice (Annals of the Royal College of Surgeons of England 2000;82:424-7). Only a minority give out written information, however, and even fewer (11%) run an antismoking clinic or group. Over half of the surgeons in this survey also counsel their junior staff about smoking. Whether the juniors take any notice could be the subject of another investigation.

Researchers from Oklahoma took advantage of an “animal damage control” exercise to test 21 of the state's wild coyotes for infectious diseases (Emerging Infectious Diseases 2000;6:477-9). Nearly three quarters carried Ehrlichia chaffeensis, the ricketsial pathogen responsible for human monocytotropic ehrlichiosis. White tailed deer are the best known carriers of E chaffeensis, which jumps to humans and domestic animals on board the lone star tick.

Digestive surgery has become more evidence based over the past 10 years as researchers design, conduct, and analyse more randomised trials (British Journal of Surgery 2000;87:1585-6). The increase has been driven partly by the rise of new laparoscopic techniques: half the randomised trials conducted in Europe between 1990 …