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 …
Not every anorexic can be saved
In the summer of 1995, I watched a woman starve to death. I was 19 and L was in her mid-30s, having suffered from anorexia since the age of 15. She looked unlike any person I have seen before or …
Lucy Letby isn’t a psychopath
When we look beyond the battle over identity politics, the great majority of us share a very clear idea about the way life should be lived. We should be allowed to grow and mature, then decline with dignity as we …
Has Gids learned from its failure?
Tomorrow, it will be a year since the closure of the controversial Gender Identity Development Service (Gids) at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust was announced. Rated inadequate by the Care Quality Commission and overwhelmed by an exponential rise …
How disastrous births haunt women
The third time I went into labour, I was determined to avoid getting told off. With both of my previous births, I had somehow managed to get things wrong. My errors the first time: going to hospital too early, then, …
No one cares for carers
Granny Rosie, as she is known to everyone, is still very much herself at the age of 92: partial to a G&T when the sun is over the yardarm, and always up for a gossip. She’s also frustrated to be …
How the NHS conquered Britain
Nothing about the National Health Service makes sense. As an institution, it provokes intense appreciation, and just as intense irritation and criticism. My own feelings about it oscillate between gratitude and fury. It’s our national shame, and the envy of …
Big Fertility profits from women’s pain
The female reproductive experience is an endless morality tale. To try for a baby is to watch yourself constantly, knowing each stage of the process involves a judgement, if not on the performance of your body, then the legitimacy of …
The danger of treating doctors like saints
The idea that doctors are saints is relatively new. For much of the 19th century, they were held in pretty low regard by the general public. Some were seen as social climbers — men using their medical training to get …
Is liberal society making us ill?
As rates of Covid-19 infection started to dwindle, there came signs of a much stranger pandemic: long Covid and its host of long-term complications. You might think that, since men and older people suffer the most complications from the virus, …
Can psychedelics cure depression?
Is there a clinical case for psychedelic drugs? Professor David Nutt, a neuropsychopharmacologist, has spent his career trying to demonstrate that there is — and that, beyond their recreational powers, drugs such as psilocybin can effectively treat depression. Some of …