Category Archives: Public health

A sense of deja vu: the advertising of e-cigarettes

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Glamourising smoking, targeting advertising at young people, using imagery of healthy, sporty smokers – all old, outlawed techniques for the tobacco industry. But the advent of e-cigarettes has lit the embers of this debate again. The BMA has complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) about a television advertisement for e-cigarettes, saying it breaches two of the new rules that were announced by the Committees of Advertising Practice in October. They came into effect on  Monday 10 November, the same day the ad was aired for the first time.

The manufacturer, VIP Electronic Cigarette, says this is the first time the act of using an electronic cigarette – or vaping – has been shown on television. It appeared in an ad break in Grantchester, ITV1’s smoke-wreathed drama about a 1950s country vicar who falls over corpses in between lighting cigarettes. Continue reading →

From typhoid to Spanish ‘flu: Conan Doyle and the war on disease

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We lost more from enteric [typhoid] than from the bullet in South Africa, and it is sad to think that nearly all could have been saved…..

So wrote Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, physician and creator of Sherlock Holmes in 1924, in his autobiography ‘Memories and Adventures’. He is describing his experiences volunteering in Bloemfontein during the Boer War (1899-1902) in a field hospital where:

Coffins were out of the question, and the men were lowered in their brown blankets into shallow graves at the average rate of sixty a day……You could smell Bloemfontein long before you could see it.

Apparently fuelled by a desire to serve his country and a spirit of adventure, he had accepted an unofficial post in a private hospital.  Continue reading →

Smallpox in London: Stockwell, state planning and hospital ships

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In 1863, a smallpox outbreak hit London. The measures taken in the borough of Lambeth to control the spread of disease were remarkably successful, according to the annual report of its Medical Officer of Health, published as part of the Wellcome library’s vast digitisation project, London’s Pulse. In his report, Dr George Puckle describes how:  Continue reading →

Medical journals and the tobacco industry

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The BMJ has announced that it will no longer consider consider research funded by the tobacco industry, in whole or part, for publication. It is time, say the editors of the BMJ, Heart,
Thorax, and BMJ Open, “to cease supporting the now discredited notion that tobacco industry funded research is just like any other research”. They cite the increasing evidence that peer review and declaration of funding is not enough: funding can Continue reading →

Health internet searches: early warning of drug safety issues?

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One common use of the internet is to search for health information. Could an analysis of search terms, and a little detective work, help provide early clues about drug side effects, before more traditional methods such as official reporting systems have kicked in? Continue reading →

Smoking bans may reduce risk of preterm births

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Bans on smoking in public places are linked with reductions in preterm births, says a study from Belgium published in the BMJ, which introduced smoke-free bans in three steps. Each time a ban was bought in, the risk of babies being born before 37 weeks fell. There were no downward trends in the period before the bans – and other factors such as ‘flu epidemics did not seem to explain the differences either. So, good news for the public health benefits of smoking bans as premature birth is an important health risk factor.