Forty-two athletes, including swimmers, weightlifters and sprinters, will compete in Las Vegas on Sunday in the first Enhanced Games.

Little in sport has “caused as much controversy – nor provoked as many questions – as the Enhanced Games”, said BBC sports editor Dan Roan. “Those behind it claim it is here to stay, and could soon expand to more events and other disciplines.”

But there is another side to the spectacle of juiced-up competitors trying to beat the world record in their discipline. Earlier this year, the company behind the event, Enhanced, launched a range of personalised performance and longevity medicines to sell to the public.

What did the commentators say?

Proponents of the games say the aim is “to challenge sporting norms by allowing athletes to push their potential with legal drugs under strict medical oversight”, said Chris Kenning in USA Today. “The approach is, let’s not be naive and pretend it’s not happening,” said Enhanced CEO Max Martin. “Let’s just take what’s happening in the shadows, put it out in the open.”

But that’s not sensible, say some sports medicine experts. “It’s akin to me saying I’m going to make smoking safe by supervising you while you’re smoking,” Aaron Baggish, professor of medicine at the University of Lausanne, told Yahoo Sports.

Most critics though “overlook the fact that the Enhanced Games is making obvious what society has always quietly accepted”, said Byron Hyde, philosopher of science and public policy at Bristol University, on The Conversation – namely “that most people are willing to watch athletes risk harm when the entertainment is good enough”. Brain trauma is the “potential price of boxing entertainment”, so “why the outrage about pharmaceutical enhancement risks?”

For Baggish, the “primary concern” is the message the event sends to the public that using these substances when taking part in sports “is in any way, shape or form OK. That’s the really scary thing.”

That appears to be one of the goals of the organisers. Aron D’Souza, founder of the Enhanced Games, told The Independent in 2024: “This is the route towards eternal life.” The games will “bring about performance-medicine technologies that then create a feedback cycle of good technologies, selling to the world, more revenue, more R&D, to develop better and better technologies”. Ultimately, “it’s about being a better, stronger, faster, younger athlete for longer. And who doesn’t want to be younger for longer?”

But, said The Economist, “the real purpose of the games is to push the limits of what the public sees as the acceptable use of performance-enhancing drugs”. The event is taking place “at a time when concerns are being raised over the medicalisation of Western society”, said Roan. Social media and ‘looksmaxxing’ are being “blamed for fuelling demand for weight-loss injections, cosmetic treatments and performance substances”.

What next?

The Enhanced Games “speak to a vision of the future in which medicines, rather than being simply used to treat disease, can extend human longevity and enhance well-being”, said The Economist.

But on Sunday, the athletes involved will effectively be the guinea pigs for this idea, albeit ones who have “burned bridges, risked their future livelihoods or their health”. And with the launch of Enhanced’s consumer business, “more and more people may soon be wagering their bodies on a chance to roll back the clock”.

Two things are true: Cruise ships can be breeding grounds for disease. Americans love cruises anyway.

Expedition cruise lines “haven’t experienced any slowdown in bookings” following the deadly hantavirus outbreak on the MV Hondius, said The Wall Street Journal. Oceangoing travelers “generally understand the realities” of long boat journeys, Expedition Cruise Network CEO Akvile Marozaite said to the newspaper. Despite the scary headlines, industry experts “expect a record number of people” to take cruises this year, said The Associated Press. The sector “seems to be somewhat Teflon” to the bad publicity, Cornell University’s Robert Kwortnik said to the outlet.

What did the commentators say?

“Why would anyone go on a cruise?” Dave Schilling said at The Guardian. The Hondius drew worldwide attention, but a separate ship that was briefly quarantined with a rash of stomach flu cases was largely overlooked by the media. The stories are “piling up” about cruise ships being ocean-bound “fetid petri dishes.” There is not “one thing” a cruise offers “that isn’t available in the safe bosom of dry land.” Cruises will remain popular anyway. If Covid-19 “didn’t kill” enthusiasm for the excursions, “I think the industry is safe.”

People who criticize cruises are “wrong about nearly everything,” Nicole Russell said at USA Today. The hantavirus outbreak “won’t dampen my desire to go on a cruise.” There may be many stories of “terrible things happening on cruise ships,” but they are “worth the risk” because they can provide an “affordable, joy-filled family vacation.” Cruises, like life, are a “trade-off.” And life is “meant to be lived.“

“Do I think cruises are worth it, health-wise?” epidemiologist Gideon Meyerowitz-Katz said at Slate. The answer is a “bit complicated.” Cruises are “absolutely great places for illnesses to thrive,” but there is not a “great deal of evidence showing that infections are more likely” than on land. It is possible that people “just generally come into contact with lots of others on vacation.” Meyerowitz-Katz is considering taking his own family on a cruise. After weighing both the risks and benefits, “it doesn’t seem like the worst idea in the world.“

What next?

People planning to take a cruise should “practice great hand hygiene,” said CNBC. They should also “get up-to-date on your vaccines” before departing. And they should “keep a safe social distance” if illness rears its head. Best to stay clear of anyone who is coughing, “has difficulty breathing or is exhibiting fever,” Wellness Equity Alliance’s Dr. Tyler B. Evans said to the outlet.

The Hondius’ next voyage is already planned, said Forbes. After arriving in the Netherlands, the ship is to be “disinfected using chlorine and peroxide,” and the crew quarantined. Two scheduled voyages for the Hondius were canceled, but the plan “pending successful cleaning” is to sail in June from the Svalbard islands to the North Pole.

Rising Ebola cases in the Democratic Republic of the Congo are ringing alarm bells across a region still scarred by previous outbreaks of the highly contagious viral disease. The World Health Organization has declared a “public health emergency of international concern”.

At least 540 suspected cases and 131 suspected deaths have been reported by DR Congo’s health minister, and two cases have been confirmed in neighbouring Uganda. But the WHO’s initial sampling suggests the outbreak is potentially much more widespread.

And what makes this outbreak “extraordinary”, said the WHO, is that it’s caused by the rare Bundibugyo strain of the Ebola virus. This has a lower fatality rate (about 35%) than the more common Zaire or Sudan strains (up to 90% and 50% respectively) but there is no licensed Bundibugyo-specific vaccine or treatment – and the tests for it do not appear to work very well.

What did the commentators say?

Experts are alarmed that this outbreak “has been able to spread for weeks undetected across a densely populated ​area”, said Reuters. It took weeks to identify it as the Bundibugyo strain and then pinpointing cases was “slowed by limited diagnostic capacity”, with only six tests possible per hour.

The lack of a vaccine is why I am in “panic mode”, Jean Kaseya, the director-general of Africa-Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, told Sky News. And ongoing attacks by Islamic State-backed militants in Ituri, the province at the centre of the outbreak, are “restricting surveillance and rapid response operations”.

Ituri is “rebel-held territory”, close to “porous borders” with Uganda and South Sudan that communities cross constantly, said The Times. That’s certainly one factor that’s “making containment so difficult”. Bundibugyo is also “among the least studied of the Ebola strains”: this is only the third outbreak on record.

We reached a “critical moment”, said the BBC’s health correspondent James Gallagher. Most Ebola outbreaks are small but specialists are still “haunted” by the largest, which started in 2014 and killed more than 11,000 people in West Africa. This time, there is a “significant threat” not only to DR Congo and Uganda but also South Sudan and Rwanda. But that doesn’t mean we’re “in the early stages of a Covid-style pandemic”. The risk to the rest of the world “remains tiny”.

DR Congo has “extensive experience in dealing with Ebola outbreaks”, and its response is “significantly stronger today than it was a decade ago”, Daniela Manno, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, told the BBC’s Gallagher. But recent US-led foreign-aid cuts have taken their toll. Containing the 2014 outbreak “relied on US leadership from USAID”, said Devi Sridharm, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, in The Guardian. But “the USAID team dedicated to Ebola-like diseases was cut by Elon Musk”. Since Donald Trump withdrew the US from the WHO, the organisation’s emergency-response budget has shrunk by 37%. UK foreign-aid funding has also “fallen to its lowest level in two decades”.

The worry “is less about this becoming a global pandemic” (unlikely, as Ebola only spreads through contact with infected body fluids), and more about “the devastation it can cause” to the region and its “already fragile” healthcare systems. But this is an “interconnected world”: “if your neighbour’s house is on fire, you don’t wait and watch; you help to put it out before the fire spreads to yours.”

What next?

The WHO is sending a team of experts to Congo and, on Friday, will host an emergency scientific consultation of researchers, clinicians, public health bodies and funders. “The cash-strapped organisation has already released almost $4 million (£3 million) to combat the outbreak,” said the BBC, “but much more may be needed.” Public health officials are also considering using a combination of the existing approved vaccines for the Zaire and Sudan strains.

But communities in the region “have little trust in government or external aid agencies”, said Sridhar. If Ebola spreads to a major urban hub, it will be “much more difficult to stop”.

“I don’t think that, in two months, we will be done with this outbreak”, Anne Ancia, the WHO’s representative for the DRC, told reporters in Geneva at the World Health Assembly. The 2014 Ebola outbreak took two years to end.

What happened

The World Health Organization Sunday declared an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo a “public health emergency of international concern.” More than 300 suspected cases and 88 deaths have been reported, with at least one confirmed case in the rebel-held city of Goma and two others in neighboring Uganda.

There have been more than 20 Ebola outbreaks in the region since the deadly virus was discovered in 1976, but this is only the third caused by the Bundibugyo strain, for which there are no approved vaccines or treatments.

Who said what

This is not yet a “pandemic emergency,” the WHO said, but all indications “point toward a potentially much larger outbreak than what is currently being detected,” with “significant local and regional risk of spread.” The emergency declaration “indicates that the outbreak requires coordination among countries, given its risk of international spread,” Politico said.

What next?

A “handful of Americans” in the DRC “may have been exposed to suspected cases of Ebola,” and one or more with symptoms “may need to be medically evacuated,” The Washington Post said. “The risk to Americans is low,” said Satish Pillai at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As the Iran war continues, food and vital medicines in the country are becoming increasingly scarce, said The Australian. The costs of some medicines “have risen by 400%”, and antidepressants and sleeping pills are reportedly being “dispensed without prescriptions”.

This is not unique to the Middle East, as other countries around the world face the threat of conflict, or suffer under pressures of economic and political repression. As mental health crises and resources continue to stretch, many fear the consequences could echo the fallout from the Covid pandemic.

A ‘kind of coma’

Some pharmacists in Iran have called the boom in antidepressants a form of “mass sedation”, said The Australian. These healthcare professionals believe that relaxing the strictness of distribution policy keeps the public in a “state of artificial calm” designed to “delay any popular uprising while the war continues”.

Access to the country’s black market has also been damaged since the start of the war. Built on sanctions, import shortages and “hoarding” by middlemen, the black market is “not new”. But with the joint threat of war and internet shutdown, the “shadow supply chain” has been significantly “disrupted”. As the war continues, Iran is stuck in a “kind of coma, caught between economic collapse and the dream of a better future”.

The rise in antidepressant use is part of a broader system to “doctrinise control of Iranians’ minds and bodies”, said Atlantic Council. Observers from abroad have “overlooked the concerted regime strategy to deliberately engineer this state of depression as a suppression mechanism”. By outlawing cultural events such as Valentine’s Day, “Chaharshanbe Suri (the festival of fire)” and “Shabeh Yalda (winter solstice)”, the regime has arguably “promoted gloom and hopelessness to the extent that citizens become paralysed and incapable of challenging the political status quo”.

Like Iran, Lebanon has been struck by the ongoing conflict, and has appeared to follow a similar pattern of “pushing anxious residents toward sedatives and sleeping pills”, said Y Net News. Though no official data has been released, news outlet Al-Akhbar, which has ties to Hezbollah, claimed that the “demand for sedatives had jumped by 300% since the fighting began”, said Y Net. This figure, though unverified, “points to a population under mounting psychological strain”.

Global impact

And in Cuba, economic and political crises present an “outlook that feels bleaker than the collapse of the Soviet Union”, said The Guardian. As a growing mental health crisis “envelops the island”, many citizens are “turning to prescription drugs” to cope with the US-imposed oil blockade, and still reeling from years of economic decline.

Cuba is stuck in a vicious cycle, as the economy shrinks – GDP has “contracted by 17% since 2019” – it means state pharmacies lie “empty”, while demand for their services increases. People are “leaving in large numbers”, which exacerbates the cycle further. In the last five years, “up to 20% of the population” has emigrated, which has in turn added to the “psychological load on those who chose (or were forced) to remain”.

In its ongoing campaign against Ukraine, Russia is experiencing a “spiral” of antidepressant use, said El País. The country has registered “record sales” of the medications every year since 2020. Last year’s total “nearly tripled pharmaceutical consumption” from 2019. In the same year, figures from Russian consultancy DSM show that after peace negotiations were “unsuccessfully reinitiated” in 2024, sales of antidepressants grew 36%. It appears the war, with its subsequent health crises, has had a “larger emotional impact on its population” than the Covid pandemic.

In the early 1950s, thousands of UN troops in Korea fell ill with a mysterious fever, said Chris Smith in The Spectator. Doctors suspected that a virus might be to blame – but it wasn’t until 1978 that a Korean scientist isolated the culprit in a mouse, and named it after a nearby river, the Hantan.

He also showed that hantaviruses, which are carried by rodents, can be inhaled by humans in dust contaminated by droppings or urine. The troops had likely kicked the virus up as they dug foxholes.

Old vs. New World

Since then, numerous strains that can be transmitted to humans have been identified. They divide into two groups: Old World hantaviruses, in Europe and Asia, cause kidney dysfunction and have a mortality rate of 1% to 15%; New World ones, in the Americas, lead to severe lung infections and are fatal in around 40% of cases. It was the latter group that caused the outbreak on the cruise ship MV Hondius, and specifically the Andes strain, the only hantavirus that – in very rare cases – can pass from human to human.

It is not yet clear how this outbreak started, said Esther Addley in The Guardian, but it is thought that one, or possibly two, passengers were carrying the virus, which has an incubation period of up to 42 days, when they boarded the ship in Argentina on 1 April. A Dutch ornithologist who fell ill on 6 April and died five days later has been identified as “patient zero”. He had spent months travelling in South America with his wife – who died on 26 April. A German woman then died on 2 May. By 10 May, seven others had fallen ill.

No pandemic

This week, 20 British nationals on board flew home to the UK, and were bussed to an isolation facility on the Wirral, said Sarah Knapton in The Daily Telegraph. Described as healthy, they were assessed for 72 hours and then asked to self-isolate at home for 42 days.

Health officials have stressed that we are not facing a pandemic. The Andes strain does not spread easily: it requires intimate or very close contact. And though many passengers left the ship weeks ago, there have so far been no “third-generation” cases – among people who were not on board. Given the virus’s incubation period, clinicians say that 21 June is the date to watch: if there have been no third-generation cases by then, it means the outbreak has run its course.

What happened

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday preserved access to mifepristone, a common mail-order abortion drug. The decision, which extends a pause on a lower court’s ruling while a Louisiana lawsuit on the issue plays out, means women can continue to order the pills through telehealth communications without seeing a doctor in person. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito dissented.

Who said what

This decision is “remarkable” because easy access to abortion pills is a “scheme to undermine” the court’s 2022 decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Alito wrote in his dissent. Mifepristone manufacturer Danco Laboratories said the ruling meant a “safe and effective drug Americans depend on will continue to be available.” The court “has thrown abortion providers and patients a lifeline — albeit a temporary one,” said Politico.

What next?

The Court of Appeals is not expected to rule on the Louisiana suit until after the November midterms, and the issue “could ultimately return to the justices on their normal docket,” said The Hill. In the meantime, the Federal Drug Administration is conducting a safety review of mifepristone.

After years of combined effort, an international coalition has come up with a new proposed name for one of the reproductive disorders affecting millions worldwide. Women’s reproductive health has long been a blind spot in the medical industry, but the group hopes that renaming polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) to polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome (PMOS) will help illuminate a better path forward in treating it.

Why the push to change the name PCOS?

For decades, millions of patients with symptoms like “irregular periods, pelvic pain, excess body hair and acne” have been diagnosed with PCOS, said The New York Times. Getting a diagnosis can be difficult, and those who do encounter stigma and imperfect treatment options along the way. An international consortium of doctors and researchers concluded that the condition’s name was part of the problem. Many PCOS patients “don’t have ovarian cysts at all,” but they often have “widespread hormonal and metabolic dysfunction.”

