Health Care

The NHS will test all children who believe they are transgender for autism under new plans seen by The Telegraph.

Every child referred to a gender clinic will be “screened for neurodevelopmental conditions” such as autism and ADHD under new guidance, to be introduced in the wake of the Cass review.

The review, by paediatrician Baroness Cass, found that the mental health conditions were disproportionately common among children and young people with gender dysphoria.

See, see, the establishment is claiming that trans peeps are mad, see!

Which isn’t the case at all. From observation there’s a case – not a proof, a case to be made – that trans is, in at least some people, a social infection that affects autists more than others. Therefore, before slicing and dicing it should be sensible to actually check this.

No?

GPs in poor parts of England are paid £5,500 less a year than in wealthy areas, study finds

And the difference in living costs – not just house prices, pints and all that too – is more or less than 4 or 5%?

Quite, internal to England price differences are more than 5%. The GPs in the poorer areas almost certainly have higher real incomes than those in richer.

No, no, we know this is true because we’ve the existence of London weighting to show us that it does. It’s just that it’s not only London, see?

Computed tomography scans – also known as CT, or Cat, scans – may be causing 1 in 20 cancers, a study has found.

About five million of the scans, which use X-rays to create detailed internal pictures of the body, are carried out each year on the NHS. But new research from the University of California (UC) suggests they could lead to lung, breast and other cancers, with a tenfold increased risk for babies.

There are no solutions, only trade offs.

This has all been known for a very long time. The only interest here is that they’ve upped the rate at which they think it happens.

Paulette Hamilton, the MP for Birmingham Erdington and chair of the all-party parliamentary group on black health, said: “The findings of this landmark survey confirm what black women have known for decades: our reproductive health is in crisis. Yet our pain is too often dismissed, underresearched and inadequately treated.

“The fact that black women are 69% more likely to suffer from serious reproductive conditions than white women is not just a disparity, it is systemic neglect.”

She added: “It is imperative that we address these disparities by investing in targeted research, prioritising culturally competent care, and dismantling the structural racism that leaves black women bearing the brunt of reproductive injustice.”

The actual difference is:

Brown, who said she felt dismissed by NHS consultants at first, eventually had surgery that found 25 large fibroids measuring up to 12cm each. After being diagnosed Brown, from a mixed heritage background, found out that black and mixed women were at a higher risk of developing fibroids.

And that’s actually it.

Stark ethnic inequalities were revealed by the survey. More than a third (38.1%) of black women reported a reproductive condition, compared with 27.7% of white women, making black women 69% more likely to have such a condition than their counterparts after adjusting for age. This was caused by a large difference in the percentage of women reporting uterine fibroids: 19.8% of black women reported having the condition, compared with only 5% of their white counterparts.

It’s one of them genetic things. Like the fair being more prone to skin cancers, West Africans to sickle cell, Mediterranians thalassaemia and so on. It’s not the system, not capitalism, not structural, it’s genes. But for the shrieking harpy….

Each year, hundreds of potentially world-changing treatments are discarded because scientists run out of cash. But where big pharma or altruists fear to tread, my friend and I have a solution. It’s repugnant, but it will work

This is both true and useful. Not many ideas are that, so this is worth considering. Read the full thing.

The number of patient deaths being investigated as possible manslaughter at a troubled NHS hospital has more than doubled to 90, the Guardian can reveal.

The growing number of allegedly suspicious deaths, up from an initial total of 40, has forced Sussex police to ask the Home Office for extra resources in dealing with its expanding inquiry into University Hospitals Sussex (UHSussex), known as Operation Bramber.

It is examining allegations of medical negligence and cover-up in the general surgery and neurosurgery departments of Brighton’s Royal Sussex County hospital, part of UHSussex, between 2015 and 2021.

OK, murder – Letby – and euthanasia (sdhe got off, so not murder) at Gosport. But manslaughter?

That’s a relief:

Life expectancy in England is rising more slowly than in the rest of Europe, according to a new Lancet study.

Obesity, bad diet and a lack of physical activity are behind a decade of life expectancy stagnation, the researchers said, with stalling progress to tackle deaths from heart disease and cancer.

Scotland had the lowest life expectancy among the 20 countries analysed, followed by Wales and Northern Ireland.

However, England was the country that had made the slowest progress since 2011.

What do we all blame that on? Celts? Devolution? Fewer markets in healthcare? What?

