Taking a stand: Richard Smith, the Editor of the BMJ has resigned on moral grounds from his post as Professor of Medical Journalism in the University of Nottingham. The University had taken a grant of pound 3.8 million from British American Tobacco to set up an international center for study of corporate responsibility. The BMJ had conducted a poll between May 4 - 10 asking 2 questions: one whether the University should return the money and second whether Dr. Smith should resign if they don’t. The 1075 poll respondents were overwhelmingly (84%) in favor of the University returning the money while 54% felt that Dr. Smith should resign since many felt that he could argue his case better if he did not continue in his post. Perhaps words like morality and integrity are not yet obsolete (eBMJ 19 June 2001).

The case for DDT: A recent study by Drs. Roger Bate and Richard Tren, fellows of the Institute for Economic Research have concluded that there is no strong evidence for harmful effects of DDT on the environment or on human beings. After malaria was eradicated from the developed world, poorer nations were pressurized to stop using DDT by environmental groups and funding agencies. This was a severe blow to malaria eradication programs especially in Africa since DDT is cheap and very effective. Anopheles developed resistance to the pyrethroids used in the place of DDT, which led to a resurgence of malaria in the late 1990’s. The current feeling among experts is that though DDT should not be used for general purposes, its use in malaria eradication programs is vital. Further a long term plan to replace it with equally effective, safer alternatives should be made (eBMJ 26 June 2001).

Rural Medicine: Canada’s small towns account for 22% of the population while only 10% of doctors work in those areas. The critical reason is that currently medical students are trained to work in well-equipped hospital settings that are not available in many resource-depleted areas. Hence a new experiment in medical education is being pioneered on the basis of the expert committee on health professional human resources chaired by the vice chancellor of MacMaster University in Ontario. Medical students will be rotated in small groups of 6-8 with various family physicians in resource depleted areas to solve various clinical problems. They will be exempt from traditional lectures and will attend tutorials with the help of laptop computers and Internet connections from wherever they are posted. The hands on training will be with family doctors who may not have had any teaching experience before (eBMJ 26 June 2001).