Commentary: Freedom of expression should be preserved

Abstract

Any academic journal serves a purpose only if it is read and understood. The more people who read and understand it, the more useful it becomes. Journals such as the BMJ, which have a valued and growing international readership, have a responsibility to be as accessible as possible, but calls for severe restrictions to their vocabulary give us a profound sense of disquiet. The suggestion assumes that medicine is simply a biomechanical science, the sick body a malfunctioning machine, the doctor a mechanic, and the BMJ the technical manual. The task faced by clinical medicine, and by association the BMJ, is immensely more complex. The challenge is to bridge the gap between the undifferentiated mass of human distress and suffering and the theoretical structures of medicine science, between the illness that the patient experiences …