When I was pregnant for the first time in 2020, I remember saying to my husband: “This country does not give a toss about the health of black people.” Why? As a pregnant woman and a sickle cell carrier, I was shocked to learn how little information is shared about this disease. Logging into pregnancy apps or reading NHS leaflets, you find an endless list of illnesses and conditions – genetic and non-genetic – that may affect your baby. Yet sickle cell was barely mentioned, despite it being the fastest-growing genetic disease in the UK.

Sickle cell affects those of West African heritage. Until recently this wasn’t, in fact, an issue among the British population. Of course, given recent immigration, it is becoming more of one.

The NHS is not known as being a hugely responsive organisation. And there we are, that’s all we need to know.

She added: “Mumsnet users tell us that they feel in many cases difficulties in seeking diagnoses and treatment are driven by misogyny, with women’s pain seen as less serious or valid than that of men, and women’s health concerns [are] dismissed, belittled or ignored.

That the NHS does not provide timely treatment is not news. That the wimmins’ care is worse than the chaps, well.

The attention paid to breast cancer over the decades, as compared to that given to prostate, might not quite bear that out really.

Mr Streeting’s argument focussed on Mr Farage’s suggestion that the health service, which may have caused 50,000 deaths due to delayed treatment last year, could move to the insurance-based model used in France in order to improve efficiency.

The Health Secretary framed NHS performance as a battleground between Left and Right, saying: “The failure of our public service to meet the needs of the people is a fertiliser for the populism we see across liberal democracies.”

He said that the NHS needed improvement in order to remove “the conditions where the populist Right thrive”.

Competition works!

OK, so far it’s only political competition leading to potential improvements in the NHS. But who thinks Wes would be bleating like this if he’d not got Reform breathing down his neck?

Obese patients and smokers face being sent to the back of the queue for NHS surgery under government plans.

Reforms announced by Sir Keir Starmer will mean that patients will only be given a date for an operation if they have been assessed as “fit to proceed”.

Tens of thousands of patients waiting for hip and knee surgery will be asked to first undergo a 12-week weight-loss programme, while smokers will be urged to quit.

Fatties might not need new knees if they were thinner. Smokers recover badly – or worse – from surgery. So, you know, sensible enough.

Except we all know how this will turn out, don’t we? You’ll not get near a knife if your BMI is even 25.1 and if you’ve even been in a room with an unlit tab.

There is also another issue. People in countries with functional medical systems are thinking “!2 weeks? Wait? For Surgery?”

He said: “Our 10-year health plan will deliver three big shifts in the focus of healthcare from hospital to community, analogue to digital, and sickness to prevention. We will refresh the NHS workforce plan to fit the transformed health service we will build over the next decade, so the NHS has the staff it needs to treat patients on time again.”

Last year, health officials drew up a strategy – which would have seen a 49 per cent increase in hospital consultants by 2036 – but just 4 per cent more GPs.

Now, they will be told to “refresh” the plan to tip the balance in favour of services closer to home, meaning far more GPs, health visitors and community nurses trained and hired.

As I keep pointing out about the place GP training has been in the hands of govt for 80 years now. And they’ve not even been able to process really simple stuff – like the feminisation of the profession will lead to fewer working hours per GP trained.

That’s just one of the problems with government plans. Governments aren’t very good at planning.

The national debate on assisted dying is both moving and frustrating. The dark magnitude of British terminally ill teacher Nathaniel Dye’s words – “my very death depends on it” – weighs on the nation’s conscience.

Dark magnitude? Nation’s conscience? Fair bit of rhetorical puff being applied there.

This interpretation is misguided. For one thing, cold utilitarianism favours assisted death. The taboo that nobody dares to articulate is that assisted dying will leave society financially better off. The NHS spends most of its resources on palliative care for people in the final six months of their life.

What do you mean no one dares articulate? This is the very point that some of us have been shrieking. That the fiscal issues so heavily favour topping Granny that that’s what will happen. Therefore……

Assisted dying will also help people protect their family wealth. Those who are being forced to spend savings and sell assets to pay for end-of-life care will at least have an alternative option. While this might sound grotesquely materialistic, for many the ability to leave a parting gift to their family, and the reassurance that while they may no longer be with them in life, they can at least contribute to their security in death, is more precious than another few months in a hospice bed.

