OtherGPs in England have launched a work-to-rule action in a dispute with the government over what they say is a lack of funding. It threatens to bring chaos to the system.

A biomedical researcher, he found that normal cells can divide only a certain number of times before they age — which, he said, explained aging on a cellular level.Leonard Hayflick, a biomedical researcher who discovered that normal cells can divide only a certain number of times — setting a limit on the human life span and frustrating would-be-immortalists everywhere — died on Aug. 1 at his home in Sea Ranch, Calif. He was 98.His son, Joel Hayflick, said the cause was pancreatic cancer.Like many great scientific findings, Dr. Hayflick’s came somewhat by accident. As a young scientist in the early 1960s at the Wistar Institute, a research organization at the University of Pennsylvania, he was trying to develop healthy embryonic cell lines in order to study whether viruses can cause certain types of cancer.He and a colleague, Paul Moorhead, soon noticed that somatic — that is, nonreproductive — cells went through a phase of division, splitting between 40 and 60 times, before lapsing into what he called senescence.As senescent cells accumulate, he posited, the body itself begins to age and decline. The only cells that do not go into senescence, he added, are cancer cells.As a result of this cellular clock, he said, no amount of diet or exercise or genetic tweaking will push the human species past a life span of about 125 years.This finding, which the Nobel-winning virologist Macfarlane Burnet later called the Hayflick limit, ran counter to everything scientists believed about cells and aging — especially the thesis that cells themselves are immortal, and that aging is a result of external causes, like disease, diet and solar radiation.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 huge numbers, older people are taking gabapentin for a variety of conditions, including itching, alcohol dependence and sciatica. “It’s crazy,” one expert said.Mary Peart, 67, a retired nurse in Manchester, Mass., began taking gabapentin a year and a half ago to reduce the pain and fatigue of fibromyalgia. The drug helps her climb stairs, walk her dog and take art lessons, she said.With it, “I have a life,” she said. “If I forget to take a dose, my pain comes right back.”Jane Dausch has a neurological condition called transverse myelitis and uses gabapentin as needed when her legs and feet ache. “It seems to be effective at calming down nerve pain,” said Ms. Dausch, 67, a retired physical therapist in North Kingstown, R.I.Amy Thomas, who owns three bookstores in the San Francisco Bay Area, takes gabapentin for rheumatoid arthritis. Along with yoga and physical therapy, “it’s probably contributing to it being easier for me to move around,” Ms. Thomas, 67, said.All three are taking the non-opioid pain drug for off-label uses. The only conditions for which gabapentin has been approved for adult use by the Food and Drug Administration are epileptic seizures, in 1993, and postherpetic neuralgia, the nerve pain that can linger after a bout of shingles, in 2002.But that has not stopped patients and health care providers from turning to gabapentin (whose brand names include Neurontin) for a startling array of other conditions, including sciatica, neuropathy from diabetes, lower back pain and post-surgery pain.Also: Agitation from dementia. Insomnia. Migraines. Itching. Bipolar disorder. Alcohol dependence. Evidence of effectiveness for some of these uses is thin.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.

For over three years, long Covid has presented Joshua Roman with health challenges — and has indelibly shaped the music he makes.Since he began playing cello at 3, Joshua Roman’s talent has taken him from his hometown of Mustang, Okla., to concert halls all over the world.He was the youngest principal cellist of the Seattle Symphony, at 22, and has been a soloist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and many other orchestras. His daily routine often included 10 hours of playing, along with a six-mile run.Then, on Jan. 9, 2021, in Jacksonville, Fla., the morning after performing Prokofiev’s Symphony-Concerto, a piece he loves for its “giant sections of flashy, virtuosic excitement,” everything changed. He woke up and found he couldn’t smell his toothpaste. Later that day, he tested positive for Covid.He was only 37 years old, but he felt extreme fatigue, as if “wearing a coat of weighted down metal inside my body.” It would be a month before he had enough energy to fly home to Manhattan. He was so weak that he got stuck on a staircase landing, crying until he managed to crawl up the rest of the steps.Eventually, most excruciating of all, he lost the stamina to play his cello for nearly three months.“I just let it sit literally collecting dust.”Mr. Roman described his fatigue as like “wearing a coat of weighted down metal inside my body.”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.

