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Health Policy InsightDaniel Park, 32, was accused of supplying chemicals to the bomber, Guy Edward Barktus, who died in May explosion
A man charged with aiding the bomber of a fertility clinic in California has died in federal custody just weeks after his arrest, prison officials said on Tuesday.
Daniel Park, 32, was accused of supplying chemicals to the bomber, Guy Edward Bartkus of California, who died in the 17 May explosion.
Continue reading...US health secretary faced hours of questioning over budget cuts and accusations he lied to senators
Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, faced a bruising day on Capitol Hill on Tuesday, including being forced to retract accusations against a Democratic congressman after claiming the lawmaker’s vaccine stance was bought by $2m in pharmaceutical contributions.
In a hearing held by the House health subcommittee, Kennedy was met with hours of contentious questioning over budget cuts, massive healthcare fraud and accusations he lied to senators to secure his confirmation.
Continue reading...Jenny Bradley on the bureaucracy that is preventing dentists who have trained abroad from working in the NHS
Thank you, Denis Campbell, for highlighting the distressing plight of many overseas-trained dentists in this country (Overseas-trained dentists working in McDonald’s as millions lack NHS care, 18 June). Brilliant dental specialists are being treated appallingly, repeatedly rejected in their attempts to book the overseas registration exam, which they could pass with ease if they could only manage to sit it.
For dentists longing to work in the NHS but who are having to take up low-paid jobs, this is a form of mental torture. Meanwhile, people are unable to get dental care on the NHS. Where’s the sense in this?
Jenny Bradley
Cirencester, Gloucestershire
Other Lives obituaries | Shame on the BBC | Pan frying | Air fried | Inquiring minds | Pre-existent state
Page after page of horrors in the Guardian these days, but for reading to lift one’s spirits, go to the Other Lives pages. These record the wonderful people who for decades have shown the other side of humanity – teachers, community activists, and voluntary workers at home and abroad.
Simon Barley
Stroud, Gloucestershire
• So the BBC believes in demonstrating impartiality between the perpetrators of genocide and their victims (BBC drops Gaza medics documentary over impartiality concerns, 20 June). In doing so, it despoils a fine reputation and should be deeply ashamed.
Bob Marshall-Andrews
Labour MP, 1997-2010
‘Fixing’ your posture won’t change how you sit, so while it’s low risk, there are probably better exercises to help maintain a range of movement
Among the overwhelming quantity of information new parents must digest is the instruction to ensure their child gets adequate “tummy time” each day.
As the name suggests, it refers to periods of lying on one’s belly, which in babies serves to improve neck strength and prevent them developing misshapen heads.
Continue reading...It seems a sensible move to use explicit warning labels on products. What I’m more sceptical about is the ‘No amount of alcohol is safe for you’ messaging ...
You’re going to want to sit down with a big glass of water for this one, because I’m afraid I have some bad news. Here we go: alcohol is not terribly good for you. Shocker, right? You’ve probably never heard anything like this before in your life. No doubt, you’ve been choking down a glass of pinot with dinner whenever you can stomach it because you thought it was good for your cholesterol. Instead, it is elevating your risk of cancer.
If public health experts have their way, the fact that alcohol is carcinogenic is going to be very hard for British drinkers to ignore. Dozens of medical and health organisations recently wrote to Keir Starmer urging the prime minister to force companies to include “bold and unambiguous” labels on booze bottles, warning that alcohol causes cancer.
Continue reading...Researchers say tobacco linked to about one in eight deaths worldwide and numbers rising sharply in some countries
Exposure to tobacco killed more than 7 million people worldwide in 2023, according to estimates.
It remains the leading risk factor for deaths in men, among whom there were 5.59m deaths, and ranks seventh for women, among whom there were 1.77m deaths.
Continue reading...Health networks in other US cities fear the Ice operations seen in LA will be replicated in their communities
On a Wednesday morning earlier this month, Jane*, the coordinator for a mobile clinic at a temporary housing campus in Downey, just southeast of Los Angeles, was weaving through the line of patients, helping them fill out routine forms.
Everything was normal, she recalled, until she glimpsed, from the corner of her eye, the facility’s security guard whisk away the cone that had been propping open the gate for the clinic, letting it swing shut. What had welcomed care now suddenly threatened capture.
