Rules regarding ways doctors must keep their personal beliefs in check when treating patients are being updated by the General Medical Council.The regulator has launched a consultation1 on proposed changes to its personal beliefs and medical practice guidance,2 which was last fully updated in 2013.The GMC said it was updating the guidance to reflect legal, social, and cultural changes. Examples include the government’s recently published guidance on defining “anti-Muslim hostility”3 and debates over assisted dying legislation.The regulator said it wanted to allow doctors to practise in line with their beliefs and values, while respecting patients’ own beliefs and “maintaining good and safe care.”It follows cases such as that of Kent GP Richard Scott, who was given a formal warning by a medical practitioners tribunal in 2023 after telling a vulnerable young patient seeking mental health treatment that he needed to reconnect with God.4The GMC clarified that the guidance does not...

bmj;392/mar20_2/s520/FAF1faRalph Ross Russell—or R3, as he was affectionately known—became a neurologist at a time when strokes were not deemed worthy of academic attention. He was one of the first to make study of the condition into a research and clinical specialty, paving the way for better understanding and care, and playing a pivotal role in turning the treatment of stroke into the medical success story that it often is today.From the outset of his career Ross Russell was at the forefront of academic research in neurology. His first senior position was as a research scholar and lecturer in medicine in Oxford under George Pickering, regius professor of medicine, at the time of much debate on the nature of hypertension and when vasospasm as the cause of transient ischaemic attacks (TIAs) was being challenged. Ross Russell’s research focused on the mechanism of hypertension and its role in cerebrovascular disease, research he...

bmj;392/mar20_1/s505/FAF1faLeo was born in Leipzig, Germany, in 1930 into a poor Orthodox Jewish family who had fled the pogroms in Poland after the first world war. His father became a communist and was in and out of prison from 1932. Leo escaped Nazi Germany and arrived in the UK in September 1939 as part of Kindertransport, aged 8. Leo and his four sisters and brother were the only members of their family to survive the Holocaust. Leo was educated at Battersea Grammar School and won a scholarship to study medicine at Guy’s Hospital.After house jobs he did national service, eventually reaching the rank of captain. On returning to London he became a paediatric resident at New Cross and St Olave’s hospitals before becoming a junior registrar at Great Ormond Street. In 1961 he obtained a research fellowship at Denver University Medical School. He returned to the UK in 1964 to...

A plastic surgeon who is serving a life sentence for attempting to murder a colleague and burn down his home has been struck off the UK medical register.Jonathan Peter Brooks was convicted of attempted murder and arson with intent to endanger life last April.Leicester Crown Court, sitting at Loughborough, heard that Brooks hated Graeme Perks, who had recently retired as head of plastic surgery at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and was a witness against Brooks in disciplinary proceedings.Brooks went to Perks’ house in the early hours of the morning of 14 January 2021, a few days into the disciplinary hearing.Brooks, dressed in camouflage and equipped with petrol cans, a knife, and a crowbar, broke in through the conservatory and doused the foot of the staircase in petrol.Perks was woken by the sound of smashing glass and came downstairs and interrupted Brooks before he could start the fire, but was...

Heritability of human life spanEstimates of the genetic contribution to human life span have been surprisingly low, often around 20% or less. A reanalysis of Scandinavian twin cohorts suggests that these figures are distorted by mortality from extrinsic causes, including infection, violence, and unintentional harms (Science doi:10.1126/science.adz1187). When such deaths are excluded, heritability of intrinsic life span rises to about 50%, similar to that of other complex traits such as body mass index, blood pressure, or general cognitive ability.Maternal diabetes and epilepsy in offspringMaternal diabetes was linked to an increased risk of epilepsy in offspring in a Canadian birth cohort of more than two million children (Pediatrics doi:10.1542/peds.2025-071138). After adjustment for socioeconomic and clinical factors, the risk of epilepsy was 30-40% higher among children of mothers with type 1 or type 2 diabetes and about 15% higher among those exposed to gestational diabetes, compared with children of mothers without diabetes....

