Resident doctors have good reason to strike over pay | Letters

I write in response to the letter from senior clinicians urging resident doctors to vote against strike action (8 June). During my 22-year career we have seen fundamental changes in medical training, including the introduction of tuition fees for medical school, loss of free accommodation for first-year doctors, the lack of expansion in training numbers, and pay erosion over 15 years.This has left many resident doctors with crippling debt on graduation, spiralling costs of training, deteriorating pay, and the prospect of unemployment. I, and the authors of the letter, were fortunate enough not to face such hardships during training.Hence I urge colleagues not to influence the negotiations between the British Medical Association (BMA) and the government regarding resident doctors’ pay

Suman Fernando obituary

My friend and colleague Suman Fernando, who has died aged 92, had an international reputation in the field of critical psychiatry, particularly in relation to advocating for race equity in mental health.As well as being a consultant psychiatrist in the NHS for more than 20 years, Suman wrote 14 books and many articles in which he consistently and methodically challenged institutional racism in British mental health provision.In his first book, Race and Culture in Society (1988), he explored the role that race and culture play in how people experience mental health issues and services. In his breakthrough 1991 book, Mental Health, Race and Culture, he challenged the dominance and singularity of the medical model, and argued that any service response for minority communities should also focus on social, cultural and institutional issues.Suman often juxtaposed the western, individualised notion of mental illness with those of the global south or indigenous healing systems that see fragmentation of community cohesion as causal, with responses that are more spiritual and community-based

Robert Tollemache obituary

My father, Robert Tollemache, who has died aged 88, was a well-respected psychotherapist, best known for his work at the Open Door young people’s mental health charity, the Inner City Centre psychotherapy service and the medical foundation Freedom from Torture.He completed his training at the Lincoln Clinic and Centre for Psychotherapy in 1985, and for 40 years maintained a private practice in Highbury, north London. Alongside his clinical work, he campaigned tirelessly to raise awareness on environmental issues, completing a PhD, aged 79, on climate change denial. He was still working for the Islington Climate Centre weeks before his death.Born at the Royal Marines barracks in Plymouth, Robert was the youngest of the four children of Nora (nee Taylor) and Maj Gen Sir Humphry Tollemache

‘That child is not a product’: how IVF big business plays on hope of people desperate for a family

IVF is “big business” and experts are concerned about conflicts of interest between profit-making and helping families have children. Monash IVF’s second embryo bungle has sparked renewed scrutiny on the IVF industry as a whole amid calls for national regulation.On Friday, state and federal health ministers agreed to a three-month review of the need for a federal scheme.Monash IVF’s chief executive officer, Michael Knapp, stepped down this week after the second mistake the company revealed this year.In April, Monash IVF revealed a woman had given birth to a stranger’s child after being implanted with the wrong embryo in a Queensland clinic

Society may have overestimated risk of the ‘manosphere’, UK researchers say

Men who engage in the online “manosphere” and the content of Andrew Tate are often able to express a “strong commitment to equal treatment and fairness”, according to research commissioned by Ofcom.Prompted by growing concerns about internet misogyny, researchers for the UK communications regulator followed the journeys of dozens of men through online content ranging from the US podcaster Joe Rogan to forums for “incels” (involuntary celibates). They found that while a minority encountered “extremely misogynistic content”, many users of the manosphere were critically engaged, selective and capable of discarding messages that did not resonate with their values.They found it was far from a unified community: many participants felt the various subcultures under the manosphere umbrella were misunderstood, with extreme misogyny being grouped with benign self-improvement content. Several participants were drawn to it by its perceived humour, open debate and irreverence as well as connecting with views they found about traditional gender roles and family dynamics

‘Transformative’: the UK lab working on a way to halt genetic type of dementia

Behind the gleaming glass facade of an office block in east London’s Docklands, Dr Martina Esposito Soccoio is pipetting ribonucleic acid into test tubes.Here, not far from Canary Wharf’s multinational banks, a British university spinout is working on a breakthrough treatment for a form of dementia that affects millions of people worldwide.There is no cure for dementia at present, but scientists at AviadoBio hope their clinical studies can stop the progression of a particular genetic type of frontotemporal dementia (FTD).“It may be one of the first dementias to have a definitive treatment, a cure if you like, a really transformative treatment that allows people to live much longer and much more normal lives,” says Prof James Rowe, a consultant neurologist at Cambridge’s Addenbrooke’s hospital who is involved in the UK trial.FTD mainly affects the front and sides of the brain and, unlike Alzheimer’s disease, does not begin with memory loss, which tends to occur later