After more than a decade of “vigorous debate” over the need for a different name that more precisely describes the syndrome, a gathering of 56 organizations debuted the result: polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, or PMOS, said Stat News. It was introduced in a policy paper published in The Lancet and presented at the European Congress of Endocrinology in Prague.

Since the previous name of the illness didn’t accurately describe the condition, it contributed to “delayed diagnosis, fragmented care and stigma, while curtailing research and policy framing,” the consortium members said in the paper. The change was based on input from dozens of organizations and experts, as well as feedback from more than 14,000 patients.

The new name “moves away from the incorrect focus on cysts” to recognizing this as a “much broader condition,” said lead study author Helena Teede, the director of Melbourne’s Monash Center for Health Research and Implementation, to The Guardian. The effects of PMOS on the body are “virtually all endocrine — hormonal.” Patients instigated a name change because they knew “how much they have suffered because of the name, and they were really passionate.” The efforts were “unprecedented,” and nobody has “put this much effort into a name change ever.”

In the policy paper, the authors lay out a plan for the World Health Organization and the International Classification of Diseases to adopt the new name over the next three years, potentially making it the international standard by 2028.

How will the name change affect treatment?

The researchers hope the name change will “transform how patients understand the condition” and “how doctors treat it,” said the Times. When a condition affects one organ, everything from research funding to education to clinical guidelines is “all in that box,” Teede said to the outlet. “And in this condition, it was in the wrong box.”

The change could also have “immediate implications for some patients,” prompting doctors to “recommend more screening for metabolic and cardiovascular problems,” said the Times. Renaming it should “redirect” professionals “into thinking about this as a long-term chronic condition and not just a period problem,” Basma Faris, an assistant professor of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive science at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, said to the outlet.

Funding for studying the disorder and treatments will no longer be limited to sources focused on ovarian health, Teede said to Time. Despite affecting “170 million reproductive-age women” and creating a “health and economic burden” that is “huge,” the illness hasn’t had much investment in research. Getting it categorized differently means “we get more evidence on how to treat it.”

Women’s health is “notoriously underfunded,” Christina Boots, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Northwestern’s Feinberg School of Medicine, said to CNN. Recognizing that it “spans not just reproductive issues, but mental health and metabolic health as well,” may help “enhance the number of dollars and the number of studies that are to understand it and treat it.”

About 5 million to 6 million American women have PMOS, according to the Endocrine Society and the CDC. It affects up to 12% of American women of reproductive age. Despite how common it is, the condition “remains misunderstood and underresearched,” said The Cut, and the World Health Organization estimates that nearly 70% of women who suffer from it have never been diagnosed. Even though the “diagnostic criteria have not changed,” experts hope that a new, more accurate name will “help more people get a diagnosis sooner.”

‘11 hantavirus deaths in Argentina were a warning’

Abraar Karan at The Washington Post

The “recent Andes hantavirus outbreak on the Hondius cruise ship has seized international attention after three passengers died” and the incident is a “warning sign of where the world’s pandemic prevention system still has weaknesses,” says Abraar Karan. While “there is no way to avoid outbreaks, proactive approaches could reduce risk.” More “detailed predeparture screening could help shipboard doctors diagnose sick patients better,” although “this approach is only as foolproof as the people who are reporting their exposures.”

Read more

‘The crisis in Sudan is much worse than what is acknowledged’

Zia Salik at Al Jazeera

In the “streets of Sudan’s capital, the destruction was apocalyptic,” says Zia Salik. The “difficulty in accessing many areas, and the sense that this is a complicated war in a faraway place, means the crisis has not received anywhere near the international attention it needs.” For “many people, the greatest fear now is that the unending war in the west of the country will result in Sudan, one of the largest countries in Africa, splitting in two.”

Read more

‘What leaders get wrong about the ROI of AI’

Katy George at Time

“If you ask most executives about AI right now, the conversation quickly turns to one question: where is the return?” says Katy George. That is “not because AI isn’t delivering value. It’s because many organizations are still looking for value in the wrong places.” AI’s impact “shows up in greater insight, more predictive power, in-task skill building and the ability to evaluate more scenarios before acting.” But “those gains don’t fit neatly into traditional metrics.”

Read more

‘States need to come clean on SNAP fraud’

Gov. Larry Rhoden at Newsweek

One “practical example of a resource that should be managed with care is the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP),” says Gov. Larry Rhoden (R-S.D.). Americans “should take great pride that such a program exists, but that should inspire diligence in its oversight.” States with “higher error rates — in the double digits in many cases — warrant attention and accountability to ensure program integrity is upheld nationwide.” The “solution starts with bringing greater transparency to the issue.”

Read more

What happened

Engaging in the arts, whether directly or by going to museums or concerts, helps people age more slowly, British researchers reported Monday in the journal Innovation in Aging. The benefits were found to be comparable to physical exercise and quitting smoking. They were most pronounced for people over 40 and those who engage in a wider range of artistic endeavors.

Who said what

The University College London researchers looked at how often 3,556 adults in the U.K. engaged in some artistic pursuit — singing, painting, dancing, crafting, photography — or visited an exhibition or heritage site. Those who did so weekly aged 4% slower in blood tests of their “epigenetic clock,” or biological aging. “People were around a year younger biologically if they’re regularly engaged in the arts,” researcher Daisy Fancourt, the study’s lead author, told NPR. Monthly arts engagement slowed aging by 3%.

Slower biological aging “does not necessarily mean someone will live longer,” The Guardian said, but “previous studies have suggested a link between arts engagement and longer lifespan.”

What next?

The research “builds on a growing body of evidence” that arts activities “reduce stress, lower inflammation and improve cardiovascular disease risk,” study senior author Feifei Bu told The Guardian. Regular creative engagement should be treated not “as a luxury” but “an essential,” Fancourt told The Art Newspaper, “just like we promote 10,000 steps a day or five-a-day of fruits and vegetables.”

What happened

Food and Drug Administration chief Dr. Marty Makary resigned Tuesday after a tumultuous 13 months leading the agency charged with regulating drugs, medical devices, vaccines and much of the U.S. food supply. The White House and Health and Human Services Department “agreed in recent days on the need to replace” him, The Washington Post said. “Marty is a great guy,” President Donald Trump, who posted Makary’s resignation message on social media, told reporters. But “he was having some difficulty.”

Who said what

“In the end,” Makary “had just about run out of allies,” having upset “rare-disease patients, antiabortion groups and some drug-industry leaders,” The Wall Street Journal said. Makary also “drew criticism from public health leaders who viewed him as pandering to anti-vaccine activists,” The New York Times said. But according to his confidantes, he “ultimately left over concerns about the administration’s decision to authorize fruit-flavored e-cigarettes,” a move Trump insisted on but Makary opposed “over concerns that fruity and candy flavors would lure young people to addictive vapes.”

Makary had some “strong ideas” about streamlining the drug review process, Matthew Herper said at Stat News, but he was the FDA’s “worst commissioner” in at least 25 years. He “offended almost everyone involved in FDA issues, which is not easy to do,” National Center for Health Research president Diana Zuckerman told the Times. “But it would still be a disaster if he is replaced by someone who appeals primarily to tobacco companies, anti-abortion activists” and pharmaceutical lobbyists.

What next?

Trump appointed Kyle Diamantas, the FDA’s top food regulator, as acting commissioner.

What happened

The Dutch cruise ship at the center of the hantavirus outbreak docked off Spain’s Canary Islands on Sunday so passengers could be evacuated to their home countries. They included all 17 American passengers from the MV Hondius, one of whom tested positive for the virus Sunday while another developed mild symptoms, the U.S. Health and Human Services Department said. One of five French passengers also tested positive after showing symptoms on the flight home, the French government said. Three passengers have died since April 11 and at least five others have fallen ill with hantavirus symptoms.

Who said what

Hantavirus is a rare and deadly virus usually spread by inhaling rodent droppings, but the Andes strain found in the infected passengers can spread through close human contact, the World Health Organization said. “This is not another Covid,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “And the risk to the public is low.”

What next?

The U.S. passengers are arriving in Omaha on Monday morning, where most will be monitored at the specialized National Quarantine Unit while the one who tested positive will be transferred to the Nebraska Biocontainment Unit, HHS said.

The Trump administration has lofty expectations about the state of the pharmaceutical industry, but not everyone appears to be a believer. Recent data from the White House predicted that the administration’s deals with drug companies could save the economy more than half a trillion dollars over the next decade. While Republicans are lauding this estimate, many Democrats are taking it with a grain of salt.

‘Touted his drug pricing deals as transformative’

The White House predicts that Trump’s deals could save $529 billion over the next 10 years, according to an analysis of data obtained by The Associated Press. The administration also estimated that federal and state governments could “save a combined $64.3 billion on Medicaid during the next decade” because of Trump’s agreements, Josh Doak said at the AP.

Trump administration officials have touted the president’s “drug pricing deals as transformative and urged Congress to codify their principles into law” as part of “most favored nation” (MFN) pricing, said Doak. The White House has “reached voluntary agreements with 17 pharmaceutical companies,” and it appears the administration’s “goal is to bring manufacturers of sole-source brand-name drugs and biologics into comparable arrangements,” Colleen Cabili said at Quartz. Details on the deal specifics remain unclear.

The president has “sought to position his pharmaceutical pricing push as a winning issue with voters,” said Cabili. Given his plummeting poll numbers over affordability, Trump has been “focusing on his efforts to cut deals with companies so that the cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. would no longer be dramatically higher than in other affluent nations,” said Doak.

The mechanism ‘remains a black box’

Despite the White House’s optimism, many across the aisle are skeptical of the Trump administration’s potential cost savings. Just prior to the White House’s analysis, 17 Democratic senators introduced legislation that would force Trump to provide details of the drug deals. If “these deals are actually lowering costs for patients, show us,” Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), one of the co-sponsors of the legislation, said in a statement. “Americans deserve transparency.”

If “these deals are so great, why is the Trump administration afraid of showing them to the public? Because Trump is a giant fraud when it comes to lower drug prices,” Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said in a parallel statement. The “scope of the savings claimed by the Trump administration are likely to intensify the scrutiny by Democrats,” said Doak at the AP. One of their primary concerns is that “pharmaceutical companies have increased their profit margins while working with the administration.”

The “exact mechanism” for these savings “remains a black box,” said Angus Liu at the biopharma news website Fierce Pharma. Beyond the price of the drugs themselves, the White House “has yet to define how commercial markets, such as employer-sponsored insurance, will access those discounted rates.” The “math for these massive savings only adds up if the administration can expand its circle of agreements beyond the 17 Big Pharma firms initially targeted” by Trump. Many biotech companies are also wary of “MFN’s impact on their business models” and “argue that they lack the diverse portfolios of pharma companies that can absorb revenue hits from pricing pressure.”

NHS patients are being forced into “rounds of phone calls and anxiety” to secure their prescriptions amid a worsening shortage of key pharmaceuticals, said the BBC.

Access to prescription medication in England is “at its most fragile point in years”, with people suffering from heart conditions, stroke risks, eye infections, bipolar disorder and ADHD among those reporting issues obtaining the medications they depend on.

‘Significant pressure’

Medicines UK, which represents drugmakers responsible for 85% of all NHS prescriptions, warned last month that it was “increasingly concerned” about the supply of certain active pharmaceutical ingredients, some of which are now in very short supply. This could place “significant pressure” on the NHS as early as June and increase costs for the health service when sourcing these medicines.

Drugs containing aspirin and paracetamol are among those at risk, as they are manufactured using by-products from the petrochemical industry, which has been affected by blockades in the Strait of Hormuz. In the UK, pharmacies are reportedly charging 20–30% more for over-the-counter medicines, said Al Jazeera.

Some pharmaceutical logistics routes rely on sea and air transport hubs in the Gulf, Frederic Schneider from the Middle East Council on Global Affairs, told the outlet. These routes are particularly fragile because many medicines require special handling, such as continuous cold storage, which has been disrupted by the war.

Richard Sullivan, professor of cancer and global health at King’s College London, told the British Medical Journal that there are already signs of “disruption in supply chains for cancer drugs”.

Complicated process

“Surging global prices” are contributing to the supply problems, and this is being exacerbated by the “complicated process of funding medicines”, said the BBC. The NHS reimburses pharmacies a fixed amount for each medicine they dispense, and pharmacies are expected to procure the drugs at or below that price.

When the cost of a medicine rises above the NHS reimbursement rate, it is added to the government’s price concessions list, which reached a record 210 medicines in April. Pharmacies are then reimbursed at the updated concession rate. However, when market prices rise rapidly – sometimes exceeding both the original tariff and the concession rate – pharmacies may be forced to supply medicines at a loss. This makes it more difficult to maintain stock levels and increases the risk of delays or unexpected shortages for patients.

The war in the Middle East has “aggravated the situation”, it is “not the sole reason for the shortage”, said Pharmacy Business. Around 60% of shortages are caused by manufacturing bottlenecks, alongside insufficient reserves of medicines and their raw materials.

A House of Lords report published in February called for improved leadership and strategy on medicine supply in the UK. Peers are urging long-term solutions to address the crisis, including sustained investment in domestic manufacturing, stronger political intervention, and making the issue a national priority. The country is currently “heavily dependent” on foreign manufacturing, particularly from companies based in India, Ireland, and Israel, said Pharmacy Business.

The government has said it is working to boost Britain’s domestic medicine manufacturing industry. A spokesperson told The Telegraph that this includes “offering financial incentives for the manufacturing of more medicines”.

What if a cling wrap could fight disease? A newly developed plastic film has successfully killed viruses on contact. The material could be easily mass-produced and doesn’t have to be reapplied. In the future, it may even replace traditional chemical cleaners.

Predatory plastic

Scientists have created a thin, acrylic film that can kill viruses, according to a study published in the journal Advanced Science. The film contains nanopillars, which are “ultra‑fine structures” that “grab and stretch the outer shell of the virus so much that it ruptures, killing the virus through mechanical force rather than chemical disinfectants,” said a press release about the study. The material was tested on human parainfluenza virus 3 (hPIV-3), which causes bronchiolitis and pneumonia, and it “successfully killed (or damaged irreparably) 94% of the viruses with which it came into contact after just one hour,” said Popular Mechanics.

There have been other surface viral disinfectants developed, but these “often involve incorporating materials such as graphene or tannic acid and other natural agents into personal protective equipment such as masks, gloves, goggles, hard hats and respirators,” Elena Ivanova, a professor of physics at RMIT University and senior author of the study, said at The Conversation. While efficient, these disinfectants “can pose a risk to human health” and may also be “environmental hazards due to chemical leaching.” Plus they have “declining effectiveness over time as the potency of the active ingredients weakens.”

Other disinfectants, like wipes and sprays, require more effort. Disinfectant “must remain wet for some time to kill germs,” said Ivanova. The surfaces can also be “recontaminated quickly when other people touch them.” Acrylic films, by contrast, are “continually effective (meaning they don’t have to be reapplied over and over again), they don’t harm the environment and they don’t contribute to antimicrobial resistance,” said Popular Mechanics. The film is also much more scalable and could potentially be produced in a similar manner to cling wrap.

Film of the future

While the plastic film shows promise, we are not quite at the place to replace current disinfectants with it. The product was tested only on hPIV‑3, which is an “enveloped virus with a fatty outer membrane,” said the release. This membrane makes it more conducive to getting caught and being ripped apart by the nanopillars. Researchers are now planning to “test smaller and nonenveloped viruses to see how broadly the nanotextured surface works.”

The effectiveness of the nanotexture also depends on the distance between each pillar. The closer the features are together, the more virus-fighting ability the film has. There need to be “more tests on curved surfaces, which — by their geometric nature — spread the pillars apart,” said Popular Mechanics. The material can also degrade over time.

“As nanofabrication tools get better, our results give a clearer guide to which nanopatterns work best to kill viruses,” Samson Mah, the lead author of the study, said in a press release. “We could one day have surfaces like phone screens, keyboards and hospital tables covered with this film, killing viruses on contact without using harsh chemicals.”

The thymus is a small organ behind the breastbone that helps to establish the body’s immune system early in life. Since it shrinks with age, it was once thought to become mostly inactive over time. And many people have had their thymus removed, primarily as a treatment for myasthenia gravis. But this mini organ may be mightier than expected.

The organ has been “overlooked for decades and may be a missing piece in explaining why people age differently and why cancer treatments fail in some patients,” said Hugo Aerts, a corresponding author on both studies, in a press release. And now two different studies published in the journal Nature — one connecting the long-term health of adults with their thymic health and the other analyzing cancer therapy outcomes and thymic health — point to the thymus playing an important role in wellness.

