BBC antiques expert died after "postpartum" psychotic episode

A jewellery expert from Antiques Roadshow died days after being restrained by five paramedics and police officers following suspected postpartum psychosis, an inquest has heard.

The psychotic episode that struck Alice Gibson-Watt, 34, resulted in delusions so severe she believed her five-week-old baby was communicating with her telepathically.

The inquest at west London coroner’s court that began on Tuesday will determine whether the way Gibson-Watt was restrained while being taken to hospital injured her.

Gibson-Watt was a jewellery expert at Sotheby’s who had appeared on the BBC1 antiques show. Her husband Anthony described to the court the “deeply traumatic” events of 13 November 2012, when his wife began crawling on the floor and screaming that her daughter had died, despite her being alive.

She had given birth to Chiara, her first child, the previous month and was thought to be suffering from postpartum psychosis, which can cause hallucinations, paranoia and delusions. The condition affects about one in 1,000 mothers.

PC Sue Thomson was one of those who helped to restrain Gibson-Watt in the ambulance that attended the couple’s home in Fulham, west London.

The officer said in evidence on Wednesday that Gibson-Watt, who had been strapped down with restraints across her chest and legs, was screaming so loudly that talking to the paramedic was difficult.

“She was thrashing from side to side and I was worried she could harm herself or those trying to help her,” Thomson said. She joined other personnel in the ambulance to help restrain Gibson-Watt, along with her mother Miranda Phillimore.

At one point Thomson said it appeared Gibson-Watt was “trying to bite out at someone’s arms”. After arriving at accident and emergency at Chelsea and Westminster hospital, she was given a sedative that calmed her.

Thomson said she then had a “normal conversation” with Gibson-Watt before she told her “she could hear the baby speaking to her and it was saying to her that it was dead”.

Consultant psychiatrist Dr Miriam Barrett, of the North West London mental health trust, told the inquest on Wednesday that in a meeting with Gibson-Watt at 6am on 14 November she “appeared quite rational and normal, but underneath she was showing in her thinking there were delusions”.

“She was convinced that she was communicating with her baby and the baby could communicate with her,” Barrett said. “The baby was part of her delusions and that is where the risk arose.”

She said during the meeting there was no sign Gibson-Watt was in pain or discomfort from any possible injury to the abdomen.

PC Thomson told the court that at no time did she see anyone touch the patient’s chest or abdomen. She had used “calm, even pressure on the shoulders and knees” to restrain her.

Other officers who gave evidence also said they did not see any of those restraining Gibson-Watt touching her chest or abdomen, or touching her in a way that could harm her or injure her liver.

After being assessed at A&E, Gibson-Watt was taken to a mental health unit at west Middlesex university hospital in Isleworth. There she suffered a cardiac arrest and it was then decided she required urgent surgery after a tear was found on her liver that had caused serious internal bleeding.

Gibson-Watt was transferred to an intensive care unit at Kings College hospital in south London, where she died on 20 November 2012.

The inquest is expected to continue until late April.

BBC antiques expert died after "postpartum" psychotic episode

Air pollution crisis ‘plagues’ UK, finds UN human rights expert

Air pollution is a crisis that “plagues” the UK, particularly children, according to the UN’s special rapporteur on hazardous substances and wastes.

Baskut Tuncak, who was appointed by the UN human rights council and completed a 15-day mission to the UK on Tuesday, said there was an “urgent need for political will by the UK government to make timely, measurable and meaningful interventions”.

Most air quality zones in the UK breach legal limits and the government has twice had its plans to tackle the issue declared illegal by the courts. It is now developing a new plan but Tuncak’s strong criticism is a further embarrassment for ministers.

“The UK has repeatedly not been among the more progressive EU member states on debates over the development of stronger health and environmental protections,” he said.

Tuncak also said Brexit was a threat to environmental protection given that most current regulations come from the EU. “I found no indication of a political commitment to retaining current standards for health and environmental protection,” he said.

The government says it will transpose all EU laws into UK law via a “great repeal act”, but the environment secretary Andrea Leadsom has said that about a third of the 800 pieces of EU environmental legislation would be difficult to transfer. A cross-party committee of MPs said earlier in January that the government must pass a new Environmental Protection Act before it begins the formal process of leaving the EU.

Tuncak also found that less than 1% of workers made sick by exposure to toxic chemicals receive compensation in the UK. “For victims of toxic pollution, seeking remedy in the UK is very difficult,” he said. “Cuts in legal aid have made it near impossible for victims of pollution and contamination to seek remedy for civil suits.”

Tuncak’s fact-finding mission to the UK was at the invitation of the government and assessed the measures taken by the government to protect the human rights of people that can be infringed by pollution, such as the rights to life, health and safe housing.

The visit coincided with a severe air pollution episode in London and he said between 30,000 and 40,000 early deaths every year are caused by toxic air across the country.

“Air pollution plagues the UK,” Tuncak said. “Children, women of reproductive age, the elderly, and those of poor health are the most threatened by toxic air, with poorer communities often exposed at higher levels. Paediatricians refer to the present state of the impacts of pollution and contamination on children’s health as a ‘silent pandemic’. I encourage the UK government to fulfil its human rights obligations on air pollution.”

Regarding the changes that will result from the UK leaving the EU, he said the UK has an obligation to progress, not to slide backwards: “The forthcoming plan for Brexit should ensure that it does not open a Pandora’s box, freeing the way for deregulation and posing a threat of regression from existing standards of protection.”

Areeba Hamid, clean air campaigner at Greenpeace, said: “It is imperative that the UK government ensures that EU safeguards on air pollution are protected and prioritised throughout the Brexit process. So far the UK government has failed to protect the public from air pollution, much of which is caused by diesel vehicles.”