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently agreed to fund a $1.6m(£1.2m) study on the hepatitis B vaccine that has glaring similarities to unethical biomedical research of the past.1 The study is on hold while the African CDC assesses its ethics and necessity, but even the fact that this potentially harmful study was proposed reveals the extent of backsliding in science, ethics, and research funding. We are regressing to the days when research on Black subjects was detrimental to their health rather than beneficial. The healthcare community must act to defend decades of progress and protect the health of Black people globally.The proposed study was planned to take place in the West African country of Guinea-Bissau where hepatitis B affects 18% to 19% of the population.2 The research team has already conducted 25 years of research there, with results from 10 studies never becoming publicly available.3This new...

The mind’s eye and aphantasiaI have previously discussed the mind’s eye and the condition in which it is absent or impaired, called aphantasia, from which I suffer.1Most of us have an oculus mentis, a mind’s eye. In English it was originally called “the eye of the mind” and is mentioned in “The Man of Law’s Tale” in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, written at the end of the 14th century. The earliest recorded instance of the modern version of the phrase is to be found in “De Regimine Principum,” “The Regiment [i.e. Rule] of Princes,” a poem by Thomas Hoccleve or Occleve (c 1369?1426), in which he exhorts the King, Henry V, to “Have often him [i.e. God] before your myndes eye.” Some people, however, don’t have a mind’s eye or have one that is not well developed. And in 2015 Adam Zeman and his colleagues gave a name...

In the abstract of this paper by Onyinyechi Duru and colleagues (BMJ 2026;392:e086384, doi:10.1136/bmj-2025-086384, published 21 January 2026), the end date of the study was incorrectly reported as 2000 instead of 2020. This has been corrected.

The competing interests statement in this editorial by Courtland K Keteyian and colleagues (BMJ 2016;355:i5996; doi:10.1136/bmj.i5996) was incomplete. The authors omitted to declare that Marschall S Runge was on the board of directors of Eli Lilly.

In this paper by Matthew Luney and colleagues (BMJ 2026;392:e085539, doi:10.1136/bmj-2025-085539, published 12 February 2026), author Arwa Hagana’s name was misspelt. This has been corrected.

Doctors need to show humility in consultations when patients present them with information they have found online, an expert panel has said.Convening at the Nuffield Trust Summit on 6 March, the panel also identified the need for doctors to explain to patients why they are giving them specific advice, to help maintain trust.The roundtable discussion—chaired by The BMJ’s editor in chief, Kamran Abbasi—asked how NHS staff should tackle health misinformation and disinformation and discussed whether the proliferation of such content online was damaging the doctor-patient relationship.Kamila Hawthorne, former chair of the Royal College of General Practitioners and current chair of the National Academy for Social Prescribing, told the panel that patients in consultations regularly presented her with information they had found by researching online. “Patients are coming in with information more and more, and they’re almost testing me,” she said.A fellow panellist, Nnenna Osuji—haematologist and incoming chief executive of the...

A second regulator has joined efforts to overturn a decision that cleared a British-Palestinian plastic surgeon of supporting terrorism and the proscribed organisation Hamas.1The Professional Standards Authority for Health and Social Care (PSA) has now joined the General Medical Council (GMC) in its High Court appeal against a decision by an independent medical practitioners tribunal on the case of Ghassan Abu-Sitta.In January the tribunal found that allegations against Abu-Sitta over a 2018 newspaper article in Arabic and two reposts on Twitter (now X) were not proved, and he was cleared of all charges against him.2 But he now faces a High Court appeal in which both bodies will argue that he should not have been acquitted.The PSA told The BMJ that it had taken the decision to appeal, “as we consider the decision to be insufficient to protect the public.” Both the PSA and the GMC deciding to appeal a...

The UK health research funding landscape has changed with unprecedented speed over the past three months. UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the UK’s largest public investor in research and innovation, is redesigning how it allocates its four year £38.6bn budget across its seven research councils.1 In addition, the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) has dramatically narrowed its scope for global health funding to focus on “acute and chronic global health security threats,” after pausing its global health programme for around six months.2Researchers have voiced concerns about job losses, institutional instability, and the waste of time and public money invested in writing and reviewing grant applications for schemes that were unexpectedly terminated or paused.3 UKRI should mitigate the potential negative impacts of these rapid changes by considering three interlinked matters: transparency and suddenness of decision making; lack of engagement with researchers and universities; and unintended consequences.Universities operate on...