T-cells and immunity

The thymus’ main function is to “generate a diverse T-cell repertoire, which provides adaptive immunity throughout life,” said the Nature study on thymic long-term health consequences. While the “relevance and abundance of the T-cell repertoire at a young age are well documented,” it’s likely that the thymus “retains a continued role in T-cell production throughout adulthood and that the pattern of decline of thymic function in adults is associated with poorer health outcomes.”

Higher thymic health scores are “associated with laboratory markers of continued T-cell production, greater T-cell diversity in blood and tumors, and stronger activity of immune pathways, supporting thymic health as a proxy for immune competence,” said the press release. “When thymic health and T-cell diversity decline, the immune system becomes less able to respond to new threats, like cancer or other diseases.”

Surprising health indicator

People with better thymic health had “about a 50% lower risk of premature death, 63% lower risk of cardiovascular death, and 36% lower risk of developing lung cancer compared to those with low thymic health,” said the release. Researchers saw “similar patterns across many other causes of death, suggesting that thymic health may reflect overall immune resilience.”

A healthy thymus is also “associated with reduced risks of progression and all-cause mortality” in cancer patients, said the Nature study on thymic health and cancer. The outcomes were especially positive for those with lung cancer. People with “healthier thymuses were more likely to respond to cancer immunotherapy drugs, which trigger the immune system to fight cancer, but don’t work for many patients,” said The Washington Post. Because of the T-cells’ role in immunity, those with their thymus removed can also have an “increased risk of autoimmune disease,” said a 2023 study published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Future solutions

The general health of the thymus can be influenced by “lifestyle and metabolic health measures, such as smoking, physical activity or HDL levels,” said the long-term health consequences study. Thymic decay is “highly individualized even in presumed healthy adults, indicating that thymic function can also be substantially reduced in individuals who did not have their thymus surgically removed.” While the thymus cannot be directly attributed to better health outcomes, there are now “new leads to be explored,” said the Post.

In the future, it might be possible to “engineer a thymus from an organ donor to help people who receive transplants tolerate their new organ without taking harsh anti-rejection drugs,” said the Post. There’s also interest in “probing whether there are ways to slow down the thymus’ natural deterioration,” which could have “many applications in autoimmune diseases, improving people’s responses to vaccinations as they age or improving how people respond to cancer immunotherapies.”

Hantavirus is typically spread by exposure to rodent droppings. That’s concerning enough. But health experts are alarmed that a deadly ship-borne outbreak of hantavirus might be spreading from human to human.

The possibility of person-to-person transmission of hantavirus is “very, very surprising and obviously a very rare occurrence,” Kari Debbink of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health said to NPR. Three people aboard the MV Hondius cruise ship have already died from the outbreak, and there are several other suspected cases among the 147 passengers and crew.

A typical rodent-caused outbreak could be resolved by “taking people off the ship,” the University of Michigan’s Emily Abdoler said to the network. But the possibility of a human-transmitted disease means “taking folks off the ship doesn’t stop the spread.”

Passengers aboard the Hondius have been isolated in their cabins in a “lockdown reminiscent of the Covid-19 pandemic,” said The Associated Press. Authorities are being cautious but also warning the public against panic. The Andes strain of hantavirus at issue “requires very close, prolonged contact” to spread between people, KFF Health News’ Céline Gounder said on “PBS NewsHour.” That’s “very different” from Covid or flu viruses that can be “transmitted much more easily through the airborne respiratory route.”

What did the commentators say?

The outbreak is “serious and frankly a bit unnerving,” Katherine J. Wu said at The Atlantic. A human-transmitted hantavirus could “pose an additional threat” to people at the ship’s destination or to healthcare workers treating the sick. The ship’s passengers will eventually disembark, but officials cannot yet say the risk that passengers and crew “will pose to the broader global community.” Making the investigation more difficult: The cruise ship environment where “strangers are constantly schmoozing” makes it easy for people-to-people viruses to spread but difficult for medical professionals to track the source.

There’s “no reason for panic,” Lisa Jarvis said at Bloomberg. A “handful of cases of a deadly virus” is understandably sufficient to “raise all our hackles” following the Covid pandemic. Hantavirus is “ubiquitous” in parts of the United States such as the desert Southwest, while actual “infections are still rare.” The current outbreak is “unlikely to turn into anything bigger.”

The World Health Organization was “built to manage” emergencies like this, Krutika Kuppalli said at Stat News. Indeed, the WHO is “coordinating the response.” But the U.S. government has not been able to take advantage of the information generated by the agency, having withdrawn from the WHO in 2025. And the outbreak should be a “warning sign to the U.S.” of the costs of that decision.

What next?

The Hondius “remains at sea” while regional leaders “clash over its docking,” said The New York Times. Spain has said the ship can dock in the Canary Islands, but regional government officials have “objected to the ship docking there.” The isolated passengers are keeping themselves busy with “reading, watching movies, having hot drinks and that kind of thing,” said travel influencer Kasem Hato to the Times.

Life on board the MV Hondius has turned from a dream adventure to a tragic nightmare after the outbreak of hantavirus.

Three people were today evacuated from the boat that is currently off the coast of Cape Verde. The patients – British, German, and Dutch nationals – are being taken to the Netherlands to receive medical care. In addition to the three passengers who died earlier in the cruise, five other people are thought to have symptoms consistent with an outbreak of hantavirus.

Though the “overall public health risk remains low”, the World Health Organization is closely monitoring the health of passengers and crew on board the ship, said WHO director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

Earlier, the Canary Islands government announced its opposition to Spain’s plan to allow the Hondius to dock there. Its originally intended destination, Cape Verde, had also refused the ship entry.

‘Tragic echoes’ of Covid

When the MV Hondius set sail in April, it was embarking on a “voyage of adventure to some of the world’s most remote islands”, said CNN. “Whales, dolphins and penguins awaited; landscapes of icy expanses, towering cliffs and rolling green hills beckoned.”

Now, the “nearly 150 passengers” are “isolating in their cabins, trapped aboard a ship anchored in the Atlantic, taking what measures they can to shield themselves from an outbreak of a deadly virus”.

Travel vlogger Kasem Hato, who is on board, said: “Most of the people on the ship are taking the matter very calmly.” The ship’s captain and staff are keeping passengers updated at regular intervals, while the passengers themselves are keeping “busy by reading, watching movies, drinking hot beverages”. He added: “If it were going to become an epidemic, it would have happened a long time ago.”

Crew and passengers are not only “trapped” on a ship experiencing a “lethal hantavirus outbreak”, but they are also “totally isolated from the rest of the world”, said The Times. Thought to cost around £10,000 per person, the cruise has “descended into something with tragic echoes of the early days of the Covid-19 epidemic”.

Whether the ship can dock in the Canary Islands has become a “hot political issue”, said the BBC. Fernando Clavijo, the islands’ president, has called his lack of involvement in the initial decision to permit docking there an act of “institutional disloyalty” by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. The head of the Island Council of Tenerife has announced her “outright and utter rejection” of the plan to allow the ship to dock in the territory.

A ‘miserable wait’

There are two possible ways passengers could have contracted hantavirus, said Thomas Jeffries of Western Sydney University on The Conversation. One is exposure while on a shore excursion, and the other is the possibility of rodents entering the ship in its cargo. “Hygiene standards and food storage practices may have caused the infection to spread more quickly.”

For investigators, the exact cause of the outbreak is a “mystery”, said The Telegraph. The Hondius “did not travel anywhere where the virus is endemic”, and Antarctic cruise ships have to adhere to “scrupulous infection control” to protect the environment. Passengers are “usually hosed down with disinfectant” before and after disembarking to avoid contaminating the area with any pathogens.

In the coming days, it may be possible to track down the source through the infected crew members, as they rarely accompany passengers on trips. “Narrowing down who went to particular locations should help pinpoint the source of the outbreak.” Unless a mouse or rat has “stowed away” on board, it is more likely that “several passengers on the ship were exposed at the same time, probably during an excursion”.

Thankfully, this is “not a new pandemic waiting to begin”, said The Telegraph. “The risk for the rest of the world is negligible.”

Having said that, isolating passengers are likely to “face a miserable wait”. Due to the incubation period of the virus, the ship may need to quarantine for up to eight weeks, and it’s likely the number of infections will rise. However, it is “unlikely to spread between passengers, so only those initially exposed will be at risk”.

The case of a woman denied sterilisation by the NHS has brought the procedure, and the alleged double standards that hamper access to it, back into the spotlight.

Leah Spasova, a psychologist from Oxford, spent 10 years trying to access the procedure, but her funding request was turned down over “concerns regarding potential regret and cost-effectiveness”, said the BBC. As the same NHS body regularly funds vasectomies without using potential regret as grounds for rejection, Spasova complained to the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman.

Last Friday, the ombudsman ruled that a policy citing the “risk of regret” as grounds to refuse funding was “unfair” to women.

What did the ombudsman say?

The Buckinghamshire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire West Integrated Care Board’s approach was “unfair, inconsistent, and based on subjective reasoning”, the ombudsman ruled. And Spasova’s case “is not an isolated one”.

A committee responsible for recommendations across six integrated care boards in the southeast reviewed the female sterilisation policy after Spasova’s complaint. It recommended that regret or the availability of other contraception should no longer be used as grounds for refusal, and that all patients who meet the critiera can access female sterilisation.

“Rejecting my application for sterilisation on the basis of regret means they were taking on liability for my feelings,” said Spasova. Policies like this are “damaging for women’s healthcare” and “absolutely discriminatory”.

How does female sterilisation work?

Sterilisation is a procedure that blocks, seals or cuts the fallopian tubes, to prevent eggs from reaching the uterus. Also known as tubal ligation (“getting your tubes tied”), it’s usually performed under general anaesthetic via keyhole surgery, with about a week of recovery. Although complex procedures do exist to reverse it, they typically have a success rate of between 50-70% and aren’t usually available on the NHS.

Female sterilisation is the most common contraceptive method used worldwide, according to the UN. In 2019, nearly 24% of women using contraception relied on sterilisation – but it’s far more prevalent in Asia and Latin America than Europe.

A 2022 analysis of Dutch women puts the rate of regret at about 10.5%, compared with 5.1% of men who regret vasectomies. But the rate of regret is nearly twice as high among women under the age of 30: about 20%. NHS clinical guidance says sterilisation should be available for women, with counselling to address the risk of regret.

Is it available on the NHS?

Sterilisation for both men and women is organised by local integrated care boards (ICBs), as part of NHS contraception services. Most ICBs routinely fund both male and female procedures, subject to certain criteria being met, but some told The i Paper that “vasectomy is encouraged or preferred over female sterilisation”. Others “go one step further and restrict funding for female sterilisation”, said the paper. In those areas, women have to submit an individual funding request for approval.

In 2024-2025, the NHS carried out nearly 11,000 sterilisations: a year-on-year increase of 2%. But the long-term trend is downward: a 22% decrease in a decade. In contrast, the number of vasectomies performed in 2024-25 was 16% higher than in 2023-24.

What are the barriers to access?

Critics argue that the stricter eligibility criteria for women seeking sterilisation “amount to unequal treatment compared with men seeking vasectomies”, said The Guardian. But others say “tighter controls reflect legitimate medical concerns”, including the risks associated with a more invasive procedure.

Patients seeking sterilisation have been “told they are too young”, said Charlotte Glynn of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service. “There is a real problem with women not being trusted to make decisions about their own bodies,” she said. It is “a form of medical misogyny”, especially when many women "struggle with the side-effects of contraceptive pills”.

Many women are told they “might change their mind” or are asked what their partners think about their decision, Annabel Sowemimo, a consultant in sexual and reproductive health, told The i Paper. Tubal ligation also costs more than vasectomies as it requires “multiple members of staff and time in theatre”. This is compounded by the “obscene” waiting times for gynaecology treatment, she said. Life-threatening conditions are prioritised, while patients waiting for sterilisation are advised to use contraceptives instead.

Poor architecture can be a public health crisis. And in Tanzania, moving families into specially designed Star Homes has resulted in a marked reduction in the spread of deadly diseases among the children living in them.

Old vs. new housing

Most houses in Tanzanian villages use “mud and thatch” and are “single-story, placing the sleeping spaces at-grade,” said The Architect’s Newspaper. These living arrangements likely contribute to the spread of malaria, diarrhea and acute respiratory infections (ARIs), which are the “major causes of mortality in young children in sub-Saharan Africa,” said a study published in the journal Nature Medicine.

Designed by researchers, Star Homes are “novel double-story” houses that “provide an insect-proof, cleaner, cooler and smoke-free environment, with a reliable supply of water and sanitation,” said the study. They have “screened facades to allow airflow while keeping out insects, bedrooms on the top floor because mosquitoes mostly stay close to the ground, and an outdoor latrine and a system to harvest and store rainwater to help reduce the spread of diarrheal diseases,” said Science. They also have a “rodent-proof storage room, self-closing doors and a solar-powered electric light.”

To test the new housing, scientists randomly placed households with children under age 13  in either “110 Star Homes or in 513 traditional mud and thatched-roofed houses,” said the study. After 36 months, children living in Star Homes had a “significantly reduced risk of malaria (44% reduction), diarrhea (27%) and ARIs (18%) compared to children living in traditional mud and thatched-roof homes.”

The improved housing also led to a “reduction in stunting,” where children under age 5  were “taller for their age than those living in traditional homes,” said the study. Healthier children are the “ultimate measure of success,” said Salum Mshamu, the lead field investigator of the Tanzanian research consulting firm CSK Research Solutions, to The Architect’s Newspaper. “Reducing stunting has lifelong consequences for education, earnings and well-being.”

More for less

The findings show that “architecture can function as a health intervention on a par with medicine when it’s developed and documented using scientific methods,” said Jakob Knudsen, the lead architect of the Star Homes, to The Architect’s Newspaper. Traditional homes in Tanzania and other sub-Saharan countries tend to “absorb heat during the day and discharge it into the houses at night,” said The Architectural Review. “High interior temperatures lead to low use of bed nets (temperature rises further inside the net), increasing the risk of mosquito bites.”

The Star Home solves many of these problems and “costs 24% less in materials than a conventional single-story cement-block house, requires 73% less concrete and generates 57% less embodied carbon,” said a release about the study. “We now hope that the building industry will adopt some of the important features of our healthy house design,” said Steve Lindsay, a professor of biosciences at the U.K.’s Durham University and the author of the study, in the release. Better building practices can “turn a dangerous home into a safe one.”

What happened

President Donald Trump on Thursday tapped radiologist Dr. Nicole Saphier to be U.S. surgeon general, withdrawing the stalled nomination of nutrition influencer Dr. Casey Means, an ally of Health Secretary Robert Kennedy Jr. and the Make America Healthy Again movement. Saphier is Trump’s third nominee, after Means and Dr. Janette Nesheiwat.

Who said what

The “MAHA movement had pushed hard for Means’ nomination,” The Washington Post said, and it blamed its failure on Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and two other Republican senators skeptical of her qualifications and stance on vaccines. Trump called Saphier, a former Fox News contributor, an “INCREDIBLE COMMUNICATOR” on “complicated health issues” in a social media post. Kennedy called her a “longtime warrior for the MAHA movement.” But unlike Means, Saphier “does not appear to be a heroine” of MAHA, The New York Times said. Its “leaders view her as too conventional” due to her tempered praise of vaccines and criticism of Kennedy, though she has “also embraced” some of his agenda.

What next?

Even as MAHA lost its “favored influencer for surgeon general,” it “notched a big win on pesticide regulation” in a House farm bill, Axios said. Thursday’s events highlighted how MAHA retains “clout on matters related to the food supply” but “can be a political liability” on “vaccines and other public health matters.”

Along with wind, rain and lightning, the weather may bring about unexpected health problems. Acute attacks of “thunderstorm asthma” can worsen pollen allergies and exacerbate respiratory conditions. And as climate change is likely to cause more storms in the future, more people will be put at risk.

Storm surge

Generally, “rain tends to lower pollen counts by cleansing the air, and many people find that rainy weather tends to reduce asthma symptoms triggered by allergies,” said Harvard Health Publishing. But thunderstorms are an exception because they can cause cold downdrafts, which “concentrate air particles, such as pollen and mold.” The particles are then “swept up into clouds where humidity is high,” and “wind, humidity and lightning break up the particles to a size that can readily enter the nose, sinuses and lungs.” Strong gusts of wind disperse the pollen and mold, irritating lungs.

The rapid breakdown and spread of air particles can cause thunderstorm asthma. “Right after a thunderstorm, people can have more asthma,” Clifford Bassett, the founder and medical director at Allergy and Asthma Care of New York, said to The Weather Channel. The phenomenon is caused by a “complex interaction between environmental and meteorological factors, coupled with intense aeroallergen exposure in susceptible individuals,” Constance H. Katelaris, a senior staff specialist of immunology and allergy at Campbelltown Hospital and Western Sydney University, said at InSight+.

