5 hours agoShareSaveConor NeesonBBC News NIShareSaveBBCA proposed trial to install a waste needle bin in Belfast city centre is not a “silver bullet” but one step to dealing with drugs issues in the city, a councillor has said.Brian Smyth was speaking ahead of a Belfast City Council vote on Thursday on whether or not to install the bin in the council-owned car park on Little Donegall Street.Councillors chose the car park over a site on Corporation Square at the People and Communities Committee last month. Green Party representative Smyth said the council was lifting between 600 and 700 needles a month in the city centre, with other organisations also involved in the collection of needles. A council report stated there had been an increase in needle finds in recent months and it had been “highlighted as being in the top six locations” for discarded needles. The proposed metal needle bin will be concreted to the ground and will provide a secure way of disposing of sharps.Smyth had previously tabled motions for similar bins to be placed in Writer’s Square, however this is not council land. He said the Department for Communities (DfC) had turned down this call. “They are worried about image but I would say if needles continue to be found in the area of high significance, then that’s going to provide an image problem,” he said.A DfC spokesperson said it recognised that drug abuse and associated anti-social behaviour in the city centre was a major issue and was working closely with other organisations, including the council, to tackle the problems.Needles found in rubbish Smyth said members of the council’s cleansing team had found needles disposed in regular rubbish bins. “This poses a risk not only to them but also to members of the public,” he said. “Whilst this is a very small response, I think we need to get our heads around the bigger issue of rising drug use in and around Belfast city centre and how we tackle it.”In March 2023, Belfast City councillors passed a motion in favour of setting up a safe injecting facility to help prevent overdoses among drug users.The council has no legal power to open a facility and a change in legislation would be required for this to happen.The aim would be to reduce overdoses and drug-related harm as well as making drug use less visible to the community.Smyth said such a facility could make the area safe for “people who live, work and socialise in the city centre”. Damian McNairney, a volunteer and trustee from The People’s Kitchen in Belfast, said the bin would help but described Belfast city centre as being in a drug crisis. The kitchen offers support to vulnerable and homeless people. “We need to be more adventurous, we need to be more compassionate in our approach to the issue,” said Mr McNairney. “Addicts are being demonised, we need to look and see if we can help.”If we solve the problem at source, i.e. the addiction, then we are going to be able to deal with the drug paraphernalia and the other issues allied to that.”Mr McNairney said there were other areas with “more prominent use” but getting needles off the street was always a positive. “There are needles around the town anyway. By not putting the bins up they’re not going to go away,” he said.Mr McNairney said he had visited a safe injection site which opened in Dublin in 2024 and he was in favour of a similar facility in Belfast.”It seems to be very encouraging in terms of people using it, there’s drug paraphernalia that has been taken off the streets, it’s being safely disposed of and people with addictions are being signposted to other services,” he said. In March, Justice Minister Naomi Long told BBC News NI that the “war on drugs had not been won” and there needed to be a rethink of how illegal drugs were dealt with in Northern Ireland.

2 hours agoShareSaveSean CoughlanRoyal correspondentShareSavePA MediaKing Charles has sent a personal message to fellow cancer patients, speaking of the “daunting and at times frightening experience” for cancer sufferers and their loved ones.In a heartfelt message to guests at a Buckingham Palace reception for cancer charities, the King spoke about becoming a cancer “statistic” – referencing the more than 1,000 new cases recorded in the UK every day.He said his experience of living with cancer had shown that “the darkest moments of illness can be illuminated by the greatest compassion”.The message doesn’t provide an update on the progress of the King’s own cancer treatment, but royal sources say he is continuing in a positive direction.The King was diagnosed with an undisclosed form of cancer in February 2024 and continues to receive regular treatment, which is said to be successful and that he is getting better.There was a brief hospital stay for the King in March after he suffered side effects, but he was well enough in April for a state visit to Italy with a busy schedule and is said to have plans for further overseas trips.There has been an attempt to be more open about his health problems – and this latest message reflects his sense of a shared experience with the many other families affected by cancer.The King’s statement continued: “But as one among those statistics myself, I can vouch for the fact that it can also be an experience that brings into sharp focus the very best of humanity.”He praised the “community of care” of those who helped cancer patients, for their humanity as well as their expertise.The King highlighted “the profound impact of human connection – whether in the careful explanation from a specialist nurse, the hand held by a hospice volunteer, or the shared experience in a support group”. “While every patient’s journey may be different, together you are ensuring that a cancer diagnosis need never mean facing the future without hope and support,” said the King.He quoted Dame Deborah James, who died of bowel cancer in 2022 and whose parents are guests at the reception, who said: “Have no regrets; and always, always have rebellious hope.”PA MediaPA MediaThe reception at Buckingham Palace on Wednesday evening, attended by the King and Queen Camilla, is in honour of community projects helping people who are living with cancer and for health groups trying to prevent cancer.Among the guests will be representatives of cancer charities including Macmillan Cancer Support, Breast Cancer Now, Maggie’s and Children’s Hospice South West.The reception includes displays showing the work of groups helping people affected by cancer, including Wigs for Heroes and Move Dance Feel, which uses dance to support women with cancer.At the Palace there are also champions of cancer charities, people living with cancer and people who lost relatives, including radio presenter Adele Roberts, former footballer Ashley Cain and actor Richard E Grant.”Every day we see the impact that cancer is having on people’s lives and that experience is even worse for some people because of who they are or where they live, which is entirely unacceptable. We are on a mission to transform cancer care, but we cannot do it on our own,” said Gemma Peters, chief executive officer at Macmillan Cancer Support.If you are affected by any of the issues raised in this story, support and advice is available via the BBC Action Line.

What makes humans conscious? Scientists disagree, strongly, as one group of peacemakers discovered the hard way.Consciousness may be a mystery, but that doesn’t mean that neuroscientists don’t have any explanations for it. Far from it.“In the field of consciousness, there are already so many theories that we don’t need more theories,” said Oscar Ferrante, a neuroscientist at the University of Birmingham.If you’re looking for a theory to explain how our brains give rise to subjective, inner experiences, you can check out Adaptive Resonance Theory. Or consider Dynamic Core Theory. Don’t forget First Order Representational Theory, not to mention semantic pointer competition theory. The list goes on: A 2021 survey identified 29 different theories of consciousness.Dr. Ferrante belongs to a group of scientists who want to lower that number, perhaps even down to just one. But they face a steep challenge, thanks to how scientists often study consciousness: Devise a theory, run experiments to build evidence for it, and argue that it’s better than the others.“We are not incentivized to kill our own ideas,” said Lucia Melloni, a neuroscientist at the Max Planck Institute for Empirical Aesthetics in Frankfurt, Germany.Seven years ago, Dr. Melloni and 41 other scientists embarked on a major study on consciousness that she hoped would break this pattern. Their plan was to bring together two rival groups to design an experiment to see how well both theories did at predicting what happens in our brains during a conscious experience.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

New data collected from more than 200,000 people across the world shows that young people aren’t as happy as they used to be.The happiness curve is collapsing.For decades, research showed that the way people experienced happiness across their lifetimes looked like a U-shaped curve. Happiness tended to be high when they were young, then dipped in midlife, only to rise again as they grew old.But recent surveys suggest that young adults aren’t as happy as they used to be, and that U-shaped curve is starting to flatten.This pattern has shown up yet again in a new study, one of a collection of papers published on Wednesday in the journal Nature Mental Health. They are the first publications based on the inaugural wave of data from the Global Flourishing Study, a collaboration between researchers at Harvard and Baylor University.The data, collected by Gallup primarily in 2023, was derived from self-reported surveys of more than 200,000 people in over 20 countries. It found that, on average, young adults between the ages of 18 and 29 were struggling — not only with happiness, but also with their physical and mental health, their perceptions of their own character, finding meaning in life, the quality of their relationships and their financial security. The researchers combined these measures to determine the degree that each participant was “flourishing,” or living in a state where all aspects of life were good.The study participants had relatively low measures of flourishing on average until age 50, the study found. This was the case in a number of countries, including the United Kingdom, Brazil and Australia. But the difference between the younger and older adults was largest in the United States, the researchers said.“It is a pretty stark picture,” said Tyler J. VanderWeele, the lead author of the study and director of Harvard’s Human Flourishing Program. The findings raise an important question, he said: “Are we sufficiently investing in the well-being of youth?”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

