Health Policy InsightNational News
Wegovy maker Novo Nordisk cuts profit forecast as US prescriptions tail off
Slowdown will deepen concerns Denmark’s biggest company is losing market share to US rival Eli Lilly
Denmark’s Novo Nordisk has cut its annual revenue and profit forecasts after disappointingly “flabby” sales of its weight loss drug Wegovy, as US prescriptions tailed off.
A boom in sales of Wegovy and the diabetes medication Ozempic helped to turn the drugmaker into Europe’s most valuable listed company, worth $615bn (£461bn) at its peak last year.
Continue reading...‘It cannot provide nuance’: UK experts warn AI therapy chatbots are not safe
Experts say such tools may give dangerous advice and more oversight is needed, as Mark Zuckerberg says AI can plug gap
Having an issue with your romantic relationship? Need to talk through something? Mark Zuckerberg has a solution for that: a chatbot. Meta’s chief executive believes everyone should have a therapist and if they don’t – artificial intelligence can do that job.
“I personally have the belief that everyone should probably have a therapist,” he said last week. “It’s like someone they can just talk to throughout the day, or not necessarily throughout the day, but about whatever issues they’re worried about and for people who don’t have a person who’s a therapist, I think everyone will have an AI.”
Continue reading...The importance of community for mental wellbeing
The healing power of music
Fox Chase Boy: stand up comedy confronts trauma in a Catholic community
There is surprising nostalgia and humour in Gerad Argeros’s story of healing after child abuse by a Catholic priest. He was an altar boy at St Cecilia Catholic church in north-east Philadelphia when, at age 11, he became one of the victims of paedophile James Brzyski. Decades later, the actor and father developed the one-man stage show Fox Chase Boy. Performing it to his close-knit parish he speaks directly about a crime cloaked in silence, and brings welcome insight into their collective trauma
Continue reading...Fox Chase Boy: standup comedy confronts trauma in a Catholic community
There is surprising nostalgia and humour in Gerad Argeros’s story of healing after child abuse by a Catholic priest. He was an altar boy at St Cecilia Catholic church in north-east Philadelphia when, at age 11, he became one of the victims of paedophile James Brzyski. Decades later, the actor and father developed the one-man stage show Fox Chase Boy. Performing it to his close-knit parish he speaks directly about a crime cloaked in silence, and brings welcome insight into their collective trauma
Continue reading...Big baby trial gives pregnant women more choice
What is the infected blood scandal?
Teen unable to eat due to rare digestive condition
Teen unable to eat due to rare digestive condition
'Doctors told my mum poison symptoms were anxiety'
'Doctors told my mum poison symptoms were anxiety'
‘The crux of all evil’: what happened to the first city that tried to ban smartphones for under-14s?
It’s a year since teachers in St Albans asked parents not to give younger children smartphones. How successful have they been? What do the kids think about it? And has it made the adults think about their own ‘addiction’?
At 3.12pm on a sunny spring afternoon in St Albans, Yasser Afghen reaches for the iPhone in his jeans pocket, hoping to use the three minutes before his son emerges from his year 1 primary class to scroll through his emails. As he lifts the phone to his face, Matthew Tavender, the head teacher of Cunningham Hill school, strides across the playground towards him. Afghen smiles apologetically, puts his phone away, and spends the remaining waiting time listening to the birdsong in the trees behind the school yard.
A one-storey 1960s block with 14 classrooms backing on to a playing field, Cunningham Hill primary feels like an unlikely hub for a revolution. But a year ago, Tavender and the school’s executive head, Justine Elbourne-Cload, began coordinating with the heads at other primary schools across the city, then sent a joint letter to parents and carers across St Albans: the highly addictive nature of smartphones was having a lasting effect on children’s brains. The devices were robbing children of their childhood. Could parents, the letter asked, please avoid giving them smartphones until they turned 14?
Continue reading...‘Concerning’ lack of female-only medical trials in UK, say health experts
Exclusive: doctors and patients forced to make decisions in ‘vacuum of evidence’ as women under-represented in data
Health experts are calling for more UK clinical trials to focus on finding new treatments for women, as “concerning” data reveals they are severely under-represented, with 67% more male-only studies than female-only.
Details of thousands of studies were collected by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the University of Liverpool. The evidence shows the UK is a hub for pioneering research, with one in eight trials testing humans for the first time, and cutting-edge treatments such as gene therapies becoming a new growth area.
Continue reading...'The NHS at its worst', ex-ombudsman tells inquiry
Plan to modernise 1,000 GP practice buildings
Teen mental health: When to seek help and what parents can do
World may be ‘post-herd immunity’ to measles, top US scientist says
As infections pummel communities in the US, Mexico and Canada, fear of ‘the most contagious human disease’ grows
A leading immunologist warned of a “post-herd-immunity world”, as measles outbreaks affect communities with low vaccination rates in the American south-west, Mexico and Canada.
The US is enduring the largest measles outbreak in a quarter-century. Centered in west Texas, the measles outbreak has killed two unvaccinated children and one adult and spread to neighboring states including New Mexico and Oklahoma.
Continue reading...Assisted deaths could be more than 4,000 in 10th year after law change
Assisted deaths could be more than 4,000 in 10th year after law change