Those most likely to experience thunderstorm asthma are people with pollen allergies and hay fever (rhinitis), as well as those with preexisting asthma and poor asthma control. Adults in their third or fourth decade of life appear to be especially susceptible. Older children are also vulnerable, being in the “peak ages for expression of allergic rhinitis,” said Katelaris. There may also be a “significantly increased risk among individuals of Asian and Indian descent,” according to data from the “largest and deadliest episode of thunderstorm asthma recorded to date,” in Melbourne in 2016. “Six of the 10 people who died were of Asian or Indian descent.”

A big storm’s a-coming

While thunderstorm asthma “may seem like more of a curiosity than a serious threat to public health,” when it “affects a large population area, emergency rooms can become overwhelmed,” said Harvard Health Publishing. During the Melbourne episode, over 3,400 people experienced severe asthma symptoms and 10 people died. “Any pollen, any dust, anything that is sitting on the ground will be dispersed, and it will be blown onto cars, into the circulating air, perhaps into homes, if the windows are open, and onto anyone who is outside and unfortunate to be in the path,” meteorologist Dante Ricci said to National Geographic.

Cases of thunderstorm asthma are expected to increase in the future due to climate change. Globally warming temperatures can lead to “prolonged allergenic pollen seasons combined with increased pollen allergenicity, as well as heightened likelihood of extreme weather events,” said a review published in The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: In Practice. In the U.S., “more than 28 million people have asthma and about 81 million people have seasonal allergies,” said Harvard Health Publishing. The best way to prevent thunderstorm asthma is to have rescue inhalers and medicine handy and to avoid going outside for 24 hours after a storm if you experience pollen allergies or preexisting asthma.

“Having an older sibling can be a mixed blessing,” said The Times. You have a “ready-made playmate”, but younger siblings must endure hand-me-downs, while sharing toys and the attention of their parents.

But a new study shows that birth order could also affect the likelihood of developing certain conditions. Research led by the University of Chicago has analysed data from more than 10 million siblings in the largest ever study of its kind. It found associations between the order of birth and susceptibility to autism, anxiety, hay fever and migraines, among other health conditions.

Though the findings should not be read deterministically, and have not yet been peer-reviewed, more than a third of medical conditions (150 out of 418) showed “birth order associations”, according to the study. “Of these, 79 were more common in firstborns, while 71 were more common in those born second,” said New Scientist.

What it shows

Previous studies have been criticised for “cherry-picking data or failing to control for confounding factors”. And more research has been done on the links between birth order and IQ. For example, a “landmark” study in 2015 analysed data on 20,000 children and found that birth order had “almost no bearing on personality and only a small association with IQ”. It recorded a “drop of about 1 to 2.5 IQ points between oldest and youngest siblings”.

The latest study, however, focused on the “likelihood of developing different conditions”, said New Scientist. In order to “mitigate some confounding factors”, such as the “influence of how parents might treat their first and second children differently”, researchers first compared 1.6 million pairs of siblings by “coupling firstborns from one family with those born second from another family”. They were matched on sex, birth year, parental age and sibling age gap.

The study analysed more than 10 million individuals from more than five million families, and found that elder siblings were more likely to be diagnosed with “neurodevelopmental conditions”, such as autism, ADHD and allergies, as well as acne and childhood psychoses, said Scientific American. Second-born siblings, on the other hand, were more likely to be diagnosed with “substance use disorders, shingles and gastrointestinal disorders”.

How far siblings are born apart also “appears to matter”. If the age gap was less than four years, siblings were associated with a lower rate of asthma and other allergies. This aligns with the “hygiene hypothesis”, which suggests that “lower exposure to allergens in early life” can lead to them overreacting to allergens later.

Strengths and limitations

“Overall, this seems like a really rigorous study,” Rohrer told New Scientist, though the associations are modest. Additionally, “we will only observe every person in one birth-order position” and “never know how their life would have played out differently in another position”.

The study’s “strength” is in its “large sample size and design”, which allowed cross-comparison between different families to “control for socioeconomic status and genetics”, said Scientific American.

However, a limitation was that researchers used “administrative insurance claims data” instead of “reviewing the prevalence of health conditions”. Parents could be more likely to seek diagnoses for their firstborn than any subsequent children. “You can’t get a diagnosis if you don’t seek it,” said Rodica Damian of the University of Houston, who was not involved in the study.

Though the variations between siblings identified in the study are small, “they can have an effect” at the “population level”. As Rohrer said: “It could be that all of these small effects of birth order come together to make a difference.”

People have long sought drug-assisted therapy. Now, rumors of certain drugs helping to treat or even heal mental health disorders has led to a surge in psychedelic retreats. These trendy respites operate overseas in countries like Jamaica and Peru; they also exist in the U.S., albeit with legal gray areas. But safety concerns have cropped up following a recent study.

Dubious precautions

Mounting interest in the potential benefits of psychedelic drugs has led to a rise in psychedelic retreats around the world. Such places offer multiday trips where attendees “pay for drug-assisted experiences” and are promised “psychological healing” and “personal growth,” said The Associated Press. Nearly all of the drugs typically offered at these retreats are “illegal under U.S. federal law,” including “magic mushrooms, ayahuasca, MDMA and LSD.” But retreat companies don’t always “make that explicit.” Sometimes they claim they are “protected by a rare legal exemption for religious organizations that traditionally use psychedelics.”

The “hard line between clinical intervention and all other uses” of drugs, such as spiritual and recreational, has blurred, said Hadas Alterman, a psychedelic medicine attorney, to Fox News. Psychedelics now “serve people who aren’t in crisis but aren’t merely thrill-seeking either.”

Many retreats have safety protocols in place, but they still carry the risk for “physical, psychological and interpersonal harms,” said researchers in a paper published in JAMA Network Open. It is therefore important that anyone interested in a psychedelic retreat “do their research” and “talk to the organizers or facilitators to get more information about what is being offered and how,” said Amy McGuire, a biomedical ethicist and co-author on the study.

The study, which surveyed dozens of retreats, documented a wide range of concerning practices, including “companies offering multiple psychedelic drugs,” said the AP. Many retreats have health professionals on site, but “their roles and responsibilities are often vague.” In some cases, they “take psychedelics alongside participants,” which could impair the professionals’ “ability to respond in an emergency.” Almost 90% of the surveyed retreats additionally “require or recommend that attendees stop taking certain medications,” including antidepressants, before using psychedelics. These “washout periods” ranged from “one day to six weeks before the psychedelic experience.”

Regulatory changes on the horizon

While psychedelics are not federally approved in the U.S., that may soon change. President Donald Trump last week signed an executive order directing the Food and Drug Administration to “accelerate reviews of psychedelics that show potential for conditions like post-traumatic stress disorder,” said the AP. The order also directs “law enforcement agencies to quickly lower restrictions on any psychedelic approved by the FDA.”

Due to the state-level decriminalization of psilocybin, Oregon and Colorado have become psychedelic retreat hubs for what some call “transformative travel,” said Parade. Relying on state regulation is risky because “each one is going to be slightly different,” Albert Garcia-Romeu, the associate director of the Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research at Johns Hopkins University, said to The Guardian. It would make more sense to go the “FDA-approved medication route” because that comes with a “set of authoritative guidelines from major medical and regulatory bodies.”

People in the field say today’s retreats are safer than they have been in past decades, when “psychedelic experiences were almost always conducted underground with few safety precautions,” said the AP. The growing market for psychedelics has also “allowed retreats to expand their services, hire more medical and coaching staff and take safety more seriously than we’ve ever seen in the past,” said Brad Burge, who has worked with psychedelic nonprofits, drugmakers and retreat operators, to the outlet.

Still, there are no “industrywide standards or regulations for how participants are screened, prepared or monitored afterward,” said the AP. So “what does that mean about the quality of care you’re going to have?” said Joshua White, the founder of the Fireside Project, which runs a hotline for people experiencing distress during psychedelic trips, to the outlet. Without regulation, there could be a “race to the bottom where there is no liability or accountability.”

We tend to think of our medieval ancestors as warty, unwashed, riddled with fleas, doomed to die young, and with little or no knowledge of medicine, or the body’s workings, said Helen Carr in The Telegraph. But in this “richly” detailed book, Katherine Harvey seeks to explain what they did, thought and knew – and it turns out that many of their concerns mirrored our own, from digestion and hair loss to mental health. Their medicine was based on the idea that the body was made up of four “humors” – blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile – connected to air, fire, earth and water. Good health relied on keeping them in balance, by blood-letting for example.

Medieval physicians’ views on diet, said Gerard DeGroot in The Times, were surprisingly similar to ours; they recognised the importance of fresh air and clean water, and they perceived a connection between body and mind. During the plague in Venice in 1348, “restrictions were placed on the wearing of mourning garb because it encouraged sadness, which damaged physical health”.

That said, some of their treatments were pretty weird. A mix of cow dung and wine was thought to cure obesity; male baldness was linked to the body drying out, so baths were prescribed. As for sex, this was believed to be good in moderation – for marital harmony, and as a form of exercise. If both parties orgasmed, all the better as this would help in the excretion of harmful superfluities.

This is a terrific book: I’ve rarely had such fun learning about the past. Ultimately, it leads one to the conclusion that our ancestors were “a lot like us: they fretted about their health, took steps to improve it, and cared for those who suffered. In the process of examining the medieval body, we also get a glimpse at the soul.”

“A little blue pill is creating a stir in Hollywood,” said Dipa Kamdar, senior lecturer in pharmacy practice at Kingston University, London, on The Conversation. “And no, it’s not Viagra.”

For several years now, celebrities have been singing the praises of propranolol, a beta-blocker originally designed for heart conditions which also helps with anxiety. Kristen Bell, Rachel Sennott and Natasha Rothwell have all mentioned taking the pill at red-carpet events over the past year. Four years ago, Khloé Kardashian admitted she borrows her mother’s medication to calm her nerves, while Robert Downey Jr started his 2024 Golden Globe acceptance speech by saying he had just taken a beta-blocker “so this will be a breeze”.

These A-lister endorsements have led, in part, to a surge in prescriptions, especially among young women and girls, with propranolol now the “go-to pill for dealing with all sorts of stressful situations, from public speaking to first dates”, said The Wall Street Journal.

How does it work?

The beta-blocker was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration in 1967 for the treatment of heart problems including high blood pressure, arrhythmia (irregular heart rate) and angina. But it soon became clear the drug also reduced physical responses to anxiety, such as high heart rate, sweating, nausea and trembling hands. And while other medications prescribed for anxiety, like certain anti-depressants, can take weeks to work, propranolol can take effect within an hour.

Unlike drugs like Xanax or Valium, which “act directly on the brain and can leave people feeling sedated, foggy, or zoned out”, propranolol doesn’t address anxiety’s “underlying roots” but “blocks its physical symptoms” by slowing down the heart rate and lowering blood pressure, said The Boston Globe.

“It’s a beta-blocker, not a bravery booster”, said Kamdar. “It won’t fix your fear of public speaking or make you smoother on a first date – though it might stop your hands from shaking while you try.”

How widely is it used?

In the US, overall prescriptions are up 28% from 2020, while NHS England figures show an increase of 37.6% over the past decade, according to data seen by The Observer. The biggest rise in the UK has been among girls aged between 12 and 17 – up from 618,813 prescriptions in 2015 to more than 1.1 million in 2025. The second highest increase in use – at 81.7% – is among women aged 18 to 23.

The increasing popularity of beta-blockers among young women and girls “points to a generation that has grown up with the pressures of social media and an epidemic of gender-based violence, as well as the isolating effects of Covid”, said the outlet.

As well as its speed and availability, its appeal may also lie in the fact that, unlike other mental health medication, “culturally” propranolol is “portrayed lightly – as if it’s nothing more than a breath mint”, said The Boston Globe.

Are there any risks?

Compared to Xanax or Valium, propranolol is a non-addictive and low-risk medication. However, “it’s not without risks or side-effects”, said Kamdar on The Conversation. Because propranolol works to reduce blood pressure and heart rate, common side-effects include dizziness, fatigue, cold hands and feet, and vivid dreams. “More serious risks – though rare – include heart failure, breathing difficulties and allergic reactions”.

In the UK, where propranolol is licensed to treat anxiety, its effects have been “more scrutinised”, said the WSJ. The General Pharmaceutical Council has highlighted the risk of overdose following the death of a 17-year-old girl in 2023, who died after taking propranolol along with other pain-relief medication. The UK’s National Institute for Health and Care Excellence anxiety-management guidelines recommend cognitive behavioural therapy, mindfulness and antidepressants as initial treatments.

“It wasn’t long ago that crunchy or smooth was the sum total of our nut butter options,” said Sue Quinn in The Telegraph. But there is now more choice than ever and the “humble peanut is jostling for shelf space with almond, cashew and pistachio” spreads.

Sales of peanut butter overtook jam in the UK for the first time in 2020, and nut butters are “now making a bid to unseat honey from its long-held perch as number one”.

Filled with “fibre and healthy fats, it’s easy to see why nut butters appeal to the health-conscious among us,” said Lauren Shirreff in The Telegraph. They are a fantastic source of protein, “especially for people who are following plant-based or vegan diets”, nutritionist Jenna Hope told the paper.

A 30g serving of peanut butter contains around 8g of protein, which is “roughly the same as that in a large egg”, and a large spoonful “would also contain nearly three whole grams of fibre”.

One of the best alternatives to peanuts is almond butter, said Shirreff. It ticks lots of boxes, having the “most fibre” of any nut butter, and “fewer calories” too. Though it has “marginally” less protein than peanut butter, it’s “packed with magnesium and calcium”.

Pistachios have been all the rage as TikTok-viral sweet treats – think Dubai chocolate – but the best way to unlock their “bold, subtly sweet, roasted-nutty taste” is in savoury dishes, said Autumn Swiers on Tasting Table. A dollop of pistachio butter can be “placed under the skin of a chicken breast pre-roast for extra crispy, sweet-nutty moisture”, or as an “elevated candidate for homemade salad dressings”.

It is important to check the label for additional ingredients, said nutritionist Brianna Sommer on Delish. “I would look for a pure nut butter that has no added anything.” It is much better to add a pinch of salt, or a dollop of honey yourself than relying on whatever the “manufacturer has decided to include”.

The easiest way to eat nut butters is “on a slice of sourdough” or “poured over porridge”, said Stacey Smith in Women’s Health. But we all know they taste just that bit better “sneakily spooned straight from the jar”. For a “treat day” indulgence try Pana Organic Cashew Caramel Spread. “Packed with good stuff”, it includes coconut sugar for a hint of sweetness, while maca and sesame seeds bring “extra oomph”.

And if you’re looking for a classic peanut butter, try the M&S range, said Martha Roberts on Which?. Its smooth version is “rich”, “creamy” and “high-oleic” with the highest fibre content of the 56 items tested. Not only is it "reasonably priced”, it contains high levels of protein, and is “extremely low” in salt. Its crunchy alternative “comes a close second to its smooth sibling” because of its higher calorie and lower fibre content, but it’s “still high-oleic and with the same keen price”.

“In the early 2020s, interest in GLP-1 weight loss drugs exploded,” said CNN. Now, “a new buzzword is taking over”: peptides.

Once a niche interest among powerlifters and bodybuilders, the injectable substances have flooded the online wellness sphere. Social media is awash with people raving about their effect on everything from weight loss to concentration. Athletes and wellness influencers hail peptides as a way to speed muscle recovery and slow ageing. Demand is surging and authorities are “starting to take notice”.

What are peptides?

Short chains of amino acids (small proteins) produced by our bodies to help regulate hormones, reduce inflammation and repair tissue. Synthetic versions are manufactured to mimic, or even enhance, those naturally occurring proteins.

Peptides are the P in GLP-1s (the class of weight-loss drugs that includes Ozempic and Wegovy). Plenty of long-established drugs, such as insulin, are peptide-based – but “grey-market injectable peptides” are “unregulated, experimental compounds”, said The Guardian. Some are “bootleg versions of approved drugs”, sold for “a fraction of their market price” online.

Unregulated peptides have “exploded onto the wellbeing market” since weight-loss drugs “became mainstream”, said the BBC. “The success of regulated GLP-1 drugs has ‘normalised’ using a needle, lowering the psychological barrier to self-injection,” said Dr Mike Mrozinski, a GP.

