In Other Journals

Did you know that the Maldives Government learned how to scuba dive and held a cabinet meeting underwater to draw attention to the planet’s rising sea levels? So says The Lancet, in an editorial that nominates climate change as the main subject in medicine at the close of the year 2009. The beginning of the year was marked by the election of a new US president set on health care reform in that country. Several honourable mentions were made of several advances in medicine, including a cure for a form of severe combined immunodeficiency, courtesy of gene therapy. However, the year’s biggest health story was the emergence of the pandemic (H1N1) 2009 influenza in April. What will 2010 bring to the world of medicine?