Tuncak said the UK’s “pivot” away from the EU towards closer cooperation with the US, pursued by prime minister Theresa May in Washington DC last week, risked a weakening of protection. “Rights that are often impacted by pollution and contamination are not recognised by the US while they are by the UK,” he said.

During Tuncak’s mission, he met representatives of the national government. But regarding assurances that Brexit would not weaken protections, he said: “I was pointed to statements that I could not find and political commitments that were not clearly expressed.”

Tuncak also reported a series of other findings:

• Communities concerned about fracking, sewage disposal and industrial expansion had “severe difficulty” accessing information directly relevant to health and safety.
  


• Budget cuts for local authorities had made it “problematic” for them to carry out their responsibilities in managing waste.
  


• The UK had inadequate laws to limit the toxic impacts of UK-based companies when operating overseas.
  

A full report of Tuncak’s mission will be submitted to the human rights council in September.

Air pollution crisis ‘plagues’ UK, finds UN human rights expert

UN"s own expert calls its actions over Haiti cholera outbreak "a disgrace"

The United Nations’ refusal to accept responsibility for the devastating cholera outbreak that has claimed more than 9,000 lives in Haiti has been branded a “disgrace” by the organisation’s own human rights special rapporteur.

Human rights groups working with victims had reacted with jubilation earlier this year following the UN’s first tacit admission that it was to blame for the outbreak after doggedly refusing to address how its peacekeepers brought the disease to Haiti in 2010.

However, in a scathing report (pdf) to the UN general assembly, the organisation’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, Philip Alston, said that flawed and unfounded legal advice provided by the UN lawyers was preventing it from accepting responsibility for the outbreak.

“The UN’s explicit and unqualified denial of anything other than a moral responsibility is a disgrace,” Alston said. “If the United Nations bluntly refuses to hold itself accountable for human rights violations, it makes a mockery of its efforts to hold governments and others to account.”

Alston accused the UN’s Office of Legal Affairs (OLA) for coming up with a “patently artificial and wholly unfounded legal pretence for insisting that the organisation must not take legal responsibility for what it has done”.

The criticism comes as the administration of the outgoing UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, is moving to provide compensation for the first time to victims of the outbreak. The UN plans to make cash payments from a proposed $ 400m (£328m) cholera response package, the New York Times reported.

Alston added that the OLA’s approach “has been cloaked in secrecy: there has been no satisfactory official explanation of the policy, no public attempt to justify it, and no known assessment of its consequences for future cases. This goes directly against the principles of accountability, transparency and the rule of law that the UN itself promotes globally.”

Peacekeepers who were relocated from Nepal to Haiti in 2010 in the wake of a major earthquake imported the deadly cholera bacterium with them. Studies have found that the UN troops could have been screened for the illness, and the disaster averted, for as little as $ 2,000.

Alston said the UN’s legal position appears to be largely explained by the approach of the US, the main contributor to the UN’s peacekeeping budget.
“Despite numerous requests to do so, the United States itself has never publicly stated its legal position on the responsibility of the UN for causing cholera in Haiti,” he added.

“Instead, it seems to have pressed the UN to adopt the position frequently taken by lawyers in the US that responsibility should never be accepted voluntarily, since it could complicate future litigation. But this rationale is completely inapplicable to the UN, which enjoys absolute immunity from suit in national courts and whose reputation depends almost entirely on being seen to act with integrity.”

The special rapporteur said that the current stance of the UN’s lawyers ensures that it would never admit its responsibility for introducing cholera. “And avoiding legal responsibility hinders the UN from learning lessons and making sure that the fatal mistakes made in Haiti are not repeated elsewhere.”

Ban’s office said in a statement earlier this year that the organisation had decided to step up its efforts to fight cholera in one of the world’s poorest countries. A reference to the UN’s “involvement in the initial outbreak” was greeted as a breakthrough by groups working with cholera victims.

Ban appeared to have been bounced into making a clearer recognition of responsibility than ever before by the advent of a draft report by Alston into how the UN handled the crisis. Alston had also been one of five experts working for the UN who earlier this year wrote a heavily critical letter to Ban in which the secretary general’s resistance to accepting any responsibility was torn apart.

UN"s own expert calls its actions over Haiti cholera outbreak "a disgrace"

Areas of NHS will implode this winter, expert warns

Parts of the NHS “will implode” this winter, an expert has warned, as new figures show falling A&E performance over the past few months.

Dr Mark Holland, the president of the Society for Acute Medicine, said the days when summer used to provide a respite for busy emergency departments had gone, and instead the NHS faced an “eternal winter”.

The NHS was “on its knees” and a major increase in hospital admissions due to flu or the sickness bug norovirus could lead to collapse, he added.

Holland spoke out as new figures show that waiting times in A&E units in England this summer have been worse than for most winters stretching back more than a decade.

One in 10 patients waited more than four hours in A&E during June, July and August – worse than any winter in the past 12 years bar one, analysis by the BBC showed. Only last winter marked a worse performance since the target was launched in 2004.

Data from NHS England for the summer also showed hospitals are missing key targets for cancer cases, routine operations and ambulance response times. Delayed discharges – where patients are stuck in hospital despite being medically fit to leave – continued to rise, with a record high during August.

The Local Government Association has said a funding gap of at least £2.6bn is opening up for providing social care in the community. This affects discharges because care packages are not always in place for those leaving hospital.

Holland said: “The NHS is on its knees and, this winter, areas will implode around the country. There is no reserve left. We coined the phrase ‘eternal winter’ months ago in relation to increasingly poor performance and this data is clear evidence that is what we are now dealing with.

