The Lancet is a weekly peer-reviewed Peer review is a generic term that is used to describe a process of self-regulation by a profession or a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals with the related field. Peer review methods are employed to maintain standards, improve performance, and provide credibility general medical journal A medical journal is a scientific journal devoted to the field of medicine. Most medical journals are peer-reviewed. Medical journals commonly arose as the journal of societies, such as the precursor to the British Medical Association, and would originally be collections of letters sent to the society by distant members, with an account of the. It is one of the world's best known, oldest, and most respected general medical journals.[1] The Lancet was founded in 1823 by Thomas Wakley, an English The area now called England has been settled by people of various cultures for about 35,000 years, but it takes its name from the Angles, one of the Germanic tribes who settled during the 5th and 6th centuries. England became a unified state in AD 927, and since the Age of Discovery, which began during the 15th century, has had a significant surgeon In medicine, a surgeon is a specialist in surgery. Surgery is a broad category of invasive medical treatment that involves the cutting of a body, whether human or animal, for a specific reason such as the removal of diseased tissue or to repair a tear or breakage. Surgeons may be physicians, dentists, podiatrists or veterinarians who named it after the surgical instrument called a lancet, as well as after the term "lancet arch", a window with a sharp pointed arch, to indicate the "light of wisdom" or "to let in light". The Lancet has been owned by Elsevier Elsevier publishes medical and scientific literature. It is a part of the Reed Elsevier group. Based in Amsterdam, the company has operations in the United Kingdom, USA and elsewhere since 1991. As of 1995[update], the editor-in-chief is Richard Horton. The journal has editorial offices in London London is a leading global city, the world's largest financial centre alongside New York, and has the largest city GDP in Europe. Central London is home to the headquarters of most of the UK's top 100 listed companies and more than 100 of Europe's 500 largest. London's influence and strengths in the arts, education, entertainment, fashion, finance,, New York New York City, the most populous city in the United States, is known for its status as a financial, cultural, transportation, and manufacturing center, and for its history as a gateway for immigration to the United States. According to the U.S. Department of Commerce, it is also a destination of choice for many foreign visitors. Both state and, and Beijing Beijing , also known as Peking (pronounced /piːˈkɪŋ/ or /peɪˈkɪŋ/), is a metropolis in northern China, and the capital of the People's Republic of China. Governed as a municipality under direct administration of the central government, Beijing borders Hebei Province to the north, west, south, and for a small section in the east, and.
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Impact
The Lancet has a significant readership throughout the world with a high impact factor The impact factor, often abbreviated IF, is a measure reflecting the average number of citations to articles published in science and social science journals. It is frequently used as a proxy for the relative importance of a journal within its field, with journals with higher impact factors deemed to be more important than those with lower ones, especially via its website TheLancet.com, which has attracted over 1.8 million registered users since its launch in 1996. It publishes original research articles, review articles ("seminars" and "reviews"), editorials, book reviews, correspondence, as well as news features and case reports. The Lancet is considered to be one of the "core" general medical journals, the others being the New England Journal of Medicine The New England Journal of Medicine is an English-language peer-reviewed medical journal published by the Massachusetts Medical Society. It is the oldest continuously published medical journal in the world, and is the most widely read, cited, and influential general medical periodical in the world, the Journal of the American Medical Association JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association is an international peer-reviewed general medical journal, published 48 times per year by the American Medical Association. JAMA is the most widely circulated medical journal in the world, and BMJ BMJ is a partially open access medical journal. It is among the most influential and widely read peer-reviewed general scientific journals in the field of medicine in the world. In the latest Journal Citation Reports Journal Citation Reports is an annual publication by the Institute of Scientific Information, a division of Thomson Reuters. It provides information about academic journals in the sciences and social sciences. It was originally published as a part of Science Citation Index, and is compiled from the citation data found there (2009), The Lancet's impact factor was ranked second among general medical journals, at 30.8, after the New England Journal of Medicine (47.1).[2]
Specialty journals
The Lancet also has several speciality journals all bearing the parent title: The Lancet Neurology (neurology Neurology is a medical specialty dealing with disorders of the nervous system. Specifically, it deals with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of disease involving the central, peripheral, and autonomic nervous systems, including their coverings, blood vessels, and all effector tissue, such as muscle. The corresponding surgical specialty) and The Lancet Oncology (oncology Oncology (from the Ancient Greek onkos , meaning bulk, mass, or tumor, and the suffix -logy (-λογία), meaning "study of") is a branch of medicine that deals with tumors (cancer). A medical professional who practices oncology is an oncologist), both of which publish original research and reviews, and The Lancet Infectious Diseases (infectious diseases An infectious disease is a clinically evident illness resulting from the presence of pathogenic microbial agents, including pathogenic viruses, pathogenic bacteria, fungi, protozoa, multicellular parasites, and aberrant proteins known as prions. These pathogens are able to cause disease in animals and/or plants. Infectious pathologies are also) which publishes reviews. These three journals have established significant reputations as important journals in their medical speciality. The Lancet Neurology's impact factor is 18.126, The Lancet Oncology 14.470, and The Lancet Infectious Diseases 15.583.[2] There is also an online journal for students entitled The Lancet Student.
