The official cause of Dr David Kelly’s death is extremely unlikely say a group of medical experts.
The inquest into the death of David Kelly was suspended before the Hutton inquiry and not resumed afterwards in one of bliar’s many spin events.

A group of prominent legal and medical experts have called for a full inquest into the death of the government scientist David Kelly in 2003.

An inquest was suspended by Lord Falconer, then lord chancellor, before the Hutton inquiry into the circumstances of the scientist’s death. It was not resumed after Hutton’s report in 2004 concluded that Kelly killed himself by cutting an artery in his wrist.

Nine experts including Michael Powers, a QC and former coroner, and Julian Blon, a professor of intensive care medicine, said in a letter to the Times that the official cause of death – haemorrhage from the severed artery – was “extremely unlikely”.

“Insufficient blood would have been lost to threaten life,” they said. “Absent a quantitative assessment of the blood lost and of the blood remaining in the great vessels, the conclusion that death occurred as a consequence of haemorrhage is unsafe.”

Kelly’s body was found in woods close to his Oxfordshire home in 2003, shortly after it was revealed that he was the source of a BBC report casting doubt on the government’s claim that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction which could be fired within 45 minutes.

Lord Hutton concluded that “the principal cause of death was bleeding from incised wounds to his left wrist which Dr Kelly had inflicted on himself with the knife found beside his body”.

In January, five doctors who made an application to the Oxford coroner to have the inquest reopened, were told that Hutton made a ruling in 2003 to keep medical reports and photographs closed for 70 years. Hutton responded by saying the documents could be revealed to doctors and that he had made the gagging order to spare Kelly’s family “unnecessary distress”.

Hopes for a new inquest have been raised by the change in government. Dominic Grieve, the attorney general, said in April, when he was shadow justice secretary, that the Tories would consider a new inquest into Kelly’s death. He also called for a review of the government’s decision not to release related medical records and postmortem documents.

Grieve is looking at the matter with the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke. Norman Baker, the Liberal Democrat MP and a junior minister in the coalition government, supports resumption of the inquest. He resigned from the front bench while in opposition to write a book, The Strange Death of David Kelly, which argued that the scientist’s life had been “deliberately taken by others”.

The Hutton inquiry applied a less stringent test than would have been used in an inquest, where a coroner has to be sure “beyond reasonable doubt” that a person intended to kill themselves.

From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/aug/13/experts-call-david-kelly-inquest

International travel and medical tourism helped the spread of drug resistant bacteria that could lead to the end of antibiotics, scientists have warned.
A new gene, NDM-1 (New Delhi metallo—lactamase), emerged which allows bacteria to be highly resistant to almost all antibiotics, the scientists said.

NDM-1 spread in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.  But it was also found in 37 patients from the UK, who travelled to India or Pakistan for medical procedures including cosmetic surgery, according to an article published in The Lancet.

“The potential of NDM-1 to be a worldwide public health problem is great, and co-ordinated international surveillance is needed,” Timothy Walsh of Cardiff University and his international colleagues wrote.

The gene was mostly found in E Coli, a common cause of urinary tract infections and pneumonia, which is highly resistant to antibiotics.

The authors said it could be easily copied and transferred between different bacteria, suggesting “an alarming potential to spread and diversify among bacterial populations”.

The paper said several of the UK patients had travelled to India or Pakistan for surgical procedures within the past year.

They wrote: “India also provides cosmetic surgery for other Europeans and Americans, and it is likely NDM-1 will spread worldwide.”

Study co-author Dr David Livermore, director of antibiotic resistance monitoring at the Health Protection Agency, said: “The findings of this paper show that resistance to one of the major groups of antibiotics, the carbapenems, is widespread in India.

“This is important because carbapenems were often the last ‘good’ antibiotics active against bacteria that already were resistant to more standard drugs.

“We have now also identified bacteria with this type of resistance – NDM – in around 50 patients in the UK.  Most, not all, had previously travelled to the Indian subcontinent, and many had received hospital treatment there.”

