Alton Towers to test excluding people with autism and ADHD from disability fast lane

People with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), anxiety and autism will be prevented from using fast-lane disability queueing passes at Alton Towers during a trial over the February half-term holidays.Merlin Entertainments, which runs the theme park in Staffordshire, provides a “ride access pass” to visitors who have difficulty queueing due to a disability or medical condition.The pass allows guests to book a slot on a virtual queueing system for themselves and up to three companions. They are then allowed to wait for their turn away from often crowded queues.But the company said disabled visitors with “additional accessibility needs” have said the digital pass “simply isn’t working for them, particularly as demand has grown and queue times for these guests have increased”

We need new drugs for mental ill-health | Letter

It is not only veterans and emergency workers living with post-traumatic stress disorder who could benefit if ministers heed the call from Sir Nick Carter (Ex-British army chief calls on ministers to back MDMA-assisted therapy for veterans, 1 February). Thousands of people who have major mental illness, and those dealing with bereavement and trauma, could be helped too.The shocking lack of progress in developing transformative psychiatric medicines, and a dearth of innovation has left clinicians with few weapons in their armoury to relieve mental pain. Families and people scarred by long-term distress tell us they are desperate for new treatments and therapies.At the Prince of Wales International Centre for Sane Research, our research centre in Oxford, we host clinical trials researching the medical use of innovative interventions such as esketamine and cannabidiol for psychiatric ill-health

Violence is part and parcel of how prisons function | Letter

Alex South’s article (Death on the inside: as a prison officer, I saw how the system perpetuates violence, 13 January) limits the scope of prison violence to individual acts by focusing on prisoner-on-prisoner homicides. But violence is part and parcel of how prisons function.Hundreds of people die in prison each year, the majority by suicide, medical neglect or drugs. Even if we focus on homicides, they reveal how violence operates at an institutional level. Last year, the inquest of Sundeep Ghuman exposed how it was multiple failures by the prison, not just the actions of his cellmate, that led to his unlawful killing

Blanket rule on trans women in men’s prisons would deny their identity, says Scottish government

A blanket rule to house transgender women in men’s prisons, even when they pose no risk to others, would be a “fundamental denial” of their identity, the Scottish government has argued.Placing a trans inmate in a prison that does not align with their lived gender runs counter to the aims of rehabilitation, Gerry Moynihan KC said on Thursday as he set out Scottish ministers’ position that a blanket rule on where prisoners are housed could contravene obligations under the European convention on human rights.In its latest court battle with the SNP government, For Women Scotland is challenging guidance that says trans prisoners should be housed according to individual risk assessment, which the group argues is contrary to the supreme court’s ruling on women-only spaces.For Women Scotland brought the original challenge that resulted in last April’s landmark ruling that the definition of a woman in equalities law refers to biological sex.Arguing that the supreme court decision was “not a universal proposition” but only for the purposes of the Equality Act, Moynihan said: “Where a transgender prisoner does not pose an article 8 problem, does not threaten the rights of others – are we to have an absolute rule that says that they must be accommodated in a prison of their sex?“Why? The sole reason is that they are to be classified as a man

Does getting cold increase your chances of catching flu?

“Put your coat on or you’ll catch your death of cold.” It’s a common refrain that feeds the narrative that getting cold will make us sick. And it’s true that illnesses are more common during the winter months, but is it true that you are more likely to catch the flu if you forget your hat?Not exactly. Writing in The Conversation, medical microbiologist Manal Mohammed from the University of Westminster has explained that colds and flu are caused by viruses that spread either by respiratory droplets or person to person regardless of the temperature. However, there is a bit of truth in the idea – many viruses survive for longer in colder and dryer conditions, increasing the chances of them hanging around and infecting a fresh victim

Autistic girls much less likely to be diagnosed, study says

Females may be just as likely to be autistic as males but boys are up to four times more likely to be diagnosed in childhood, according to a large-scale study.Research led by the Karolinska Institutet in Sweden scrutinised the diagnosis rates of autism for people born in Sweden between 1985 and 2020. Of the 2.7 million people tracked, 2.8% were diagnosed with autism between the ages of two and 37