4 hours agoShareSaveNikki FoxBBC health correspondent, EssexShareSaveFamily handoutA mental health trust has admitted its failure in the care of a 16-year-old inpatient led to her death.Elise Sebastian, a Harry Potter fan and music lover, was found unresponsive in her room at the St Aubyn Centre unit in Colchester in April 2021.Staff at the unit, run by the Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust (EPUT), had been tasked with providing one-to-one care.The family attended the first day of an inquest into her death and they are participating in the ongoing Lampard public inquiry which is investigating more than 2,000 patient deaths. The Lampard Inquiry team will monitor Ms Sebastian’s inquest.Family handoutThe inquest at Essex Coroner’s Court heard how Elise was supposed to be on one-to-one care at the St Aubyn’s unit after several self-harm attempts.Essex area coroner Sonia Hayes said she was supposed to be observed when she was in isolated areas.Mother Victoria Sebastian visited Elise on 17 April that year and gave her a cuddle.But, when she left, Elise was allowed to enter her bedroom from a communal area without staff members present.The teenager, who lived in Southminster near Maldon, was found unresponsive and died in hospital two days later.Mrs Sebastian told the inquest that the pain of her death was “too much to bear” and Elise was “badly let down by the system”.EPUT accepted the trust’s failures were “causative of her death” and its lawyer Pravin Fernando said: “[It] failed in its responsibility by allowing her to enter her bedroom unsupervised.”The family also said EPUT staff had not told them where Elise was after she had already been rushed to hospital – so they drove to Colchester Hospital in the hope she was there.JOHN FAIRHALL/BBCMichael Lewis, a senior paramedic for the East of England Ambulance Service NHS Trust, was called after Elise was found unresponsive.He said he was met with several locked doors and became “extremely frustrated”.”I felt there was no-one there taking responsibility,” he said.”Each question was met with ‘I don’t know’.”He continued: “I was told the patient was on one-to-one observation so I remember thinking – how has this happened.”Dr Lisa Cunningham, a consultant in emergency medicine at the Essex & Herts Air Ambulance, said in a statement there was an “air of stress from the staff”.Family handoutMrs Sebastian said family meant everything to Elise, and she had a fantastic relationship with her brother and two sisters.Her father Glen Sebastian described her as a “typical little princess” and said they would enjoy visiting places like the West End and art galleries.”She would blow me away with her paintings and she certainly had a gift,” he said.Ms Hayes heard how Elise was diagnosed with autism and sometimes struggled to understand other people’s behaviour.She had physical health issues including bowel problems and a curvature of the spine.The teen was also diagnosed with epilepsy which affected her confidence socially.The coroner was told she first struggled with anxiety aged 12 and had several admissions to mental health units when she was 15 after being bullied.She managed to abscond from the unit on previous occasions.Both Mr and Mrs Sebastian, who are now separated, said they had suffered with post traumatic stress disorder since her death.In her opening statement, Ms Hayes said Elise was: “A young person with her own hopes and dreams.” The inquest is expected to last for four weeks.Related internet links

With federal support, Environmental Health Perspectives has long published peer-reviewed studies without fees to readers or scientists.Environmental Health Perspectives, widely considered the premier environmental health journal, has announced that it would pause acceptance of new studies for publication, as federal cuts have left its future uncertain.For more than 50 years, the journal has received funding from the National Institutes of Health to review studies on the health effects of environmental toxins — from “forever chemicals” to air pollution — and publish the research free of charge.The editors made the decision to halt acceptance of studies because of a “lack of confidence” that contracts for critical expenses like copy-editing and editorial software would be renewed after their impending expiration dates, said Joel Kaufman, the journal’s top editor.He declined to comment on the publication’s future prospects. “If the journal is indeed lost, it is a huge loss,” said Jonathan Levy, chair of the department of environmental health at Boston University. “It’s reducing the ability for people to have good information that can be used to make good decisions.”The news comes weeks after a federal prosecutor in Washington sent letters to several scientific journals, including The New England Journal of Medicine, with questions that suggested that they were biased against certain views and influenced by external pressures.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