“Over the coming weeks and months, if we see a major increase in admissions due to flu or bed closures due to norovirus, we will collapse.

“The government has failed to acknowledge or address the scale of the crisis in social care and delayed discharges and, at present, I see no plan of action in place to prevent it derailing the health service. If we are unable to discharge patients and release pressure on our emergency departments and acute medical units at the front door, the system grinds to a halt.”

The Nuffield Trust chief executive, Nigel Edwards, said only a small handful of hospitals now hit the A&E target.

“We need to look at the underlying causes,” he said. “Our analysis of hospitals suggests that after years of squeezed bed numbers, there is not enough space left to move patients through at the rate we want. The practice of counting bed use at midnight misses the real crunch points during the day.

“On the frontline, leaders should work on better monitoring and control of patient flow minute by minute. Helping the longest staying patients to leave hospital sooner should be a priority, although it will be difficult with the social care system on its knees. Nationally, we should be realistic about what hospitals can do when they are this full, and how hard it will be to free up space again.”

The shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, said: “’The figures expose the Tories’ record of failure on the NHS.

“On Jeremy Hunt’s watch hospitals are now bursting at the seams with thousands of people waiting hours in overcrowded A&E departments and on hospital trolleys.

“These pressures are a direct consequence of the decisions Jeremy Hunt has taken. This government’s cuts to social care over the last six years have left councils struggling to provide basic support for older people in the community and the growing crisis in general practice is forcing many people to travel to A&E because they can’t get an appointment with their family doctor.”

Matthew Swindells, NHS England’s national director for operations and information, said: “While hospitals are continuing to look after more than nine out of 10 A&E patients within four hours, and A&E performance improved this month, today’s CQC [Care Quality Commission] report highlights the impact of rising social care pressures on emergency admissions and delays in people leaving hospital.

“As the CQC argues, if we are to solve these pressures, the transformation work kicking off this autumn led by local health and care organisations, is essential.”

A Department of Health spokeswoman said hospitals continued to perform well, seeing nine out of 10 people within four hours. “In the last 12 months, 175,000 more people were seen within this standard compared to the previous year,” she said.

“We are committed to delivering a safer seven-day NHS which is why we have invested £10bn to fund the NHS’s own plan to transform services for the future and crucially ensuring that the amount of money available to local authorities for social care is rising in future years of the parliament, reaching up to £3.5bn extra by 2020.”

Areas of NHS will implode this winter, expert warns

Act on children"s mental ill health or risk national crisis, warns expert

The UK should brace itself for a “tsunami” of adults with mental health problems unless urgent action is taken to help today’s children, according to one of the leading experts in the field.

Prof Dame Sue Bailey, chair of the Children and Young People’s Mental Health Coalition, says the government needs to spend heavily now on mental health services for children if a crisis is to be averted.

“I describe mental health services as a car crash waiting to happen,” Bailey said. “The government is starting to do the right thing, NHS England is pulling the money through, but there are so many factors mitigating against it succeeding that it needs a financial fuel injection, right now.”

Ahead of this week’s Conservative party conference, when the prime minister is expected to identify improving mental health as a key priority, Bailey, chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges and a former president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said baby boomers like her needed to do more to help young people, not just for their children’s sake but for themselves.

“We’d see immediate benefits, a better transition from primary to secondary school, a better transition of children into the world of work; they’d be more robust, more resilient.”

She suggested that her generation owed it to those that followed.

“The pressures on young people today are very different. We do know there has been a record number of phone calls to ChildLine from children with suicidal thoughts; that 55% of headteachers are reporting large number of pupils with anxiety and distress; and that rates of admissions for self-harm are at a five-year high. I think part of trying to convince both government and my generation [to invest in mental health services] comes from understanding that actually we did have it relatively well. This is one generation being asked to think about … the needs of the younger generation.”

Last week an inquiry found that more women aged between 16 and 24 were experiencing mental health problems than ever before. One in four had harmed themselves, according to the government-funded Adult Psychiatric Morbidity survey. The number who screened positive for post-traumatic stress disorder was found to have trebled from 4.2% in 2007 to 12.6% in 2014.

Many of the problems identified by the inquiry were attributed to pressures that had arisen in childhood.

Prof Dame Sue Bailey says her generation should support the needs of the next. Photograph: Anna Gordon

“If there was more money going into schools to help children self-support around mental health problems, it would have an amazing payoff,” Bailey said. “You’d get better attainment for all children, not just the brightest, and fewer disruptive pupils. I think we’ve got a generation who feel that they are having their freedoms and opportunities taken away from them. This does require a substantive injection of funding into child mental health, for the voluntary sector, schools, community projects.

She said that supporting a mentally sustainable future generation was in her own interests because one day she would be “frail and elderly with incontinence, dementia” and would need people to care for her.

“Is this just another set of bleeding-heart special pleaders? No, it’s the thing to do if we want a sustainable society that can help young people support themselves. We need to listen to them more about what their problems are, with all the risks that surround them, such as all [those] that come out of social media.”

Last week the government announced that it was allocating an extra £25m to clinical commissioning groups across England to accelerate plans for improving mental health services for children and young people. It said the money would help to cut waiting times for treatment, reduce backlogs and minimise the length of stay for those in in-patient care.

But Bailey said the cash would still mean that, by 2021, “instead of one in four children being seen by child and adolescent mental health services through referral, it will be down to one in three”.

“We have to welcome what the last two parliaments have done, which is to recognise mental health and give it parity [alongside physical health] but we need to make a complete leap with extra funding. If we don’t, we are going to have a tsunami of children with mental health problems being taken into adulthood who are less able to cope in families and in employment.”

