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In 1998, Andrew Wakefield, a gastroenterologist at London’s Royal Free Hospital, published a study in the prestigious medical journal Lancet that linked the triple Measles, Mumps and Rubella vaccine with autism and bowel disorders in children. The study — and Wakefield’s subsequent public statements that parents should refuse the vaccines — sparked a public health panic that led vaccination rates in Britain to plunge.
At first it sounded like science fiction, curing genetic diseases by giving people new genes. Then it seemed like simple fiction: while theoretically possible, gene therapy appeared unlikely to become a true therapeutic option, the field having suffered years of complications and high-profile setbacks.
Although the stigma once associated with mental illness has receded in recent years, most of the 12 million Americans who have clinical depression still don’t get treated for it, partly because many are too embarrassed to go to a psychologist. In fact, according to mental-health professionals, the majority of depressed people who seek professional help turn first not to a psychologist, but to their primary care physician. But do regular doctors really know how to identify depression A large new scientific review published today by the journal Lancet suggests they don’t.
One in 25 deaths around the world is caused by alcohol consumption, and booze is now as damaging to global health as tobacco was a decade ago, according to a new study in the British medical journal the Lancet.