Illegal weight-loss drugs being sold in UK by firms with high Trustpilot scores

Companies selling illegal weight-loss drugs are amassing positive Trustpilot reviews as critics say regulatory gaps allow high-risk operators to appear credible.A Guardian investigation found that Retatrutide UK had a score of 4.4 on the global review site, despite purporting to offer a drug that is unlicensed and illegal to sell or buy. Its website sells a 20mg retatrutide pen for £132.It is among a number of operators promoting themselves on the review website to appear legitimate

Failure to diagnose treatable male infertility leading to unnecessary IVF, experts say

Couples are needlessly going through IVF because male infertility is under-researched, with the NHS too often failing to diagnose treatable causes, leading experts have said.Poor understanding among GPs and a lack of specialists and NHS testing means male infertility is often left untreated in couples struggling to conceive, despite men accounting for 50% of all infertility cases.Many causes of male infertility are treatable. One of the most common, varicocele – a dilated vein in the scrotum that increases testicular temperatures, damaging sperm – can be treated through surgery, while lifestyle adjustments and supplements can also help.Vaibhav Modgil, an honorary clinical professor at the University of Manchester, and consultant urological surgeon and andrologist, said there was a lack of awareness of male infertility, which affects between 5% and 10% of men in the UK

‘It was soul destroying’: men on the struggle to get answers about infertility

After six years of trying for a baby and two failed rounds of IVF, Toby Trice found himself at his “lowest ebb”, feeling “lost, lonely and alienated from society”.“We were in this dark phase of not knowing where we were at. All our friends and family around us had children and we were constantly reminded we couldn’t. It was soul-destroying.“After the second round of IVF – and hope was ripped away from us – I had suicidal thoughts

Lessons not learned after Georgia Barter driven to suicide by abuse, says her mother

The family of a woman judged to have been unlawfully killed by her partner after she took her own life following years of domestic abuse has said “lessons have still not been learnt” after the government indicated it would not make changes to how officers use the police national database.An inquest earlier this year found that Georgia Barter, 32, experienced years of abuse at the hands of Thomas Bignell.The inquest, in Walthamstow, London, heard that even though Bignell was known to at least four police forces, officers were not always able to access information about previous reports or arrests on the police national database (PND) when they were called out to attend to incidents involving Barter.When he was arrested in relation to alleged assaults on her, the inquest heard that officers did not appear to have either the capacity or the authorisation to check the database.The hearing was told that the Metropolitan police and Essex police received multiple reports about Bignell’s alleged abuse of Barter, including a report from a member of the public who told Essex police that Bignell had threatened to kill her

‘We’ve got to listen to dead women’: critical part of Queensland’s DV response stops reviewing all recent deaths

The Queensland advisory board tasked with reviewing domestic and family violence deaths has quietly stopped routinely analysing new cases, and has not looked into most of the latest deaths for more than two years.Guardian Australia’s Broken trust investigation has uncovered evidence and allegations that raise concern about the way the coronial system investigates women’s deaths and the accuracy of Queensland’s DFV statistics.Coroners have repeatedly made rulings that nothing more could have been done to prevent homicides, in the face of evidence of serious policing and system failures that have contributed to women’s deaths and the mounting toll.Queensland’s Domestic and Family Violence Death Review and Advisory Board is considered a “critical” part of the state’s response to domestic and family violence. Its aim is to “prevent future avoidable deaths”

What has happened since the UK supreme court’s gender ruling?

In April, the supreme court ruled in a long-running case against the Scottish government brought by gender critical campaigners For Women Scotland (FWS). The landmark judgment said that, for the purposes of the Equality Act, the legal definition of a woman was based on biological sex. We look at what has happened since the ruling.The judgment has significant ramifications for who can now access women-only services and spaces, such as refuges or toilets, but most public bodies, businesses and other service providers are still waiting for an updated code of practice from the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), which will offer practical guidance on how to apply the ruling.A few companies, such as Barclays, moved quickly to bar transgender people from using toilets of their lived gender, as did Virgin Active, after a legal threat this summer