She acknowledged that mental health had always been vulnerable to budget cuts. “[With] austerity, things going wrong, mental health problems rise and it’s easy for money to go into other things. As a coalition, we’re monitoring that.”

• In the UK, the Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1-800-273-8255. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is on 13 11 14. Helplines in other countries can be found here
  

Act on children"s mental ill health or risk national crisis, warns expert

What Determine’s an Expert?

We experience experts when we first go to school. We learn from our teachers that A comes before B, that 1 comes before 2, and left is the opposite of right.

Then we grow up.

Nowadays, expertise means nothing when everyone’s an expert.

Ever since Al Gore invented the internet, people have been complaining about how everyone thinks they are an expert.

People have become their own travel agents.
People diagnose their own illnesses with online checklists of their symptoms.
Parents weigh in on other people’s parenting choices, glorifying their credentials by stating they are a mom, so they know.

This has been going on forever despite this being a devaluation of actual expertise.

When everybody is an “expert”, nobody is an expert.

Unfortunately, real experts aren’t appreciated for their years of study, dedication to the field, and specialized knowledge.

When your neighbor says something it is now given equal weight to what is said by actual experts who are actually involved in something that affects the entire population.

Scientists are brushed aside as having an “agenda”, or tied into a large corporation, or not having a real-life understanding, while those with their compelling stories and gut feelings know better.

Career politicians rant like they know everything about everything, and all they need is to be able to give a speech as proof that they understand everything about everything, despite their speech being written by another “expert”. Despite their knowledge about how to save the world, nothing ever happens to accomplish that. Yet somehow the corporations always flourish.

So, while it is so easy to get a message out, maybe it’s time to go back to assess the quality of the message.

Hell, if we got rid of the industrial-scale production of things like food or energy or clothing or education, we would somehow save money and learn once again how to love our neighbors through bartering and sharing.

People want to make their own schools rather than rely on formalized educational institutions. After all, just because a physician only gets two hours of nutritional training in school because their curriculum is paid for by Big Pharma, why shouldn’t we accept that true healing only involves a medication or a surgery to relieve a symptom? It’s a total waste of time to address the cause.

Large-scale farming is viewed with skepticism or outright fear in favor of gardens or boutique farms, which are often run by newbie farmers. Come on, Monsanto has ben around for so long and how can anyone know better than them and how can an organic farmer have more knowledge and expertise that a corporation that espouses feeding the world?

Would-be writers avoid the culling and gatekeeping of the professional publishing industry and instead upload their manuscripts to self-publishing sites. Who cares if the publishing industry is so over whelmed and rejects so much? Obviously, if it doesn’t meet their standards what’s the value anyway?

People watch more homemade videos on their phones than professionally produced programming on TV and we all know that the mainstream media is the best and most objective and honest of all.

Music? Anyone can cut their own album in their back bedroom with a laptop and an app. How can that compare to spending a fortune to do it right?

And, why hire a professional photographer for your wedding when your buddy has an iPhone7?

Then we hear about “artisanal cooking, which is just a marketing tool for stuff that is basically “homemade”. I wonder how bread, for example, is made is made in an industrial kitchen and then called “artisanal”? Artisanal means that something is made by using traditional, non-mechanical methods, kind of like how grandma used to do it.

The empowerment of the individual to to master all things is sweet elementary school thinking of the A B, 1 2, left right thinking. But why can’t it work? Sometimes clumsy hands are more earnest and loving than the professional touch.

Understand that if you are self taught or operate with the kind of structure that keeps buildings from falling, keeps lies from getting on the front page, which is usually what happens when mainstream prevails, integrity provides a process for correction if mistakes are made.

Regardless of the path, the element of human genius comes with expert knowledge and dedication to truth and honesty. And only through dedication of one’s life to master a subject and present it in a truthful manner, even if it means going against the tide, exemplifies integrity.

Above all, we all must realize that we can learn more every day and as such we always keep an open mind. That and only that determines who an expert is.

Aloha!

To learn more about Hesh, listen to and read hundreds of health related radio shows and articles, and learn about how to stay healthy and reverse degenerative diseases through the use of organic sulfur crystals and the most incredible bee pollen ever, please visit www.healthtalkhawaii.com, or email me at heshgoldstein@gmail.com or call me at (808) 258-1177. Since going on the radio in 1981 these are the only products I began to sell because they work.
Oh yeah, going to www.asanediet.com will allow you to read various parts of my book – “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”, containing a wonderful comment by Mike Adams.
In Hawaii, the TV stations interview local authors about the books they write and the newspapers all do book reviews. Not one would touch “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Why? Because it goes against their advertising dollars.

What Determine’s an Expert?

Let medical doctors use medication to aid terminally ill individuals die, says wellness expert

He also urged the NHS to cease “retaining men and women going at any cost” when they are near death by carrying out every little thing achievable to prolong their lives, this kind of as making use of drips and attempting other kinds of treatment, which he described as “a huge problem”.

In the broad ranging interview, Prof Ashton also argued for a nationwide move to a four-day functioning week to fight increasing ranges of mental sickness, saying: “When you look at the way we lead our lives, the tension that men and women are below, the stress on time and sickness absence, [work-related] mental wellness is clearly a significant issue.

He mentioned that he was concerned about the increasing suicide rates amongst younger guys, blaming the “significantly altered position of guys in society vis-a-vis women and vis-a-vis the labour market” for “affecting men’s self-esteem and self-self confidence as a consequence of this dislocation, with the reduction in their classic position as breadwinners”.