“International travel gives a great potential for spread of resistant bacteria between countries.  Few antibiotics remain active against these bacteria. Their spread underscores the need for good infection control in hospitals both in the UK And overseas, and the need for new antibiotic development.”

A Department of Health spokesman said: “We are working with the Health Protection Agency on this issue. The HPA alerted the NHS in January and July last year to be vigilant about these bacteria and take appropriate action where necessary.

“Hospitals need to ensure they continue to provide good infection control to prevent any spread, consider whether patients have recently been treated abroad and send samples to HPA for testing.

“So far there has only been a small number of cases in UK hospital patients. The HPA is continuing to monitor the situation and we are investigating ways of encouraging the development of new antibiotics with our European colleagues.”

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/new-superbug-spreads-to-uk-hospitals

Breast cancer rates are more than four times higher in the UK than in Eastern Africa, new World Health Organisation figures show.
Some 87.9 per 100,000 British women were diagnosed with breast cancer in 2008, compared to just 19.3 women per 100,000 in Eastern Africa.

The statistics come from the World Health Organisation’s global database of disease prevalence.

Eastern Africa includes countries such as Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania.

The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) said some of the difference is because British doctors are better at diagnosing and recording cases.

However, it warned that British lifestyles – including a high incidence of obesity, too much drinking and a lack of exercise – were contributing to high rates of breast cancer at home.

Research has shown that around four out of 10 cases in British women could be prevented if women kept to a healthy weight, drank less alcohol and were more active.

Women in Eastern Africa drink much less alcohol than British women and obesity is far less common. They are also much more likely to breastfeed – which lowers the rates of breast cancer even further.

According to the statistics, the highest rates of breast cancer in the world are in Belgium, which had 109.4 cases per 100,000 women in 2008.

Breast cancer is now the most common cancer in the UK, with around 46,000 new cases each year. The disease kills about 12,000 British women annually.

Dr Rachel Thompson, deputy head of science for the WCRF, said: “The fact that breast cancer rates in Eastern Africa are so much lower than in the UK is a stark reminder that, every year in this country, thousands of women are diagnosed with a case of cancer that could have been prevented.

“That such a large difference in breast cancer rates exists between these two areas is a real concern. Also, it is not just Eastern Africa that has significantly lower breast cancer rates.

“The rate here is double that of South America, for example, and more than three times that of Eastern Asia.

“The fact that rates of breast cancer are much lower in other parts of the world highlights the fact that breast cancer is not inevitable.

“This means we need to do more to get across the message that just by making relatively simple changes to our lifestyle such as drinking less alcohol and maintaining a healthy weight, women can reduce their risk of breast cancer.”

Dr Caitlin Palframan, policy manager at Breakthrough Breast Cancer, said: “It is difficult to directly compare these two populations side by side as it is likely that many breast cancer cases in Eastern Africa are not diagnosed or recorded.

“Breast cancer is thought to be due to a combination of lifestyle, genetic and environmental factors and many of these may differ between the UK and other populations.

“Although some risk factors cannot be changed women can reduce their risk by drinking less alcohol, maintaining a healthy weight and exercising regularly.”

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/uk-breast-cancer-rate-higher-than-east-africa

The Department of Health has spent almost £500 million on management consultants, including deals with firms which have hired senior Labour figures and high ranking civil servants.The disclosure of more than 100 contracts worth a total of £470 million last night engulfed the labour Government in accusations of “cronyism”.

Among those recruited by the favoured firms are a former health minister, an ex-adviser to the health secretary and a senior Whitehall official responsible for encouraging private sector involvement in the NHS.

Doctors’ and nurses’ leaders expressed concern over the use of resources which could have paid for more than 60,000 hip operations, or the annual salary of 22,000 nurses.

Critics also said the revelations indicated that the “revolving door” between the labour Government and its favourite consultant firms was spinning ever more quickly, with former senior politicians, officials and advisers linked to companies profiting directly from the policies they had introduced.