It’s the fifth summer of Covid, and most people seem eager to move on. We want to understand the pervasiveness of the ignorance-is-bliss attitude.Covid cases are surging, but in contrast to summers past, our lives seem to be carrying on with all of their scheduled programming.Covid is still a serious threat to people who are immunocompromised or elderly, but for many others, a positive Covid case seems to be regarded much like the common cold of the before times, and some are abandoning their once-meticulous methods of testing and isolation in favor of a more laissez-faire attitude.The Times is trying to assess how people are thinking about their own transition into a life where the disease is by some standards endemic. On days when you haven’t felt very well, have you bothered to test for Covid, or decided it didn’t really matter what respiratory condition was behind it? If someone in your household has come down with Covid, did you go to work, school or the gym anyway, despite your exposure? Have you found yourself purposely skipping a Covid test for fear of having your social or vacation plans canceled?Please respond by Monday, Aug. 19. We won’t publish any part of your response without following up with you first, verifying your information and hearing back from you. And we won’t share your contact information outside the Times newsroom or use it for any reason other than to get in touch with you.

Like most countries, the U.S. has no comprehensive national system for monitoring disease in companion animals — which leaves pets and people at risk.Trupanion, a Seattle-based pet insurance company, is partnering with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to create a disease tracking system for pets, the company announced this week. The system will draw on insurance claims submitted to Trupanion in real time when sick dogs and cats visit the veterinarian.“The concept is to proactively detect potential threats to pets and public health,” said Dr. Steve Weinrauch, the chief veterinary and product officer at Trupanion.The effort, which also includes academic scientists and other companies in the pet industry, is still in its early stages. Initially, it will focus on bird flu, a virus that has been spreading through American dairy cows and spilling over into domestic cats.“This is a really important public-private partnership that is going to help fill some important gaps,” said Dr. Casey Barton Behravesh, who directs the C.D.C.’s One Health Office, which focuses on the connections between human, animal and environmental health.It’s one of several ongoing efforts to address such gaps, which extend far beyond bird flu. Like most other countries, the United States has no comprehensive national system for tracking diseases in pets. While the C.D.C. is charged with protecting human health and the Department of Agriculture focuses on farm animals, companion animals tend to fall through the cracks.“This is a population that is a little bit lost in the shuffle,” said Dr. Jennifer Granick, a veterinary internist at the University of Minnesota, who is one of the founders of a separate effort to create a disease surveillance system for pets.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.

Jacobs familyA teenage girl with a severe dairy allergy died after drinking a Costa Coffee hot chocolate made with cows’ milk due to a “failure to follow the processes in place to discuss allergies”, a coroner has ruled.

ReutersTravellers should consider getting vaccinated against mpox if they will be visting affected areas in Africa, new advice says.

This week a meteorologist stepped away from a live broadcast when he noticed familiar feelings of panic start to arise. We can all learn from how he and his colleagues handled it.A meteorologist in Australia was delivering the weather report on live television this week when he started having a panic attack.Nate Byrne, the news presenter, later explained to BBC News that he was heading to the studio’s “weather wall” when he realized he was suddenly out of breath.“The specific position — in front of the wall — is a trigger for me,” he said. “My body starts tingling. I start sweating. Just everything in my body is screaming: Run. Go. Get out.”Because he had dealt with on-air panic attacks before, he and his colleagues knew what to do. Mr. Byrne explained what was happening to viewers, then quickly tossed to the anchor of the show while he went off camera to recover.How can you help if a friend, family member or colleague is having a panic attack? We asked experts for tips.First, what is a panic attack?A panic attack is a sudden wave of overwhelming fear and anxiety that is accompanied by physical symptoms.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.

MultiPlan has helped big health insurers make billions by reducing reimbursements for medical bills, but its business model is now being questioned.Already under investigation in Congress, a data analytics firm that has helped major health insurers make billions of dollars by reducing reimbursements for medical bills is facing growing scrutiny from Wall Street and in the courts.The firm, MultiPlan, and the insurance companies it serves often collect larger fees when payments to medical providers are far lower than the amount billed. A recent investigation by The New York Times found the approach left some patients with unexpectedly high bills as they were asked to pick up what their plans did not cover.MultiPlan has seen its stock price drop by more than 70 percent since April, when The Times published its investigation, and its general counsel and chief financial officer have left their jobs. It disclosed quarterly financial results this month that its chief executive called “disappointing and unacceptable,” and it warned of a future hit to revenues as well.The chief executive, Travis Dalton, acknowledged during a call with analysts that “media scrutiny has been an ongoing challenge.” The firm attributed slumping revenues largely to changes by major clients, though it declined to provide more detail.In a note to investors, the research firm CreditSights, which regularly follows the company, said it suspected some clients were responding to “increased scrutiny on MultiPlan’s business model” and had “gravitated away from using MultiPlan in light of The New York Times article.”Insurers who manage so-called self-funded health plans for employers — the most common way Americans get health coverage — often turn to MultiPlan for payment recommendations when patients receive care outside their plan’s network. The Times investigation found that MultiPlan had encouraged some insurers to use its most aggressive pricing tools, leaving medical providers with slashed compensation and employers with high fees — in some instances higher than the medical care payment itself.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.