Youngster psychological well being providers were also criticised as in crisis by Prof Ashton, who explained solutions are not preventing difficulties or responding to them when they arrived.

He also attacked the lack of intercourse education in colleges, saying: “Classroom teachers will tell you boys are seeking at pornography on their iPhones at the age of eleven,twelve and 13. This is in which they are getting their intercourse details from, because we’re not giving them suitable intercourse and relationships schooling.”

His remarks are set to stoke a new row above doctors’ part in assisted dying. On 18 July peers will debate a personal member’s bill proposed by the former Labour minister Lord Falconer which desires terminally unwell grownup patients who have significantly less than six months to dwell and who are mentally competent to be ready to choose an assisted death in which a doctor would write the prescription for the medication but the patient would administer them.

A single religious group mentioned Prof Ashton’s views had been chilling and that medical doctor-assisted suicide would allow medical doctors “perform God” with dying sufferers and would see vulnerable individuals being killed.

Andrea Williams, the chief executive of the Christian lobby group Christian Concern, criticised Prof Ashton for his comments: “To say that it really is care for a medical professional to kill is … a full denial of their Hippocratic oath,” she explained. “A medical professional is there to care for the patient, not to destroy the patient. Midwives joyfully carry existence into the world. It really is not a doctor’s area to play God at the end of daily life.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesman stated: “The government believes that any change to the law in this emotive area is an concern of person conscience and a matter for parliament to choose, rather than government policy.”

Claudia Wood, Chief Executive of the United kingdom think tank, Demos, stated: “Assisted Dying is an emotive concern and understandably provokes strong reactions on each sides. But the bulk of the public do help assisted dying in principle – it really is right that politicians have a possibility to talk about the possibility of legislating on this situation.”

Let medical doctors use medication to aid terminally ill individuals die, says wellness expert

Young children can be "damaged" by becoming shared between parents, youngster expert claims

Fathers’ rights groups have branded the feedback manufactured by Penelope Leach, one particular of Britain’s major parenting authorities, “worrying” and towards widespread sense.

Ms Leach, a former president of the National Childminding Association who has written a amount of books about caring for youngsters, claims making it possible for underneath fives to remain with their fathers produces “unhealthy attachment troubles.”

She also claims in her most recent guide, Loved ones Breakdown, that there was “undisputed evidence” that a time period of separation from their mother can adversely influence a child’s brain improvement.

She argues that “When individuals say that it is ‘only fair’ for a father and mom to share their 5-yr-outdated daughter on alternate weeks, they imply it is honest to the adults – who see her as a possession and her presence as their right – not that it is fair to the youngster.”

She also mentioned when attorneys bid for their consumer to have overnight accessibility with their youthful youngsters they are ignoring proof about the distressing and damaging affect on the kid.

Leach said the rights of the child must constantly outweigh those of the mother and father and extra: “It can be damaging to the child to divide time equally amongst the mother and father.”

Ian Maxwell, from Households Want Fathers, told the Independent on Sunday that society had moved on from traditional attachment theory when bonds amongst mother and little one had been observed as the strongest.

He added: “The bond between fathers and youngsters is just as essential and we would query the evidence Ms Leach is citing for the primacy of the maternal bond.”

He explained her argument did not accord with widespread sense was described her claims as “worrying.”

Leach has previously drawn criticism for her earlier bestselling guide, Your Little one &amp Little one: From Birth to Age 5, published. In this she claimed only mothers could care correctly for their children.

She has also attracted controversy soon after she claimed scientific evidence showed that leaving a infant to cry could have an effect on the improvement of its brain and make it susceptible to nervousness in later life.

Young children can be "damaged" by becoming shared between parents, youngster expert claims

Heart failure situations do not get expert care, doctors warn

Placing heart failure sufferers on basic wards can delay the commence of medicine, professionals say. Photograph: Alamy

Sufferers with heart failure are dying simply because they receive inadequate care soon after being “scattered” close to hospitals which have also number of beds for them in expert wards, medical doctors are warning.

Heart professionals are concerned that many of individuals with the issue can stay undiagnosed or not get put on the proper medication because they are not taken care of on cardiology wards and looked right after by a committed staff.

Half of this kind of patients finish up on some other kind of ward and have a 54% better opportunity of dying in hospital as a consequence, according to a current audit by specialists of the NHS’s dealing with of practically 44,000 hospital admissions for acute heart failure in England and Wales in 2012-13. Although seven% of individuals treated on a cardiology ward die in the course of their remain in hospital, that rises to 11.three% of those cared for on a standard health-related ward and 14.4% of individuals looked following on any other sort of ward.

Heart failure is typically fatal. One in 4 folks who are hospitalised due to the fact of it die inside a yr of their therapy.

A lot more than 750,000 folks suffer from it. Most are over 65. It takes place when someone’s heart is so weak or stiff that it can no longer pump blood effectively all around their body, leaving them quite out of breath, unable to undertake fundamental each day tasks, and typically with a hazardous develop-up of fluid in their lungs.

“Some individuals are dying unnecessarily,” explained Dr Lisa Anderson, a advisor cardiologist specialising in heart failure at St George’s hospital in south London. “Although care has enhanced in current many years we aren’t treating these individuals appropriately to minimize their probabilities of readmission and death.”

Her very own hospital has between 50 and 60 inpatients with heart failure at any 1 time. However, only “a tiny proportion” finish up on cardiology wards, with the rest spread across as numerous as twenty diverse wards in three various wings, which includes surgical, elderly care and post-operative card wards. That is normal of the situation in many hospitals, Anderson added.

