Revelations of poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry out Pfizer’s pivotal covid-19 vaccine trial raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight. Paul D Thacker...

When good science is suppressed by the medical-political complex, people die Politicians and governments are suppressing science. They do so in the public interest, they say, to accelerate availabi...

Covid-19 vaccines and drugs were developed at “warp speed” and now experts are concerned that the US Food and Drug Administration inspected too few clinical trial sites. Maryanne Demasi reports On 25...

Marcus Rashford writes an open letter to health professionals I have always been a big advocate for collaboration and have always been driven by the power of togetherness. I can [...]More...

Patients with the omicron variant of covid-19 shed virus for longer after symptoms emerge, show data from Japan, potentially jeopardising hopes that the period of isolation for people testing...

The government of Mexico City handed out nearly 200 000 “ivermectin based kits” last year to people who had tested positive for covid-19, without telling them they were subjects in an experiment on...

Once this is done, there must be complete transparency about how the NHS came to be left in this exposed position Lucinda Hiam, Martin McKee, and Danny Dorling On 31 January [...]More...

Emergency use authorization for mass child vaccination presents a different balance of risks and benefits than it did for adults, say Wesley Pegden, Vinay Prasad, and Stefan Baral The rapid [...]Mo...

An unevaluated, underdesigned, and costly mess Quick turnaround testing for covid-19 is to be made available to everybody, initially to those without symptoms, across England at a cost of £100bn...

It can be difficult to approach a colleague if you have concerns about their wellbeing because of a change in their behaviour. Abi Rimmer asks experts how best to handle this situation Lucy Warner,...

Was it fatalism that allowed 138 000 covid deaths in the UK? Were these deaths bound or decreed to have happened? The answer is, simply, no. Did fatalism kill people in social care, or differentially...

Objective To determine the risk of hospital admission with covid-19 and severe covid-19 among teachers and their household members, overall and compared with healthcare workers and adults of working...

Data should be fully and immediately available for public scrutiny In the pages of The BMJ a decade ago, in the middle of a different pandemic, it came to light that governments around the world had...

### What you need to know The health benefits of physical activity are proved and wide ranging, exceeding that of any drug. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has described physical activity as a...

The lack of robust mitigation measures in schools puts children at greater risk of covid-19 infection and its consequences To:  The Rt Hon Gavin Williamson MP  Secretary of state for [...]More...

When good science is suppressed by the medical-political complex, people die Politicians and governments are suppressing science. They do so in the public interest, they say, to accelerate availabi...

Marcus Rashford writes an open letter to health professionals I have always been a big advocate for collaboration and have always been driven by the power of togetherness. I can [...]More...

Medicine involves lots of measuring and counting. We weigh babies to check that they’re thriving (and especially when we’re worried that they’re not). We monitor blood pressure, blood sugar, choles...

What we know, and what we don’t The UK’s £100bn “Operation Moonshot” to roll out mass testing for covid-19 to cities and universities around the country raises two key questions. How infectious are...

Scientists and senior doctors have backed claims by France’s health minister that people showing symptoms of covid-19 should use paracetamol (acetaminophen) rather than ibuprofen, a drug they said...

Ever wondered what a patient expert does? Paola Kruger talks about how she became an integral part of providing support to other patients with her condition.

### What you need to know The health benefits of physical activity are proved and wide ranging, exceeding that of any drug. The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges has described physical activity as a...

The BMJ and our sister journals will no longer carry ads for breastmilk substitutes Nearly 40 years since the introduction of an international code to regulate the marketing of breastmilk substitut...

The Independent Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Independent SAGE) has renewed its call for urgent reform of the government’s covid-19 test and trace system,1 urging that it be replaced by...

In front of patients or colleagues, or hidden in the toilets, is it appropriate—or maybe even a good thing—for medics to shed a tear on the job? Fran Robinson investigates Many doctors admit to...

As the UK government announce plans to roll back covid-19 restrictions in England, a group of patient advocates with long covid write an open letter to Sajid Javid, the secretary [...]More...

It can be difficult to approach a colleague if you have concerns about their wellbeing because of a change in their behaviour. Abi Rimmer asks experts how best to handle this situation Lucy Warner,...

Decisions taken to end the universal wearing of face masks in hospitals and doctors’ surgeries are placing patients and staff at greater risk of covid infection and need to be reversed, a group of...

Doctors in Norway have been told to conduct more thorough evaluations of very frail elderly patients in line to receive the Pfizer BioNTec vaccine against covid-19, following the deaths of 23...

Deaths and new infections from covid-19 are falling to low levels in Scotland. Devi Sridhar and Adriel Chen look at how the country is on course to eliminating the virus [...]More...

Female doctors are disappearing following Taliban bans. That’s bad news for a country where primary healthcare is on the verge of collapse. Sally Howard and Geetanjali Krishna report Maria Zubair, a...

This living systematic review by Siemieniuk and colleagues ( BMJ 2020;370:m2980) has been updated. For the latest update, visit doi:10.1136/bmj.m2980. The latest version of this living systematic...

Deepti Gurdasani and colleagues argue UK covid policy did not give children sufficient priority and question the evidence behind government decisions ### Key messages Children in the United Kingdom...

A US study of 46 079 pregnancies has found that vaccination against covid-19 was safe and did not increase the risk of preterm birth or small for gestational age babies.1 Pregnant women and those...

