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New Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors (2nd edition), Elisabeth A. Martin. (Oxford University Press, 2009, £19.99)

This new edition of Oxford’s nifty little handbook is a real must-have. The small format crams a wealth of information into its 468 pages. Its worthy aim:‘to provide scientists, science writers, and editors of scientific texts with a guide to the style for presenting scientific information most widely used within the scientific community’.

The book mostly follows OUP house-style but this is no hindrance to its application to other publications. It lists US as well as UK spellings; advice on punctuation, prefixes, suffixes, units and quantities, symbols, italicisation and recognised abbreviations. It is not intended as a dictionary although arranged alphabetically, and you may find gaps, and it is not a compendium for spoken language (you won’t find help with pronunciation). But that’s it in terms of negatives.

What it does offer is a miraculous wealth of scientific terms in a wide range of disciplines (people, standards, names, biological nomenclature, chemical formulae), plus a large section of supplementary diagrams and tables including the periodic table, SI units and mathematical symbols. It also contains five useful features on the nomenclature of genes, organic and inorganic chemistry, organisms, and on the internet – all concisely presented and relevant, especially for editors with a sketchy science background. The dictionary section uses an accessible two-column layout in a clearly legible font and covers chemistry, biology, physics, botany, biochemistry, immunology, computer science, zoology, astronomy, mathematics, and genetics.

As a former subeditor I fell in love with this handy helper straight away and it has become a daily reference source. My one niggle is the inexplicable absence of basic statistical terms. Add these and the book would become the perfect reference work. Birte Twisselmann, web editor, BMJ

Sex, Sleep or Scrabble? Phil Hammond. (Black & White Publishing, 2009, £6.49)

Hammond, a gangling, red-headed, half-Aussie comedian, is one of the MJA’s most high-profile media docs. His motor-mouth verbal style is mirrored in his writing. This, his third offering between covers, pursues a number of loosely arranged themes he classifies as ‘Seriously Funny Answers to Life's Quirkiest Queries’: sex, his patients’ sexual problems, other of their intimate ailments, and curiosities from the med student curriculum. It’s very funny, dirty and irreverent. A list of favourite sex words for Scrabble; ‘Can you beat a good poo?’ ‘What should you do if someone dies on you during sex?’ ‘Have you ever been reported to the GMC?’ (He has, but the complaint was not upheld.) And the rudest thing he learned at medical school: a mnemonic for the five branches of the facial nerve (temporal, zygomatic, buccal, mandibular and cervical): ‘Two Zulus buggered my cat’.

If he has one unrivalled talent demonstrated in this volume it is as a fantastic cross-head writer. But I can’t help thinking that if he could structure his fluent humour into something resembling either a plot or an argument, he could write a book for the library, rather than the smallest room in the house. Philippa Pigache

Snow White Turtle Doves, Juliet Bressan (Poolbeg Press, 2009, £6.29)

There are days when you need a book that is just a good auld read. Nothing too taxing, and nothing too stupid either. There seems to be a split in the market these days – paperback novels are either worthy tomes or cynical fluff (I am not counting the classics here, which are in a category of their own). You get to choose between brown rice salad and candy floss. Both are enjoyable, but sometimes you would like a Sunday roast with veg, spuds and a not-too-sweet pudding. Sometimes it is also nice to romp through territory that’s familiar, and in my case that is medicine.

As a novel, Snow White Turtle Doves hits down the middle, and then veers off a little mid-way. I would classify it as chick-lit with sensible shoes and a twisty message. If it were a wine it would be Pinot Grigio – but drunk in a non-touristy pub in Dublin where the bachelorette parties don’t go. I like it for two more reasons. It has a medical theme running through it, and the women characters in it are believable.