Continue reading...Turn the volume down, don’t use cotton buds and get your hearing tested before it’s too late. Here’s what experts recommend to keep your ears healthy
Hearing loss can make life difficult and lead to social isolation. But with extremely loud devices in our pockets, and earbuds in near-constant use, we are at more risk than ever. How can you take care of your ears to avoid problems?
Continue reading...Their baby’s crying brings on PTSD for Kenny, a former sniper in Afghanistan, and Kerry is beset by her own dark secret. Can love keep them together?
There is never the tiniest doubt that Kerry and Kenny Watson love each other. “I always tell him that he has the most beautiful ears,” says Kerry, marvelling at the wonder of her husband. “Even his wrists are beautiful.” But when Kenny came home to Scotland after serving as a sniper in Afghanistan, it looked as if their marriage was almost certainly over. Diagnosed withpost-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), Kenny was sleeping between 18 and 24 hours a day, and became so paranoid that he thought dog walkers were Taliban snipers. The worst thing was that the crying of their baby son, Harris, triggered his PTSD. This intimate documentary, told without a scrap of sentimentality, follows the couple over 10 years.
The story unfolds almost like couples therapy, unpeeling the relationship layer by layer. On the voiceover Kenny jokes that when he met Kerry he told her he was a deep-sea firefighter, not a soldier, because he thought the truth would scare her away. What he loved first about his wife was her honesty; but Kerry has never fully opened up to him about a trauma from her childhood. The camera is a fly-on-the-wall in their lives through the worst of Kenny’s illness. In the darkest moments, he is agonisingly, unflinchingly direct about what is going on in his head.
Continue reading...Of course public sector jobs should be properly compensated. But in a society where pay has stagnated, support for more strikes is waning
“Because you’re worth it,” goes the ad. But knowing who is worth what is even harder to determine than it was half a century ago. So as doctors vote in a strike ballot, how will the public weigh up their just reward?
Some 50,000 resident doctors – formerly known as junior doctors – are deciding whether to walk out again in England. Their year-and-a-half-long series of strikes ended with Wes Streeting agreeing a 22.3% pay rise over two years. Now their seniors, hospital consultants, are about to vote on striking to reclaim the 26% the British Medical Association (BMA) says their pay has fallen by since 2008.
Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist
Continue reading...The US health secretary’s latest report is more interested in vaccine scepticism than the brutal toll inflicted by guns and road traffic accidents
“Make America healthy again”. We can all get behind this slogan and agree that much more could be done to improve the health of people living in the US. Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health and human services secretary, recently released a report detailing the challenge of the US’s health. About 90% of it outlines the high rates of obesity, mental health issues and chronic disease, 10% covers vaccine scepticism, and 0% looks at solutions or any discussions of the systemic social and economic issues that drive much of the US’s health problems.
But what surprised me more was a notable omission of the two biggest killers of American children. American children aren’t just unhealthier. They’re more likely to die in the first 19 years of life because of guns – both homicides and suicides – or in a road traffic accident than children in comparable countries. How can an entire report be written without mentioning these factors, and how unique the US is in the burden of disability and death they cause?
Prof Devi Sridhar is chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of How Not to Die (Too Soon)
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Continue reading...Retro-style tourism video fronted by a former All Blacks coach won the Cannes Lions grand prix for good award
A public health advertisement that campaigned to make New Zealand “the best place in the world to have herpes” has won a top prize at the Cannes Lions – one of world’s most prestigious advertising awards.
The campaign, launched by the New Zealand Herpes Foundation in October last year, attempts to challenge decades of entrenched stigma around genital herpes – a condition that affects up to 80% of New Zealanders at some point in their lives, the foundation said.
Continue reading...As heatwaves grip the US, placing millions under advisories, experts describe how to mitigate effects of heat stress
The US is in a record-breaking heatwave, with tens of millions people on alert. A persistent heat dome is blanketing much of the midwest and spanning through the north-east. The phenomenon traps hot air and humidity, and exacerbates the “feels like” temperature to much higher than it actually is.
Health experts and climate scientists described the effects of extreme heat on the human body, which populations are most at risk and ways to mitigate it.
This article was originally published on 29 June 2023
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