Volume renumbering
Prior to 1990, The Lancet had volume numbering that reset every year. Issues in January to June were in volume i, with the rest in volume ii. In 1990, the journal moved to a sequential volume numbering scheme, with two volumes per year. Volumes were retro-actively assigned to the years prior to 1990, with the first issue of 1990 being assigned volume 335, and the last issue of 1989 assigned volume 334. The table of contents listing on Science Direct uses this new numbering scheme.[3]
Expression of political views
The Lancet has taken a political stand on several important medical and non-medical issues. Recent examples include criticism of the World Health Organization The World Health Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) that acts as a coordinating authority on international public health. Established on 7 April 1948, and headquartered in Geneva, Switzerland, the agency inherited the mandate and resources of its predecessor, the Health Organization, which had been an agency of the, rejecting claims of the efficacy of homoeopathy Homeopathy is a form of alternative medicine, first proposed by German physician Samuel Hahnemann in 1796, in which practitioners use highly diluted preparations. Based on an ipse dixit axiom formulated by Hahnemann, which he called the law of similars, preparations which cause certain symptoms in healthy individuals are given in diluted form to as a therapeutic option,[4] disapproval during the time Reed Exhibitions (a division of Reed Elsevier Reed Elsevier is a global publisher and information provider. It is listed on several of the world's major stock exchanges. It is a FTSE100 and FT500 Global company. The Reed Elsevier group is a dual-listed company consisting of Reed Elsevier PLC and Reed Elsevier NV) hosted arms industry The arms industry is a global industry and business which manufactures and sells weapons and military technology and equipment. Arms producing companies, also referred to as defence companies or military industry, produce arms mainly for the armed forces of states. Products include guns, ammunition, missiles, military aircraft, military vehicles, fairs, and a call in 2003 for tobacco Tobacco is an agricultural product processed from the leaves of plants in the genus Nicotiana. It can be consumed, used as an organic pesticide and, in the form of nicotine tartrate, it is used in some medicines. It is most commonly used as a recreational drug, and is a valuable cash crop for countries such as Cuba, China and United States to be made illegal.[5]
Controversial articles
The Lancet was severely criticized after it published a paper in 1998, in which the authors suggested a link The MMR vaccine controversy refers to claims that autism can be caused by the MMR vaccine, a vaccine against measles, mumps, and rubella. The scientific consensus is that no credible scientific evidence links the vaccine to autism, and that the vaccine's benefits greatly outweigh its risks between the MMR vaccine The MMR vaccine is a mixture of three live attenuated viruses, administered via injection for immunization against measles, mumps and rubella . It is generally administered to children around the age of one year, with a second dose before starting school (i.e. age 4/5). The second dose is not a booster; it is a dose to produce immunity in the and autism Autism is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication, and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their synapses connect and organize; how this occurs is not.[6] In February 2004 The Lancet published a partial retraction of the paper.[7] The editor-in-chief, Richard Horton, went on the record to say the paper had "fatal conflicts of interest" because the study's lead author, Andrew Wakefield, had a serious conflict of interest that he had not declared to The Lancet.[8] The journal completely retracted the paper on 2 February 2010, after Wakefield was found to have acted unethically in conducting the research.[9]
The Lancet also published a controversial estimate of the Iraq War PKK: 537 killed , 9 killed (PKK Claim), 230 (official army figures claim)'s Iraqi death toll—around one hundred thousand—in 2004. In 2006 a follow-up study by the same team suggested that the violent death rate in Iraq was not only consistent with the earlier estimate, but had increased considerably in the intervening period (see Lancet surveys of casualties of the Iraq War). The second survey estimated that there had been 654,965 excess Iraqi deaths as a consequence of the war. The 95% confidence interval In statistics, a confidence interval is a particular kind of interval estimate of a population parameter. Instead of estimating the parameter by a single value, an interval likely to include the parameter is given. Thus, confidence intervals are used to indicate the reliability of an estimate. How likely the interval is to contain the parameter is was 392,979 to 942,636. 1,849 households that contained 12,801 people were surveyed.[10]
In January 2006, it was revealed that data had been fabricated in an article[11] by the Norwegian After World War II, Norway experienced rapid economic growth, with the first two decades due to the Norwegian shipping and merchant marine and domestic industrialization, and from the early 1970s, a result of exploiting large oil and natural gas deposits that had been discovered in the North Sea and the Norwegian Sea. Today, Norway ranks as the cancer researcher Jon Sudbø and 13 co-authors published in The Lancet in October 2005.[12][13] Several articles in other scientific journals were withdrawn following the withdrawal in The Lancet. Within a week, the high-impact New England Journal of Medicine published an expression of editorial concern regarding its published research papers by the same author and in November 2006, the journal withdrew two oral cancer studies led by the Norwegian researcher.[14]