“Individuals get sent just wherever a bed is accessible”, even however they want rapid and ongoing care from heart professionals. Even though someone on a cardiology ward has an echocardiogram accomplished within 24 hours, these elsewhere can wait for up to four days, she stated. That is critical due to the fact it can delay the patient’s diagnosis and therefore currently being place on the proper medication.

Individuals on non-specialist wards are considerably much less most likely to get one particular, two or all three of the various kinds of medicine which improve patients’s odds of survival, thereby raising their danger of death, the audit discovered. Only about one in three of individuals who require to take all three medicines get them.

“All these worrying factors – in which you remain in hospital, when you get your diagnosis and no matter whether you obtain the right medicine – suggest that there is an elevated risk of death if you are not looked following by a professional,” Anderson extra.

Ageing and enhanced care of heart failure – mortality has been halved in the final decade – mean that hospital admissions due to the fact of it shot up by 18% among 2011-12 and 2012-13 in what Anderson named “a massive tidal wave of admissions”. That spike has coincided with cuts in hospital bed numbers in a lot of places.

Professor Peter Weissberg, medical director of the British Heart Foundation, said he shared the concern about patients’ outcomes in non-professional wards but that the sheer number of this kind of individuals meant it was “utopian” to expect hospitals to deal with each 1 on a cardiology ward.

But hospitals need to always have a professional ward for heart failure sufferers – several do not – and a crew of specialist physicians and nurses who can visit people who are elsewhere to guarantee they get excellent care to decrease their danger of death, he stated.

An NHS England spokeswoman mentioned: “There have been tremendous falls in deaths from heart condition in current years, and far better prevention and help at house will support minimize heart failure, but for individuals patients who do in the end need to have inpatient care we certainly want them to get the ideal focus attainable.”

The National Institute for Well being and Care Excellence (Nice) last week mentioned that all heart failure patients must be handled on a cardiology ward as they can acquire inferior therapy if they do not.

Heart failure situations do not get expert care, doctors warn

Prime Cancer Expert: "I Am Far more Anxious About International Warming Than My Kids Dying Of Cancer"

In the mid 1970s, only 50 % of patients diagnosed with cancer survived for much more than five years. On the most current statistics, far more than 70 % do.

We laymen not only get this great information for granted but have a tendency to venture it into the long term. Must we?

Place one more way is there a kind of “Moore’s Law” of progress against cancer? In the view of the leading cancer professional Gerard Evan, the short response is No. But there is a longer reply that is only slightly significantly less cheering.

In a remarkably upbeat evaluation at an worldwide conference in Ireland final week, Evan, a professor at each Cambridge University in England and the University of California-San Francisco, predicted that the illness will most likely be beaten inside of three decades. “I can rather confidently say that my children will by no means have to worry about dying from cancer,” he commented. “I’m more anxious about global warming than my children dying of cancer.”

As for a type of Moore’s Law, Evan believes that progress towards cancer will not so neatly adhere to the steady increase in pc processing power predicted by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in the 1970s. “The effort to improve cancer survival costs proceeds in fits and commences,” says Evan. “It depends on numerous things, not least the continuing assistance of governments for investigation.”

Nevertheless Evan, a leader in developing so-known as intrinsic tumor suppression, one particular of many new weapons in the cancer war, scarcely conceals his excitement at the existing speed of progress. He remarks: “I began as a cancer researcher in 1977 and for twenty years we have been banging our heads on a brick wall. Then in the mid-1990s the area was suddenly transformed as we began to recognize molecular processes. It is as if there were libraries all more than the globe full of books written in a language we did not recognize. Now we recognize that language.”

Genentech headquarters in San Francisco: In the running. (Photograph credit: Wikipedia)

All this adds up to exciting new options for the worldwide pharmaceutical market. A rapid Web search suggests that amongst the front runners in creating fascinating new therapies are Novartis, as effectively as AstraZeneca’s Medimmune and Roche’s Genentech. Also in the running are Pfizer and Lilly.

Prime Cancer Expert: "I Am Far more Anxious About International Warming Than My Kids Dying Of Cancer"

Sufferers wait as well long for expert care in the NHS

Bringing in experts into primary care can pace up the treatment method of patients, writes Dick Vinegar. Photograph: Alamy

The Swedish writer, Henning Mankell, creator of Wallander, who was diagnosed with cancer in January, wrote movingly about the agony of waiting for remedy. “This waiting can be tough, at occasions unbearable: but there is practically nothing 1 can do about it …”

I know the feeling. 5 many years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer, and had to wait for treatment method for 6 weeks. I went by means of a huge battery of tests in the quick diagnostic unit at the Surrey Marsden in about two hours flat, which resulted in a company diagnosis five days later and a date for an operation.

My wife and I have found in the final two months that sufferers with other maladies are not so rapidly served by hospital medical professionals.

My wife has been getting mysterious heart pains. I have created an irregular heartbeat, and, at the identical time, my kidney function has dropped. All these problems, I suppose, can be deemed life-threatening, even though none of them were severe enough to merit referral as inpatients. We felt that we would like to have a expert masterminding our therapy.

That did not occur for my wife’s heart or my kidneys. It was our GP who known as the shots about our treatment method. But all the time we had been not very sure that she had got it proper, and we remained anxious. The specialists, soon after all, are supposed to know ideal. After about 6 weeks we did get the specialists’ see, which confirmed that the GP had completed the right point. That was reassuring, but it seemed that all the specialists contributed had been a number of tweaks and an authoritative report.

What happened to my irregular heartbeat was somewhat different. By likelihood, my difficulties blew up two days prior to my yearly cardiologist’s MOT. So, proper from the commence, my therapy was dictated by a expert. My anxiety ranges dropped away, considerably lower than our worries about our other treatment options, which had not been blessed by a specialist consultant until rather late in the day.

