Claire Edwards’s role as a consultant orthopaedic surgeon at Norfolk and Norwich University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust gives her “that joy of working with your hands and making a visible and functional difference.”“You see change happen before your eyes. Using your hands to create something or to change something is deeply satisfying,” says Edwards, whose other roles include being head of the School of Surgery for the East of England.A hand and wrist surgeon, she enjoys the variety this specialism brings. “It’s about listening to patients, then working together to reach a shared understanding of what might be causing their symptoms and what we can do to help,” she says.As a musician—Edwards plays clarinet and piano—she is interested in treating musicians’ hand problems. “If a violinist has arthritis, I might treat the left hand and right hand quite differently, because the right hand needs to control the bow, and the...

What’s eating you?Not a human being, hopefully. Quite aside from the fact it’s one of humanity’s biggest taboos, cannibalism actually endangers whole populations, say scientists.1They haven’t done an RCT, I hope?Not sure the regulators would approve that one. But experts from Poland and the Czech Republic have suggested that cannibalism became taboo in human societies not because of instinct but because it is harmful to populations who partake in it.Flesh things out for usMichal Misiak of the University of Wroclaw and Petr Turecek of Charles University in Prague used a mathematical model to explore why cannibalism continues to periodically recur in populations, and what factors suppress it. The model assessed cannibalism as a potential food source, weighing up theoretical nutritional benefits against multiple costs including infection.I’m hungry for an explanationTheir findings, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that sustained cannibalism could lead to societal collapse...

The current Bundibugyo Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and Uganda is exposing dangerous gaps in global health security. Experts warn that, amid the aid cuts and ongoing conflict in the region, the outbreak could become one of the deadliest Ebola epidemics to date.1 In the absence of an approved vaccine, the main tools for control are trust, community collaboration, and systemic empathy.Systemic empathy describes how health systems care for people, including their own staff. It prevents stigma, which can catalyse a vicious cycle of contagion. In a stigmatised environment, symptomatic people and their families often avoid medical care out of fear of discrimination, forced isolation, and the denial of proper burial rites.2 At community level, the abrupt enforcement of coercive or heavily militarised measures intensify stigma, fuel rumours, and undermine cooperation.3The arson of an Ebola treatment centre in Rwampara, DRC, on 21 May 2026 is...

We are researchers, trade unionists, members of parliament, bereaved family members, charity leaders, business representatives, and investors who share knowledge and experience of the devastating consequences of work related suicide. We urge the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) to include work related suicides in its current consultation on reportable deaths and injuries.1 Recognising suicide as a potentially work related death is a first urgent step in making workplaces safer and preventing suicide deaths.An estimated 600 suicide deaths per year in the UK are work related.2 Yet, the HSE continues to exclude suicide from reporting requirements, treating it as an exception in relation to every other work related injury or death.This position is dangerously outdated. It ignores the changing demands of work and its impact on psychological harm or despair. It undermines the HSE’s core mission to keep workplaces safe. It places the UK sharply at odds with health and safety...

Ethnicity is a social construct that influences health outcomes and is closely tied to a person’s cultural identity, including language and customs.1 Race is a polemical sociopolitical construct, historically used to divide people based on perceived physical differences.2 Both concepts are closely linked to the social determinants of health and influence disease aetiology, prognosis, treatment, help seeking, and care.3 It is therefore important to recognise and measure ethnicity and race, because exclusion and discrimination based on these factors can amplify structural inequities and population risk factors for disease.45However, the measuring of these variables is challenging because the language and terminology used to describe them is sensitive, owing to, in part, the close association between identity; the aftermath of colonisation, violence, and trauma; and contemporary structural racism and prejudicial norms.67 Ethnicity and race also intersect with other multidimensional variables such as religion, language, and country of birth. Collecting information about these...

The deaths of two children have prompted calls for patients referred to hospital by a GP to be assessed by a doctor.The Doctors’ Association UK (DAUK) campaign group has written to the health and social care secretary, James Murray,1 highlighting the deaths of 8 year old Ethan Hanson and 9 year old Dylan Cope. Neither child was assessed by a doctor while in hospital.Ethan was initially assessed by a GP, who raised the alarm about his condition and advised urgent emergency treatment. But a later assessment by an advanced nurse practitioner saw him treated for constipation and sent home.2 Ethan died in April 2025 from septic shock and perforated appendicitis.Dylan died in December 2022 after a diagnosis of a ruptured appendix and sepsis. He attended the emergency department on referral from his GP for suspected appendicitis. He was examined by a nurse practitioner who failed to refer to the GP’s...

“Better to die from Ebola than the attacker who would come and cut my head off.” That was what Yap Boum II’s driver told him as he arrived this week in Beni, North Kivu, a province of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).Boum is head of the emergency preparedness and response division for the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC). He is also regional incident manager for the Ebola response. In early June he visited an Ebola treatment centre in Beni. A week before his trip more than 30 people were killed in attacks on nearby villages. Multiple victims were beheaded.1“When you listen to that, you change your perspective on what your role is in the response,” Boum told The BMJ. “The most important thing we have is the trust of the community—which is not a given.”Since the current Ebola outbreak emerged in mid-May2 there have...

The UK’s drug regulator has approved a daily pill version of the obesity drug semaglutide (Wegovy) for weight loss.The tablet form of Wegovy, manufactured by Novo Nordisk, is the first glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) receptor agonist pill to be approved by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) for weight loss and weight management in the UK.The drug has until now been approved only in injectable form. However, oral semaglutide is already approved in the UK for treating type 2 diabetes under the brand name Rybelsus.1The MHRA’s approval of the drug for weight loss opens the door to more UK patients taking the oral version, but it will first have to be evaluated by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) before it can be used in the NHS.The treatment—which is cheaper than the traditional injectable version and has a more easily disturbed mechanism of action—was approved in...

Thousands of young people across England, Wales, and Scotland will be offered the meningitis B (MenB) vaccine for the first time this summer.123Eligible students—those finishing year 13 this summer (aged 17 and 18), together with people under 25 starting university or other residential further education—will be offered two doses of the vaccine, at least four weeks apart, before they start further education this autumn.The programme is being launched after the major outbreak seen in Kent in March, which led to two deaths.4The Department of Health and Social Care described the outbreak as the “fastest growing and largest ever seen in the UK” but said there had also been “more clusters than normal this year, some of which have been bigger than expected.”Young people eligible for the vaccine will be contacted directly through the NHS app, text, email, or letter, depending on records held by the health service.Announcing the expanded vaccination...

The NHS must be less risk averse in adopting digitalisation, technology, and artificial intelligence, the new health and social care secretary James Murray has said.In his first major speech since replacing Wes Streeting last month.12 Murray also said ministers “cannot go further” in boosting the pay of resident doctors, who are due to go on strike again from Monday 15 June.Speaking at the NHS ConfedExpo conference in Manchester on 11 June, Murray said the NHS “too often” let concern over potential risks overshadow thinking about benefits of new technology.Instead, the NHS needed to “innovate and take the right risks,” he told the conference. “Too often the question is, ’What if it goes wrong?’—and of course that is an entirely legitimate question to ask, especially in health and social care where we are talking about profound consequences,” he said.“We also need to balance that question by giving equal weight to another...

Hospitals in England cared for around 90 000 patients last month—nearly 3000 a day—in corridors or other inappropriate treatment areas, new figures show.NHS England data on corridor care, published for the first time on 11 June, show how far ministers are from eradicating an “unacceptable” practice that doctors’ leaders and health analysts say has become “normalised.”“It should be a source of national shame this has been allowed to happen to our health service in the 21st century,” said Den Langhor, emergency medicine lead for the BMA’s Consultants Committee. “Treating patients in corridors isn’t just inappropriate: it’s undignified and often unsafe.”NHS England describes corridor care as a “significant patient safety and experience issue”1—defined as when patients in emergency departments and inpatient wards spend more than 45 minutes in a clinically inappropriate place where they cannot be assured of essential equipment or dignity.This includes patients in emergency departments receiving treatment, those waiting...

The president elect of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) has resigned following uproar at the association’s annual meeting, when five doctors were forcibly ejected after handing out copies of an editorial criticising the administration of the US president, Donald Trump.1Jennifer Green, professor of medicine at the Duke Clinical Research Institute, was due to lead the ADA from January 2027. But multiple sources cited by the MedPage Today news site,2 which broke the story, said that Green had resigned after the incident.Mark Atkinson, chair of the ADA’s Scientific Sessions Planning Committee, has also reportedly resigned over the incident.Dozens of experts had walked out of the presidential address session at the annual meeting on 7 June, holding a sign reading, “We stand with science.”The ADA has formally apologised to the five doctors expelled. In a video uploaded on 10 June3 Charles Henderson, ADA chief executive, said, “I recognise the impact that experience...

Thousands of men in England with prostate cancer are to be offered high powered “precision” radiotherapy that will cut their number of treatment sessions from 20 to five.The pioneering multibeam radiotherapy, known as stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR), will treat the condition far more quickly and with fewer side effects, said NHS England (NHSE).Standard external beam radiotherapy delivers several beams of radiation to the treatment area and is typically given as a number of daily doses over a period of weeks. But SABR uses many smaller, focused beams of radiation directed from different angles that meet at the tumour, thus giving it a high dose of radiation while the surrounding healthy tissues get a much lower dose, lowering the risk of damage to normal cells.SABR is already offered to some patients with lung, liver, pancreatic, or brain cancer. The announcement on 10 June means that it will now also be available...

