Front cover: Brian Rasic/Rex Features Out There BMA working abroad seminars will take place as follows: Edinburgh: 23 September; contact BMA Edinburgh Office, 3 Hill Place, Edinburgh EH8 9EQ or telephone 0131 662 4820. London: 4 November; contact BMA North Thames Office, BMA House Tavistock Square, London WC1H 9JP or telephone 0171 388 8296. 10th European Students' Conference: 20-24 October, at Charite medical school, Berlin. Scientific conference for medical students. Deadline for abstracts: 15 May. If your abstract is accepted, then you will be invited to present your work at the conference. More details at http://medizin.imnetz.de/esc or email Steffen Lueder at steffen.leuder@charite.de Ride the rapids in Nepal: 17-27 September. Conquer Nepal's Sun Kosi river and raise money for NCH's Action for Children. Cos is £275 plus a minimal level of sponsorship. Contact the events team on 0171 704 7037 or email events@high.nchafc.org.uk TALC - Teaching Aids at Low Cost: TALC is a non-profit organisation supplying teaching aids and books to raise standards of health care worldwide. In order to keep postal costs low, TALC is asking students who are going abroad for electives or visits to take some textbooks from TALC with them. Many of the books cannot be found in the high street bookshops, and all are half the price of retail. TALC is in the Library/Resource centre in the Institute of Child Health (tel: +44 (0) 171 242 9789 x2424), 30 Guilford Street, London WC1N 1EH. Ring TALC, with details of what you want before you visit (10 am-4 pm, Mon-Fri). Alternatively, write or ring for a catalogue- TALC, PO Box 49, St Albans, Herts AL1 5TX, tel: +44 (0) 1 727 853869. If you'd like to advertise in Out There please write to: Catherine Harding-Wiltshire at studentBMJ, or email her at charding@bmj.com Please specify the issue you want to advertise in, and don't forget to tell us any closing dates.

Student BMJ August 1999 volume 7 Editorials 262 Time for evidence based medical education 263 Withdrawing or withholding life prolonging treatment 264 The power to prescribe and the risk of addiction: handling the fire of Prometheus 265 A lesson learnt: Pride before a fall News and student politics 266 Applications to medical school revamped England gets more medical students Alternative medicine to be taught at Newcastle Scientists raise possibility of vaccine for Alzheimer's disease Drinking more than 35 units per week can double the risk of stroke Message in a bottle reaches Cologne BMA calls for extra safeguards for life and death decisions BMA wants presumed consent for organ donors First national paediatric formulary is launched in the UK NHS librarians cannot access the internet UK government confirms ban on human cloning From dentistry to molecular biology Education 272 Emergency! 275 Picture Quiz 276 Formal settings in which doctors' actions may be challenged 279 Do we need a new word for patients? 281 ABC of sexual health: Male sexual problems 284 Career focus: Otolaryngology Papers 285 Outcome of long stay psychiatric patients resettled in the community: prospective cohort study Life 288 Planning your elective - Vietnam 289 Eight weeks in Vietnam 290 Guide to medical etiquette 291 Results of the column competition 292 Tent life 294 BMA/STA Travel photographic competition 99 296 You should know you\'re a medic: The solar eclipse Soundings 297 Getting it up 297 Driving a hard bargain Letters 298 Doctors as public servants Health care cannot be perfect Doctors' pay must match that of other professionals Undergraduates want best possible medical education Reviews 300 Hypnotic holidays and Hippocratic oaths - five handbooks for house officers 301 Paediatrics and Child Health 301 Paediatrics: Key Questions Answered Net.philes 302 Medicine and the media 303 In the grip of spin Minerva 304 Editors choice Summer has finally arrived, bringing with it a desire to stake out a tent in a sun drenched field in order to listen to live music. Festivals, however, are not all fun and frolics as Siân Knight finds out after following round the Glastonbury medical team (p 292). With the advent of the solar eclipse in a few days' time, Simon Keightley warns of the danger of staring at the sun (p 296) and explains exactly what will happen should you be transfixed by this natural phenomenon. Festival fever - p 292 Stewart Petersen argues the case for evidence based medical education (p 262); perhaps if his points were taken up, it would eliminate the need to study Wai-Ching Leung's article on the legal procedures today's doctors should be aware of (p 276). On p 294 we publish the results of this year's STA/BMA travel competition, and on p 290 you can read the winning column in our competition to replace The not-so-secret diary of a medical student. Thank you to all who entered. Dealing with shock and hypotension - p 272 If the August sun becomes too much for you - and you disagree with the BMA that it's actually good for you - take shelter inside your house and relax with Carmen Basu's guide to Vietnam. Why experience it when you can actually read about it? This is especially true for the symptoms detailed in Emergency!, which in this issue deals with shock and hypotension (p 272). Enjoy your summer!   Results of the BMA/STA travel competition - p 294