I apologise for going on so extended about my very own ailments – a dreadful case of “anecdotal proof”, for which I am continually upbraided by clinical purists. I am trying to say some thing quite elementary: that sufferers are unhappy unless of course they do not obtain professional assistance from day 1. Maybe our conditions worsen if we do not get immediate expert care, notably if we have a heart condition.

So, what is the NHS going to do about this self-evident reality? Probably NHS England will say “we are not as undesirable as Wales”, in which I heard nowadays that individuals have to wait 15 months for cardiac surgical treatment. I think there is a culture in England as properly as Wales that it is okay for a patient to wait two months or more to see a specialist consultant. This might be okay for the consultants, and for the government attempting to balance the NHS books. But the patient, as ever, is suffering. Possibly, the NHS management may possibly also contemplate the heretical thought that the remedy of a patient seen promptly by a specialist could expense significantly less, and consume fewer scarce assets, than a lengthy, drawn out treatment. It could conserve the NHS millions.

So, how can we pace up the treatment of individuals? Carry specialists in cardiology, renal and orthopaedics into primary care. There, they will be nearer their individuals, and, hopefully, response instances will be faster. I collect that this is currently happening in some super-surgeries. Also, bring down the expense of X-ray tools and echocardiograms, so that they can turn into resources of main care.

What I am genuinely saying is that, currently, secondary care prolongs the agony of waiting, and primary care need to take above, and see if it can pace issues up. This may possibly indicate that some hospitals will wither and die. So be it.

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Sufferers wait as well long for expert care in the NHS

Patient care underneath threat as overworked medical professionals miss essential signs, expert warns

Care of hospital sufferers is under risk because overworked frontline doctors are searching right after so several sick people that they are missing essential indications of sickness that could affect chances of survival, one of Britain’s most senior physicians warns right now.

Hospital physicians are running about “like a scalded cat” striving to search right after up to 70 elderly individuals at a time, far more than the highest of 20 regarded as necessary to make sure they acquire proper interest, the president of the Royal School of Physicians, Sir Richard Thompson, told the Guardian.

Doctors specialising in acute medication are so stretched they are not able to devote the ideal minimum of 15 minutes investigating each patient’s signs since they have as well many sufferers to get round in a common seven-hour shift, he extra.

In an interview with the Guardian, he stated some physicians are facing caseloads during 1 shift of up to 70 sufferers, numerous of whom are medically challenging – what medical professionals get in touch with “multiply morbid”, older folks with problems this kind of as heart difficulties, diabetes and breathing problems at the same time.

“You attempt standing on your feet for seven hrs attempting to be on the ball, considering of the various problems, currently being wonderful to patients, for seven hrs. It truly is totally destructive. Not everyone has 70, but most people are seeking after well over 20,” Thompson, whose school represents most of the UK’s thirty,000 hospital medical doctors, except individuals in Scotland, explained.

“If you have got over 20 it becomes extremely hard. The care gets thinner and thinner. It signifies the advisor can not see the patient as significantly or indeed as early as they must do, so certainly the common of care is going to fall”.

Widespread understaffing, particularly overnight and at weekends, is posing a direct threat to patients’ security, he warned.

Acute medicine consultants are supposed to see newly-admitted sufferers within a few hrs. “So you can picture that anything might be missed because somebody hasn’t been there to lead the staff and to get a correct choice, so you can effectively envision things going wrong” because they have not seen them rapidly sufficient, Thompson mentioned.

Medical doctors below continual “strain and tension” end up investing as tiny as five minutes with some individuals. When that transpires “yes, you miss factors”. Physicians more and more do not have enough time to invest striving to tease out the particulars of each and every patient’s illness, he stated.

In a strongly-worded attack on ministers he accused the coalition of cutting the NHS budget despite repeated pledges, like from David Cameron, to defend it from the austerity programme. “In spite of what weasly words folks at the top say, money’s been taken out of the NHS.” He cited the £2.8bn that has been provided to social care in the past 3 years.

As a consequence, he claimed: “The NHS is beneath-doctored, underneath-nursed, beneath-bedded and beneath-funded. There are as well number of doctors to do the more and more massive work to a substantial common, and securely, and compassionately.”

A worrying quantity of hospitals, specifically smaller ones, face “significant” gaps in their healthcare rotas, said Thompson.

Health secretary Jeremy Hunt’s drive because the Mid Staffs scandal to make certain each and every patient has secure, substantial-high quality care is unachievable because the NHS has neither the resources nor the workforce required, Thompson mentioned. It wants “billions” of lbs far more a year to function appropriately, he claimed, and urged all political events to be brave and accept that actuality and commence doing work out in which additional funding need to come from.

His broadside is the most recent expression of increasing frustration among bodies representing NHS personnel at the tight budgets the services is under, which includes a £20bn “efficiency financial savings” drive, at a time of rapid growth in demand for healthcare.

The leader of the British Medical Association, Dr Mark Porter, said: “A lot of of Thompson’s remarks will be recognised by individuals operating in the NHS. Medical doctors are working tougher than ever before as all NHS solutions come under massive pressure from a combination of increasing workload, falling sources and staff shortages in key specialities.”

He also backed Thompson’s declare that the NHS price range has been lower. While ministers declare it has been ringfenced “in reality billions of lbs are currently being clawed back by the Treasury each year”. 4 years of shell out cuts had left NHS personnel feeling devalued and beneath attack”, extra Porter.

The chief economist at the Nuffield Believe in health thinktank, Anita Charlesworth, explained the coalition had fulfilled its guarantee to give the Department of Well being an inflation-linked “flat real” boost throughout every single year of this parliament.

