Readers reflect on the hardships faced by younger medics and those training, and the degradation of an entire public service

I write in response to the letter from senior clinicians urging resident doctors to vote against strike action (8 June). During my 22-year career we have seen fundamental changes in medical training, including the introduction of tuition fees for medical school, loss of free accommodation for first-year doctors, the lack of expansion in training numbers, and pay erosion over 15 years.

This has left many resident doctors with crippling debt on graduation, spiralling costs of training, deteriorating pay, and the prospect of unemployment. I, and the authors of the letter, were fortunate enough not to face such hardships during training.

My friend and colleague Suman Fernando, who has died aged 92, had an international reputation in the field of critical psychiatry, particularly in relation to advocating for race equity in mental health.

As well as being a consultant psychiatrist in the NHS for more than 20 years, Suman wrote 14 books and many articles in which he consistently and methodically challenged institutional racism in British mental health provision.

A second embryo bungle in Australia undermines trust in IVF as bioethicists raise concerns about potential conflicts of interest in a system that straddles the boundary between consumer service and healthcare

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IVF is “big business” and experts are concerned about conflicts of interest between profit-making and helping families have children.

Monash IVF’s second embryo bungle has sparked renewed scrutiny on the IVF industry as a whole amid calls for national regulation.

On Friday, state and federal health ministers agreed to a three-month review of the need for a federal scheme.

AviadoBio’s breakthrough therapy hopes to stop progress of FTD, which is usually diagnosed in people under 65

Behind the gleaming glass facade of an office block in east London’s Docklands, Dr Martina Esposito Soccoio is pipetting ribonucleic acid into test tubes.

Here, not far from Canary Wharf’s multinational banks, a British university spinout is working on a breakthrough treatment for a form of dementia that affects millions of people worldwide.

US health secretary announced new members for Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, after firing all 17 experts who held the post

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, named eight new vaccine advisers this week to a critical Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) panel after firing all 17 experts who had held the roles.

New members of the panel include experts who complained about being sidelined, a high-profile figure who has spread misinformation and medical professionals who appear to have little vaccine expertise. Kennedy made the announcement on social media.

Pioneering drug can halt advance of multiple myeloma for three times as long as standard treatments

Thousands of patients in England with blood cancer will become the first in the world to be offered a pioneering “Trojan horse” drug that sneaks inside cancer cells and wipes them out.

In guidance published on Friday, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) gave the green light to belantamab mafodotin, which can halt the advance of multiple myeloma for three times as long as standard treatments.

Research looked at records of 14,800 people in Bradford to see what happened after they moved to more polluted area

What happens to your mental and physical health when you move to an area with worse air pollution? That’s the subject of a fascinating new UK-based study.

Prof Rosie McEachan, the director of NHS Born in Bradford, asked: “Do already unhealthy communities, who are often poorer members of our society, end up in unhealthier environments because no one else wants to live there; or is it the places themselves that are making people ill?”

Government announces £9m funding to make specialist blood machines more widely available across NHS

People living with sickle cell disease in England are to benefit from quicker and more accessible treatment due to a £9m investment, the government has announced.

Apheresis services, which are a type of treatment that removes harmful components from a patient’s blood, are to improve across England through the funding of more specialist treatment centres. The funding will ensure the wider availability of machines that remove a patient’s sickled red blood cells and replace them with healthy donor cells.

Millions of people are taking weight-loss drugs like Mounjaro and off-label Ozempic. But with so many unanswered questions, are we in the middle of a giant human experiment? In this episode, journalist Neelam Tailor asks two doctors what these drugs are really doing to our bodies, our minds, and our society – from muscle loss and mental health to beauty standards and the blurred line between medicine and aesthetics.

Among the names announced by the US health secretary are several who have expressed anti-vaccine views

Robert Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, named new members to serve on a key panel of vaccine advisers on Wednesday after abruptly firing all 17 sitting members of the independent panel of experts, according to a post on X.

The eight new members of the advisory committee for immunization practices (ACIP) are: Joseph R Hibbeln, Martin Kulldorff, Retsef Levi, Robert W Malone, Cody Meissner, James Pagano, Vicky Pebsworth and Michael A Ross.

More than 200 health experts say regulatory proposals will lead to biggest increase in pollution in decades

US power plants will be allowed to pollute nearby communities and the wider world with more unhealthy air toxins and an unlimited amount of planet-heating gases under new regulatory rollbacks proposed by Donald Trump’s administration, experts warned.