“The GLP-1s put it on the map,” Evan Miller, CEO of Gameday Men’s Health, told CNN. “And then people were like, ‘Well, what’s next?’”

Are they legal?

They are in “a legal and regulatory middle zone” known as the grey market, said the BBC. Many popular peptides aren’t considered medicines in the UK, so they’re unregulated by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency. As they’re not approved for human use, they aren’t subject to quality controls.

In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bars pharmacies from compounding peptides, but they can be bought from manufacturers in China, which export them under the label “for research purposes only”, or “not for human consumption” – a legal loophole. In practice, they are “packaged, dosed and marketed in ways that clearly anticipate human use”, said three public health experts from Australia on The Conversation. This creates “a parallel market”, outside clinical oversight and regulation.

According to US customs data, imports of hormone and peptide compounds from China reached $328 million in the first three quarters of 2025, up from $164 million in the same period the previous year, said The New York Times.

Are they safe?

Many peptides and cosmetic injectables are sold with claims that they can accelerate skin repair, improve wrinkles and even reverse aspects of ageing. But high-quality human evidence is limited. Most claims are based on “a handful of laboratory studies”, usually on animals, said the public health experts on The Conversation.

The FDA warns that they pose “serious safety risks” because of potential impurities, including the risk of allergic reactions. Recent analysis by Texas testing lab Finnrick of some products suggests that 8% could be contaminated. Bacterial endotoxins can do a “serious number on you”, Adam Taylor, anatomy professor at Lancaster University, told the BBC.

Using peptides is “unfounded and reckless”, Eric Topol, director of the Scripps Research Translational Institute, told The New York Times. Last year, two women were hospitalised after injecting unknown peptides at a Las Vegas anti-ageing festival.

They lack “reliable safety data and quality control”, said The Guardian. According to Taylor, users are “converting themselves into the guinea pigs or the lab rats”.

Who’s taking peptides?

Precise numbers are impossible to discern, but wellness influencers, bio-hackers and Silicon Valley tech bros are among those publicly endorsing the practice.

Unregulated peptides have “flooded some corners of the tech scene” in the US, said The New York Times. They’re showing up in “hacker houses, start-up offices and even ‘peptide raves’”. Tech podcaster and self-proclaimed “gym bro” Jayden Clark posted on X that “the elites all have a Chinese peptide dealer”. The term “Chinese peptides” has become a meme.

US podcaster Joe Rogan claims peptides BPC-157 and TB-500, a combination known as the “Wolverine stack” after the Marvel superhero, help with injury recovery. Robert F. Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, says he is “a big fan of peptides”. In 2024, RFK Jr said on X that he would end the FDA’s “aggressive suppression” of peptides.

In shops, offices and bars across Spain, a single story has been monopolising conversation, said Enrique Aparicio in El Público (Madrid). The case of 25-year-old Noelia Castillo, whose life was ended by euthanasia in a Barcelona hospital last month, has “stirred the entire country”, sparking a fierce debate about an assisted-dying law introduced in 2021.

Castillo had had a troubled life; she'd spent her teen years in state-run foster care, had suffered several sexual assaults, and in 2022 was gang raped by three men. Days after that, she threw herself out of a fifth-floor window. The suicide attempt left her paralysed and in chronic pain with depression: insisting that her life was no longer worth living, she asked that it be ended. However her father, backed by a religious advocacy group called Christian Lawyers, claimed that given her fragile mental state, she was in no position to give meaningful consent to an assisted death.

‘Unnecessary suffering’

It's appalling the way in which Castillo was denied the right to a dignified death, said El País (Madrid). Her euthanasia had been unanimously approved, as the law requires, by two doctors, a lawyer and a review and oversight body; and it had been scheduled to take place on 2 August 2024. But then the legal challenges started to roll in, and it was only on 10 March this year, when the European Court of Human Rights rejected the final appeal by Christian Lawyers, that they came to an end. And so her “unnecessary suffering” was prolonged for a “devastating” 601 days, and in the full glare of media attention.

No, that puts everything the wrong way round, said Javier Redondo in El Mundo (Madrid). The assisted-dying law was supposed to provide a “dignified death” for terminally ill patients languishing “bedridden, paralysed and intubated; in agony”. It was not meant for young people like Castillo, who “lacked hope for the life ahead”. This case has fundamentally shifted the “boundaries of euthanasia”.

‘Abandoned’ by society

Indeed, the noise of this scandal should reverberate “far beyond the borders of Spain”, said Laurent Frémont in Le Figaro (Paris). It lays bare a society that no longer knows how to look after its most needy citizens. At every turn, Castillo was failed by the state: it took her from her family when she was a teenager and put her in foster care; she was still in the state's care when she was gang raped; and finally, instead of providing the psychiatric care she so badly needed, the state granted her a medically assisted death. In short, she was “abandoned by the institution” meant to take her family's place.

We need to be careful here, said Pedro García Cuartango on ABC (Madrid). I myself am morally opposed to euthanasia, and I too view Noelia Castillo's death as a societal failure. Yet we must acknowledge that the assisted-dying law was passed by an absolute majority in parliament and thus has full political legitimacy. We may hate the outcome, but in the clash between the law and our moral convictions, we in the end have to accept the law.

Several thousand people have been killed in Iran since the U.S.-Israeli war broke out, and the conflict has created an additional humanitarian crisis: delays and shortages of medical supplies. Hospitals and health care clinics throughout the Middle East are reporting critical lapses in supplies, which experts fear could lead to a surge in deaths even as the U.S. agreed to a temporary ceasefire.

What did the commentators say?

With the war in a state of flux, humanitarian centers “across the Middle East, Asia and Africa are facing the risk of running out of basic medication and food” due to the “restriction of shipments in the Strait of Hormuz,” said NPR. Some of this food, especially dry and canned goods, can “be stored for a long time,” Bob Kitchen, the vice president of emergencies and humanitarian action with the International Rescue Committee, said to NPR. But health care supplies are a different story, as most of the “medicines or treatments for malnutrition will expire.”

Many of these countries rely almost entirely on foreign aid for medical supplies. Sudan, for example, has “no manufacturing capacity and is entirely dependent on imported medication,” Omer Sharfy of Save the Children in Sudan said to NPR. This means health care workers “won’t be able to find alternatives in the local market.” The war has also “disrupted the movement of medical supplies from WHO’s global logistics hub in Dubai,” said the World Health Organization. By March 11, just 12 days into the war, over “50 emergency supply requests, intended to benefit over 1.5 million people across 25 countries,” were “affected, resulting in significant backlogs.”

Even countries far away from the conflict are bearing the brunt of these scarcities. Fears of syringe and IV shortages in South Korea are “spreading through Korea’s health care sector, prompting authorities to urge medical providers to refrain from stockpiling,” said The Korea Times. The problem is not that the Persian Gulf countries are “major drug producers. They’re not,” said health care news nonprofit Healthbeat. But these nations do “form ‘a critical pharmaceutical transit hub,’ where drugs and their basic ingredients from India, Europe and China routinely pass before heading to Africa, Asia and the United States.”

What next?

Some are hopeful that the two-week ceasefire, announced by President Donald Trump and initially agreed to by Iran, will allow the flow of medicine to restart. But while the U.S. has backed a ceasefire, Israel has continued its assault on the region, carrying out a series of strikes in Lebanon. Iran reclosed the strait in “response to Israeli attacks against the Hezbollah militant group,” said The Associated Press. Iran later accused the U.S. of also violating the deal and claimed that a long-term ceasefire was “unreasonable.”

Even before the strait was closed again, experts say it is unlikely its opening would have made a huge difference in moving global medical supplies. The ceasefire deal would not lead to a “‘mass exodus’ of ships through the Strait of Hormuz,” said The Guardian. The deal also allows Iran and Oman to “charge a fee of up to $2 million a ship on vessels transiting through the strait,” which could further limit the amount of supplies that are able to pass.

With no end to the larger skirmish in sight, fears persist that the shipment of medical supplies could remain at risk. All of these events are happening in an industry that was “decimated by funding cuts from the United States and Europe last year,” said The Washington Post, and is “now straining to meet demand that grows with each additional day of war.”

A new dating service has sprung up in Japan, aiming to get around the country’s ban on married couples having different surnames.

In a series of match-making events held this spring, every participant shared the same family name. The concept, the organisers said, is simply that “two people who already have the same last name won’t have to agonise over which one to use after marriage”.

Are you a Sato, Suzuki, Tanaka or Ito?

Japan’s current civil code, which dates back to the 19th century, specifies that a husband and wife must use the same family name. While there is no stipulation which name the couple adopts, in the country’s male-dominated society it is the man’s in 95% of cases. While critics claim this affects women’s employment prospects and contributes to Japan’s low birth rate, conservatives maintain that any change would undermine the traditional family unit and cause confusion among children.

Either way, it leaves young couples with an added pressure when trying to find a life partner. Four in-person gatherings in Tokyo, each focusing on one of Japan’s most popular surnames – Suzuki, Tanaka, Sato or Ito – “offer a rare opportunity for people who share a surname to meet someone they could legally marry without either person having to change names”, said news site The Mainichi.

It is not hard to see the appeal. A recent survey conducted by Asuniwa, a Tokyo-based association that advocates for a selective separate surname system and co-organises the events, and dating app Pairs, polled 2,500 people in their 20s and 30s. They found 36% of women and 46% of men “felt resistance” about changing their surname, while a smaller proportion had misgivings about their partner changing their name. Around 7% said they would break up if neither partner wanted to change their surname, while just under 6% said they would “wait until the (separate surname) system is legalised” to tie the knot.

“I hadn’t given much thought to the idea of marrying another Suzuki, but I can see now why it’s a safe option,” Taisho (not his real name) Suzuki, a 33-year-old company employee, told The Guardian. “I don’t want to give up my surname when I marry, and I know a lot of women feel the same about their names.”

For others it is more of a novelty. “To be honest, I’m not too fussed about keeping my maiden name, but I thought it would be fun to meet another Suzuki,” said Hana (not her real name) Suzuki, a 34-year-old nurse.

‘Bump in the app before you bump in bed’

For would-be couples in Iceland, the problem is being related to your partner. With a population of just 330,000, the risk of pairing up with someone genetically similar to you is high.

“Now, as social media and apps expand the dating pool”, many people are turning to a website “to ensure they aren’t swimming in the same gene pool,” said The Wall Street Journal.

Tracing a person’s lineage in Iceland is “especially challenging because last names are no indicator of historic family lineage”. Usually, a person’s last name is the father’s first name, followed by “son” or “dottir”.

“Íslendingabók”, or the Book of Icelanders, is an online database that contains the full genealogy of 720,000 Icelanders, living and deceased. While the historical work dating from the 12th century was not originally designed for dating, it led to a spin-off app that allows users to bump their phones together to instantly trace whether their family trees are intertwined, sparking the tagline “bump in the app before you bump in bed”.

China’s parent trap

In China, meanwhile, some parents are taking matters into their own hands to find partners for their children.

There is a long tradition of in-person outdoor “marriage markets”, where parents display handwritten CVs of their unmarried children in the hope of finding suitable partners.

Many are now “increasingly turning to ‘find a daughter-in-law’ or ‘find a son-in-law’ platforms online, turning partner-seeking into direct negotiations between parents”, said South China Morning Post.

“Instead of trying to persuade single young adults who resist matchmaking”, a few “sharp-eyed businesses” are now “directly targeting a different demographic: anxious parents with strong purchasing power”.

Quarterly membership costs 399 yuan (£43), for an online profile with an individual’s age, education, occupation and income, as well as home ownership status and expected timeline for marriage, prioritised above personality traits, hobbies, and interests.

A new injectable filler is making a splash for being minimally invasive and for the source that fills its vials: donated human fat from cadavers. The eerie origins of the shots have led to a mixed response. Some praise the innovations; others worry about future complications.

The rise of ‘corpse cosmetics’

Tiger Aesthetics’ new product, AlloClae, has become popular with “patients eager to look their best in the boardroom” without “undergoing general anesthesia or taking days off for recovery,” said Business Insider. Rather than using an implant or a patient’s body fat to add volume to hips or augment breasts, AlloClae relies on “donor fat from a cadaver as a first-of-its-kind body filler.”

While the procedure could cost as much as $100,000, people are “paying for the convenience,” cosmetic surgeon Sachin Shridharani said to Business Insider. It is about “not having the downtime, not needing more aggressive procedures, not having an anesthetic.” On social media, influencers sometimes refer to buttocks injections of AlloClae as ‘zombie BBLs,’ ‘zombie filler’ and ‘corpse cosmetics.’

The rise in GLP-1 use has contributed to the trend, along with “filler fatigue,” as traditional fillers can “cause problems such as puffiness and lymphatic issues,” said The Guardian’s Ask Ugly column. People who are on Ozempic or are dieting heavily are “really thin and don’t have enough fat to transfer,” plastic surgeon Melissa Doft said. They want their “legs and their belly to be skinny but want their breasts to be fuller.”

Even though AlloClae comes from cadavers, the product is “less macabre than you may think,” said Business Insider. Tiger Aesthetics purchases abdominal fat cells from organ donations at tissue banks. Then the company “screens it for diseases, purifies it and processes it.” The practice of using cadaver material is not unprecedented. There is already a donor fat product called Renuva, used for facial injections, while AlloClae uses higher volumes for the body. Cadaveric bones have also been recycled in dental grafts. Cadaver tissue, known as “allografts,” is “commonly used in surgically treating ACL tears,” said The Guardian.

Concern brews among surgeons

While a select few plastic surgeons have begun offering AlloClae injections, others have concerns, “especially when it comes to using AlloClae in the breast,” said The Cut. Breast is not “just fat, it’s glandular, hormonally active and requires lifelong imaging for cancer screening,” said plastic surgeon Adam Kolker. Anything injected can “create new densities, nodulifications or cysts,” which can “complicate mammography and ultrasound.” Without imaging and safety studies, physicians can’t responsibly predict how AlloClae will “behave during cancer surveillance.” A new “biologic material with unknown imaging behavior” becomes a “big diagnostic question mark.”

AlloClae is a “good tool,” said surgeon Glenn Lyle to The Guardian, but there is wariness about how eagerly people are adopting it. The industry is “moving too fast with this” without “follow-up studies.” The product is “being put in willy-nilly.” AlloClae is FDA compliant, which is “not quite the same as it being FDA approved,” the outlet said. Because human fat tissue is considered an existing product, it is “not subjected to the same standards as cosmetic interventions such as botox, dermal fillers or breast implants.”

Others are worried that fears about the origins of AlloClae could have a negative impact on organ donation. If people start “restricting their participation” due to fears of the product being used for cosmetic purposes, the “harm may outweigh the good,” Ryan Pferdehirt, the vice president of ethics services at the Center for Practical Bioethics, said to The Guardian. We need “skin grafts, bone marrow transplants and organ donation.” That is “far more important, I think, than the cosmetic aspects.”

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is struggling. The agency tasked with protecting the health of U.S. citizens has lost a quarter of its staffers over the last year, morale is lousy for those who remain and for the moment the organization has no leader: Its last Senate-confirmed director was ousted in August and no replacement has been chosen.

Health and Human Services Secretary (HHS) Robert F. Kennedy Jr. promised to restore trust in the CDC following the Covid-19 pandemic. But can his “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) movement survive the turmoil?

Why MAHA might be stalled

Kennedy’s MAHA agenda “appears to be stalled,” said The Guardian. The CDC lacks a director, and Trump’s nomination of Casey Means to be U.S. surgeon general is “stuck in limbo” in the Senate. But the administration “isn’t ready to nominate a new CDC director” despite a deadline of last week to do so, said CNN. Administration officials are still “evaluating candidates” who can shift the CDC “to its original mission of fighting infectious disease,” said HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon.

The CDC nomination delay comes as MAHA and Kennedy “appear to be on the ropes,” Tom Bartlett said at The Atlantic. MAHA supporters are “angry” that Trump is shielding herbicide makers from legal liability. The Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine chief just left the agency, a federal judge put a hold on Kennedy’s anti-vaccine agenda and the Kennedy-allied vice chair of the CDC’s vaccine advisory panel resigned last week. Those events, taken together, suggest the secretary’s hold on power is “waning.” A December poll “seems to have scared the White House off Kennedy’s vaccine agenda.” The result: Kenedy is “losing his grip on the CDC.”

The agency is meanwhile in “turmoil,” said The New York Times. Insiders say it is being “remade into a vehicle for ideologues” who share Kennedy’s anti-vaccine agenda. The shift prompted a staff exodus that leaves public health advocates concerned that Americans will be “increasingly exposed to a wide range of health threats” amid surges of measles, whooping cough and flu infections.