This is not great or grand literature: think Edna O’Brien but updated and sharper. Think nouveau-Oirish but not dark and cynical. The story moves along at a good pace and it has some nice loose ends that had me trying to complete the story myself. There is no happy-ever-after ending, but there is a resolution of kinds. Buy it if you want something to read – on the plane, or the train, or when it is raining on Sunday and you could murder a bar of chocolate and book – and you don’t want to feel that you are wasting your time. I think it is meant for women but I know men who have read it too – the kind of men who are interested in finding out how women think. This is the first in Juliet’s three-book deal. I have read a draft of her next one, “Entanglement”, and think it’s even better. Mary Black

Scotland’s Health Deficit: an explanation and a plan, Oliver Gillie (Health Research Forum, 2008, £12.50) or download pdf free at www.healthresearchforum.org.uk.

Scots suffer more chronic disease than almost anyone else in the western world and Scotland’s cold and cloudy climate is at least in part to blame, says Oliver Gillie. His conclusion that death rates are closely related to hours of sunshine is persuasive – the more sunshine we get, and the higher our blood levels of vitamin D, the lower are our chances of dying early.

Insufficient vitamin D increases the risk of cancer, heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, diabetes, multiple sclerosis and arthritis, as well as bone disease and fractures, he claims, and produces a solid and voluminous body of research evidence to support his argument. This deficit could be reversed if Scots compensated for the lack of sunshine on their bodies by taking vitamin D-rich foods, or a vitamin D supplement. The Canadian Cancer Society recommends that all Canadians take 1,000 international units of vitamin D a day throughout autumn and winter.
The book focuses on Scotland, but the problem applies equally to the north of England. Other northern countries have less annual sunlight but their inhabitants, such as the Inuit of northern Canada, the Lapps in northern Scandinavia, the Norwegians and the Swedes, still eat traditional foods, oily fish and reindeer meat (plus stomach contents), all rich in vitamin D.

Oliver wants us to readopt our former diet of sardines, pilchards, mackerel, herring, trout and salmon; all vitamin D-rich, as are eggs and liver. Dairy products are often sold boosted with vitamin D. Healthy people receive more than 90 per cent of vitamin D requirements by exposing their skin to the sun, so get out in it when it does shine, but avoid sunburn

Like most orthodox GPs, I’m generally against popping vitamin or other supplements, but after reading Oliver’s book I’m changing my mind about vitamin D. Oliver’s crusade is directed at policy makers who he believes have oversold the ‘keep out of the sun’ message, but he writes beautifully and provides masses of references, so it makes a great read for journalists, too. Tom Smith – GP, Guardian columnist, author of Skin Cancer: prevent and survive. 

Ancestral Roots – modern living and human evolution, Timothy Clack (Macmillan Science, 2008, £15.19).

Man has come a long way over the last million years and Timothy Clack aims to track how we have done it and relate it to our lives today. He contends that we must learn from our distant past if we are to understand the present and improve the future.

The book looks at aggression, war, sex and sexism, racism and ageism, and traces their origins in our animal or early human past. (Robert Ardrey did this in African Genesis in 1961.) I was interested in what he said about lifestyle, food and its link with disease. Our teeth tell us that we evolved as omnivores: the scissor-like, grinding action of our molars enables us to both tear meat and grind seeds. Apparently, primitive man also ate a lot of insects, so we still produce an enzyme that dissolves the chitin of the insect exoskeleton. (One way or another we still consume about a kilo of insects a year that creep into our food.)

Survivalist Bear Grylls eats many more on TV. No programme goes by without him prising a few grubs from a rotten log which he contemplates carefully before chewing, though he never seems to enjoy them much, which suggests that where taste is concerned we have moved on.

Man’s gut and brain have also moved on: the one became shorter, the other larger, which was just as well since population pressure required that we use brainpower to invent agriculture. This occurred independently in several different parts of the world with various crops, so the evolutionary direction would seem to have some sort of inevitability.

If you enjoy relating man’s primitive roots to his all-too-fallible present – food production gets easy so we get fat; guns make killing easy so, with our aggressive nature unchanged, we kill more people – you will find this book entertaining. Oliver Gillie

 The Little Book of Medical Breakthroughs, Naomi Craft (New Holland, 2008, £7.99)

The Little Book of Medical Breakthroughs explains over 100 seminal discoveries, inventions and theories that have shaped the history of medical practice. Presenting a wide range of the most important medical breakthroughs, it covers a variety of topics, including artificial limbs used in Ancient Egypt, modern-day X-rays, immunisation and sanitation.

