I’m taking a break from the blog until the new year, and in light of that I thought I’d recommend some books that have come out in 2021 and that I think are well worth a read over the christmas holidays.
A few weeks back I wrote an article about the drug class known as “PCSK9 inhibitors”, and how they seem to lower the risk of a heart attack, and how there is even preliminary evidence to support the notion that they prolong life. The article wasn’t particularly popular among some readers of this blog, presumably because it was construed as supporting the LDL hypothesis … Read more
It started with an experiment on locusts in 1991. David Raubenheimer and Stephen Simpson, two zoologists who were at the time doing research at Oxford University, wanted to know what would happen to locusts if they varied the relative proportions of protein and carbohydrate in their diets. They therefore conducted an experiment in which they fed locusts pellets containing varying proportions of protein and carbohydrate, … Read more
Peter Gotzsche is no crank. Rather the opposite, in fact. In the world of evidence based medicine, he is one of the great heavyweights. He was a founding member of the Cochrane collaboration, is a professor of clinical research methodology at the university of Copenhagen, and has had his work repeatedly published in all the leading medical journals. His blunt honesty and willingness to speak … Read more
One of my favourite novels is The House of God by Samuel Shem. Published back in 1978, it covers the first year of work in a hospital of a doctor who has just graduated from medical school. A lot of medical students read it at some point during medical school, and think it’s a satire of what goes on in a hospital. Then they … Read more