In an interview with Dr. Phil, the health secretary offered false information about vaccine oversight and revealed a lack of basic understanding of new drug approvalsHealth Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. advised parents of newborns to “do your own research” before vaccinating their infants during a televised interview in which he also suggested the measles shot was unsafe and repeatedly made false statements that cast doubt on the benefits of vaccination and the independence of the Food and Drug Administration.Mr. Kennedy made the remarks to the talk show host Dr. Phil in an interview that aired Monday on MeritTV to mark the 100th day of the Trump administration. He said, as he has in the past, that “if you want to avoid spreading measles, the best thing you can do is take that vaccine.”But Mr. Kennedy also made clear, as he has in the past, that he believes it is up to individuals to decide. In suggesting vaccines are unsafe, he contradicted decades of advice from public health experts, including leaders of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.“I would say that we live in a democracy, and part of the responsibility of being a parent is to do your own research,” the health secretary said, in response to a question from a woman in the audience who asked how he would advise a new parent about vaccine safety. “You research the baby stroller, you research the foods that they’re getting, and you need to research the medicines that they’re taking as well.”The phrase “I did my own research” became a cultural and political touchstone during the coronavirus pandemic, when proponents of vaccination, mostly on the political left, used it to denigrate those who had chosen not to get vaccinated. It became an internet meme and popped up on mock tombstones in Halloween-themed graveyards in liberal neighborhoods.The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Mr. Kennedy’s comments came amid the largest measles outbreak in about 25 years in the United States, which has included the deaths of two young children and an adult.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

14 minutes agoShareSaveFergus WalshMedical editorShareSaveBBCA 29-year-old doctor from Bristol has had her eyesight saved after a “game-changing” test identified a mystery infection that had plagued her health for five years.Ellie Irwin suffered persistent inflammation in her right eye resulting in blurred vision and underwent intensive treatment to no avail. At one point she even considered having her eye removed.It was only after Ellie was offered a “last resort” analysis called metagenomics, that she was diagnosed with a rare bacterial infection which was cured with antibiotics.”It’s been transformative,” Ellie told the BBC. “I feel so fortunate.”Professor Carlos Pavesio, consultant ophthalmologist at Moorfields Eye Hospital in London, says Ellie’s case is a “breakthrough in the diagnosis of infectious diseases”. “There are many patients we treat with chronic infections for years, but despite multiple tests we cannot identify the bug responsible,” he says.In 2019, while still at medical school, Ellie began suffering from inflammation in her right eye. All tests for infection came back negative and it was assumed she had an autoimmune condition.Ellie was prescribed steroid eye drops and immunosuppressants, some of which needed to be given by intravenous infusion.”It was completely dominating my life,” Ellie says. “I needed eye drops every single hour and it was difficult to balance that alongside starting work as a junior doctor. My vision was really variable, and I would have some bad days.”I was on so much medication and going to so many appointments, yet I didn’t feel I was getting any better.”The treatment and inflammation led to Ellie developing a cataract that had to be surgically removed, just after she graduated from medical school.Ellie says she eventually reached “breaking point”, and even began considering having her affected eye removed.”Whilst losing sight in one eye is terrifying,” she says, “my biggest fear was that it might spread to my left eye.”Ellie IrwinIt was one of Ellie’s doctors at Southmead Hospital in Bristol who suggested metagenomics – a last resort test not generally available to patients and only used where standard diagnostic tools have failed to identify or rule out infection.Metagenomics technology uses cutting-edge genomic sequencing, which can identify all bacteria, funghi or parasites present in a sample by comparing them against a database of millions of pathogens.A team at Moorfields Eye Hospital arranged for a sample of fluid to be taken from inside Ellie’s eye and sent to the metagenomics labs at Great Ormond Street Hospital (GOSH) – the only lab in the UK officially recognised to carry out these diagnostic tests for patients, and one of only a few in the world.Currently, the standard method for detecting bacterial infections is by trying to grow a sample of it in a Petri dish.For viruses, the most common diagnostic tool is a PCR test. These will be familiar to many from the pandemic, when millions sent off swabs in the post to confirm whether they had Covid.However, Dr Julianne Brown, principal clinical scientist at the GOSH metagenomics service, says PCR has some drawbacks.”The trouble with PCR is that you have to think of the viruses that might be causing an infection and do a separate test for each and every one,” she says. “So if you’ve got an infection with something that’s unexpected, rare or not previously known, you won’t find it.”Dr Brown says metagenomics is “an enormous step up – it’s a complete game-changer”.Ellie IrwinIn Ellie’s case, metagenomics diagnosed a rare strain of the bacterial infection leptospirosis found in South America.It is now presumed Ellie picked up the bug swimming in the Amazon river in 2018, while on a trip