Problems in the supply of PPE during the covid-19 pandemic are symptomatic of the ongoing neglect of doctors’ wellbeing, argues Judith Dawson Working as a healthcare professional has long been...

T cells could be valuable allies in pandemic control Protective and enduring immune responses to viral infections or vaccines usually arise from the combined actions of lymphocytes: B cells (respon...

In allowing mass infection, Boris Johnson’s government is pursuing a strategy that will lead to avoidable deaths and long term illness, say this group of authors The statement from the [...]More...

Brian Connelly has been campaigning to reform NHS rota practices since his daughter died in 2011, we should all be behind him say Peter Brindley and Matt Morgan. 

In the early days of the covid-19 pandemic hope was high that services would “build back better.” It was a hope that sustained health professionals as they pushed themselves further to keep a...

SARS-CoV-2 has infected more than 278 million people globally, with at least 5.4 million deaths recorded by the World Health Organisation as of 26 December 2021. The omicron (B.1.1.529) variant of...

Hospitals should remove any barriers to doctors eating and drinking during the working day As healthcare providers, it’s easy to forget to look after ourselves at work. We know that [...]More...

Objective To determine whether researchers are submitting manuscripts and peer reviews to BMJ journals out of hours and whether this has changed over time. Design Observational study of research...

The UK is an outlier by allowing children to remain unvaccinated at a time when lifting of restrictions will increase covid-19 infection rates We have heard much about how vaccination [...]More...

An antibody blood test for covid-19, which the manufacturer Abbott claims is 99% accurate, has been certified for use by the European Union. The test—which has received its CE mark, meaning that it...

The qualities, which make a good and caring doctor, are also the qualities, which place us at higher risk of mental illness I have been a widow for ten months [...]More...

### What you need to know Post-acute covid-19 (“long covid”) seems to be a multisystem disease, sometimes occurring after a relatively mild acute illness.1 Clinical management requires a whole-pati...

The UK government is facing legal action over a £102.6m (€119m; $143m) contract for FFP3 respirators to be worn by healthcare staff treating covid-19 patients, which was granted without competition...

In August, one of us (CP) wrote about schools being the gaping hole in the English covid strategy. This was written in the face of the highly transmissible delta covid-19 variant.1 Three failings...

An Italian academic has claimed striking evidence that most people infected with covid-19 show no symptoms but are still able to infect others, which he says has huge implications for testing policy,...

Cases of covid-19 are rising in Brazil, as the more transmissible P1 variant spreads across the country. In Brazil, the federal government’s approach to the covid-19 pandemic has been to [...]More...

Objective To determine the risk of hospital admission with covid-19 and severe covid-19 among teachers and their household members, overall and compared with healthcare workers and adults of working...

The major funder of health research stands to gain financially from the pandemic, raising questions about transparency and accountability An increasingly clear feature of the covid-19 pandemic is...

Unable to work or to play with their children, forced to sell their homes or facing insolvency—doctors with long covid deserve more support from the government and the NHS, writes Adele Waters When...

Gao M, Piernas C, Astbury NM, et al. Associations between body-mass index and COVID-19 severity in 6.9 million people in England: a prospective, community-based cohort study. Lancet Diabetes Endocr...

We need urgent radical solutions for the crisis in social care, to prevent the collapse not just of the NHS but of the entire UK economy. Social care is facing extreme difficulties with funding and...

Doctors are dying. The combination of a novel virus, no treatment, and inadequate supplies of personal protective equipment (PPE) is putting frontline health workers at risk of serious harm. The...

Experts have warned that schools must be reopened with caution, amid emerging evidence from Israel and Italy that more young children are being infected with new variants of covid-19. Paediatricians...

The French Medicines Agency (ANSM) has said that it will file criminal charges with the Marseilles public prosecutor against the local hospital-university institute (IHU) for infectious diseases,...

### What you need to know Proton pump inhibitors (PPIs) are one of the most widely used classes of drugs globally, often taken for longer than needed and at high financial cost to society. Among...

Healthcare workers in Hong Kong have condemned the Hong Kong Police Force for failing to abide by international humanitarian norms during clashes with protesters, after doctors and nurses were among...

Deepti Gurdasani and colleagues argue UK covid policy did not give children sufficient priority and question the evidence behind government decisions ### Key messages Children in the United Kingdom...

For the sake of ideology, hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths occurred, write Deisy Ventura and colleagues After almost six months of investigation, a Brazilian senate inquiry into covid-19 has...

NHS Improvement is inviting comments on proposals for a patient safety strategy. The aim is to “make sure people receive the safest care possible,“ and the document makes repeated calls for [...]Mo...

Unnecessary, disproportionate, and misguided In a profound departure from public health norms, new law will remove the right of care home staff in England to choose whether to be vaccinated against...

As testing and the Oxford AstraZeneca vaccine are hailed as UK pandemic successes, why won’t Oxford University or the government disclose the “long list” of financial interests of a high profile...

The government must be honest about the threat the pandemic still poses Today may be the most difficult day the NHS has ever experienced. The headlines will focus on the pressures created by the...

Doctors have warned that the current situation in Indian administered Kashmir, where the government has imposed a security lockdown and communications blackout, is preventing people from seeking...

Community doctor Clare Nettleton tells Kathy Oxtoby why animals have always been a key to her soul Clare Nettleton has a constant companion who reminds her just how much animals mean to people....

Improving doctors’ wellbeing requires a radical rethink, writes Caroline Elton , including a multifaceted approach, investment, and support from leaders. It should be taken as seriously at system...