This user-friendly book is arranged in chronological order and contains illustrations throughout.

Enhancing Me: the hope and the hype of human enhancement, Pete Moore (John Wiley, 2008, £12.99)

In Enhancing Me, Pete Moore examines the ways in which technology can change our bodies, our brains, our emotions, and how long we live. He also looks at what drives us to want to be ‘superhuman’, and the consequences for the individual and society alike:

If you could live forever, would you want to? If you could download your mind onto a computer, would you still be you? Should we insert chips into our children, so we can track where they are? Should we force violent criminals to have mood-controlling brain implants? Would you want technology to improve your memory… or help you forget?

If you’ve ever wondered – or worried – about the pace at which technology is progressing, then this book will give you an eye-opening glimpse of the future in this fascinating field!

Watch a trailer at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=9AMK1cCtS58

All in the Mind, Alastair Campbell (Hutchinson, 2008, £17.99).

The first novel by Tony Blair’s infamous spin doctor has generated conflicting reviews. ‘Terrible’ says The Daily Telegraph’s Harry Mount. ‘A landslide victory’ says psychotherapist and Labour Party adviser Derek Draper in The Observer. ‘I have rarely read a book where the agonies and insecurities of mental trauma have been so well chronicled’, says Stephen Fry, actor and depression sufferer.

I’m with Draper and Fry. Even if the ending is incredible, this is a remarkable first novel. It draws strength both from Campbell’s own experience of alcoholism and depression, and from a simple story line revolving around a prominent psychiatrist and his patients.

In most novels with mental health themes the central characters are patients/clients, with therapists relegated to secondary roles. The psychiatrist, in contrast, is always centre stage, but the nature of the man means that his patients are never far away: they are either there, physically, in front of him, in his clinic; or in the forefront of his mind, re-affirming his own fear of failure, both personal and professional.

I have never met Campbell, but in the 11 years I worked on The Guardian and The Observer he was widely regarded as a bully. I find it hard to reconcile his former reputation with this highly sensitive book in which Campbell shows himself one of the few authors to have created a psychiatrist hero. I mentioned earlier that the ending was incredible – a view I reiterate now. But it was also compelling. I am not going to give it away. John Illman

The Wine Diet, Roger Corder (Sphere, 2008, £7.99).

Roger Corder claims that wine drinkers are generally healthier, and often live longer. ‘…Moderate wine drinkers (2-3 small glasses of wine a day) have the lowest mortality from all causes with no increased risk of cirrhosis of the liver’, he reports; welcome news after all those negative headlines warning middle-class drinkers away from their daily consumption of fermented grape juice. In fact, ‘Societies with some of the healthiest, longest-lived people – Sardinia, Crete, rural, south-west France … live to a ripe old age because they … drink wine every day.’ OK, so it’s not quite that simple. As Corder points out, these populations also take more care of themselves and eat a higher percentage of fresh and unprocessed foods. Wine is just part of the package. He wants us to be more discerning; to drink the right type of wine, in moderation, and preferably consumed with food.

Back in 2004, my favourite BMJ review advocated the ‘Polymeal’ as a ‘natural, safer and probably tastier’ alternative to the Polypill, claiming that the regular consumption of fish, fruit, vegetables, garlic, almonds, dark chocolate and wine could reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease by as much as 75 per cent. That paper was short on detail. Corder’s book fills in the gaps. His research has shown the link between vascular health and the presence, in red wine, of potent flavonoids called procyanidins. These combat inflammation and the build-up of fatty, atheromatous plaques through beneficial effects on the arterial endothelium. A full understanding of the mechanisms involved may lead to the development of new medicines to prevent heart disease, but for now he has concentrated on analyzing the procyanidin content in a range of red wines. He grades them on a scale of one to five hearts: ©©©©©. Those with the top rating supply at least 120mg procyanidins per 125ml (a small glass). The Wine Diet promotes other more familiar lifestyle advice, along with 50 recipes and a two-week menu plan to kick-start your new healthy eating (and drinking) regime. Corder’s sugar-free Chocolate Truffle Ice-Cream is first on my list to make. Sarah Brewer (who has qualifications in both wine and nutrition)

