In the first quarter of the 19th century, the natural philosophers Humphry Davy, Thomas Young, and William Hyde Wollaston dominated science in the UK. Strangely, all three died in 1828–29. But whereas Davy and Young are remembered, Wollaston is largely forgotten; a biography by a friend fizzled out in the 1850s, and his manuscripts disappeared until 1949. Yet, as The Lancet stated in 1888: “although [Wollaston] later on abandoned the practice of the healing art for physical research, his genius and his achievements must ever remain prized and treasured ornaments of the profession”.

I first met Tony McMichael over the nappy changing table at a parent run child care cooperative in Chapel Hill, NC, USA, in 1972. He was an assistant professor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and he and his wife Judith had a young daughter. Tony was a rising star in epidemiology. I was a postgraduate student from London, also with a new baby, working on my masters thesis in social medicine. I was pleased to find a fellow jogger, although Tony was much more serious about running than I ever was.

How do you persuade a President or Prime Minister to take health seriously? The most common approach is one we use in The Lancet every week. We try to explain the burden of disease, disability, and risk facing people today and in the future. We hope to move the hearts and minds of policy makers by appealing to their sense of outrage. How can they bear the fact that so much unnecessary suffering exists among the populations to whom they are directly responsible? We try to publish research that offers solutions to these burdens.

Pfizer is merging with botox-maker Allergan to become the world’s largest drug company. Asher Mullard asks experts how they think the union will affect research and development.

On Dec 16, 2015, at the request of Congress, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH)—the largest source of medical funding in the world—officially released the NIH-Wide Strategic Plan, Fiscal Years 2016–2020: Turning Discovery Into Health. The plan is framed around NIH’s mission of seeking and applying knowledge to enhance health, lengthen life, and reduce illness and disability in the context of future challenges and opportunities. It focuses on four essential, interdependent objectives: advancing opportunities in biomedical research in exploration of fundamental science, discovery of treatments and cures, and advancement of health promotion and disease prevention; fostering innovation by setting NIH priorities; enhancing scientific stewardship; and excelling as a federal science agency by managing results of scientific investments, outputs, training approaches and grant review process.

In 1969, Franz Ingelfinger wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine about the journal’s “definition of a ‘sole contribution’”.1 The journal’s masthead had stated a clear condition for any manuscript’s consideration: “Articles are accepted for consideration with the understanding that they are contributed for publication solely in this journal.”1 In other words, a given paper could be published exclusively in The New England Journal of Medicine, and nowhere else. This policy, known as the “Ingelfinger rule”, has had a major role in determining the ethos of publication in clinical research, and was revisited at least three times.

The Lancet and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS) held their first Health Summit in Beijing on Oct 30–31, 2015. The overall high quality of the research presented signified the beginning of a new era for medical science in China. To support the growth of medical research in China, accelerate the country towards its goal of Healthy China 2020, and also strengthen the international collaborations between Chinese researchers and scientists elsewhere, we plan to turn The Lancet–CAMS Health Summit into a premier national event in China’s scientific calendar and invite abstract submissions from China for The Lancet–CAMS Health Summit 2016, which will be held on Oct 30–31, 2016.