Exclusive: Doctors say clean air zones need expanding, after 45,458 visits in first half of this year – up from 31,376 last year

The number of patients being treated by GPs for asthma attacks has increased by 45% in a year, prompting calls for urgent action to tackle toxic levels of air pollution.

There were 45,458 presentations to family doctors in England between January and June this year, according to data from the Royal College of General Practitioners research and surveillance centre. Across the same period in 2024, there were 31,376 cases.

Costing up to $10,000 a cycle, in vitro fertilisation is big business. Calls are growing across Australia to make treatment more affordable

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Cassie Van Swol and her husband, Steven, spent $40,000 and took out a second mortgage chasing the promise of parenthood.

“The whole time they kept telling me, ‘We’ll just get you pregnant,’” she says of their private IVF provider.

Health leaders say financial penalties are not the answer, warning NHS faces existential threat unless it reconnects with public

Money for hospitals in England is to be linked to patient ratings, ministers have announced, as one of the health bosses tasked with implementing the government’s 10-year plan for the NHS in the country warned it faced an existential threat unless it reconnected with the public.

The measure, under which healthcare providers could lose a proportion of their funding if patients are unhappy, is part of a package the health secretary hopes will incentivise investment in services that could prevent the need for hospital visits – and encourage listening to patients more.

As Mr Doodle, Sam Cox found a global audience and made a fortune with his signature scrawls covering furniture, clothes – and eventually an entire house. But behind the scenes, he was unravelling into psychosis

From the road, it’s barely visible; glimpsed, maybe, if peered at with cheeks pressed against the property’s imposing iron gates. There is otherwise little out of the ordinary in this quiet Kent corner of London’s affluent commuter belt – St Michael’s has a village hall, a country club, a farm shop. But at the end of a snaking, hedge-lined driveway is an incongruous home: a sprawling, six-bedroom neo-Georgian mansion, almost every inch, inside and out, covered in the trademark black-on-white line drawings of its owner, Mr Doodle, the 31-year-old artist Sam Cox.

A car honks twice behind me. A woman in her 80s steps out. “It’s mindblowing, isn’t it?” Sam’s grandmother Sue says, eyebrows aloft. “And terribly … different.” The gates ahead buzz open. “Take it slowly,” she offers, by way of warning. “You’ll want to give your eyes a few minutes to adjust.”

From Van Gogh’s starry skies to the nocturnal workings of Louise Bourgeois and Patricia Highsmith, sleepless nights have long inspired heightened creativity. Could those artistic impulses actually help us to sleep?

I can’t remember when I first stopped sleeping soundly. Maybe as a child, in the bedroom I initially shared with my brother, Tariq. I would wait for his breathing to quieten, then strain to listen beyond our room in the hope of being the last one awake, and feel myself expanding into the liberating space and solitude. By my early 20s, that childhood game of holding on to wakefulness while others slept began playing out against my will. Sound seemed to be the trigger. It was as if the silence I had tuned into as a child was now a requirement for sleep. Any sound was noise: the burr of the TV from next door, the ticking of a clock in another room. When one layer of sound reduced its volume, another rose from beneath it, each intrusive and underscored by my own unending thoughts. Noise blaring from without and within, until I felt too tired to sleep.

The artist Louise Bourgeois suffered a bad bout of insomnia in the 1990s, during which she created a series of drawings. Among them is an image that features musical notes in red ink, zigzagging across a sheet of paper. They look like the jagged score of an ECG graph that has recorded an alarmingly arrhythmic heartbeat. It sums up the torment of my insomnia: there is a raised heartbeat in every sound.

Regulator tells Sally Westcott to pull product that allegedly has undeclared levels of prescription-only melatonin

An NHS manager has been stopped from selling children’s gummies allegedly laced with undeclared levels of a prescription-only sleeping drug, the Guardian can reveal.

Magnesium glycinate gummies for children who have trouble sleeping have been sold since March last year by Nutrition Ignition, an Epsom-based company owned by Sally Westcott, whose other job is a clinical therapy lead at Epsom and St Helier NHS trust.