to Ecuador and Colombia.Ellie says it was an emotional moment when she was given the results of the test.”I broke down – I just had to cry. I never imagined that it would come back positive and be for something that was treatable,” she says. “I was given three weeks of antibiotics and within days my vision was clearer and the inflammation subsided.”A single metagenomics test costs around £1,300, which is far more than standard diagnostics. However, as the technology is developed that price is likely to fall rapidly.Virologist Professor Judy Breuer, who has been developing metagenomics at GOSH and University College London (UCL) for more than a decade, says her team currently receives three or four samples a week from hospitals around the UK for metagenomic testing in addition to those it carries out on its own patients.These are often samples from parts of the body that are normally sterile sites, where bacteria are not usually found such as the brain, central nervous system, liver and eye.”In the future, we think metagenomics will become a first line test and be able to diagnose infection in any sample, probably within the same day,” she says.It’s also likely to become faster, cheaper and easier to do, explains Dr Brown, meaning it will become available to more patients rather than just a small number who are severely unwell.Ellie IrwinResolving her eye problems has allowed Ellie to concentrate on her training as a GP and arrange her wedding. Ellie was married in Newcastle on 29 March, the same day the city celebrated Newcastle United’s win in the Carabao Cup.She says: “We got a shout-out from Ant and Dec and went up on a scissor lift above the Newcastle United fans, which was incredible.”Prof Breuer says she is thrilled with how the treatment is changing lives.”It is amazing to see the impact it is having for patients like Ellie.”

We naked apes need Band-Aids, but shedding the fur that speeds healing in other mammals may have helped us evolve other abilities.Watching wild baboons in Kenya, Akiko Matsumoto-Oda, an evolutionary biologist and primatologist at the University of the Ryukyus in Japan, had a front-row seat to the violence between these monkeys, especially the males.“I was struck by how frequently they sustained injuries,” she said, “and, even more, by how rapidly they recovered — even from seemingly severe wounds.”Compared with her own experiences with nicks and cuts, the baboons’ ability to heal seemed like a superpower.In a study published on Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Dr. Matsumoto-Oda and her colleagues compared the healing rates of humans, chimpanzees, monkeys and mice. They found that human wounds took more than twice as long to heal as wounds of any of the other mammals. Our slow healing may be a result of an evolutionary trade-off we made long ago, when we shed fur in favor of naked, sweaty skin that keeps us cool.When possible, the researchers wanted to study healing in a way that was less violent and more controlled than watching wild baboons.To measure human healing, they recruited 24 patients who were having skin tumors removed at the University of the Ryukyus Hospital. To gather data on chimpanzees, which are some of our closest animal relatives, researchers observed five captive chimps at the Kumamoto Sanctuary of the Kyoto University Wildlife Research Center, which houses animals formerly used in pharmaceutical research. The chimps’ wounds, like those of wild baboons, mostly came from tiffs between the animals.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Animal testing remains a fundamental part of biomedical research. But as funding evaporates, mice, rats and even monkeys may be euthanized.On April 1, the Trump administration’s effort to slash government funding arrived in Morgantown, W.Va., where federal scientists spent their days studying health and safety threats to American workers. That morning, hundreds of employees at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health were notified that they were being terminated and would lose access to the building.Left behind were more than 900 lab animals. The institute ultimately managed to relocate about two-thirds of them — primarily mice, as well as a handful of rats — sending them to university labs, according to two facility employees who were recently terminated. The remaining 300 animals, however, were euthanized last week.Over the last few months, the Trump administration has taken aim at the American research enterprise, firing scores of federal scientists, rescinding active research grants and proposing drastic cuts to the funding that helps labs keep their lights on.These moves, which have left many of scientists out of work and disrupted clinical research, have profound ramifications for the lab animals that serve as the basis for much of the nation’s biomedical research.“There are going to be a lot of animals that are going to end up being sacrificed — killed,” said Paul Locke, an expert in laboratory animal law and the use of non-animal alternatives in research at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.The ultimate toll is difficult to predict, experts said, in part because many of the administration’s actions are embroiled in legal battles. Animal research is also shrouded in secrecy; there are no definitive numbers on how many animals live in U.S. laboratories.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe.