TV psychiatrist Raj Persaud is to go before a General Medical Council panel hearing to decide if he should continue to practise, the Guardian has learned. The 44-year-old consultant, who presents Radio 4's All In The Mind and appears on Channel 4's Richard and Judy show, has been called to answer charges of plagiarism before a "fitness to practice" panel which has the power to strike a doctor off the GMC register.
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It is not surprising that a large majority of Britons fear the prospect of a care home (Prospect of moving to a care home frightens two-thirds of Britons, December 3). No one wants to lose their independence, and the health and social services that once aspired to rehabilitation to maintain independence are having to focus increasingly on the very vulnerable.
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No longer the preserve of athletes attempting to improve their performance, steroids are being used by an increasing number of image-conscious teenagers. Annemarie Flanagan reports
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Andy Williamson faced years on dialysis. Then his friend and fellow band member made an offer he couldn't refuse: one of his own kidneys. If you had, perchance, wandered down to London Bridge last week, you might have heard a peculiar sound wafting around the area's medieval lanes. The Organ Grinders, an off-beat, slightly eccentric jazz-funk outfit of brass, guitars, Hammond organ and drums, was playing a tight, one-off set at The Clink, a musty onetime prison- turned-museum. And if you had strolled inside, you may have seen the band burst into one of its concluding numbers, "Live Life Then Give Life", a bizarre title for serious musicians, but with an important message: to promote living kidney donation.
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Just because you're tied to a workstation, there's no excuse for letting your fitness slide. Rebecca Armstrong discovers 'deskercise' Scientists have claimed that it's as risky as smoking, increases obesity, and that it could lead to deep vein thrombosis if you do it for too long. Yet 59 per cent of us do it every day at work. Sitting at a desk, it seems, can be hazardous to your health.
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Over recent years, my eyebrows have thinned to almost nothing. I think it started after I had my second baby, eight years ago – I'm now in my forties. On the net, all that comes up is thyroid problems and I don't have any other symptoms, though my thyroid was tested after that baby, as I lost a lot of weight and my periods took 18 months to return. I have to draw in my eyebrows to look normal. What is causing this? And will they ever come back?
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A man who was given the world's first permanent artificial heart has died, a friend said yesterday. Peter Houghton became the longest surviving artificial heart patient after receiving the thumb-sized pump at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford in June 2000. Mr Houghton, from Edgbaston, Birmingham, was given just weeks to live when he decided to try the battery-powered Jarvik 2000 heart.
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Artificial heart man dies aged 68 - BBC Health News 3rd December 2007
A former champion surfer who has waited more than four years for a kidney transplant is preparing to fly to the Philippines to buy one. Mark Scholfield, 43, a father of two children, aged 16 and 13, has saved £40,000 for the operation in Manila, where it is legal for people to sell their kidneys.
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Everyone knows about postnatal depression – but figures show that the black cloud descends on more women before the birth than afterwards. Our correspondent reports on a condition that can affect unborn babies as well as their mothers
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‘My mood went into freefall’ - The Times 4th December 2007
Do not bother holding the front page: scientists have come a step closer to perfecting the male contraceptive Pill. Oh, why don’t they save their Petri dishes for something more useful? Like, say, developing acne cream for frogs? Male birth control just won’t work. Men cannot be trusted to change their underwear regularly, never mind take a tablet. And even if they do, no one would believe them. A drunken man at 3am whispering: “It’s OK, love – I’m on the Pill” into a woman’s ear is about as likely to pull as John McCririck.
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BRIAN STREVENS group chief executive at SCA Group, a social enterprise, on an initiative that helps residents in deprived areas to gain access to NHS dental treatment SCA Group started because there was a lack of community social services in the independent sector. It was very successful and we decided to expand into community healthcare. We saw an opportunity with dental services. Hampshire had a real shortage of NHS dentists – whole areas didn’t have any because local dentists would work only privately.
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FLU jabs in supermarkets may seem like a convenient idea and a good way to break up a spell of shopping, but what happens if it goes wrong? Dr Nick Brown, a GP in Chippenham, Wiltshire, tells GP (Nov 30) that a patient of his, who was ineligible for an NHS jab, paid for an “off the shelf” service, situated somewhere between the meat counter and the alcoholic drinks department of a local supermarket.
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In spite of recent provocations, we mustn't start behaving as if the British government was an episode of Strictly Come Dancing. Prime Ministers should not be summarily slammed and booted off with a quick show of the old thumbs-down, as if every form of seriousness was actually best treated as a kind of hysterical entertainment. There is a sense just now that we enjoy failure more than we respect success, and I know that seems rational when there's not a lot of success about to respect.
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We all know lifestyle plays a major role in our risk of developing certain illnesses. But what we're born with is also important - not just those 'faulty' genes which are known to trigger certain diseases, but also physical characteristics determined from birth. Here, Angela Epstein reveals what our bodies about our future health...
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Some patients with neuromuscular diseases may die more than a decade too soon because specialist services are too far away, a report says. It found people with muscular dystrophy in north east England - close to a centre of excellence - live an average of 30 years after diagnosis.
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It is 40 years since the first heart transplant was carried out by Dr Christiaan Barnard in Cape Town, South Africa. What would Barnard say about transplantation today? Admittedly, his patient lasted little longer than two weeks, but a huge medical advance had been made. Yet 40 years on, are we still advancing? Well, here in the UK, not exactly. Heart transplantation in this country was at its peak about a decade ago. Then, over 350 such operations were carried out each year.
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