Key takeaways from world’s largest cancer conference in Chicago

Doctors, scientists and researchers shared new findings on ways to tackle cancer at the 2025 American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting, the world’s largest cancer conference.The event in Chicago, attended by about 44,000 health professionals, featured more than 200 sessions on this year’s theme, Driving Knowledge to Action: Building a Better Future. Here is a roundup of the key studies.An immunotherapy drug could help some cancer patients live years longer without the disease getting worse or coming back, a trial found.Pembrolizumab, sold under the brand name Keytruda, kept head and neck cancers at bay for five years, compared with 30 months with standard care

Free school meals extended but winter fuel changes could tax dead pensioners’ families

Bereaved families of tens of thousands of dead pensioners could be pursued by tax officials to recoup winter fuel payments under a new system being explored by the Treasury, the Guardian has learned.In a further attempt to win public support and quell Labour backbench concerns, ministers are announcing on Thursday that all pupils in England whose families claim universal credit will be eligible for free school meals under an expansion of the scheme.Rachel Reeves, the chancellor, confirmed on Wednesday that more pensioners will get winter fuel payments reinstated this year after weeks of uncertainty over the government’s decision to make a U-turn on scrapping the benefit.Ministers are looking at restoring the payments as a universal benefit and then recouping the money when high-income pensioners fill in their tax returns, as creating a new means test would be a highly complex option.However, government insiders are concerned about a time lag of at least six months between the payment of up to £300 being made and it then being clawed back

EHRC commissioner calls for ‘period of correction’ on trans rights after legal ruling

Transgender people must acknowledge a “period of correction” of rights after the supreme court decision on gender because they “have been lied to over many years” about what their rights actually were, one of the commissioners drawing up the official post-ruling guidance has said.Speaking at a debate about the repercussions of April’s ruling that “woman” in the Equality Act refers only to a biological woman, Akua Reindorf said trans people had been misled about their rights and there “has to be a period of correction, because other people have rights”.Reindorf, a barrister who is one of eight commissioners at the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), who was speaking in a personal capacity, said she believes the fault lay with trans lobbyists.However, the human rights campaign groups Liberty and Amnesty called on the EHRC to make sure the rights of trans people were properly considered when it draws up guidance for public bodies on how to implement the changed legal landscape.A director of the trans campaign group TransActual said Reindorf’s remarks were profoundly unhelpful

‘Stress crisis’ in UK as 5m struggle with financial, health and housing insecurity

More than 5 million UK adults are experiencing a triple whammy of financial, health and housing insecurity as British households hit levels of “multi-stress” not seen since the global economic crash well over a decade ago, research shows.One in 10 working-age adults are juggling low income and debt, insecure tenancies and high rents, and problems accessing NHS care. They are at least twice as likely as the rest of the population to report mental stress, sleeplessness and isolation.Researchers said the explosion in multiple insecurity amounted to a “national stress crisis”, with those affected experiencing heightened volatility and uncertainty in their lives and profound feelings of powerlessness and lack of control.The analysis highlights the rise in the number of people experiencing a combination of three separate categories of insecurity to map the extent to which people have the capacity to enjoy a good quality of life, materially and psychologically

Less than 4% of exploited care workers helped by UK government scheme

Less than 4% of exploited care workers have reported finding new work in a multimillion-pound government scheme designed to rematch them with new employers.Analysis by the Work Rights Centre found just 3.4% of the 28,000 exploited migrant care workers signposted to a service to find them new jobs had reported being rematched with a new employer, while 131,000 social care vacancies remain unfilled.Dr Dora-Olivia Vicol, chief executive of the charity, said: “After Covid, England desperately needed more care workers, and thousands of people from around the world answered that call in good faith.“But instead of jobs they got scams, and instead of justice they got a referral to a programme that simply doesn’t work as intended

Weight loss drugs linked to higher risk of eye damage in diabetic patients

Weight loss drugs could at least double the risk of diabetic patients developing age-related macular degeneration, a large-scale study has found.Originally developed for diabetes patients, glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonist (GLP-1 RA) medicines have transformed how obesity is treated and there is growing evidence of wider health benefits. They help reduce blood sugar levels, slow digestion and reduce appetite.But a study by Canadian scientists published in Jama Ophthalmology has found that after six months of use GLP-1 RAs are associated with double the risk of older people with diabetes developing neovascular age-related macular degeneration compared with similar patients not taking the drugs.Academics at the University of Toronto examined medical data for more than 1 million Ontario residents with a diagnosis of diabetes and identified 46,334 patients with an average age of 66 who were prescribed GLP-1 RAs