That any number of avaricious little bastards will thereby guilt Granny into taking the pills….

Critics of the Bill have warned that legalising assisted dying could lead to a slippery slope, with not just the terminally ill but the chronically ill becoming eligible and under pressure to end their lives. This argument seems naively narrow.

Naively narrow? But it’s the argument you’ve just made twice!

Jeebus. First they came for logic….

In the report, Mr Teague writes: “Many of the safeguards promised by its supporters amount to nothing more than arbitrary restrictions, with no rational foundation. Reason demands their removal, propelling an irreversible expansion of scope that has already taken place in the Netherlands and elsewhere.

“This process is as logically inexorable as it is empirically inevitable, for the very arguments relied upon to justify physician-assisted suicide would also support the introduction of voluntary and, ultimately, non-voluntary euthanasia.”

I’m pretty sure we already have “non-voluntary euthanasia” or, as we might call it, murder. The Gosport Hospital and Liverpool Pathway cases seem to show that to me. In that latter there were bonuses for hitting targets of those “choosing” euthanasia. We know what targets do, right?

I do grasp my life my choice arguments. No, really. I’ve just no idea at all about how we move from where we are to a greater, erm, freedom without it descending into a welter of murder of little old Grannies.

An NHS nurse was suspended for more than two years after a patient claimed she was pregnant with his child, an employment tribunal has heard.

So, she worked on a ward for crims who were nutters. One of whom made the claim.

OK, well, we have had reports of warder and crims etc. So, investigate by all means:

Employment Judge Simon Loy said there were then a “series of extensions” to her suspension, which lasted for 29 months.

Among humans at lesat that’s long enough to sort out the pregnancy issue, no?

Assisted dying is being abused in Canada with doctors coercing patients into ending their lives, members of the group who helped to legalise it have admitted.

Unfathomable.

According to the data, disproportionate numbers of people who ended their lives through assisted dying when they were not terminally ill – 29 per cent – came from Ontario’s poorest areas.

Almost half of the UK workforce lack access to workplace health support including winter flu vaccinations and checks for cardiovascular diseases, a report has found.

The analysis, by the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH), looked at data from the Department for Work and Pensions and the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (DBEIS) and found that more than 10 million UK workers lack access to services including basic health checks, vaccinations, and smoking or weight loss support, provided by their employer.

The report found that the UK’s current workplace health system could further exacerbate existing health inequalities, given that people in lower paid industries, such as hospitality and agriculture, are even less likely to have access to health protection interventions at work.

Why would anyone need health care at work when the State already provides all?

He will add that this means moving more care from hospitals to the community, a shift from treatment to prevention and switching from analogue to digital services.

Prevention doesn’t actually save money. Because something catches up with us anyway. Which is where most of he expense isx, that lsat 6 months. The variable in health costs tends to be how many years of healthcare do you get before that lsat 6 months.

Yes, yes, this is tendency, not a certainty. But it’s as with baccy, booze and burgers saving the NHS cash because early deaths. On average that’s true.

Now, obviously, prevention has large private benefits that accrue to the patient. But it’s not a cure for the finances of the NHS.

Yes, yes, race science etc, ghastly stuff. And yet:

Does that mean race is a biologically meaningful definition? It does not. Race as we currently use it is a socially constructed idea, but one with biologically meaningful consequences, such as in healthcare where many disease outcomes are significantly worse for racial minorities. The impact of disease correlates significantly with socioeconomic factors, primarily poverty, and in our society racial minorities are mostly in lower social strata. Black and brown people endure worse medical outcomes not because they are black or brown, but because of this fact. The science very clearly evidences this, and no amount of cosplay race science – or human biodiversity, as they euphemistically brand their propaganda – can debunk it.

No, that’s going too far in the opposite direction. Thalassaemia in Med littoral derived genetics, sickle cell in West African (both, likely, deirved from beneficial malaria resistance), Tay Sachs in Ashkenazi, booze and lactose intolerance in East Asians, propensity to diabetes in Pacific Islanders and on and on. It is not – simply not – true that health differences are reliant solely upon socioeconomic status. But that’s what he’s trying to say here. A more equal society isn’t going to do away with any oof those things I’ve mentioned there now, is it?

Canadians with nonterminal conditions sought assisted dying for social reasons
Some people have asked to be killed due to non-medical reasons – including isolation and homelessness