Evidence-based medicine, it's often said, begins and ends with care of the patient.

[img_assist|nid=14|title=Drug development|desc=|link=node|align=left|width=100|height=75]Few topics in medicine are as contentious as the marketing and selling of pharmaceuticals. On one side, advocates of the drug industry (whose combined profits were over $600 billion in 2006) suggest that drug companies do enormous social good through philanthropic efforts, foreign aid and through their donation of drugs to developing countries - fluconazole, for example, to AIDS patients in Africa.

Bloggers are e-mailing asking about the appearance of OM blog. Some of you might be interested to know that we are using Drupal, a freely-available open-source content management system.

What do you think of the new look? Please take a minute and send me an e-mail or post your comments. I'll be working on the next post The Rise of Openness in Medicine and will post soon.

Welcome to the Open Medicine (OM) blog - a new interactive information and discussion forum for readers of our Journal. Our blog is a place to visit, share and learn something new. Please tell your friends about us.

As an open access (OA) librarian, I would like to share my thoughts about the principles of open access that I value in my chosen profession. First, open access to scholarly information in the digital world is not only a core value for me, but for many librarians. It's in our DNA (well, I am a medical librarian).