The complete guide to medical writing, edited by Mark C Stuart. (Pharmaceutical Press, 2007, £19.49)

There are numerous challenges in scientific writing and this book attempts a broad overview of many different kinds, from popular consumer health journalism to preparing a thesis. Each area is covered by a different chapter and a different specialist author, although the very first tackles the overarching problem of translating complex issues into easily flowing prose – an aspect of nearly all medical or scientific writing.

There are chapters covering scientific papers, case reports and conference posters detailed enough to be useful to the novice writer. Other chapters tackle letters to the editor, journal editorials, press releases and medical journalism for lay people. The chapter on submitting an article to a peer review journal would be invaluable for beginners. There are also excellent chapters on the daunting tasks of writing a thesis, and on preparing examination papers or scientific presentations. And if you still swear by overhead projectors, the comparison with PowerPoint presentations may convince you otherwise. The chapter on medical journalism is by MJA member Pamela Mason. Finally, there are sections on publishing law, writing books, the background to the publishing industry, and using the web.

In short, this is a book for the inexperienced but medically qualified writer. If you are already practised in any of the areas covered – for example, medical journalism – you may find it a little pedestrian. But if you are hoping to branch out, it may encourage you. Doctors often get fixated on publishing papers in learned journals. This book demonstrates that there are a multitude of other writing options. Mareeni Raymond, trainee GP

Available to MJA members at 20 per cent discount with free shipping direct from Dafydd.Howells@rpsgb.org.

Baby milestones, Dr Carol Cooper. (Hamlyn, 2007, £15.99)

This is a comprehensive guide to child development from birth to three years. Written in calm, reassuring style, it will be most useful to new parents although handy to dip into the second or even third time round. Dr Cooper isn’t overly didactic – unlike some authors she doesn’t insist there is only one ‘right’ way to approach parenting.

She makes it clear that every child is an individual who develops at his or her own rate, and she overcomes the gender problem by talking about ‘he’ in one chapter and ‘she’ in the next, a sensible approach that reflects the overall tone of this guide. There’s a nice balance between advice on encouraging young children while warning against over-stimulating them or becoming that dreaded thing, a competitive parent.

The book is easy to navigate, divided into ages and stages and colour-coded so that readers can go straight to the sections that concern them. There’s a summary of development at the start of each section and each chapter follows a similar format, starting with a general ‘Things to look out for’, leading to topics such as learning, communication or growth and development. It’s good to see sections on prematurity and special needs, too, issues that are sometimes overlooked.

Some topics, like early weaning, Dr Cooper present without acknowledging that they could be controversial. For example, other authors – or parents – might disagree with advice such as introducing bottles before four weeks if you plan to mix breast and formula feeding. A list of other sources of information would have been helpful here. If you were going to buy just one baby book, this would be a good choice. Kaye McIntosh

Make Me a Baby, Dr Simon Atkins. (BBC Active, 2007, £8.99)

Tying-in with the TV series of the same name, this book is beautifully illustrated and loaded with information on conception, pregnancy and birth. Although the author has never given birth, as a busy GP he has looked after plenty of women who have, and the book includes almost everything that parents-to-be need to know.

Along the way, Atkins debunks some of the myths surrounding pregnancy and labour, and the stuff aimed at Dads is more useful than in most books of this type. Not that I could find any of it again, since the volume has two full pages of picture credits where normal publishers provide an index.