Readers respond to an article by Zoe Williams that asks why we pretend extreme heat is fun

Call me a killjoy, but I agree with Zoe Williams (Why do we pretend heatwaves are fun – and ignore the brutal, burning reality? 23 June). It’s not just because I’m a fading redhead with fair skin, freckles, vitiligo and a need for factor 50 protection. I enjoy feeling warm to my bones as much as anyone. Today, the world is hotter than it was when I was a child. I’m now 68 and science has been predicting a hotter climate for many years. People around the world are dying because they are overheating.

Does anyone care? The opportunity to build in human-centred solutions to warming is being missed – for example, into urban housing and for vulnerable people, so we are incredibly underprepared for the human tragedy being forecast by scientists. I’m worried for my children and grandchildren. What kind of world are we building?

Families devastated by failings in maternity services deserve nothing less, writes Saffron Cordery; plus letters from Ann Pearson, Zoe Green and Simon Gibbs

This inquiry (Wes Streeting announces investigation into ‘failing’ NHS maternity services, 23 June) needs to get to the heart of why NHS maternity services in England are falling far short of where they need to be.

It must leave no stone unturned; there are significant, systemic challenges that affect trusts’ ability to consistently deliver high-quality care, deep-rooted issues with morale and culture within maternity services and, as you highlight (Editorial, 23 June), the “shockingly higher risk of mortality faced by black and Asian mothers” and those from more deprived backgrounds.

Janet Menage asks if parents can give informed consent if they are unaware of the many potential uses of the material

Re your report (All babies in England to get DNA test to assess risk of diseases within 10 years, 20 June), the NHS plans to test the DNA of all babies to “assess disease risk”, in association with AI, having already sampled 100,000 newborns. The Department of Health and Social Care said that genomics and AI would be used to “revolutionise prevention” and provide faster diagnoses and an “early warning signal for disease”.

In line with previous predictions, when individuals who submitted to a PCR test (which amplifies genetic material) during Covid-19 had their DNA sold for profit without their consent, infants now face their private, personal, biological data being captured, stored and used by who-knows-what corporations on behalf of the NHS.

The market orientation required of scientists isn’t doing society any good, writes Steven Lee; Dr Richard Milne says the media needs to challenge anti-science voices

Jane Qiu rightly identifies that public trust in science has diminished in recent times (The Covid ‘lab leak’ theory isn’t just a rightwing conspiracy – pretending that’s the case is bad for science, 25 June), but she misses some root causes.

Scientists and the media often don’t differentiate or clearly distinguish between hypotheses, initial findings and accepted scientific understanding when publishing information, leaving the reader/listener confused. The media get viewers, readers or clicks (money); the scientist potentially gets interest that leads to longer tenure or funding. The public gets confused when a report is later refuted or overturned.

Demand for beauty products by gen Alpha customer base also behind retailer’s expansion after tough times

An increase in demand for weight loss drugs, including Mounjaro and Wegovy, as well as demand among its generation Alpha customer base for beauty products is driving expansion at Superdrug.

The retailer plans to add 25 more stores to its 800-plus strong chain this year as well as extending existing outlets, despite troubles across the high street that have led to the closure of hundreds of stores at its rival Boots and downsizing at chains from Poundland to River Island.

Risk analyst Tony Cox’s work has been backed by the chemical lobby, and some health experts are alarmed

An industry-backed researcher who has forged a career sowing doubt about the dangers of pollutants is attempting to use artificial intelligence (AI) to amplify his perspective.

Louis Anthony “Tony” Cox Jr, a Denver-based risk analyst and former Trump adviser who once reportedly claimed there is no proof that cleaning air saves lives, is developing an AI application to scan academic research for what he sees as the false conflation of correlation with causation.

Exclusive: Three risky behaviours can mean people dying 20 years earlier than they should, says senior doctor

One in 50 people aged 16 or older in England are at risk of an early death because they smoke, drink too much and are overweight, research has found.

This “triple threat” increases the risk of diseases such as cancer and diabetes and in some cases means people dying 20 years earlier than they should, a senior doctor has said.

