Frank Wells

Falling research in the NHS

A clear national strategy is needed to overcome local barriers to research

WHO NEEDS MOLAR UNITS FOR DRUGS

The standardisation of units for drug concentration measurement in clinical medicine is an urgent necessity. The obvious choice is mass units based on the litre. A change to molar units for drug concentrations would make no sense unless drugs were also prescribed in moles, which would cause disruption and inconvenience. There would be considerable danger to patients and the change would be expensive. Most importantly, molar units for drugs will not benefit doctors or their patients. Mass units should be retained and proposals for the adoption of molar units should be abandoned.

Alan John Rowe

Although he had been a much respected family doctor for over 30 years in rural Suffolk, where he lived throughout most of his life, Alan John Rowe was very much a prophet in his own country. Acknowledged by the BMA (he was a …

Misleading guidelines on oxygen treatment in asthma

before treatment was started. There has, however, never been a recommendation to avoid cimetidine in renal failure, only to adjust the dose. The original general practice records of every patient recruited to our study were examined. Our field workers found no evidence that patients in the study had been screened for renal impairment before starting treatment with cimetidine. In summary, we see no reason to change our earlier conclusion that there was no evidence that cimetidine was responsible for the excess of observed over expected deaths from urinary disorders during the second, third, and fourth years of follow up in our study. In the fifth and sixth years there was no excess. D G COLIN-JONES