Ongoing resident doctors' strikes indicate overt workforce tensions in the UK.1 By contrast, Japan faces a less visible but equally concerning “silent strike.” Despite universal health coverage, increasing numbers of young doctors are opting out of core specialties such as internal medicine, general surgery, and paediatrics.2Government data show that, between 2006 and 2024, the number of trainees under 30 declined by 48% in internal medicine, 36% in general surgery, and 17% in paediatrics.3 Meanwhile, entry into cosmetic medicine has risen 16-fold. This shift reflects structural disincentives. Cosmetic practice, outside the national insurance system, allows flexible pricing, whereas insured care is tightly regulated. Financial pressures have intensified, the proportion of clinics making a loss increasing from 24.6% in 2023 to 39.2% in 2024.4Career structures further limit choices. The specialist training system introduced in 2018 restricts mobility by tying early career doctors to financially vulnerable institutions. In addition, the 2024 work-style reform,...

AbstractAutism is a neurodevelopmental condition with varied trajectories through the lifespan, leading to individualized patterns of strengths and challenges. Longitudinal autism cohort studies show the importance of developmental and adaptive skills starting in the early years, followed by emerging co-occurring conditions, and opportunities for autonomy and community participation when approaching adulthood. Studies of interventions to support developmental outcomes in autistic children have shown benefits; however, adverse events from therapies and outcomes prioritized by autistic people must be incorporated. Programs for autistic children and youth are making some progress by including members of diverse communities, developing and adapting interventions to meet their needs. Most importantly, autistic people have highlighted the many contributors to a ‘good life’, prominent among which are acceptance and meaningful inclusion. This review summarizes the latest evidence about developmental trajectories and outcomes among autistic children and youth, and how this translates into clinical practice and policy.

Retatrutide, a triple action treatment for type 2 diabetes, could significantly reduce blood glucose concentrations and body weight in patients with the condition, a phase 3 trial has reported.The results, published in the Lancet,1 show that patients who received injections of retatrutide for 40 weeks lost more than four times as much weight as those in the placebo group. After 40 weeks the average reduction in HbA1c with the new treatment was more than twice that in the placebo group, showed the trial, which was funded by the drug's manufacturer, Eli Lilly.Retatrutide is a triple hormone receptor agonist that targets receptors for glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) to suppress appetite, glucose dependent insulinotropic polypeptide (GIP) to control blood glucose concentrations, and glucagon to increase energy expenditure. This is in contrast to semaglutide (Ozempic), which targets just GLP-1 receptors, or tirzepatide (Mounjaro), which works on both GLP-1 and GIP, so is termed a...

Resident doctors and consultants in Northern Ireland have voted to go ahead with two 24 hour strikes later this month in a dispute over pay.A pay uplift of 3.5% for 2026-27 was recommended by the Doctors' and Dentists' Pay Review Body earlier this year.But the offer was rejected by the BMA in Northern Ireland, which then balloted its members on strike action.1 The organisation claims that Northern Irish doctors' real terms pay is significantly lower than 18 years ago.With the strikes now imminent, the BMA said that it was up to the minister of health in Northern Ireland to come forward with a “credible” pay offer.David Farren, chair of the BMA's Northern Ireland Consultants Committee, said, “This result sends a very clear message that concerns about pay erosion, workload, and the future of the profession are widely shared across the workforce, across all grades of hospital doctor.”Of the doctors who...

The retired GP and climate activist Sarah Benn has had her suspension from the medical register extended again after a tribunal.Benn was initially suspended for five months in April 2024 for breaching court orders and for contempt of court while taking part in climate change protests at an oil terminal in 2022.1In 2023 she pleaded guilty to criminal damage after chalk spraying the gates and a wall at a company involved in animal testing. She was referred for a second hearing at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal Service (MPTS), which then suspended her for 12 months in June of last year.2 Last week (5 June) she was suspended for a further 12 months after a fresh MPTS hearing.Benn qualified in 1990 and spent 32 years in clinical practice, working as a GP for most of her career before retiring in 2022. In 2022 she attended climate protests on three occasions at...

This Viewpoint discusses policies the Biden administration can enact to reduce costs, including benchmarking Medicare Part B drug payments to the lowest price paid in similar countries, preventing Part D plans from negotiating confidential rebates with manufacturers, and patent reform to promote generic drug use.

This Viewpoint reviews evidence that higher hospital prices reflect greater market power more than higher-quality services and proposes that backstop price caps can mitigate harms from the most excessive prices without constraining or distorting competitive health care markets.