Tom Jefferson at the Cochrane Vaccine group publication in the BMJ on the role of funding and quality and publication is worth taking a look at. Analysing studies on vaccines from published systematic reviews, they asked the question of whether publication in prestigious journals is associated with industry funding.

The recent cholera outbreak is the worst in Zimbabwe's history, infecting 66,000 people with over 3,300 deaths [1, 2]. Last week, a Red Cross worker wrote a diary from Zimbabwe for the BBC [1]. Despite technological advances it revealed the desperate circumstances under which people are providing and receiving health care in parts of the world, even when the evidence for cause and cure is beyond doubt.

The NEJM publication [1] of Breast Cancer after use of Estrogen plus progestin in postmenopausal women, NEJM 2009 Volume 360:573-587, analyses the effect of the substantial reduction in Hormone replacement therapy (which is estrogen plus progestin also known as HRT) prescriptions that followed the publication of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI) trial in 2002. They analyse temporal trends in breast cancer diagnosis in the WHI cohort following the 5.6 year period after the trial had finished and both initial groups (those on HRT and placebo) both stopped taking HRT.