bmj.com: Comment

Should we use regulation to demand improved public health outcomes from industry?

Should businesses that sell products that are responsible for a huge number of deaths illness and injury, such as tobacco and junk food, be held accountable and made to improve public health? Yes, says Stephen D Sugarman. Setting targets for companies will produce innovative solutions, he says. No, argues Stig Pramming, who believes collaboration is the best way to improve health.

Diagnosis specific sickness absence as a predictor of mortality

Specific diagnostic information may provide GPs with a useful biopsychosocial tool to identify groups of workers with an increased risk of serious illness and mortality, says an editorial about the Whitehall II prospective cohort study. The study investigates whether knowing the diagnosis for sickness absence improves prediction of mortality..

Diagnosing child abuse

This editorial says that the evidence base is advancing through new areas of research, including biomechanical studies. The systematic review that it is commenting on shows that while no one fracture in isolation is specific for physical abuse, rib fractures are highly specific for abuse in the absence of an overt traumatic or organic cause. Further, fractures from child abuse are significantly more common in children under 18 months of age than in older children, which should inform the differential diagnostic approach in this age group.

Identifying famines

Timely, accurate, and accepted measures are needed, because famines require different interventions than those that tackle other food problems, says this editorial. The two stage cluster survey that it is commenting on shows that on the basis of the famine scale proposed by Howe and Devereux, most regions in Niger experienced food crisis conditions and some areas approached famine proportions in 2005. (Picture credit: Ruslan Olinchuk - Fotolia.com)

Why is the press so nasty to NICE?

The UK's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) has always been controversial, but Nigel Hawkes finds the torrents of abuse thrown at it in the past two months have set new standards, in volume and in vitriol. Its chief executive has been called "Dr Death" and the organisation as "a bunch of fat cat executives who sit in their plush office playing God."

Becoming Ben

Bad Science, Ben Goldacre's book, aims "to teach good science by examining the bad" and contains an impressive collection of villains. But why is most of his ire reserved for the media, and the "humanities graduates" who run it, wonders Richard Smith in this review.
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