Happy Birthday to PLOS Medicine

On the 10^th anniversary of our first issue, the PLOS Medicine Editors reflect on some of our most interesting and influential articles.

This week PLOS Medicine celebrates the 10^th anniversary of our first issue. Don’t worry, you don’t need to get us a present. Instead, you can celebrate with us by taking a stroll down memory lane and reading some of the most exciting and interesting articles from the past decade.

We’ve chosen eight articles and one collection that highlight the breadth and influence of PLOS Medicine, from publishing ethics to public health policy to translational medical advances and more.

Starting today and over the next week, Speaking of Medicine will be publishing posts written by the editors of PLOS Medicine explaining what each article is about, what makes it exciting and important, and reflecting on its influence on the field since it was published.

Post 1 of 8:

“A little furry test for human toxicity” by Laureen Connell, about Fialuridine Induces Acute Liver Failure in Chimeric TK-NOG Mice: A Model for Detecting Hepatic Drug Toxicity Prior to Human Testing the 2014 translational study in which Gary Peltz and colleagues described how a new mouse model with a humanized liver can replicate human-specific toxicity and improve safety of clinical trials.

Post 2 of 8:

“PLOS Medicine’s Big Food Series: Shining a Spotlight on Industry’s Influence on Health” by Paul Simpson, about the series of eight commissioned articles that considered the various ways food corporations influence global human health.

Post 3 of 8:

“Outing Wyeth and Their Hired Ghosts” by Margaret Winker, about The Haunting of Medical Journals: How Ghostwriting Sold “HRT”, Adriane Fugh-Berman’s 2010 Policy Forum that explored a pharmaceutical company’s manipulation of the medical literature to promote a product.

Post 4 of 8:

“Quantifying the dirty nature of war” by Amy Ross, about The Dirty War Index: A Public Health and Human Rights Tool for Examining and Monitoring Armed Conflict Outcomes, Madelyn Hsiao-Rei Hicks and Michael Spagat’s 2008 Policy Forum that proposed a new tool to quantify the harm done by certain weapons and warfare tactics on civilians.

Post 5 of 8:

“Pulling back the curtain on lethal injection” by Thomas McBride, about Lethal Injection for Execution: Chemical Asphyxiation? the 2007 research article by Leonidas Koniaris and colleagues that investigated whether lethal injection actually produces a consistently painless death.

Post 6 of 8:

“The truth about standardized packaging? Blow some my way” by Linda Nevin, about Representation and Misrepresentation of Scientific Evidence in Contemporary Tobacco Regulation: A Review of Tobacco Industry Submissions to the UK Government Consultation on Standardised Packaging, in which Selda Ulucanlar and colleagues deconstructed advocacy documents submitted to the UK and demonstrated a meaningful distinction between scientist and advocate.

Post 7 of 8:

“Voluntary Male Circumcision as HIV Prevention in Africa” by Linda Nevin, about the first randomized controlled trial of voluntary medical male circumcision.

Post 8 of 8:

“I’ve got a (lot of) little (check)lists” by Virginia Barbour, about CONSORT 2010 Statement: Updated Guidelines for Reporting Parallel Group Randomised Trials and Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses: The PRISMA Statement. This pair of guidelines, published in 2009 and 2010, presented medical researchers and publishers with standards for reporting to improve the way we read, assess, test, and reproduce science.