White House avoids controversy

Federal law says that acting agency directors “may not serve in the role for more than 210 days,” said The Hill. That deadline passed last week. National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya, who had been serving as acting director, has been “delegated to provide continuity in day-to-day CDC processes” until a permanent replacement is confirmed, said a White House spokesperson.

Getting Senate confirmation is a “potentially tall order,” said Axios. Kennedy and other Trump health appointees have “antagonized some of the chamber’s Republican centrists.” The White House is especially “eager to avoid further controversial health moves” ahead of November’s midterm elections. So Trump’s eventual CDC pick “may need both MAHA and science chops,” said Roll Call. Key GOP senators “want a moderate public servant” who can last in the job. The administration, said Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), does not have a “very encouraging track record thus far.”

Public satisfaction with the NHS has increased for the first time since 2019.

But although 26% of British adults questioned in the British Social Attitudes survey were satisfied with the health service – an increase of 6% from 2024 – the majority, some 51%, said they were dissatisfied with their experience. That “sounds more like a cause for concern than celebration”, said The Guardian in an editorial.

Puzzling findings

“The public appears inclined to accept the government’s narrative of a broken system being painstakingly put back together.” But hospital waiting lists are “still huge”, NHS dentistry has “probably never been in a weaker state” and there’s “justified impatience” on lagging social care provision. So “having pronounced the NHS ‘broken’”, Wes Streeting and his Department of Health and Social Care colleagues must “hurry up with their repairs”.

Still, the survey results, published by The King's Fund think tank, suggest the health service is “finally on the long road to recovery”, said The Mirror. The “gold standard assessment” found that the Labour government’s first full year in power “saw the greatest fall in dissatisfaction” in the NHS since “New Labour’s first full year in power in 1998”.

“Puzzlingly,” said Joseph Freer, from Queen Mary University of London, on The Conversation, “overall satisfaction rose”, but there was “no corresponding rise in satisfaction with each individual NHS service: GPs, A&E, dentistry and hospital care”.

This might be because services “did genuinely improve”, but the survey “simply did not poll enough people about each individual service to reliably detect small improvements”. Or perhaps the “political context” has “shifted”: a European study found that how people “feel about” the health system is now “influenced by things outside it”, such as “the political climate and what they see in the media”.

Skill shortage

While “debate” on the NHS “typically focuses on funding, waiting lists and plans for reform”, said Chris Day, chair of the Russell Group, in The Times, the system’s “most fundamental constraint” is that it “does not have enough skilled people”.

There are more than 100,000 vacancies across the wider “health ecosystem” and “demand for staff is rising faster than the system is able to meet”, thanks to “an ageing population, rising chronic illness and growing expectations”. So the “real solution” to improve the NHS experience is to increase “training capacity” and support a “range of alternative career paths into healthcare”.

Everyone should care, because the fate of the NHS is “a question that matters even to those who rarely use” it, said Chris Smyth in the Financial Times. Its budget of £200 billion “dwarfs any other public service” and will hugely “determine” whether Rachel Reeves imposes more tax rises.

The issue is also “central” to Labour’s “tenuous hopes of political recovery”; if Labour can’t convince voters it’s “fixing the NHS”, it “will have little else to offer”. But if it can “demonstrate tangible improvement” it will have a “powerful argument” against Nigel Farage, who has “repeatedly questioned whether the NHS funding model can survive”.

The thousands of people who crowded into Club Chemistry in Canterbury on the nights of 5, 6 and 7 March had no idea they were attending meningitis super-spreader events, said Lara Wildenberg in The Times. But it is now clear that as these youngsters shared drinks and vapes, kissed and danced, MenB was passing between them.

Cautiously optimistic

On 13 March, the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA) was notified by a hospital in Kent of a confirmed case of meningitis in a patient who had been admitted two days earlier. It started contact tracing, but local students were told nothing and so continued to mix.

On 14 March, hospitals reported a surge in admissions of young people with symptoms of meningitis, and on the campus of the University of Kent the mood shifted, as a video clip of a student being wheeled away by paramedics circulated on WhatsApp. Finally, on Sunday 15 March, the UKHSA issued a public alert and launched a “full-scale response”. Over the next few days, thousands of people were given preventative antibiotics and MenB vaccines.

By the end of last week, there had been 20 confirmed cases of MenB, said The Guardian. All the patients had been hospitalised, and two had died: an unnamed student aged 21, and Juliette Kenny, 18, a local sixth-former. But with no cases reported since, health authorities are cautiously optimistic that the outbreak – the worst in the UK in a generation – has peaked.

Few youngsters are vaccinated

MenB can kill within hours of symptoms becoming apparent, said Laura Donnelly in The Telegraph, but these symptoms are easily mistaken for those of flu – or even a bad hangover. So why were students not alerted earlier?

What troubles me is that so few youngsters are vaccinated for this terrifying disease, said Camilla Tominey in the same paper. Aged 13 or 14, children are jabbed for other forms of meningitis, and since 2015, babies have been given MenB jabs. For everyone else, the only option is to get the jab privately (if they can – stocks are very low). There are reasons for this, said BBC News. Although a quarter of adolescents carry the meningococcal B bacteria, it is very rare that it causes disease.

The vaccine does not offer long-term protection: babies have it to protect them during infancy, when they are most vulnerable. And it doesn’t stop transmission, or work on all forms of MenB. Even so, there have long been calls for teenagers to be offered MenB jabs, and ministers have promised to review the policy. But even if teenagers are vaccinated, they won’t be totally safe, or safe for ever – so being alert to the symptoms of meningitis will remain vital.

The UK was once a “world leader” in organ transplants, said the BBC’s “File on 4 Investigates”. But it has “fallen behind”.

In 2024, the number of heart transplants carried out per million people in the UK was lower than in most European countries, thanks to a lack of investment, resources and “outdated” technology. Waiting lists for organs are at a record high, while family consent rates for donation have fallen dramatically since the “opt-out” presumed consent system was implemented.

What’s going wrong?

“Organ donation is in crisis,” said Martha Gill in The Observer. Last year, the waiting list for an organ reached its highest on record, according to NHS Blood and Transplant: an 8% year-on-year increase. “As a consequence, many will die waiting for a phone call.”

There are only five heart and lung transplant centres in England, and one heart transplant centre in Glasgow. Anyone living in Wales or Northern Ireland must travel for a transplant, and there is significant regional variation in waiting times.

Half of the six main centres have also “lost their top surgeon in the past two years”, said the BBC. Others are leaving for jobs abroad: a “brain drain” of experts. Without experienced mentors, junior surgeons are increasingly “risk averse” and only using the healthiest donated organs, said Jorge Mascaro, Birmingham’s former director of cardiothoracic transplants (now based in the US). “It’s getting worse.”

The number of organs donated in the UK per head is equal to, or greater than, most of Europe. But the NHS transplants far fewer hearts and lungs than most countries, said the BBC. “Some countries make use of twice as many.” Surgeons say this is down to a lack of equipment and new technologies used abroad, such as machines that can scan organs to check if they are diseased. Ice boxes are often still used to transport organs between hospitals, which can harden them.

Operations are also regularly cancelled thanks to a lack of theatre space, hospital beds or staff. Post-transplant patient care is crucial to prevent complications, but the NHS “continues to struggle” to provide long-term support: the UK’s five-year survival rates “lag behind”.

Has the opt-out system failed?

When the “opt-out” system of presumed consent was implemented in England in 2020, “expectations were high”, said Gill. But the number of donors has been “crashing”. In the year to March 2025, there was a 7% decrease in the number of deceased organ donors, according to the Organ and Tissue Donation and Transplantation Activity Report. Life-saving transplants also decreased by 2%.

Most people support organ donation in theory, and nearly half the population have signed the Organ Donor Register, according to Organ Donation. But relatives have the final say; family consent rates have dropped from 69% to 61% over the past five years. Surveys suggest a “common reason: they didn’t know what their relative wanted”, said The Observer. The types of deaths that make donation possible – usually traumatic, sudden deaths of young healthy people – make it even harder for families to decide.

The presumed consent of the opt-out system acts as a “weaker signal of underlying preference” than the active consent of an opt-in system, said researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in a 2024 paper. This “uncertainty” means families are “more likely to refuse consent”. Evidence suggests an opt-out model alone doesn’t boost donations: it must be accompanied by a framework of logistics, psychological support and education.

What can be done?

The NHS and campaigners are calling for “better education in schools”, said The Mirror: for organ donation to be included in curriculums, and campaigns particularly targeted at ethnic minorities (among whom the family consent rate is significantly lower).

Evidence suggests an opt-out model alone doesn’t boost donations. Countries must invest in healthcare infrastructure, psychological support for families, and public awareness campaigns to encourage people to discuss their wishes. Family consent rates increase to almost 90% if the deceased has done so.

A government-commissioned review of heart and lung transplant services, published in 2024, made various recommendations, including better holistic care, a single-service model across the multiple centres, and “rapid-short term actions to improve organ acceptance decision-making”, said NHS England.

NHS England has since been abolished; responsibility for transplant services now lies with the Department of Health and Social Care. In a statement to the BBC, the department said the government had inherited a broken NHS, and that it recognised the “systemic issues” facing transplantation. The government said it would write to the NHS demanding that it “urgently implement” the recommendations, to make transplant services “fit for the future”.

Male-pattern hair loss affects 80% of men at some point in their lifetime (and female-pattern hair loss affects half of all women over the age of 70). But “until recently, we knew remarkably little about how to slow, halt and reverse its seemingly inevitable onset”, said Tom Howarth on BBC Science Focus.

For all the recent messaging about “body positivity”, the search for a balding “fix” has become “increasingly desperate – and financially lucrative”, said Esquire. The hair-loss industry is well on track to be worth £9 billion by 2030.

Balding happens when hair follicles on parts of the scalp produce gradually thinner and lighter hairs, until eventually they shrink and stop producing hairs at all. Until now, conventional treatments have focused on drugs that might help stimulate hair follicles or stop them shrinking. But they don’t work for everyone, can have unpleasant side effects and aren’t always available on the NHS. Other “solutions”, from micropigmentation to hair transplants and scalp-reduction surgery, have mixed results and can be very expensive. But now scientists think they have found new ways to make things look much better up there.

Hair loss cures in the pipeline

“Declarations of hair loss cures” have always been “a dime a dozen,” said Popular Mechanics, but recently there have been signs of genuine progress with new techniques – either to replace shrinking hair follicles with healthy ones or to use stem cell therapy to regenerate hair growth.

An “early frontrunner” is hair cloning, said Howarth on BBC Science Focus. Also known as hair multiplication, it’s a form of “hair banking”: before baldness hits, healthy hair follicles are extracted from your scalp and cryogenically frozen; once hair-thinning starts, these follicles are taken to a lab and the skin cells around them are isolated and multiplied; these “cloned” cells are then injected into balding patches on your head to produce lovely new hairs. A few private clinics already offer hair cloning in the UK; it’s pricey but costs may come down as the market increases.

For those whose days of hair-banking possibility are long behind them, autologous fat grafting holds some promise. Stem cells, harvested from fat cells taken from the belly, are injected into the scalp to stimulate hair growth. A study review of this technique, published in the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, found it to be “effective” in supporting hair regrowth and increasing hair density and diameter.

Meanwhile, in Japan, researchers are having success with their quest to grow hair follicles from scratch in a lab. Their “bioengineered hair follicle germ” has achieved follicle growth in mice, according to a study published in Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications. It’s a milestone in hair-treatment technologies, said Popular Mechanics.

Which is the most promising?

The “big one” is a drug called PP405, developed by US pharmaceutical company Pelage, said Lane Brown in New York Magazine. “The internet’s gathering places for the bald and balding” went wild when news broke that, in Pelage’s early clinical trials, it seemed not only to slow hair loss but to reactivate “parts of the scalp that have already surrendered”.

“We were blown away,” said Qing Yu Christina Weng, Pelage’s chief medical officer, told the magazine. After four weeks of applying the drug as a topical gel, not only were the treatment group “growing new hair where there wasn’t any before, it wasn’t peach fuzz or baby hair – it was proper, thick, terminal hair”. By week eight, 31% of those treated with PP405 had a 20% increase in hair density, compared to 0% in the placebo group, according to a Pelage press release.

The drug, which is designed to stimulate the activity of a metabolic enzyme called LDH in hair-follicle stem cells, still has further, bigger trials and safety tests to get through before it can be approved by regulators. But, if it is, its potential is obvious. “After decades of snake oil and broken promises,” it feels as though “the end of baldness” is within sight, said Brown. Call it “the faint stubble of hope”.

This super mineral is crucial for everyday health. But while many are taking it in supplement form in accordance with the latest social media trend, experts say there’s a healthier way of consuming the recommended amount in your diet.

Why is magnesium so popular?

The mineral is needed to “regulate our nerves, bones, immune system and blood sugar levels,” said The Independent. It is one of the most abundant minerals in the human body and is responsible for “more than 300 biochemical reactions,” including keeping the heartbeat steady and assisting in the production of energy and protein. Despite its abundance, the body does not naturally produce magnesium, so we need to acquire the mineral from food or supplements.

In the past few years, magnesium supplements have gone viral in social media wellness circles. It is the “key ingredient in #sleepygirlmocktails”, in which a powder is “stirred into tart cherry juice and prebiotic soda,” creating a “wellness cocktail for anxious millennials,” said Wired. People are “popping magnesium glycinate before bed instead of melatonin” because it “allegedly cures insomnia, constipation and existential dread.” Last year, Google searches for “which magnesium is best for sleep” and “which magnesium makes you poop” more than doubled.

Nutrients come “in and out of vogue in our society,” Whitney Linsenmeyer, a spokesperson for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, said to Parents. Magnesium is “having a moment right now,” perhaps because it is an “important nutrient in supporting common health concerns” like sleep, anxiety and PMS.

Magnesium glycinate capsules are commonly used for sleep issues and anxiety. Magnesium citrate usage is trending for constipation relief. Many social media users have posted about their “lack of bowel movements” and how drinking magnesium citrate “went above and beyond (sometimes too far) to get them back on track,” said Parents.

Should we be taking the supplements?

Unless you have a magnesium deficiency, “magnesium supplements aren’t essential,” said Wired. If you are struggling with “migraines, insomnia or other conditions where research suggests health benefits,” they may be worth trying, but “first talk to a health care professional.” Instead of supplements, you can focus on consuming “magnesium-rich foods” such as legumes, leafy greens, whole grains, nuts, fruits and soy products. Dark chocolate is also a good source of magnesium.

Deficiencies can be difficult to detect, Louise Dye, a professor of nutrition and behavior at the University of Sheffield, said to the BBC. Still, it is believed that we’re not getting enough magnesium from our food. Over the past 60 years, “intensive farming practices have caused a significant depletion of the mineral content of the soil,” including a “decrease in magnesium of up to 30%.” Additionally, “western diets typically have a greater proportion of processed food, where numerous products are mostly refined,” leading to magnesium being “depleted by up to 80-90% in the process.”

Supplements can be risky, however, and “overdosing may even be deadly,” said The Independent. Too much magnesium from food “does not pose a health risk in healthy individuals because the kidneys eliminate excess amounts in the urine,” the National Institutes of Health said. But high doses of magnesium from dietary supplements or medications “often result in diarrhea that can be accompanied by nausea and abdominal cramping.” Other symptoms may include low blood pressure, thirst, drowsiness, muscle weakness and slow or shallow breathing. Extremely high doses can lead to irregular heartbeats or even cause the heart to stop altogether, according to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.

Warming temperatures from climate change will likely lead to high levels of physical inactivity in the future, which could have significant public health implications. Heat leads to dehydration, exhaustion and overall inhospitable conditions. Regions with less air conditioning and cooling facilities will see the highest reduction in activity, but without intervention, more places will be affected.

Running hot

Rising temperatures are “projected to increase the prevalence of physical inactivity, translating into additional premature deaths and productivity losses,” said a study published in The Lancet Global Health. The study analyzed data from 156 countries between 2000 and 2022 to create a model for future physical activity globally. The results showed that by 2050 “each additional month with an average temperature above 27.8°C (82°F) would increase physical inactivity by 1.5 percentage points globally and by 1.85 percentage points in low- and middle-income countries,” said a release about the study.

With this reduction in physical activity, there would be a “predicted 0.47-0.70 million additional premature deaths annually and $2.40-3.68 billion in productivity losses,” said the release. The effects were mostly concentrated in low- and middle-income countries, and “some hot spot countries closer to the equator show estimated increases in physical inactivity of more than 4 percentage points by 2050,” said The Washington Post. On the other hand, high-income countries had no discernible difference in physical activity levels because they tend to have better infrastructure to combat heat.

