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I subscribe to 6 medical journals but cannot recommend the BMJ. It is too much a social justice journal.
I have never seen a medical journal issue a disclaimer beneath an article written by an editor. It was proper to do so, because it would be disturbing to think that such blatantly left-wing sentiments could represent the underlying ethos of the Journal. Phrases such as "corporate blindness" and "vaccine apartheid" indicate a decidedly unbalanced political slant.
And too much of the BMJ's "news" is just filler. I would point to such forgettable articles as, " Make GP Practices Carbon Neutral by 2030" , an entire half-page about chloramphenicol eye-drops (interesting to perhaps 0.5% of your readers) and "GP's Should be Able to Delist Patients Who Racially Abuse Staff". Right. A potentially very important interview with Charlie Massey regarding racism in referrals to the GMC was long on platitude and short on anything else. Your interviewer should have pulled him up for his vagaries and virtue signalling. I came away feeling that very little will come out of the GMC's "action plan". I suspect physicians will still feel anything from terribly alarmed to suicidal at receiving a letter from them.
Here is one topic the BMJ should write about: a series on how physicians are infantised in the UK. They are regulated and guidelined into the ground and publicly punished without mercy for misdemeanours. A senior gynaecologist lost £30,000 in income for making a boorish remark to a patient and a foolish registrar paid £36,000 in suspension after lying about a train token without being contrite enough about it. Why did the BMJ even print that nonsense? Whose side is it on? And the whole "responsible officer" bureaucracy is demeaning. As if any grown-up physician needs one to protect the public from him or her. Who is responsible for protecting physicians from regulators who do not care about them?
Could the BMJ consider addressing such issues rather than carbon neutrality and vaccine apartheid? And could its publisher fight harder for social justice for physicians?
Journal of Woke-ism?
Dear Editor
I subscribe to 6 medical journals but cannot recommend the BMJ. It is too much a social justice journal.
I have never seen a medical journal issue a disclaimer beneath an article written by an editor. It was proper to do so, because it would be disturbing to think that such blatantly left-wing sentiments could represent the underlying ethos of the Journal. Phrases such as "corporate blindness" and "vaccine apartheid" indicate a decidedly unbalanced political slant.
And too much of the BMJ's "news" is just filler. I would point to such forgettable articles as, " Make GP Practices Carbon Neutral by 2030" , an entire half-page about chloramphenicol eye-drops (interesting to perhaps 0.5% of your readers) and "GP's Should be Able to Delist Patients Who Racially Abuse Staff". Right. A potentially very important interview with Charlie Massey regarding racism in referrals to the GMC was long on platitude and short on anything else. Your interviewer should have pulled him up for his vagaries and virtue signalling. I came away feeling that very little will come out of the GMC's "action plan". I suspect physicians will still feel anything from terribly alarmed to suicidal at receiving a letter from them.
Here is one topic the BMJ should write about: a series on how physicians are infantised in the UK. They are regulated and guidelined into the ground and publicly punished without mercy for misdemeanours. A senior gynaecologist lost £30,000 in income for making a boorish remark to a patient and a foolish registrar paid £36,000 in suspension after lying about a train token without being contrite enough about it. Why did the BMJ even print that nonsense? Whose side is it on? And the whole "responsible officer" bureaucracy is demeaning. As if any grown-up physician needs one to protect the public from him or her. Who is responsible for protecting physicians from regulators who do not care about them?
Could the BMJ consider addressing such issues rather than carbon neutrality and vaccine apartheid? And could its publisher fight harder for social justice for physicians?
Competing interests: No competing interests