A bill promising to prioritise UK trained medical graduates for training places has become law.However, doctors’ leaders say questions remain over international medical graduates (IMGs) and the definition of doctors with “significant experience.”The Medical Training (Prioritisation) Act 20261 passed the final legislative stage on 5 March after it gained Royal Assent, with the government saying it would come into force on 6 March.It promises to prioritise UK trained graduates for foundation training places and prioritise UK medical graduates and non-UK trained doctors with what is deemed to be “significant NHS experience” for specialty training places.It aims to make good on a government promise from the NHS 10 year plan2 to tackle “the choked recruitment system” that has resulted in UK trained doctors being unemployed because of rising competition for posts from IMGs.3Since visa restrictions on IMGs working in the UK were lifted in 2020 the estimated numbers of applicants for...

Consultants have urged unions and regulators to protect their freedom of speech after high profile cases of doctors facing regulatory action.At the annual BMA consultants conference this week (4 March), consultants overwhelmingly backed a motion (88%) outlining their right to freedom of expression. This included the ability to speak out on matters of public conscience, international conflict, and humanitarian law.Consultants specifically called for the regulator the General Medical Council (GMC), independent tribunal the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), and the BMA to take actions to counter unfairness in the current regulatory system (box).Huda Mahmoud, a nephrology consultant at Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust—who proposed a motion—told the conference she was concerned about infringements to doctors’ freedom of speech.She highlighted the case of Ghassan Abu-Sittah, a British Palestinian plastic surgeon and humanitarian doctor.Abu-Sitta, 57, faced allegations relating to an article he wrote in 2018 in a Lebanese newspaper that it was said...

Health workers and facilities have come under attack across the Middle East as conflict engulfs the region, health leaders and charities warn.The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), and the World Health Organization have urged restraint, with the escalating situation threatening to collapse already fragile healthcare systems.Fighting involving Iran, Israel, and armed groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon has intensified in recent days following joint US-Israeli air strikes on Iran on 28 February that killed the nation’s supreme leader, ??Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.Israel carried out further air strikes on Iran and on Hezbollah positions in Beirut on 4 March, while a US submarine sank an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka, killing 87.1Iran and Hezbollah have fired rockets and drones at countries across the region in retaliation, with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard threatening on 4 March the “complete destruction of the region’s military and economic...

President Donald Trump has issued an executive order aiming to increase domestic production of the controversial weedkiller glyphosate, sold as Roundup.1Trump’s 18 February order comes under a national security justification for increasing US production of glyphosate for food security. It grants immunity under compliance with the Defense Production Act, which generally protects parties from liability for actions taken to comply with orders under the act, though it does not provide blanket product liability immunity.But the move has brought angry accusations of betrayal from the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement and placed its founder, US health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, in the awkward position of defending a product he has long condemned.Roundup is made by Bayer, which acquired the original manufacturer Monsanto in 2018. The pesticide has been the subject of tens of thousands of lawsuits, many from users who claim to have developed non-Hodgkins lymphoma as result of...

bmj;392/mar06_3/s439/FAF1faWhen the powers that be at King’s College Hospital told neurosurgeon Charles Polkey that it had decided to name a ward after him he was initially reluctant to accept the honour. He only relented after his wife, Maureen, told him he should do so as he had devoted his life to the hospital. Polkey also reasoned that the recognition would highlight the good work of the unit to which he had been so dedicated.Polkey’s reserve was characteristic of a man who colleagues described as humble and quietly self-assured; while his work was internationally recognised, he had little ego or vanity.He undertook all forms of neurosurgery, including emergency paediatric neurosurgery, but was best known for his work in epilepsy surgery. He was appointed to the Maudsley Hospital as successor to Murray Falconer, who in the early 1970s had developed temporal lobectomy for the treatment of intractable epilepsy. Polkey built on Falconer’s...

This Viewpoint discusses policies the Biden administration can enact to reduce costs, including benchmarking Medicare Part B drug payments to the lowest price paid in similar countries, preventing Part D plans from negotiating confidential rebates with manufacturers, and patent reform to promote generic drug use.

This Viewpoint reviews evidence that higher hospital prices reflect greater market power more than higher-quality services and proposes that backstop price caps can mitigate harms from the most excessive prices without constraining or distorting competitive health care markets.