The inactivity levels would increase gradually. The “real-world picture is usually not that people suddenly stop moving altogether,” the study’s lead author Christian Garcia-Witulski, a research fellow at the Lancet Countdown Latin America and a professor at the Pontifical Catholic University of Argentina, said to the Post. Instead, “heat gradually erodes the safe, comfortable and practical opportunities people have to stay active in everyday life.” Warmer temperatures would hinder activities such as “jogging outdoors or walking to work, particularly in areas which don’t have strong adaptive measures like proper shading or cool pavements,” said Time.

Internal conflict

Even without the climate pressure, “nearly one third (31%) of the world’s adult population, 1.8 billion adults, are physically inactive,” said the World Health Organization (WHO). Between 2010 and 2022, the number of people who “do not meet the global recommendations of at least 150 minutes of moderate-intensity physical activity per week” increased by 5%. Climate change is only expected to increase the number further. While lower-income countries face the brunt of the decrease in physical activity, “the pattern was not uniform,” and “some colder areas, such as North America, Argentina and South Africa, also report high rates of physical inactivity,” said the study.

“Outdoor laborers, street vendors and subsistence farmers cannot easily shift physical exertion to cooler hours,” said the study. Also, “women and adolescents often lack access to climate-controlled recreational spaces.” Physical activity “contributes to prevention and management of noncommunicable diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, cancer and diabetes and reduces symptoms of depression and anxiety,” said WHO.

“The link between physical inactivity and chronic diseases is so strong that any compromise to achieving regular exercise” will “pose broad public health risks,” Jonathan Patz, the chair of health and the environment at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said to the Post. Prioritizing reducing greenhouse gas emissions as well as building cooling infrastructure will be necessary for human health.

People agree that smoking is bad for you, but nicotine has far from gone up in smoke. Levels of American adults smoking cigarettes hit a record low in 2024, but nicotine products like vapes, patches and gum are alive and well.

Of the wide array of nicotine products, none have been picking up speed the way pouches like Zyn and On! have. These products are usually the size of a piece of gum and are held in the mouth between the gums and teeth, which slowly releases nicotine into the body. While mainly touted as a method to quit smoking, the pouches have made their way into the wellness spaces and are also being used as a tool to improve concentration.

How are nicotine pouches gaining popularity?

For those looking to quit smoking, nicotine pouches are considered to be the “least harmful nicotine option” because they are not known to “cause cancer, lung disease or other ailments,” by themselves, said The Wall Street Journal. But nicotine pouch usage is not exclusive to those trying to quit smoking.

The addictive chemical has a new lease on life, with many touting its benefits. Some studies have found that nicotine can improve cognitive performance, including attention, memory and learning. Nicotine has also been “linked to weight loss and reduced appetite,” as it “appears to influence the parts of the brain that control hunger and makes the body burn more energy,” Dipa Kamdar, a senior lecturer in Pharmacy Practice at Kingston University, said in an article for The Conversation. The pouches have similar effects to GLP-1s, which have been used for weight loss.

Nicotine pouches have since been touted as a powerful wellness compound, especially in the right-wing and biohacking spaces. It is a “life-enhancing, God-given chemical,” right-wing media personality Tucker Carlson said on Instagram. He claims that nicotine can treat erectile dysfunction and released his own brand of pouches called ALP, in collaboration with the tobacco giant Turning Point Brands. Over time, many media personalities have “advocated for nicotine use, not just as a way to get a buzz but as a cure for ailments ranging from whooping cough to atrial fibrillation,” said Salon.

The nicotine pouch hype has also skipped into the workplace. Rather than strictly drinks and snacks, the tech company Palantir began stocking nicotine pouches as a job perk, hoping to increase workers’ focus and productivity. Nicotine startups Lucy and Sesh have “installed branded vending machines in Palantir’s Washington, D.C., office,” said Fortune. This is “just one of the ways biohacking has taken the Silicon Valley tech space by storm.”

Is there merit to the benefits?

Any health benefits associated with nicotine are “frequently overblown or misinterpreted” and “outweighed by the problem of addiction,” said Stat. These effects are particularly dangerous as young people and those who have never smoked are picking up the habit. The chemical’s addictive nature can “become a gateway for someone to start using more harmful forms of nicotine, including cigarettes,” said the Journal. Most nicotine pouches on the market are also not FDA-authorized. Only certain Zyn and On! products have received authorization. Still, authorization differs from approval, as “all tobacco products are harmful and potentially addictive,” said the FDA.

Regarding cognitive enhancements, “people who already have cognitive difficulties have more room to improve, while those with healthy brain function are already performing close to their best,” said Kamdar. Nicotine is ”unlikely to offer any real benefit to people who don’t have cognitive impairments.”

What most experts agree on is that nicotine pouches are one of the better ways to quit smoking because most of the danger from cigarettes comes from the combustion of tobacco and not the nicotine itself. Evn though nicotine can cause other issues like nausea, vomiting, harm to blood vessels and an increased risk for heart attack and stroke. “Wellness trends come and go,” said Kamdar, “but addiction is far harder to shake.”

Step aside, girl dinner! Boy kibble is, according to social media, the new way to eat. Focused on protein loading and very little else, the trend is popular among Gen Z men and glorifies eating a bowl of tasteless mush. But it also reflects a push toward disordered eating and hypermasculinity.

Dog food for humans

Referring to the food as kibble is no accident, as most of the time these recipes involve a carb (like rice) and a form of protein (like ground beef) mixed together in a slop-like concoction that has glaring similarities to dog food. “Pleasure-seeking details like flavor and aesthetics are tossed to the side,” said The New York Times. However, this form of dinner may be “less nutritionally complete even compared to what you may be feeding the four-legged members of your family,” said Parents.

While some will opt to add vegetables to their kibble, for the most part, the goal is to maximize the amount of protein consumption, often at the expense of overall nutritional value. Many of these meals forgo fruits, whole grains and healthy fats. “When your meals lack these essential nutrients, deficiencies in fat-soluble vitamins and essential fatty acids, and micronutrients like calcium, vitamin D and iron, can result,” said Parents. Also, the “lack of fiber in boy kibble puts kids at risk for constipation and does not support a healthy gut microbiome,” Madison Szar, a pediatrician with Bluebird Kids Health, said to the outlet.

“Proteinmaxxing” is a trend increasing in ubiquity among young men, especially as Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. rolled out new diet guidelines emphasizing protein consumption. At the same time, “grocery prices and fitness trends continue to shape online food culture,” said Newsweek. With these combined factors, boy kibble “reflects a broader shift toward streamlined, protein-forward meals that prioritize convenience over presentation.”

Healthy facade

The goal of eating boy kibble is to consume an easy, nutritional meal, even if the nutritional value is debatable. But the boys are largely ignoring seasoning, making the meals themselves not very tasty or enjoyable, a mere means to an end. “This kind of moralizing of food or turning suffering through meals into a badge of honor” can “map on to some kind of disordered eating patterns and risks, no different than, say, orthorexia,” Abbey Sharp, a registered dietitian and the author of the book “The Hunger Crushing Combo Method,” said to Fortune.

The entire movement is a male response to the 2023 girl dinner trend, “where women devised elaborate hodgepodges of charcuterie-like plates, consisting of assorted meats, breads, cheeses, fruits and leftovers,” said Fortune. While girl dinner showcased the tendency to cobble together meals from things readily available in the kitchen, tying the slop-consumption to the word “boy” helps “soften what could be perceived as toxically masculine consumptive behaviors,” Emily Contois, an associate professor of media studies at the University of Tulsa and the author of “Diners, Dudes and Diets: How Gender and Power Collide in Food Media and Culture,” said to the Times.

The entire branding of boy kibble is “served with a heavy dose of internet irony,” said Newsweek. Using the term is “allowing men to sidestep the more feminine aspects of dieting,” Adrienne Bitar, a professor at Cornell University who studies the culture of American food and health, said to the Times. Dieting has been “seen as vain, frivolous, attention-seeking, superficial,” but by taking part in a trend, men can say “this isn’t about vanity” or “appearance, necessarily” but instead about “optimization and quantifying how to become my best self.” The trend reflects a recent “backlash moment of men wanting to reclaim a more traditional, conventional masculine authority.”

What happened

A federal judge in Boston on Monday paused most of Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s consequential actions on vaccines, as well as the decisions made by the influential vaccine advisory committee he gutted and remade with handpicked members. U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy, siding with the American Academy of Pediatrics and five other medical groups, said Kennedy had likely violated legal administrative procedures in appointing his new Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, then illegally sidestepped his handpicked panel in January to shrink the federal schedule for childhood vaccines from 17 routine immunizations to 11.

Who said what

Since 1964, “all U.S. vaccine policy has first run through ACIP, an independent panel of vaccine experts” that guides the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations, CNN said. The committee has historically decided which vaccines are safe and effective through “a method scientific in nature and codified into law through procedural requirements,” Murphy ruled. But under Kennedy, the “government has disregarded those methods and thereby undermined the integrity of its actions.”

The ruling from Murphy, an appointee of former President Joe Biden, is a “severe blow to the Trump administration’s health agenda,” The New York Times said. But the “blow to Kennedy’s efforts to overhaul federal vaccine policy” landed “at a time when the White House is seeking to limit vaccine critics’ influence within the administration,” Axios said. Kennedy wants federal vaccine policy “to more closely reflect” his skepticism of vaccines, Politico said. But the White House is looking to “shift the focus ahead of the midterms away from vaccines, which the public overwhelmingly supports, toward priorities with widespread voter buy-in, like lowering prescription drug costs.”

What next?

Murphy’s order effectively blocks ACIP from meeting Wednesday and Thursday, as planned. But it’s “not the final word,” The Associated Press said. His ruling bars 13 of ACIP’s 15 members from serving on the panel, freezes all the committee’s decisions since June and halts Kennedy’s reduced immunization schedule “pending either a trial or a decision for summary judgment.” The Trump administration is expected to appeal the ruling.

The United States has generally had a more forgiving set of regulations governing the use of additives, preservatives and other chemicals in food and drinks than the European Union (EU). The difference has begun to narrow, however, both because some U.S. states are banning ingredients that the federal government allows, and because the Health and Human Services Secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., pledged to more aggressively prohibit some of these substances as part of his Make American Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.

Some substances that were once legal to use in foods in the U.S. but not in Europe, like partially hydrogenated oils as well as brominated vegetable oil (BVO), were banned in the U.S. prior to the second Trump administration. They included a food dye called Red No. 3, which was banned by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on January 15, 2025. In April 2025, Secretary Kennedy announced plans to work with the food industry to voluntarily phase out six other petroleum-based food dyes, all of which are already banned for use in foods in the EU.

Azodicarbonamide (ADA)

ADA is used in the U.S. to “whiten cereal flour and improve baking bread dough,” said CBS News, but is banned for use in food by the EU, where it is considered a carcinogen. ADA has become increasingly controversial, however, and some companies have rolled back its inclusion in certain products.

In 2014, for example, Subway announced that it would no longer use ADA in its bread products, which turned out to be the leading edge of a trend. The American Bakers Association announced in 2026 that most of its members had already phased out the use of ADA, with the remainder doing so by the end of the year. The FDA is currently reviewing information about ADA.

Butylated hydroxyanisole (BHA)

BHA “is a preservative used in cured meats and other foods,” said the Environmental Working Group, a U.S.-based nonprofit. It is “subject to severe restrictions in Europe” but continues to be added to American food products under the FDA’s GRAS (Generally Regarded as Safe) principle, said The New York Times. The National Toxicology Program deemed it a likely human carcinogen decades ago. In February 2026, the FDA ordered a new safety review of BHA, “pointing to long-standing concerns that the food additive might cause cancer in humans,” said NBC News.

Butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT)

BHT is an “antioxidant that helps stabilize vegetable oils so they stay fresh longer and is often used in crackers and cereals to extend their shelf life,” said Tasting Table. The antioxidant’s presence in the popular cracker Wheat Thins, for example, is the reason you won’t be able to find them in Europe. Due to “concerns related to potential endocrine-disrupting properties,” BHT is banned for use in foods in the EU, said the European Commission. In August 2025, the FDA launched a “postmarket assessment of the safety of BHT as used in food and food contact materials,” said the FDA.

Potassium bromate

Potassium bromate is a substance that is found “usually in the form of fine crystals or powder, to strengthen dough” in more than 100 products sold in the U.S., said CBS News. It has been used for more than a century in breadmaking, but the European Union, the United Kingdom, Canada and most other countries in the world consider it a human carcinogen.

While Secretary Kennedy’s HHS has not taken any direct action against potassium bromate, he has stated that he wants to eliminate the program under which it is used in the U.S., under the FDA’s GRAS designation. Critics say that GRAS allows companies to include ingredients that were “greenlit for use not by the FDA but by the food and chemical industry,” said CNN.

Propylparaben

The chemical is deployed in more than “50 products in U.S. grocery stores,” said Consumer Reports, “including many packaged corn tortillas, baked desserts and cake icing.” Propylparaben helps “stop the growth of microorganisms in most packaged foods,” said The Cleveland Clinic, but may “interfere with your endocrine system, which includes glands and the hormones they send out to tell organs and tissues what to do.” The EU banned the inclusion of propylparabens in food in 2006. A 2024 FDA review did not lead to any new regulatory action.

Titanium dioxide

The “naturally occurring oxide of titanium,” titanium dioxide “has been used for decades to impart white color to many foods, from baked goods and sandwich spreads to soups, broths, sauces, salad dressing and food supplements,” said the European Commission. The EU banned its use in food products in 2022, citing the “possibility that the use of titanium dioxide as a food additive might cause DNA or chromosomal damage.” In the U.S., the “chemical seems to be largely surviving the food-dye purge” spearheaded by Kennedy, said The Atlantic, although some companies, including the maker of Skittles, are phasing it out voluntarily in expectation of future regulatory action.

Move over, protein. There’s a new dietary trend that’s doing the rounds. Fitness aficionados and wellness influencers are now “fixated” on how to “increase your daily fibre intake”, said Amelia Bell in Harper’s Bazaar.

Fibremaxxing is the latest addition to the “wellness glossary” and for good reason. Apart from its role in “digestion, weight management and gut health”, fibre also helps “stave off diseases” and reduce inflammation. A high-fibre diet can be highly beneficial but like any other TikTok-fuelled obsession, there is always a risk of “overdoing” it if one does not proceed with caution.

Fibre acts as “food for the microbiome”, said nutritionist Rhian Stephenson. Eating fibre-rich food “slows gastric emptying and carbohydrate absorption”, which helps stabilise blood sugar levels and provides metabolic support by “increasing the feeling of fullness”. This is why those with a healthy fibre intake often see “less weight gain and easier weight maintenance”.

According to NHS data, “most adults don’t come even close to hitting the daily recommendation of 30 grams”, said Dean Stattmann in GQ. Such a low level of consumption could take an “insidious toll on our collective health”.

Fibre is the indigestible part of plants that gives them their structure. It works as a gut cleanser by “shuttling away things that might otherwise overstay their welcome”. Without it, unmoving stools can “create little ‘pouches’ in the colon, called diverticuli, which can trap bacteria”, said Dr Dana Ellis Hunnes, a clinical dietician at UCLA Health. The bacteria can “potentially increase the risk of colon cancer, irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease, and just inflammation in general”.

Consuming plant-based foods is a great way to increase fibre intake. Lentils, beans, chia seeds and almonds are all rich in the nutrient. There are also many oral supplements available to help reach the recommended 30g daily intake level.

However, it is important to note that these supplements “don’t behave in the body in the same way that fibre from a whole food does”. Apart from fibre, whole foods have vitamins and minerals as well as water. This makes them more “synergistic” and less dehydrating.

The fibremaxxing trend certainly “carries a message” that many health professionals have been “banging the drum about for years,” said Polly Weeks on the BBC. But there’s a lot “we still don’t know about the gut and its microbiota” and one should be wary of “uninformed views, extreme advice and miracle quick-fix claims”.

Kieran Tuohy, a professor of energy metabolism and microbiome at the University of Leeds, said trying to “fibremax” on powders could be a “worrying” trend but “self-regulating” fibre levels by consuming plenty of whole foods is a great step to take.

Since 1959, Cuba’s so-called “white coat army” has been one of the Caribbean island nation’s most distinctive exports. “From Latin America to Africa and beyond”, thousands of highly trained medical professionals have worked to fill gaps in overstretched health systems around the world, generating valuable income for Havana in the process, said Al Jazeera.