The prose gets a little ponderous in places, but the book is mostly accessible. It deserves to be popular, and the three letters BBC on the front suggest it’s worthy of trust (unless a phone-in competition is involved). Carol Cooper

Read the Label! Discover What’s Really In Your Food, by Richard Emerson (Vermilion, 2007, £5.99)

‘An analytical trolley dash up those supermarket aisles that seeks to educate today’s inquisitive, health-conscious consumer. What does it really mean when a product claims to be full of “natural goodness”? How can you spot if a product contains artery-clogging hydrogenated fats? And just how much salt should your child be consuming? Crack the codes, eliminate the E-numbers and control those carbs with this invaluable aid to savvy shopping.’ Daily Record

‘Traffic light systems? Nutritional guidelines? Food labels confuse me and I’m paid to know about these things. But new handbook Read the Label By medical journalist Richard Emerson demystifies label jargon… There’s everything from chocolate to wine to every type of food labelling. It pays to be savvy as, legally, it’s our own responsibility to read the fine print. As a result, manufacturers can get away with misleading labels. So, don’t let the food industry dupe you – read this book.’ Red Magazine

A Seaside Practice, by Tom Smith (Short Books, 2007, £12.99)

Fans of Tom Smith, and there must be a fair number in the Medical Journalists’ Association, quite apart from the judges of the various awards he has won over the years for his journalism and self-help books, will be pleased to learn that he has turned his talents to autobiography enlivened by colourful, medical anecdote. A Seaside Practice is a sort of l960s update on Dr Finlay’s Casebook, with jokes. The stories are fictionalised but based on real events and characters Tom encountered in his years as a GP in the Scottish Lowlands (in the pseudonymous village of Collintrae).

He solves the case of the chloroformed cows; recounts the kidnap of the inebriated pheasants; learns to decipher the mysterious tongue spoken by the natives (‘The wean’s come oot in a wheen o’wee pukes’ translated as ‘The toddler has developed a large number of septic spots’); warns of the hazards of performing an autopsy on a corpse that has spent some days putrefying under water and, this being from the master of the self-help manual, explains in passing medical phenomena with lucid simplicity. For example, macrocytosis suggests that a heavy drinker’s liver may be about to pack up; ‘it means your red cells are a lot bigger than they should be… because (your liver) is not able to provide the right proteins to make normal cells’.

We are introduced throughout to a rich cast of rural Scots viewed with the affectionate detachment of a wise family doctor. It’s a joyous, easily digestible feast from cover to cover, and no bedside table should be without it. Philippa Pigache

The Insulin Murders, byVincent Marks and Caroline Richmond (RSM Press, 2007, £12.95)

Forensic science is big on TV these days. The modern and allegedly undetectable murder weapon of insulin injection has fascinated fiction writers ever since Banting and Best made their discovery. However, this book looks at the meticulous medical detective work behind real-life deaths caused by insulin over a period of 50 years. Vincent Marks is a leading authority on hypoglycaemia and has provided expert witness evidence in a number of celebrated trials including that of Lincolnshire nurse, Beverly Allitt, convicted of murdering four babies in her care, and possibly more, by insulin injection. Of the 14 cases examined here, with a quite forensic attention to pharmaco-pathological detail, no less than seven were committed by female nurses. A question of access and knowledge of the murder weapon, since only one of the victims had ever used insulin medically; also perhaps evidence of the female penchant for poison as a murder weapon?

Marks and Richmond also detail the celebrated von Bulow case, made into a movie as Reversal of Fortune, in which Claus von Bulow was first convicted and later cleared of murdering his wife Sunny. Other cases range from the excessive – poisoning, via drip with three different toxic agents – to the low-key and ambiguous. Marks (a witness for the defence) remains convinced that Dee Winzar did not murder her paraplegic husband, but that the insulin came from some another source. The development of increasingly sophisticated immunoassays that distinguish the different causes of fatal hypoglycaemia even after death is a fascinating theme throughout the book. In the Winzar case Marks found himself arguing for the defence against leading expert, colleague and former trainee Derrick Teale, head of the supra-regional centre for hormonal assay in Guildford.

