Publisher Health

Richard DonaldsonA man who has been fighting

BBCDiary of a CEO host Steven Bartlett is amplifying harmful health misinformation on his number-one ranked podcast, a BBC investigation has found.

Getty Images”If I see someone tapping their fingers on a desk, my immediate thought is to chop their fingers off with a knife,” an anonymous patient confides to a researcher.

She was among hundreds of women who said they were coerced into sterilization at a California hospital in the 1970s. The lawsuit led to state and national reforms.Dolores Madrigal, the lead plaintiff in a landmark lawsuit brought by Latina women in California who said they were coerced into unwanted sterilization during childbirth at a Los Angeles hospital in the early 1970s, died on Nov. 9 in Las Vegas. She was 90.The death, at a hospice facility, was confirmed by her son Oren Madrigal.Ms. Madrigal was among several hundred Spanish-speaking women who said they were pressured into signing consent forms — written in English — agreeing to have their fallopian tubes tied during cesarean section deliveries. Ten of them filed a federal class action lawsuit against the Los Angeles County-U.S.C. Medical Center in 1975.The sterilizations occurred amid political hysteria about overpopulation: In 1970, President Richard M. Nixon had established the Commission on Population Growth and the American Future, led by John D. Rockefeller III. The plaintiffs argued that the hospital, which received state and federal funding for family planning programs, was trying to lower the birthrate of Mexican American women — a charge hospital administrators and medical staff denied.After a bench trial in 1978, Judge Jesse W. Curtis Jr. of U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California ruled against the plaintiffs, writing in his decision that their “ability to understand and speak English is limited,” that the case was “essentially the result of a breakdown in communications” and that “one can hardly blame the doctors.”Ms. Madrigal’s experience showed otherwise, her attorneys had argued, and ultimately led to state and national reforms, including mandatory waiting periods for the procedure, known as tubal ligation, for women in labor, and requirements that doctors provide patients with consent forms in their native language.The coerced sterilizations brought news coverage and protests by women. Here, a 1977 poster advertises a public hearing and rally.Rachael Romero, San Francisco Poster Brigade, 1977We 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.

The government has said the first victims of the infected blood scandal will receive final compensation payments this week.

Hospitals in England are being hit by a “tidal wave” of flu and other winter viruses, NHS bosses say.

Rates of bowel cancer are rising among younger adults, with no clear reason why, experts are warning.

Odds are your adolescent has already encountered online pornography. Your role is to openly address it, scholars say.The average American first sees online pornography at age 12, and nearly three-quarters of all teenagers have encountered it, according to a 2023 survey of adolescents by Common Sense. It’s enough to make most any parent squirm, but Brian Willoughby, a social scientist at Brigham Young University who studies the pornography habits of adolescents and the impact on relationships, has some advice: “Don’t panic.” Instead, he says, help your child understand that “this is a normal and acceptable topic, even if you’re stressed out.” Here are some suggestions for how to broach the subject:Build a DialogueFirst, try to take some of the intense emotion — yours and your child’s — out of the conversation. “Start with helping them feel calm and validated,” Dr. Willoughby said. “They can’t have a conversation with you if they are feeling strong emotions.” Then, he said, “assess their reaction to porn — were they excited, disgusted, attracted, disinterested? — and make them feel safe sharing this with you.”That shared trust forms the basis for a next step, he said: “Tie your own values into the conversation. Share what your view of porn is and why.”He noted that adolescents crave a clear explanation, not merely a pronouncement that pornography is “wrong.” Dr. Willoughby suggested that parents “talk through some of the details of porn to point out problems with expectations and intimate behaviors” and then “tie these thoughts and views to your overall hopes and values about sexual intimacy.”Try Content BlockersNumerous phone and computer apps offer help blocking pornographic content.These can “potentially buy a few years of protection” if loaded on a child’s phone and other devices, said Melea Stephens, a family therapist in Alabama who speaks to universities, legislators and church groups about the harm that exposure to pornography can present to children and teenagers.Despite such barriers, studies indicate that most young people will stumble across the content or find their way to it. At that point, Ms. Stephens said, parents should take their adolescent aside and “explain the difference between a real, loving, mutually respectful romantic relationship and the destructive dynamics and meta-messages being depicted in pornography.”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.

A growing cottage industry is dedicated to the theory that mind-altering drugs can improve business leadership.Burrowed in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies is a wooden house, a retreat center made of pine and spruce and filled with mushroom carvings, tapestries of periwinkle and indigo paisley, books about “The Indoctrinated Brain” and other paraphernalia nodding to the promised transformation: Enter as a chief executive, emerge as an enlightened one.When a group of executives wearing hoodies and leggings arrived on a Tuesday evening in October, they vibrated with the nervous energy of summer camp drop-off. They were gathered for a retreat called “The Psychedelic C.E.O.,” which they had agreed to let me observe.Their guide, Murray Rodgers, used to be a hard-charging oil and gas executive. About a decade ago, he underwent a process of self-discovery. It began after a miserable pairing — a divorce and a failed company initial public offering — that left him alone on his 60th birthday, watching Hugh Grant’s romantic comedy “The Rewrite” and wondering if it was time for a rewrite of his own. He became a yoga instructor and then went to Costa Rica to try ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic brew. This started a sequence of mushroom trips and psychedelic ceremonies that left Mr. Rodgers, now 69, spiritually, psychologically and professionally transfigured.It was as if he had thrown his ego into a dryer and watched it shrink, and he became intent on helping others with that same kind of cosmic laundering.He wrote a book, “The Psychedelic C.E.O.,” and after hearing from readers, he also began hosting retreats. On that day in October, he welcomed five business leaders — Adam, Adam, Jill, Chris and Ajay — most of whom requested to use only their first names so as not to alarm their investors, employees or children with their unconventional approach to professional development. All run small businesses in the Calgary area and had met through an entrepreneurs’ network.After their arrival, they scarfed down bowls of thick lentil soup and then settled on couches in a downstairs den, waiting for Mr. Rodgers to introduce the agenda.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.

More adolescents than ever are watching it. What’s needed, researchers say, are frank conversations and “porn literacy.”Brian Willoughby knows he’s doing a good job when parents become uncomfortable. That’s because part of his job involves telling them that their teenagers are looking at pornography — hard-core, explicit, often violent. Sometimes, the conversation is with a church group.Dr. Willoughby is a social scientist at Brigham Young University, where he studies the pornography habits of adolescents and the impact this has on relationships. When he goes into the community to explain what the modern world is like, he speaks plainly.“I always have to be careful to couch things by saying, ‘I’m not saying porn is good — but I am saying it’s a reality,’” he said. “You can stick your head in the sand and pretend it doesn’t exist, and say this is bad and pray harder, or use addiction language, but you have to have a realistic understanding of what’s happening.”In the past, many parents have tried to ignore the watching of pornography by their children, forbid its use or wish it away. But scholars who study the adolescent use of online pornography say that the behavior is so commonplace and impossible to prevent that a more pragmatic approach is required. When it comes to pornography, they want us to talk about it.The aim: to teach adolescents that the explicit content they encounter is unrealistic, misleading about many sexual relations and, as a result, potentially harmful. The approach does not condone the content or encourage its use, Dr. Willoughby emphasized, but acknowledges its ubiquity and unrealistic, hard-core nature. Long gone are the days of nude magazines that left much to the imagination.“That was nudity, sexualized,” Dr. Willoughby said of the pornography of yesteryear. “A lot of parents still think that porn is Playboy.”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.