12.7% of people in England (5.9 million) are overweight and drink more than 14 units but do not smoke.

5.5% (2.5 million) are overweight and smoke but drink less than 14 units.

1.4% (600,000) smoke and drink more than 14 units but have a normal weight.

A US panel’s decision not to recommend the preservative thiomersal won’t affect vaccine availability in Australia, say experts. But it will stoke dangerous anti-vax sentiment

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An influential US vaccine panel has recommended against seasonal influenza vaccines containing a specific preservative, causing concern among medical and scientific experts who fear the decision may impact future vaccine availability.

But what is the preservative, why is it the subject of controversy and will it affect vaccines in Australia?

Extreme air pollution from farming fires meets high population density, causing substantial harm to health

The post-monsoon period in Delhi has become a time of smog. In November, the city’s pollution index reached its highest levels, classified as “severe plus”, cloaking the city in thick, brown smog and forcing schools and offices to close.

Prof Andre Prévôt, of the Paul Scherrer Institute, who led a group of scientists investigating the causes, said: “The visibility drops drastically – often to just a few hundred metres – and it feels as if standing in a heavy soup of pollution.

When our teenage son was diagnosed with cancer, we joined the 3 million-strong army of unpaid carers in Australia. Now the TV series Dying for Sex gives caregiving the value it deserves

When I started watching the Disney+ show Dying for Sex, I was wary that the cancer storyline might hit a bit too close to home, after our teenage son was diagnosed with cancer in 2022.

The series follows Molly (Michelle Williams) who decides to leave her marriage and pursue sexual pleasure after being diagnosed with stage four cancer. And yet while it’s a difficult watch for obvious reasons, it wasn’t the “cancer stuff” that hit me where it hurts (everywhere); it was the portrayal of Nikki (Jenny Slate), Molly’s best friend, who takes over as carer when Molly leaves her husband. Nikki loses her job, her relationship, her house, her own mental health. And it’s very rare that we see the role of a carer highlighted in pop culture in this way.

Cancer Research UK says this is more than any other health condition and 350,000 years of productivity are lost

People dying early of cancer costs the UK economy £10.3bn a year, more than any other health condition, a study has revealed.

That is the total cost of the 350,000 years of lost productivity recorded across Britain every year because adults have died prematurely of the disease, according to Cancer Research UK (CRUK).

Rates are higher in young women as in young men and mental ill health up across age groups, study shows

Sharp rises in rates of anxiety, depression and other disorders have led to one in four young people in England having a common mental health condition, an NHS survey shows, with young women more likely to report them than young men.

The study found that rates of such conditions in 16- to 24-year-olds have risen by more than a third in a decade, from 18.9% in 2014 to 25.8% in 2024.

More than a fifth (22.6%) of adults aged 16 to 64 have a common mental health condition, up from 18.9% in 2014.

More than one in four adults (25.2%) reported having had suicidal thoughts during their lifetime, including about a third of 16- 24-year-olds (31.5%) and 25- to 34-year-olds (32.9%).

Self-harm rates have quadrupled since 2000 and risen from 6.4% in 2014 to 10.3% in 2024, with the highest rates among 16- to 24-year-olds at 24.6%, especially young women at 31.7%.

Decision to restrict thimerosal in immunizations could impact future vaccine availability on a global scale

• US pediatricians criticize RFK Jr’s new vaccine panel: ‘Truly an embarrassment’

A critical federal vaccine panel has recommended against seasonal influenza vaccines containing a specific preservative – a change likely to send shock through the global medical and scientific community and possibly impact future vaccine availability.

The panel was unilaterally remade by health secretary Robert F Kennedy Jr, a vaccine skeptic who has urged against the use of thimerosal despite a lack of evidence of real-world harm.

Pediatric health experts slam ACIP’s plans to reassess current vaccination schedules for children

Robert F Kennedy Jr’s newly appointed vaccine advisory panel is facing criticism from pediatricians after its announcement of plans to reassess the current vaccination schedules for children and adolescents.

Experts warn that the move appears designed to undermine public trust in immunization.