In a 2009 editorial, the journal accused Pope Benedict XVI Pope Benedict XVI is the 265th and current Pope, by virtue of his office of Bishop of Rome, the head of the Catholic Church and, as such, Sovereign of the Vatican City State. He was elected on 19 April 2005 in a papal conclave, celebrated his Papal Inauguration Mass on 24 April 2005, and took possession of his cathedral, the Basilica of St. John of publicly distorting scientific evidence on condoms to promote Catholic doctrine on chastity in AIDS prevention.[15] The Vatican defended itself by pointing to an earlier Lancet article published in 2000 which asserted that condoms could not possibly be sufficient in solving the AIDS crisis. [16]
A December 2003 editorial by the journal, titled "How do you sleep at night, Mr Blair? Anthony Charles Lynton "Tony" Blair is a British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament (MP) for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007; he resigned from all these positions in June 2007", called for tobacco use Smoking is a practice in which a substance, most commonly tobacco or cannabis, is burned and the smoke tasted or inhaled. This is primarily practised as a route of administration for recreational drug use, as combustion releases the active substances in drugs such as nicotine and makes them available for absorption through the lungs. It can also to be completely banned Smoking bans are public policies, including criminal laws and occupational safety and health regulations, which prohibit tobacco smoking in workplaces and/or other public spaces. Legislation may also define smoking as more generally being the carrying or possessing of any lit tobacco product in the UK. The Royal College of Physicians The Royal College of Physicians of London was the first medical institution in England to receive a Royal Charter. It was founded in 1518 and is one of the most active of all medical professional organisations. Since the College's creation as the College of Physicians by royal charter of King Henry VIII in 1518, it has engaged in a wide range of rejected their argument. John Britton, chairman of the college's tobacco advisory group, praised the journal for discussing the health problem, but he concluded that a "ban on tobacco would be a nightmare." Amanda Sandford, spokesperson for the anti-tobacco group Action on Smoking and Health, stated that criminalizing a behaviour 26% of the population commit "is ludicrous." She also said, "We can't turn the clock back. If tobacco were banned we would have 13 million people desperately craving a drug that they would not be able to get." The deputy editor of The Lancet responded to the criticism by arguing that no other measures besides a total ban would likely be able to reduce tobacco use.[17]
The smokers rights group FOREST A forest is an area with a high density of trees. There are many definitions of a forest, based on the various criteria. These plant communities cover approximately 9.4% of the Earth's surface (or 30% of total land area), though they once covered much more (about 50% of total land area), in many different regions and function as habitats for stated that the editorial gave them "amusement and disbelief". Director Simon Clark called the journal "fascist Fascism is a radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy. Fascism was originally founded by Italian national syndicalists in World War I who combined left-wing and right-wing political views," and argued that it is hypocritical to ban tobacco while allowing unhealthy junk foods Junk food is an informal term applied to some foods which are perceived to have little or no nutritional value, or to products with nutritional value but which also have ingredients considered unhealthy when regularly eaten, or to those considered unhealthy to consume at all. The term was coined by Michael Jacobson, director of the Center for, alcohol consumption, and participation in extreme sports An extreme sport is a popular term for certain activities perceived as having a high level of inherent danger, and that are counter-cultural. These activities often involve speed, height, a high level of physical exertion, and highly specialized gear or spectacular stunts. Health Secretary John Reid reiterated that his government is committed to helping people give up smoking. He added, "Despite the fact that this is a serious problem, it is a little bit extreme for us in Britain to start locking people up because they have an ounce of tobacco somewhere."[18]
In August 2010, the journal published an article about multi-drug resistant "superbug" infection, which they have named controversially New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase or NDM-1 based on their assumed origin.[19] The report mentioned, out of samples collected from 37 infected people in UK, only 17 had a history of travel to India or Pakistan.[20] They also blamed medical tourism in India for the spread of this super bug, which Indian government denied. [21] [22]
See also
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Tue, 13 Jul 2010 11:16:43 GMT+00:00
afp according to a 2008 study in The Lancet , 16 million people around the world inject drugs, three million of whom live in Eastern Europe. ... Obama unveils comprehensive national HIV/AIDS policy The Republic
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taken in July 2005 along the Petawawa River Renfrew Co Ontario Canada with a Canon EOS 1D Mark II and EF 300mm F 4 L IS lens with a 2X extender and 580 EX flash
Priya Shetty
Fri, 02 Jul 2010 00:01:00 GM
Meena Saraswathi Seshu: tackling HIV for India's sex workers. By - Priya Shetty.
