University of warwick

Coventry United Kingdom

This is my obituary written 10 years ago--x years before my death. Who the hell is Richard Smith? One thing I’ve discovered through editing the BMJ is that all doctors are saints. At least they are when dead. Doctors’ obituaries are tales of one triumph after another. The doctors you meet may be incompetent, egocentric, selfish, pompous, and drunk, but they are cleansed of these faults by the time they die. As an editor, this infuriates me. I’m interested in real people, not the seraphs (six winged celestial creatures, in case you don’t know) who adorn our obituary pages. But all my attempts to “get real” in the obituary pages have failed. I’m fighting a whole culture. S