The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) unveiled a plan on Wednesday that would repeal a landmark climate rule that aims to mostly eliminate greenhouse gases from power plants by the 2030s and would, separately, weaken another regulation that restricts power plants’ release of hazardous air pollutants such as mercury.

NPCC’s Gavin Stephens says settlement in spending review will cover little more than inflationary pay rises

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Green party MPs and activists joined a protest outside parliament today saying the government should use the spending review to announce a wealth tax. In a post on social media, Adrian Ramsay, the party’s co-leader, said:

We expect the chancellor to take another axe to public spending today: decline by design from a govt that refuses to tax wealth to properly fund our overstretched public services & support the most vulnerable. We need to invest in a secure & fairer future. #TaxExtremeWealth

Tribunal says consultant’s failings in treatment of Martha Mills ‘single lapse of judgment in an otherwise exemplary career’

A senior doctor who was found guilty of “misconduct which impairs his fitness to practise” in his treatment of 13-year-old Martha Mills will face no sanction due to “exceptional circumstances”.

The disciplinary tribunal said on Wednesday that it would take no further action with respect to Prof Richard Thompson because it was a “single lapse of judgment in an otherwise exemplary career”. It said there were no outstanding public protection issues and it was not the tribunal’s role to punish him.

‘My body, my data’ law is necessary to protect women from persecution in post-Roe era, lawmakers say

Three Democratic members of Congress have introduced a bill to limit companies’ ability to hoover up data about people’s reproductive health – a measure, they say, that is necessary to protect women from persecution in the post-Roe v Wade era.

Representative Sara Jacobs of California, Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii and Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon on Wednesday filed the “my body, my data” bill in both the US House and Senate. The bill aims to block companies from collecting, using, retaining or disclosing information about someone’s reproductive health unless that data is essential to providing a requested service. This provision would apply to information about pregnancy, menstruation, abortion, contraception and other matters relating to reproductive health.

The UK faces a critical choice: follow the global trend of disengagement or stand firm in backing health security

Right now, aid reductions across the globe are jeopardising decades of progress against preventable diseases, leaving millions of people vulnerable. This retreat from global health threatens to unravel hard-won advances against diseases we have nearly conquered.

Polio, which paralysed hundreds of thousands of children annually just 40 years ago, has been eliminated in most parts of the world. Meanwhile, there has been a resurgence of diseases such as measles and cholera in populations besieged by conflict and climate emergencies.

Sarah Champion is the Labour MP for Rotherham

Head of NHS England to say robot-assisted surgery will become ‘the default’ for 90% of keyhole operations by 2035

Millions more people will have robotic surgery over the next decade under NHS plans to slash the huge waiting list for hospital treatment.

The move will mean a significant expansion in how often surgeons use robots when treating people for cancer, hysterectomies and joint replacements, as well as in medical emergencies.

By the time I got a diagnosis, I had seen four different doctors over the span of six years

My baby nephew grabbed my arm, eager to show me his toy trucks.

“Don’t ever touch me there again!” I snapped.

Health officials, scientists and vaccine researchers sound alarm after health secretary fires 17 advisory members

Robert F Kennedy’s “clean sweep” of a critical vaccine advisory panel spread shock and dismay among health experts, as many warned the health secretary’s decision would erode trust in the US vaccine approval system.

The secretary fired all 17 members of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) advisory committee for immunization practices (ACIP) – a group of scientific experts who recommend how vaccines should be administered and distributed.

Taxes now account for $28 of the average $40 price for a packet, following a triple-fold excise hike in 10 years from 46c to $1.40 per cigarette

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Economists say regular increases to the tobacco excise have stopped working to further lower smoking rates, and are instead encouraging a soaring cigarette black market.

Instead, they suggest either a freeze or a cut to the excise rate while Australia cracks down on illicit tobacco. However a public health advocate warned policymakers not to be “conned” into a radical tax cut.

British Pregnancy Advisory Service says NC20 amendment to criminal justice bill ‘not right way’ to overhaul the law

An attempt to change the law on abortion led by the Labour MP Stella Creasy is not supported by “any of the abortion providers in the country”, a leading pro-choice charity has said.

Rachael Clarke, the head of advocacy at the British Pregnancy Advisory Service (Bpas), said Creasy’s NC20 amendment to the criminal justice bill “is not the right way” to overhaul abortion laws.