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Medicine and Science from The BMJ

The BMJ•thebmjpodcast.podbean.com
Health & Fitness
Medicine
The BMJ brings you interviews with the people who are shaping medicine and science around the world.
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Episodes

Children are bypassing the Australian social media ban

Australia has been in the vanguard of legislation to try and reduce the influence of social media on children and young people - their ban for under 16s was introduced on the 10th of December 2025, to great fanfare, and a lot of interest around the world. But how effective are these bans at keeping children away from social media? New research just published on BMJ.com has looked at that question of efficacy - finding that children are using the most simple tactics to evade the ban. To dicuss wh...

Jun 26, 2026•38 min•Ep. 86

The £400 million blackhole for doctor training, drug ads evading regulation, and reining in AI in war

The US military’s Operation “Epic Fury” highlighted the devastating cost of using artificial intelligence for rapid military planning. Thomas Adamkiewicz, associate professor at Morehouse School of Medicine, and Zulfiqar Bhutta, Robert Harding Inaugural Chair in Global Child Health at the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, to discuss why international humanitarian law is lagging dangerously behind technology, and why we urgently need a new era of legal frameworks to govern AI use in war. Direc...

Jun 22, 2026•48 min•Ep. 84

Cancer screening: when does testing go too far?

The heated debate on prostate cancer screening boils down to one question: should men be routinely screened? Two recent position statements from the UK’s national screening committee published in the BMJ show that screening decisions are steeped in complexity. The benefits of screening may be easier to grasp, but the harms of overdiagnosis and overtreatment are given less attention. Can we close the divide between the public and academic discourse? Guest: Sian Taylor-Phillips is professor of pop...

Jun 12, 2026•37 min•Ep. 83

Child mortality has reduced, but there are worrying trends

New estimates of Global Patterns in Neonatal, Child, and Adolescent Mortality have been published - and while there has been a huge improvement, those gains are in danger - and we’re seeing worrying trends. Kate Strong, a Scientist at the World Health Organization and Lucia Hug, a specialist in statistics and monitoring for UNICEF, join us to explain the data - and why they are worried about our ability to measure this in the future. Helen Sharman is the first British Astronaut to make it to spa...

Jun 06, 2026•41 min•Ep. 82

How to make healthcare more human

Does healthcare have a moral emergency? In this episode of the Medicine and Science podcast, Kamran Abbasi sits down with healthcare leaders Maureen Bisognano, president emerita of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement and Bob Klaber, director of strategy at Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust, to discuss why they're calling the lack of humanity in medicine an emergency. We ask why this dangerous imbalance between the rational (efficiency, data, and metrics) and the relational (human connec...

May 29, 2026•36 min•Ep. 81

What does Wes Streeting's exit mean for the NHS modernisation bill?

It has been a tumultuous time in UK health politics. UK Health Minister ,Wes Streeting, has freshly resigned. What does this mean for his newly introduced NHS Modernization Bill as it heads through Parliament? Together with Hugh Alderwick, Director of Policy and Research at the Health Foundation, we unpack the bill's sweeping centralization of power, the abolition of NHS England, and the contentious role for US tech firm Palantir in the new NHS. And, we explore a major milestone for women's heal...

May 22, 2026•37 min•Ep. 80

Social media companies are using the tobacco industry playbook to addict children

Twitter was launched 20 years ago, followed quickly by the iPhone and Instagram. Today, nearly 60% of the world’s population uses social media. Medical experts are sounding the alarm on the potential for these platforms to cause systemic harm. This past year has seen large events in the legal and public health battle against tech giants, with millions of dollars awarded in damages to child victims. Why has pinning down these companies proven difficult? And, what are the parallels between the soc...

May 15, 2026•49 min•Ep. 79
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