Krish Vedavanam

The UK's health and social care services are increasingly strained by rising demands and widening health inequalities. The government has decided to cut welfare benefits for people with disability,' with the minister for intergovernmental relations defending the cuts by saying you can't "tax and borrow your way out of the need to reform (the] state." This is in the world's sixth largest economy, where private fortunes continue to grow. Could taxing wealth be a viable approach to address these critical challenges and promote equity across the population? In simple terms a wealth tax is a tax on a person's or a business's assets, such as their cash and bank holdings, land, and other real estate. There are many ways to tax wealth, including one-off windfall taxes (for example, on a bank or fossil fuel profits) and annual taxes on assets." Proponents argue that wealth taxes are more equitable and reduce inequality, and are therefore justifiable in terms of social justice alone, that they are a counterweight to unfair economic advantages and excessive influence of the wealthy in politics.

Another editorial from this week’s @bmj.com.

By Kate Pickett and David Taylor Robinson.

A wealth tax in the UK could raise £60bn a year to tackle widening inequalities.

Perhaps we can no longer afford NOT to do it?

Link here:
www.bmj.com/content/389/...

#MedSky
#Inequalities
#SDOH
#WealthTax

Patricia Cantley: We must remember how scary hospitals can be for our patients - The BMJ We need to do everything we can to redress the imbalance between patients in hospital and healthcare professionals My Mum always told me to be wary of doctors, a statement [...]More...

Having a brother with a disability undoubtedly influenced my approach to working as a doctor.

Here’s my @bmj.com piece on scary hospitals, who aren’t good at looking after people with this sort of issue.

#NationalSiblingsDay
#DuchenneMuscularDystrophy
#MedSky

blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2018/03/...

Breast cancer overdiagnosis disproportionately affects more affluent groups in our society who are more likely to respond to invitations for screening and testing. 10 11 In focusing particularly on the "overdiagnosis" of people who rely on the welfare state because they live in a state of significant distress, we risk stigmatising some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in the UK

And here’s another big question, posed by @helensalisbury.bsky.social & @elspethdavies.bsky.social

Overdiagnosis of physical vs mental health issues affect different sectors of the population disproportionately.

Are we stigmatising some of our most disadvantaged citizens here?

#SocialInequalities

Excellent, measured discussion via @helensalisbury.bsky.social “it’s notable that there’s been little public conversation about overdiagnosis of physical health conditions”

Afghan rights defender told she faces ‘no risk’ from Taliban as Home Office denies asylum Woman who worked with western governments in her home country before fleeing the Taliban told to return

This, I’m afraid, is what “we’re going to be tougher on asylum seekers than the other lot” leads to
1/🧵

Afghan rights defender told she faces ‘no risk’ from Taliban as Home Office denies asylum

“With the US retreating from its historical leadership in global science and public health, Europe has an opportunity and a responsibility to fill the void”

💯 @standupforscience.bsky.social

Barriers for access and utilization of dementia care services in Europe: a systematic review - BMC Geriatrics Background Dementia is a group of chronic diseases characterised by cognitive impairment that progressively disrupts daily functioning and requires increasing levels of healthcare, social support, and...

Improving care coordination, communication and training for healthcare professionals, alongside reducing systemic delays, are essential steps toward providing more effective care for people in Europe living with dementia. Our review in BMC Geriatrics. link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Thankyou ❤️ so pleased you have signed up. I’m sure any contribution you’d make would be so valuable. I would love for us (me, my team, my service, my colleagues) to do better Xx

POrtal for Patient and Public Engagement in Dementia research Weclome to Popped! This platform invites you to share your thoughts on research projects aimed at improving dementia care.

🤩 popped.org.uk

Development of a diagnostic checklist to identify functional cognitive disorder versus other neurocognitive disorders Background Functional cognitive disorder (FCD) poses a diagnostic challenge due to its resemblance to other neurocognitive disorders and limited biomarker accuracy. We aimed to develop a new diagnosti...

