There’s one thing I’d happily see Rachel Reeves raise taxes on: junk food. Spend a day in my A&E department if you don’t believe me. I’m constantly treating people suffering from chronic conditions — type 2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, …
Blair was right about ID cards
Why won’t Keir Starmer support digital ID? When they caught wind of the electoral landslide, Blair and Blunkett lurched from their caskets to demand a return of this, New Labour’s most divisive and, eventually, most thoroughly defeated policy. But Labour …
Wes Streeting wants to experiment on you
Only last month, Health Secretary Wes Streeting was warning us sternly against “killing the NHS with kindness”. This week, true to his principles, he announced an intention to start experimenting upon fat people in partnership with Big Pharma.
The five-year …
Wes Streeting wants to experiment on you
Only last month, Health Secretary Wes Streeting was warning us sternly against “killing the NHS with kindness”. This week, true to his principles, he announced an intention to start experimenting upon fat people in partnership with Big Pharma.
The five-year …
A&E is now a deathtrap
Last Friday night, a young man walked into my A&E department, mid-hallucination, and started to lash out at a crowd of patients. After being wrestled to the ground by my specialist clinical colleagues and security staff, it didn’t take long …
A&E is now a deathtrap
Last Friday night, a young man walked into my A&E department, mid-hallucination, and started to lash out at a crowd of patients. After being wrestled to the ground by my specialist clinical colleagues and security staff, it didn’t take long …
Letby Truthers want a good story
“It was like staring at a Magic Eye picture,” Ravi Jayaram, one of the medics who first raised concerns about Lucy Letby, told the New Yorker. “At first, it’s just a load of dots… But you stare at them, and …
Labour won’t save the NHS
Any culture, society or nation is ultimately judged on how it protects its citizens, and how it treats and cares for its most vulnerable. And on this standard, the Conservatives have failed. Over the past 14 years, their contempt has …
The liberal lessons of the Cass Report
Pity poor Dr Hilary Cass, the eminent paediatrician charged with managing an independent review of NHS gender services for young people, whose final report was published this week. Given the hair-trigger sensibilities of interested parties, she seems to have been …
Can the Cass Report really be enforced?
When the US astronomer Carl Sagan stated that “extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence”, he was riffing on an idea that has influenced the scientific method since the mid-1700s. If we are to conclude extraordinary things, ideas that conflict with what …
Why is the NHS hiring fake doctors?
When 25-year-old Benedict Peters showed up in A&E in 2022 with chest pain, he was discharged with a diagnosis of gastritis and anxiety. That night, he died from an aortic dissection, a fatal bleed from the largest artery in the …
How ADHD became a luxury label
Josh’s mum finds it hard to understand him. At school, her son is puppyish, friendly: a 12-year-old who still has the excitability of a primary school child rather than the jadedness of other Year Eights. But at home, his mum …
Should junior doctors be paid more?
Only two years after the NHS was founded in 1948, GPs first demanded an increase to their salaries — and threatened to withdraw their labour from the service entirely if those demands weren’t met. Many of the doctors involved in …
What does Palantir want with NHS data?
Everyone has said things that, in hindsight, they regret. For Peter Thiel, the billionaire founder of PayPal and US IT giant Palantir, it might have been his claim this year that the NHS makes people sick. Or that the British …
Inside Britain’s new trans clinics
Since its closure was announced last July, Gids — the Gender Identity Development Service at the world-renowned Tavistock and Portman Trust — has become synonymous with mismanagement and medical scandal.
It was supposed to be a haven for young people …