Some level of medical interest and understanding are probably a prerequisite to appreciating this book. But that is just what MJA members should have, and at least they will be spared the abundant trauma and gore that are the stock in trade of Crime-Scene Investigation. Philippa Pigache

Food is better medicine than drugs: your prescription for drug-free health, by Patrick Holford and Jerome Burne (Piatkus, 2007, £10.99)

The pharmaceutical industry has had to tread a rocky road over the last few years: it has been thrust repeatedly into the spotlight as questions were raised over drug safety, clinical trial transparency, its marketing activities, the trust of the general public – the list is long. So revisiting the scandals that have plagued the pharmaceutical industry is to be expected – even warranted – in a book entitled Food is better medicine than drugs.

But the lengthy and repeated swipes these authors take at the sector, to my mind serve only to blur the message that drugs alone are not the answer to the major health issues today with the claim that the non-pharmaceutical route is the only one of value. Certainly, many conditions can be prevented, alleviated or even treated nutritionally, but others demand a dual-pronged attack that delivers optimum nutrition to support health while undergoing drug treatment.

Once you wade through the pharma-bashing, the authors offer some valuable nutritional advice – albeit with rather too much focus on supplementation, a research field still in its infancy and lacking a robust and conclusive body of evidence. I agree with a holistic approach to health and believe it is possible to reduce medication dose, come off therapy altogether, or simply benefit in a plethora of ways from good nutrition. So this book could perhaps be useful for people who want nutritional advice on how to prevent or treat ill-health before resorting to medicines.

However, I think it often veers dangerously close to scaremongering, and could drive patients away from medicines that are ameliorating or even life-saving, while failing to sufficiently emphasise the risks of treatment withdrawal or the potential side effects associated with supplementation. For most readers, beset as they are by conflicting health stories, I suspect that this book will trigger more confusion than explanation. Claire Bowie, editor, Pharma Times

The Trouble with Medical Journals, by Richard Smith (Royal Society of Medicine Press, 2007, £19.95)

This is a unique offering by the former BMJ editor – challenging, comprehensive and controversial. Medical journals, it begins, influence all our lives, and not always for the better. Medical journals, it ends, have many problems and need reform. They are over-influenced by the pharmaceutical industry, too fond of the mass media, yet neglectful of patients. The research they contain is hard to interpret and prone to bias, and peer review – the process at the heart of journals and all of science – is deeply flawed.

Journals carry many studies that are fraudulent, Smith alleges, Editors themselves also misbehave. The cited authors of studies in journals have often had little to do with the work: many have undeclared conflicts of interest. The medical journal business is corrupt, he claims, because the owners restrict access to important research, most of it publicly funded.

Let me build on my introduction. This must be the most controversial medical book of the 21^st Century which has the same kind of explosive impact as Ivan Illich’s critique of the limits of medicine, Medical Nemesis, (1976). It looks to the past and forward to four different futures for medical publishing, based on the cartoon series, The Simpsons. Homer, the fat, lazy, father, is a neurologist. His view of medical publishing is: ‘It ain’t that broke, so there’s no great need to fix it.’ He prefers hard copies of everything and does not recognise the impact of Google. Marge, the wise mother who sorts out everybody’s problems, is a geriatrician. In her world the academic community has won its battle with the publishers. All original research is freely available through the web. But she rarely accesses original research, because she receives magazines (increasingly on screen) summarising the research that really matters to her, no longer sifting through a mass of information of no practical use. Lisa, the smart, sassy, daughter, is a paediatric surgeon. Hers is a world of texting, Wikipedia, blogs, email, bulletin boards and chat rooms. A world of six billion inhabitants, where no-one is more than just a few clicks away. Traditional publishers find Lisa’s world very threatening. Bart is the streetwise son. In his world the big guys have taken over – Microsoft, Tesco, Walt Disney et al. Traditional scientific publishers have gone and editors work for large companies: their job not to think independently, but to promote the mission of their employers.

Smith also has a few anecdotes. As a TV doc he recalls suggesting that heart disease would make a good topic because it ‘kills half the population’. ‘But is there enough to talk about for three minutes?’ asked the producer. He uses this story to illustrate one of his ‘seven lessons for dealing with the mass media’. This lesson is: ‘Time is very short on tele