Useful consensus guidelines in #MCI from #VerónicaCabreira and colleagues including @profrobhoward.bsky.social and @suvankarpal.bsky.social

neurologyopen.bmj.com/content/7/1/...

american masculinity is so amazing. caring about clothes as a man apparently makes you "gay" but our position on geopolitics totally depends on whether you wear a suit

Establishing the cost of Nausea and Vomiting of Pregnancy (NVP) and Hyperemesis Gravidarum (HG) Survey Calling all women who are currently suffering with NVP or HG, or who have previously suffered with NVP or HG. We would like to invite you to take part in this survey about your experiences of Nausea...

For any women out there who experienced/are experiencing (sending 💜) severe nausea/vomiting in pregnancy pls consider filling in this anonymised survey for a research project led by Dr Melanie Nana. She is the clinical academic making real change re. HG here in the uk forms.gle/u6GNNAhX5WqS...

Great thread from @walaszek.medsky.social 👇🏽

You are absolutely correct @trishaelliott.bsky.social - @bmj.com has a large array of open access articles and is committed to increasing access

bmjgroup.com/bmj-increase...

In this age where access to good quality research is declining it’s worth knowing this!!

Likewise! I’m a member of the BMA so can read this @BMJ.com article easily, but sometimes it’s harder to access useful/relevant articles if you are not a member/lack institutional access

Great article by @helensalisbury.bsky.social - thanks for sharing and making more accessible @trishaelliott.bsky.social

😬

What does this mean for UK data when Palantir technologies has secured NHS contracts??

Nazi - Live Chumbawamba · Showbusiness! (Live) · Song · 1995

open.spotify.com/track/3OlXDh...

Support for older people in Wales – water bill advice, care home toolkit, dementia advocacy With water and other bills rising, and the Welsh population ageing, assistance for older people is needed now more than ever. Here are three sources of support

With water and other bills rising, and the Welsh population ageing, assistance for older people is needed now more than ever. Here are three sources of support | Age Cymru

@bylines.cymru

Here’s to sustained improvement 🎉

So interesting to learn that Deepseek achieved very similar outcomes to Open Ai and other generative AIs using a different (and much cheaper) strategy.

Cognitive psych is often traced back to the 1950s.
Psychology is often traced to Wundt's lab in 1879.
Textbooks speak of "proto-psychologists" like Fechner & Helmholtz in the 1800s... Westerners all.

Have you heard about Ibn al-Haytham, whose work predated them by 100s of years?

1/4

Advancing diversity isn’t about sidelining merit but addressing inequities that often prevent true merit from being recognised. Diversity programmes address systemic bias and discrimination

#equity #diversity #inclusion #belonging #EDI #DEI #mythofmeritocracy #bias #discrimination #systemicracism

Sage Journals: Discover world-class research Subscription and open access journals from Sage, the world's leading independent academic publisher.

The UK is preparing for a new era of Alzheimer's care with blood-based diagnostic biomarkers. These tests could revolutionise how we diagnose and treat this devastating disease. Learn more in our article in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine. journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

(same content as the table in the paper)

My commentary on the do's and don'ts of cognitive evaluations in LLMs is now out in Nature Human Behavior:

doi.org/10.1038/s415...

posting here with a figure that didn't make it into the final draft and is now instead a boring table :P

#CogSci #LLMs #AI

Article screenshot of a genome-wide association study of major depression published in the journal Cell

1/n Our multi-ancestry #GWAS meta-analysis of major depression is now published in @cellpress.bsky.social.

www.cell.com/cell/fulltex...

A thread 🧵:

Preventing dementia in Italy: Estimations of modifiable risk factors and public health implications Dementia is a major global public health challenge, with over 50 million cases in 2020, projected to reach 152 million by 2050. Effective prevention s…

Comparison of PAFs, PIFs, and national and subnational population-level policies, for dementia risk reduction in 🇮🇹.

A tour de force of a paper from Simone Salemme and colleagues

www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

All look amazing, what did you choose? Given today’s freezing temperatures, I would be tempted by a hot pudding!

Before you go, tell me where is this cafe?!