Kamran Abbasi

Kim Fox is a UK cardiologist who was paid by Servier, a French drug company, to support clinical trials on ivabradine, a drug for treating angina. The payments were made from 2006 to 2015 to a private company run by Fox and his wife that was involved with contract research. The bulk of the money was taken as profit from the company by Fox and his wife. None of this is illegal. However, it is a remarkable story. The payments amount to a staggering £50m, which shows just how much money is thrown at a new drug. Further, Fox was president of the European Society of Cardiology and chaired its guideline committee that recommended ivabradrine. Ivabadrine has now fallen down the pecking order of drugs of choice for angina. The guideline, in that sense, hasn’t stood the test of time. This is a familiar trajectory. Publication bias talks up the benefits of new drugs early on, with less supportive evidence and information on harms tending …

Ikigai is the Japanese concept of “what makes life worth living.” It might otherwise be described as a sense of fulfilment by pursuing one’s passions. Ikigai helped Milo Kato to feel reinvigorated and heal after an acute hospital admission for schizophrenia (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-100399).1 Kato overcame the stigma of the lay definition of the condition, as a “split mind,” by achieving a better understanding of its scientific definition. We delve deep into the science of schizophrenia in our State of the Art review that examines advances in pathophysiology, management, and precision medicine (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-635470).2 While the lifetime prevalence of schizophrenia is around 0.5%, lifespans are shortened by 15-20 …

What we will remember of this series is the cricketing incompetence of Mohsin Naqvi's Pakistan Cricket Board. Mess at the top

Might artificial intelligence indeed kill us all? The chances are greater than 10%, according to one expert. Another researcher has publicly quit the AI company Anthropic over safety fears.1 This news arrives around the same time that Anthropic warns us that people are attempting to use AI to create biological weapons (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-100871).2 The threat from such weapons is real and is a major concern for ministries of defence around the world. A BMJ analysis paper earlier this year outlined how a surveillance system for biological threats might be constructed (doi:10.1136/bmj-2025-086457).3 The warnings are being served. Is it wise to ignore them? One view is that safety concerns about AI are being exaggerated to allow the leading AI companies to maintain their competitive advantage and maintain their influence over regulation. That may …

Risk holding in the NHS is “not ideal for patients, and it is not ideal for doctors,” argues Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer. Delivering the inaugural BMJ annual lecture in partnership with the Academy of Medical Sciences, Whitty described how risk holding has shifted from early career doctors to senior doctors over 30 years (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-100924).1 It’s a shift that any senior doctor of a certain vintage can relate to; the burden of risk has migrated upwards with them. The shift wasn’t planned, but it is a reality. Today’s early career doctors hold too little risk. New consultants, after training in an environment that cocoons them from risk holding, now experience a dramatic increase in it. On “day 1, suddenly, bang: they [new consultants] hold all …

Vision, pragmatism, and five giants: new deals on social care and physician assistants

Hail medicine’s latest, and super intelligent, miracle cure

The threat of bioterrorism is real and proven. Past incidents are well documented. The willingness of certain countries to engage in biological warfare, in contravention of international treaties, is well established. But it seems that we can’t agree on whether artificial intelligence adds to that risk. How worried should we be? The views of experts broadly divide into three categories (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-101086).1 One group believes that the risks are existential. Others say that the risks are exaggerated by the industry. They believe that when Anthropic warns that people are already experimenting by using AI to create bioweapons, this is a thinly disguised ruse by a technology company to boast about AI’s capabilities and boost its commercial value. It’s “highly, highly unlikely,” they believe, that AI will cause human mass extinction in the near future. The …

Climate crisis is a pressing security concern Seven of the nine planetary boundaries on which we rely to make the earth habitable have been breached, according to the 2026 planetary health check. This breach is the worst ever recorded.1 The effect of surpassing these vital climate tipping points is already being felt everywhere by nature and humanity. The environmental consequences of further breaching these planetary boundaries are unknown, posing a security risk that several European governments are taking seriously.2 Earlier this year, a UK national security assessment detailed the high risk consequences of the collapse of global ecosystems and biodiversity loss. These include food shortages, water scarcity, geopolitical insecurity, and conflict.34 In 2021, before the US government became dominated by fossil fuel interests and climate denialism, the US Department of Defence noted that the “unprecedented scale of wildfires, floods, droughts, typhoons, and other extreme weather events . . . contributed to instability around the world” and created substantial security risks.5 The implications are relevant worldwide. At a pre-COP summit held in Fiji on the 5-8 October 2026, Murat Kurum, the Turkish climate change minister and COP31 president said that wealthy countries need to spend more on tackling the climate crisis than on defence, because the climate crisis is “the” security issue.6 Despite the evident security risks posed by the climate crisis, governments are instead focused on global defence spending, which has increased over the past decade. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute estimates that world military expenditures reached $2887bn in 2025, a 2.9% rise from 2024.7 In 2025, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) allies pledged to increase defence investments to 5% of …

Summer is coming. While superpowers engage in forever wars; while nation states, rogue states, and failed states flex their weaponry; while old alliances are abandoned and new ones forged; while our thoughts are consumed by security threats and our leaders dream of building military might; while the elite pray to new gods and dream of new worlds; while the growing ranks of undeserved and underserved poor people are too distracted, disempowered, or disinformed to contemplate a better future; while the people tasked with securing our existence are conflicted by personal, corporate, and national interests; and while we banish our greatest threat, the threat we must unite against, from our collective conscience, the forces of summer are breaching our planetary walls (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-101184)1—and they bring annihilation. As we squabble over power, politics, and pride, the world burns. The World Meteorological Organization predicts that one of the years 2026-30 will exceed 2024 to become the hottest on record.2 More than 500 wildfires burned more than four million hectares of Canada in August (doi:10.1136/bmj-2026-101071).3 Being rich is no protection. Melting and collapsing glaciers caused …