But, she added: “It is clear that this is placing a developing strain on the NHS, most notably in the acute hospital sector. This is in spite of holding down the earnings of NHS employees. Following 2015 it is not sensible to expect the NHS to proceed to meet the demands of an expanding and ageing population inside of flat funding.”

Hunt has also demoralised the service’s 1.3m employees by “slagging off the complete of the NHS”, Thompson extra. “What he has accomplished is emphasise also considerably the bad care rather of emphasising the very good care” which most individuals obtain most of the time, he insisted.

A DoH spokesman responded that: “Patient security and care is a priority for the government and it is proper that we have high expectations for our NHS. Although the NHS is a single of the safest, most efficient healthcare programs in the planet we should by no means shy away from attempting to enhance requirements for patients.”

The NHS now has the highest ever quantity of professionally experienced clinical personnel considering that census records started, with plans in place to enhance it further, he stated, incorporating that there are now far more than 7,500 far more medical professionals operating in the NHS than in 2010.

Patient care underneath threat as overworked medical professionals miss essential signs, expert warns

Statins scaremongering will price lives, expert warns

“I would feel the papers on statins are far worse in terms of the harm they have done,” he said.

Close to 7 million people take statins in Britain, a figure that could rise to 12 million underneath draft NHS tips, at present out for consultation, which will advise the vast majority of males in excess of 50 and ladies over 60 to get the drug as a precaution.

Prof Collins criticised content articles by John Abramson from Harvard healthcare college, and Aseem Malhotra, a cardiologist in Britain. Each claimed statins caused hazardous side effects and did not decrease mortality.

However, the Oxford academic stated claims the side effects triggered by statins did far more harm than very good were misleading and damaging to public self-confidence.

“We have genuinely very good data from over 100,000 men and women that display that the statins are quite well tolerated. There are only a single or two nicely-documented [problematic] side results,” he explained.

A latest study by researchers at Imperial School claimed statins have nearly no side effects, with users encountering fewer adverse symptoms than if they had taken a placebo.

Statins scaremongering will price lives, expert warns

Ask the Expert: Omega-3 Fatty Acid

Dr. Frank Sacks

Professor of Cardiovascular Ailment Prevention, Division of Nutrition, Harvard School of Public Health

one. What are omega-3 fatty acids, and why should I make confident to include them in my diet program?

Omega-three fatty acids (also acknowledged as n-3 fatty acids) are polyunsaturated fatty acids that are essential nutrients for overall health. We need omega-3 fatty acids for quite a few standard entire body functions, such as controlling blood clotting and developing cell membranes in the brain, and considering that our bodies cannot make omega-three fats, we have to get them by way of foods. Omega-3 fatty acids are also connected with a lot of well being rewards, such as safety towards heart disease and probably stroke. New studies are identifying prospective positive aspects for a wide variety of problems which includes cancer, inflammatory bowel ailment, and other autoimmune diseases such as lupus and rheumatoid arthritis.

2. What food items are great sources of omega-three fatty acids? How considerably do I need to have to consume of these meals to get enough omega-3s?

There are two main types of omega-three fatty acids in our diet plans: A single variety is alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), which is discovered in some vegetable oils, such as soybean, rapeseed (canola), and flaxseed, and in walnuts. ALA is also identified in some green vegetables, such as Brussels sprouts, kale, spinach, and salad greens. The other type, eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) and docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), is found in fatty fish. The entire body partially converts ALA to EPA and DHA.

We do not know whether or not vegetable or fish omega-three fatty acids are equally useful, although each seem to be helpful. Unfortunately, most Americans do not get adequate of either kind. For very good overall health, you must aim to get at least one wealthy source of omega-three fatty acids in your diet every day. This could be via a serving of fatty fish (such as salmon), a tablespoon of canola or soybean oil in salad dressing or in cooking, or a handful of walnuts or ground flaxseed mixed into your morning oatmeal.

three. What are omega-6 fatty acids? Need to I be concerned about the ratio of omega-six fatty acids to omega-three fatty acids in my diet program?

Omega-six fatty acids (also identified as n-six fatty acids) are also polyunsaturated fatty acids that are vital nutrients, that means that our bodies can not make them and we should receive them from foods. They are abundant in the Western diet regime frequent sources incorporate safflower, corn, cottonseed, and soybean oils.

Omega-6 fatty acids reduced LDL cholesterol (the “bad” cholesterol) and decrease irritation, and they are protective against heart illness. So the two omega-six and omega-three fatty acids are healthful. Even though there is a concept that omega-3 fatty acids are greater for our well being than omega-six fatty acids, this is not supported by the most current proof. Hence the omega-three to omega-six ratio is essentially the “good divided by the excellent,” so it is of no worth in evaluating diet program top quality or predicting condition.

four. Is it greater to get omega-3 fatty acids from food or from dietary supplements?

Certainly meals, considering that the plants and fish that contain omega-3 fats have other good nutrients, such as protein, nutritional vitamins and minerals. (PhytOriginal is a live plant based omega-3 food/supplement that will effortlessly satisfy your daily necessity).  People who do not eat fish or other meals rich in omega-3 fatty acids should consider taking an omega-3 supplement of 500 mg per day (Aqua Well being Labs grows a full fish oil substitute)  Studies propose that people who have presently had a heart assault may possibly benefit from greater doses of omega-3 supplements (essentially, double the 500 mg), so if you do have heart disease, check with your healthcare supplier about whether or not taking a higher dose of omega 3s helps make sense for you.

Source: http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/omega-3/

Ask the Expert: Omega-3 Fatty Acid