By Jerome Burne An article published […]

By Rob Verkerk Editor’s Introduction: Why […]

I’m a GP in a busy city centre NHS surgery and my ambition is radically to change the kind of treatment you will be offered when you visit a GP anywhere in the UK. Eventually I’d like a ‘Lifestyle Prescription’ to become the first treatment most patients are offered.

If the low carb diet was a political party, it should be now be close to forming a government. Its story mirrors that of actual parties – founded decades ago, it was small for a long time, languishing on the fringes of respectability; its policies were dismissed as untested and possibly dangerous by the low-fat ruling party which had close links to big business.

‘I wish they’d make up their minds,’ you may find yourself muttering if you don’t follow healthy eating debates all that closely. ‘One moment they tell us to stop eating butter and eggs on pain of having a heart attack and to have marge and no more than an egg a week.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a remarkable study, just published in the BMJ which had found that over half of the new cancer drugs released onto the market in a four year period by the EU drugs regulator had no good evidence that they were effective. In other words, there was also no evidence that their benefits outweighed their risk or that they were value for money.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about a remarkable study, just published in the BMJ which had found that over half of the new cancer drugs released onto the market in a four year period by the EU drugs regulator had no good evidence that they were effective. In other words, there was also no evidence that their benefits outweighed their risk or that they were value for money.

Cancer drugs can come with nasty side-effects, we know that, but they are worth taking because they have been properly scientifically tested and found to help patients live longer and have a better quality of life. But the latest research shows that the reality is not so comforting. Over half of new drugs are being prescribed to patients with little or no evidence they do any good at all. Here’s how it works.

Why are some cases of cancer cleared from the body after surgery while others lurk, waiting to metastasize and emerge elsewhere months or even years later? There is no good answer at the moment because the conditions that allow these invaders to flourish doesn’t fit with our gene-focused theory of how and why cancer develops in the first place.

It’s hardly news that things have not been going well for various professional elites lately. Economists so busy promoting the neo-liberal agenda they failed to notice the on-coming depression; politicians resolutely deaf to constituents’ complaints that generosity to those at the top had destroyed jobs and cut wages at the bottom.