Britons have been warned that they must save six times more for their pension or face poverty. The message is that it’s time to embrace deferred gratification and start saving. The average pension pot…
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Health – Articles, Analysis, Comment
Displaying 5351 - 5375 of 5636 articles
Lack of exposure to a particular influenza strain means you won’t have had a chance to build up complete immunity. And if the strain spreads easily between people and there is little immunity in communities…
Between 2005 and 2011, nearly half of all new drug formulations in the US were approved without companies having to demonstrate a tangible benefit, such as relieving disease symptoms, extending life, or…
The close of 2013 saw a drugs bust of cinematic proportions in China. Part of Operation Thunder, more than 3,000 armed police with a cavalry of helicopters, motorboats and police dogs busted the village…
As a medical student in India in the early 1980s, the biggest problems I encountered were under-nutrition, sanitation, high burden of infectious diseases and woefully inadequate vaccination of children…
The UK’s largest medical charity, the Wellcome Trust, has made its vast database of images freely available to all. The collection holds photos of hundreds of years worth of medicine, instruments and scientific…
Coronation Street’s Hayley Cropper killed herself before the watershed last night. The build up to this prompted the inevitable moral panic frenzy. The media’s role in the representation of suicide is…
My partner and I volunteered at a homeless shelter last month – the idea being to channel our spare time and seasonal spirit into something community-focused and productive. I’ve worked in many inner-city…
Days after Pope Francis told mothers to “not think twice” about breastfeeding at church and in public, Sally Davies, the UK’s chief medical officer, called for women to be allowed to breastfeed at work…
As I get out and about in the health service I never cease to be amazed by the quality of care that is provided every day. When we get it wrong, the implications can be catastrophic – and we need to understand…
Holding hands with someone you love in public may seem like a carefree display of affection, but for people in same sex relationships it is still a risky thing to do. Despite progress in our attitudes…
In the UK today, there are sizeable inequalities in health – and sometimes that gap isn’t just about north versus south. In Stockton Tees in the north-east of England, for example, there’s a 15-year gap…
Ever since the time of the guillotine, doctors have been at the centre of the death penalty. Joseph Guillotin, the physician who suggested the device be used in 18th-century France, was actually against…
For people with learning disabilities the world can be a bewildering and strange place to get to grips with, but in hospitals it can be even worse. Sometimes members of staff at a busy hospital simply…
If there is a set of rules about coping with cancer, I have never seen it. Perhaps in some circles a commonly accepted method exists. If so, I remain in the dark, despite my own experiences with this disease…
As Asafa Powell faces the Jamaica Anti-Doping Disciplinary Panel, we already know his defence – that he was given a supplement called Epiphany D1 by his former physiotherapist, Chris Xuereb, without his…
Some species live for a very long time, others more fleeting. Bristlecone pines have remarkable life spans of around 5,000 years and in the animal kingdom, creatures like elephants, whales and tortoises…
There is nothing more likely to raise the hackles of any self-respecting rationalist than to be confronted with the latest celebrity story about the miraculous healing power of homeopathy or some other…
Seventy years ago Swedish sociologist and Nobel Peace Prize winner Alva Myrdal pointed out in Nation and Family the generational bias inherent in democratic political systems: young voters will be old…
Added sugar in our diet is a very recent phenomenon and only occurred when sugar, obtained from sugar cane, beet and corn, became very cheap to produce. It’s a completely unnecessary part of our calorie…
Ethical issues are rife in medicine. Arguments about abortion, organ donation and euthanasia regularly take their turn in the headlines, normally prompted by media scare-stories or an arising controversy…
The British Medical Journal’s investigation into the role played by the alcohol industry in public health policy focuses on the government’s decision to drop its commitment to introduce a minimum unit…
Overly positive, inflated praise such as “terrific!”, “you did incredibly well!”, “perfect!” is very common in western countries. At first glance this might not seem a bad thing; heaping praise can only…
It is no secret that mental health services are in a sorry state. Last year saw lots of stories about the increased pressures being placed on treating people in the community and on beds in mental health…
Since mid-December the nascent South Sudanese state has collapsed into inter-ethnic violence, sparked by a skirmish within the country’s Presidential Guard. At least 1,000 people have been killed and around…