But the long-standing scheme is now under strain, as the United States seeks to “starve Cuba of much-needed revenue” by putting pressure on its allies to stop importing Cuban medics to prop up their strained health services.

‘Coercive labour’

“For decades” the Cuban government has sent healthcare professionals to work overseas in diplomatic arrangements in which host nations pay Havana directly for the services of its medics, said The New York Times. Doctors are dispatched to “work in remote villages and cities in dozens of countries” where local healthcare systems have difficulty filling posts, but the medics themselves only receive a “small fraction” of what is paid for their services. It is “unclear” exactly how much Cuba has received from such arrangements, but research estimates a revenue of around $4 billion (£2.9 billion) a year from the export of skilled workers, including healthcare workers and teachers.

US officials argue that the programmes amount to a “coercive labour export scheme”, said the Financial Times. The US has expanded visa restrictions on those involved in medical missions, including officials in host countries, whom it accuses of participating in “forced-labour practices”. Last year, it imposed travel restrictions on several officials from Brazil, “once a top destination” for Cuban doctors but where numbers have now rapidly fallen amid increasing pressure from the US.

‘Close to collapse’

“After nearly 50 years”, arrangements will draw to a close in Guyana, said the Associated Press, while “several other Caribbean countries” including St Lucia, Antigua and Dominica are also reviewing their programmes. Medical missions have also ended in staunch Cuban ally Venezuela, as well as Guatemala.

Cuba framed the end of the medical mission in Jamaica as the nation “yielding to US pressure”, said Cuba’s 14ymedio. But Jamaica’s “version is different”, alleging that Cuba “did not even respond” to a proposal to pay doctors directly for their work.

The impact is being felt well beyond the Americas. In Calabria, one of the poorest regions in Italy, the arrival in recent years of 400 Cuban doctors has been “essential to keeping local hospitals running”, said Reuters. But, under duress from Washington, Calabria has now “scrapped plans” to hire 600 further doctors, and is now scrambling in a “global search for medical staff” expected to cost the region €8 million (£6.9 million), said Euractiv.

Giuseppe Ranuccio, vice-president of the Calabrian regional council, told the outlet that the health system was already “close to collapse”. The Cuban doctors “were supposed to buy time for structural reforms”, he said. “But those reforms never arrived.”

A new single-pill HIV treatment has proved as effective as regimens of up to 11 tablets a day in suppressing the virus in hard-to-treat patients. It’s “a potential breakthrough for a growing cohort of long-term HIV survivors” who are resistant to standard treatments and struggle to keep to complex medication schedules, said the Financial Times.

Along with the rollout of a twice-yearly jab to prevent HIV infection, this represents “the latest advance in a scientific ‘golden age’ for treating the virus” – even as wealthy countries cut their funding.

How well does the new single-dose pill work?

Researchers recruited, from 15 countries, more than 550 people living with HIV for whom conventional therapies were no longer effective. They had a median age of 60, and many had other health conditions. Their HIV treatment involved taking between three and 11 pills a day. They were randomly assigned to continue their treatment or switch to the new single pill.

Almost 96% of those who switched continued to suppress the virus, without new signs of drug resistance, according to the study results published in The Lancet. That is a similar rate to the control group who stayed on their more complicated multi-pill treatment. But the “switchers” found the new regimen easier to follow, and experienced a decrease in some side effects, such as elevated cholesterol levels.

The findings are “game-changing” for people who have lived with the virus for decades and have conditions “associated with ageing”, said study lead Chloe Orkin, a professor of infection and inequities at Queen Mary University of London. “The participants found the regimen far more convenient.”

The pill, a combined dose of established HIV drugs bictegravir and lenacapavir, could be “transformative” for those who struggle to access clinics because of age or poverty, said Anne Aslett of the Elton John Aids Foundation. “The challenge now” is to ensure this treatment breakthrough is “complemented by political will, funding and community engagement”, she told the Financial Times.

How do the HIV-preventive injections work?

A twice-yearly jab of lenacapavir was shown in 2024 clinical trials to be 100% effective at preventing new HIV infections.

An injection like this has a clear advantage over daily prevention pills in poorer countries, where patients – particularly young women – might struggle to access clinics or feel stigmatised for seeking treatment. Last year, the World Health Organization recommended it; the director general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus described it as “the next best thing” to an HIV vaccine.

There was initial concern that the drug would not be affordable in poorer countries. In the US, it was launched with a price tag of more than $28,000 (£21,000). But last year, manufacturer Gilead granted licences to six manufacturers to produce generic versions of the drug in 120 low and middle-income countries at a cost of $40 (£29) per patient per year. This is a “historic breakthrough”, said Philippe Duneton of the Unitaid global-health initiative.

Meanwhile, in October, another long-acting HIV-preventive injection, cabotegravir (given six times a year), became available on the NHS in England and Wales. (It has already been made available in Scotland). This is a “cutting-edge treatment”, said Health Secretary Wes Streeting. “For vulnerable people who are unable to take other methods of HIV prevention, this represents hope.”

What other progress has been made?

Promising results have been seen with stem cell transplantation. Seven people have been declared HIV-free after receiving a stem cell transplant – and, significantly, two of them had received stem cells that were not actually HIV-resistant.

This “upends our understanding of what’s required” for a cure, said New Scientist. If HIV-resistant cells aren’t necessary to destroy the virus, then scientists have a wider potential pool of stem cell donors, and greater options in their search for an effective HIV cure.

Other trials are exploring ways to cure HIV by genetically editing immune cells.

People “hum into their phones, gargle with theatrical enthusiasm, dunk their faces into bowls of ice water, and poke at their ears”, said Katie Edwards and Dan Baumgardt on The Conversation. They are all trying to “activate” their vagus nerve, the new “favourite body part” of the internet.

Social media is abuzz with the transformational potential of vagus-nerve “training”. Stimulate it and reset it, wellness influencers claim, and you can improve your mental and physical wellbeing.

What is the vagus nerve? 

It’s the longest cranial nerve in your body. Its name derives from the Latin for “wandering” because its two branches rove through your entire body – travelling from the brainstem down into your neck, chest and abdomen, connecting to the heart, lungs, gut and the liver. It constantly relays information from your brain to your organs and back again, and is often described as an internal communication superhighway or our body’s intranet.

How important is it? 

As “signal updater” between brain and body, the vagus nerve is a part of the autonomic nervous system that regulates processes you don’t consciously control, such as heart rate, breathing and digestion. Within that system, it has a key role in the parasympathetic response – sometimes known as “rest and digest” – slowing heart rate and decreasing blood pressure. Put simply, when you feel calm, safe and relaxed, your vagus nerve is helping to make that happen.

The theory is that your body can sometimes get “stuck” or spend too long in the opposite sympathetic response – known as “fight or flight” – and stimulating the vagus nerve can prompt a return to calm.

Can stimulating it make you healthier?

Implanted devices that directly stimulate the vagus nerve have long been used to treat neurological conditions like epilepsy and treatment-resistant depression. More recently, trials of transcutaneous devices, often placed around the neck or in the outer ear, have shown promising results in treating conditions including diabetes, Crohn’s disease, fibromyalgia and irritable bowel syndrome.

This kind of non-invasive vagus-nerve stimulation (VNS) first entered the “mainstream consciousness” as a “biohacking tool” in the 2025 Netflix documentary “Don’t Die”, said Vogue. The film followed US tech entrepreneur Bryan Johnson’s “longevity journey” and the “anti-ageing” crusader is shown wearing a VNS gadget that, he said, helps him manage stress and get to sleep.

From then on, the vagus nerve got “the trendy treatment”, said The Independent. Wearable devices swiftly appeared on the market that were said to enable VNS by sending a “specific level” of electrical current through the nerve that will “wake up” or “reset the system”, much like “rebooting a computer”.

I am cautious about claims that the vagus nerve can be “switched on like a light”, Arshad Majid, a professor of cerebrovascular neurology at the University of Sheffield, told Edwards and Baumgardt on The Conversation. There’s “not an on-off button” that these devices, or other DIY methods, like humming or gargling, can trigger. And, in some cases, trying to stimulate the nerve can “trigger headaches and even depression”.

That said, we are running various clinical trials on non-invasive VNS devices, and the “next few years of research” could “reshape” how we treat a range of conditions. But you should “maybe hold off on aggressively poking your ear” for now.

Bone broth “has undergone the PR glow-up of a lifetime”, said Saskia Kemsley in The Standard. Celebrities including Gwyneth Paltrow, Halle Berry and Kylie Jenner have all jumped on board, extolling its rejuvenating benefits.

So what is bone broth? Put simply, it's a nutrient-dense liquid made by simmering animal bones with vegetables or other natural ingredients for up to 24 hours, similar to making stock for use in soups or stews. Drinking the broth for its health benefits is a “phenomenon” that has “skyrocketed” in recent years, even if the evidence is somewhat unclear.

“Of all the wellness trends, this one’s probably up there with the strangest,” said Daisy Jones in British Vogue. “A broth? Made from bones, you say? Sounds a bit fee-fi-fo-fum to me.”

But bone broth promises an “array of supposed health benefits”. Some studies have shown that it is an anti-inflammatory “gut-healing powerhouse”, rich in electrolytes, and full of amino acids that help “regulate the immune system and promote gut health”. People are also indulging in a bid to improve their skin with the high collagen content. “Hmmm, maybe not so unappealing after all?”

Some of the most popular brands are “hugely expensive”, and often not much better than you can make at home, so you don’t need to “spend a fortune” buying the stuff, said Clare Finney in The Times. All you have to do is pop into a butcher’s for some “broken-down bones” at a “fraction of the price”, Michelin-star chef Emily Roux told the newspaper, “or if you’re making a roast chicken, never throw away the carcass”. After a four- to six-hour “long, slow simmer”, you can add combinations of “star anise, black peppercorns, any veggies or herbs that are suffering in the fridge” to “zhuzh it up”.

If you do want to splash out on a shop-bought broth, one of the best on the market is Borough Broth, whose organic beef bone broth is “filled to the brim with umami excellence” and has a “whopping 40% bone content”, said Kemsley in The Standard. Freja is another brand “taking supermarkets by storm for good reason”. Its broths have a two-year shelf-life, making them a “pantry essential”, and there’s also a fish-based version for pescatarians.

Despite the frenzied uptake by influencers who think it is a “wonder stew for your face”, some experts have a “bone to pick” with the trend, said GQ. Though it can be a great source of amino acids, the results can be inconsistent depending on what is cooked, and how.

“My personal advice would be that it doesn’t add anything that a healthy diet containing a good source of proteins wouldn’t do”, Dr Christine Hall, NHS GP and aesthetics doctor, told the magazine. “In fact, a healthy, balanced diet will actually contribute more.”

The NHS has long been grappling with staff shortages and funding shortfalls but now another destabilising issue is coming to the fore: the vulnerability of its supply chain.

In today’s volatile world of tensions, tariffs and climate-related disasters, NHS stocks of vital medicines and equipment are increasingly under strain, and shortages are becoming more common.

Currently, a global shortage of bone cement has led to the postponement of scheduled knee and hip replacement operations across the country. For the people who have been waiting in pain to make it “to the front of orthopaedic surgery queue”, this is “a crushing blow”, Deborah Alsina of Arthritis UK, told The Guardian.

Painkillers, aspirin and hearing-aid batteries

There is also a UK-wide shortage of the highest prescription-strength form of the painkiller co-codamol. It’s most commonly manufactured in India but the Indian government is “delaying the authorisation to import ingredients required to make the drug there”, said the BBC.

With shortages expected until at least June, the Scottish government is limiting supplies, and warning patients who are prescribed the pills to gradually reduce the number they are taking because stopping abruptly can trigger withdrawal symptoms such as headaches and nausea. Alternative treatment options will be offered to those affected but some health boards have said the expected uplift in demand for these alternatives may not be sustainable.

Some deaf people are “being forced to turn off their hearing aids” because of a nationwide shortage of certain hearing-aid batteries, said The Times. The shortage, first highlighted in November, is expected to be resolved by 16 March but “it’s not a good situation from a personal safety point of view if people are turning off their hearing aids”, Kay Fairhurst of Salford Disability Forum told the paper.

Britain is also “grappling with widespread shortages of aspirin”, said PA Media’s health editor Jane Kirby. Most pharmacies are reporting “significant difficulties” in sourcing the vital drug, which is used to help prevent blood clots, strokes and heart attacks in high-risk patients. Pharmacists are being “forced to tightly ration” their aspirin stock, with many withdrawing it from over-the-counter sales.

The government has blamed “manufacturing delays” for the shortage but pharmacy associations are also blaming the NHS payment model. “The prices paid for many medicines by the NHS are so low that manufacturers often prioritise supplying other countries instead, leaving the UK pushed to the back of the queue,” Leyla Hannbeck of the Independent Pharmacies Association told PA Media. And, even if they can order stock, pharmacies are left out of pocket: the aspirin shortage has pushed its price up to £3.90 a packet but the NHS will only reimburse pharmacies £2.18 a packet. These are “signs of a fundamentally broken pharmacy contract”, said Olivier Picard of the National Pharmacy Association.

‘Critical pinch points’

The UK depends on supply chains for antibiotics, vaccines and diagnostic tests that are “highly brittle and vulnerable”, The Centre for Long-Term Resilience think tank reported last year. These supply chains have “critical pinch points overseas”, and NHS reliance on a small number of manufacturers, often in China, “has never looked more fragile” in this time of “turning geopolitical tides”.

All of NHS England’s supply of gentamicin, an antibiotic used to treat serious bacterial infections, comes from two supplier factories in the same Chinese city. Any disruption to that city, or any geopolitical issue that causes an export ban between China and other countries, would “wipe out UK access to gentamicin”, the report warned.

The NHS supply chain is “exposed to vulnerabilities of unprecedented scale and complexity”, said global risk consultancy Marsh. Geopolitical tensions, the aftermath of the pandemic and disruptions to crucial shipping routes have “exposed the fragility of international supply chains, causing costly delays and supply shortages that reverberated across healthcare systems worldwide”.

Global tariffs, including on medical equipment and pharmaceuticals, have “introduced significant cost pressures on international trade flows”. The NHS has “felt these disruptions acutely”. There is an “urgent need to build a more resilient, agile and secure NHS supply chain”.

“After decades of terrible PR”, the humble cabbage is “quietly gaining cultural capital”, said Business Insider. The sad memories of soggy “WWII boiled cabbage recipes” and the “Cabbage Soup Diet of the ’80s” are things of the past.

Some would call this boom a “recession indicator”, but many are flocking to the vegetable’s high-fibre and low-calorie content. Whatever the reason, cabbage is certainly “having a moment”.

Currently, the “fibre-maxxing” movement is in full swing, with fermented foods all over social media as users scramble for better gut health. Cabbage “punches well above its weight” in terms of nutritional value, said Rob Hobson, nutritionist and food author. It is a “rich source” of fibre, and also vitamin C and K, and he says it “will overtake protein as the trendiest nutrient” this year.

Cabbage has “never enjoyed the glossy halo afforded to avocados, blueberries”, or any other sought-after superfood, said Hannah Twiggs in The Independent. “It is the vegetable equivalent of sensible shoes: practical, reliable and almost aggressively uninterested in seduction.” The green leaves have fed people of all backgrounds for thousands of years – in soups in central Europe, kimchi in Korea, and becoming “fused” into the “national psyche” of Ireland alongside potatoes.

Perhaps what is fuelling this resurgence is its “lack of glamour”, low price tag and wide availability. Cabbage “asks little, delivers much and carries none of the aspirational baggage of trendier ingredients”. It is “not new. It is just newly appreciated.”

“Everything’s coming up cabbages”, even in fashion, said Anna Grace Lee in Vogue. After the “Pinterest Predicts” trend report said that 2026 is the year of “peak cabbage obsession”, the vegetable has become “chic”. There are cabbage motifs everywhere, from the “Sandy Liang cabbage bag” to the “Dodie Thayer for Tory Burch ceramic line”.

“I always keep a head or two in my fridge so I can throw together a quick, healthy, and budget-friendly meal at a moment’s notice,” said Charlyne Mattox in Country Living. Cabbage is one of the best ingredients to “stretch your grocery dollar”, while still providing a “nourishing” meal.

“Butter-braised” cabbage with cream and garlic is a “quick and easy” way to use up any “pantry staples”. You can add “roasted salmon, bone-in chicken breasts, or a tender pork chop” for a delicious meal. For a lighter option, try rustling up a classic bacon-cabbage panzanella, adding meat and bread to your taste – and sprinkling a little “crumbly cheese” like feta on top.