Lord Warner, a Labour peer, who was a health minister until December 2006, now acts as an adviser to PA Consulting group, which received £4.9 million from the Department of Health (DoH) in 2007/8.

Until last December he also advised Deloitte, which received almost £3 million in the same year.

Since resigning as a minister in 2006, the peer has also registered interests working for six other health care, technology and IT firms.

Matthew Swindells, policy adviser to then health secretary Patricia Hewitt between 2005 and 2007, who was earning £195,000 at the DoH, is now group managing director for health at Tribal, which earned more than £2 million from the department in 2007/8.

KPMG, the finance firm, secured £4.9 million in the same year. Last month the firm announced the appointment of Mark Britnell, currently on gardening leave from his £235,000 role as DoH director general for commissioning.

The civil servant was responsible for a policy to encourage more private sector involvement in the health service. He drew up plans which allowed a shortlist of firms – including KMPG – preferential access to lucrative NHS contracts.

Under rules intended to reduce conflicts of interests, Mr Britnell has been told that he cannot lobby the Government for his first nine months in his new job.

Other figures to have crossed from Government to private sector firms which won the management consultancy contracts include Sir Michael Barber, who was Tony Blair’s chief adviser on delivery – focusing on education and health – from 2001 to 2005.

Since September 2005 Sir Michael has been a partner at McKinsey, which was paid £9 million for management consultancy services to the DoH in 2007/8.

Lord Birt, the former BBC director general, was Tony Blair’s strategy adviser from 2000 to 2005. In 2006 he was appointed as an adviser to Capgemini UK, the British arm of the global outsourcing giant.

The DoH figures show that Capgemini UK was paid £3.2 million in 2007/8 for management consultancy to the DoH and the agency running the NHS IT programme.

Information released under the Freedom of Information Act discloses for the first time the details of 111 management consultancy contracts held by the DoH and two of its central agencies.

In total, the DoH, its IT programme Connecting for Health and the NHS Purchasing and Supplies Agency spent £470 million on management consultants in the three years from 2005/6 to 2007/8.

It came after the department had made hundreds of its own staff redundant via an “efficiency programme” intended to save money.

The spending came in addition to an estimated £350 million spent annually on consultants by 150 primary care trusts. Research has shown consultants in the NHS earning up to £2,000 a day for project work.

Matthew Sinclair, from the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “It is particularly alarming that many of these management consultants are political cronies or have only recently finished working for the Department of Health.”

Dr Mark Porter, deputy chairman of the BMA’s consultants committee, said: “These consultants aren’t just taking money from the front line, they are often drawing up policies which in themselves damage patient care.”

Dr Peter Carter, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “We are unable to find any evidence about whether this represents good value.”

Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, said: “This lays bare the hypocrisy of Labour’s claims to have cut back on Government administration costs.”

PA Consulting group said Lord Warner’s advisory work for them did not relate to any contracts held with the DoH. Deloitte said the peer’s role as a strategic adviser ran from March to December last year.

Lord Warner said he only began advising PA Consulting in Autumn 2008, and was no longer advising four of the eight companies he has worked for since stepping down as a minister.

He added: “Provided people leave a decent period after they are in office before they take up such posts – which I did – provided they clear it with the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments, which I did, and provided they register the interest in a public document – which again I did, I don’t think it is right to stop people who were involved in Government forever from working elsewhere. I would defend to the death the right to have a free flow of labour.”

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Millions-spent-on-NHS-management-consultants-with-Labour-links

The number of 11 and 12-year-old girls prescribed the pill by a family doctor has soared five fold in the past decade, according to new figures.
More than 1,000 girls in the first year of secondary school have been given prescriptions for the pill, according to figures from GPs, while a further 200 have long-term injectable or implanted contraceptive devices.

The disclosure prompted warnings that Britain was “facilitating the sexualisation of young people at an every younger age”.

It follows the publication of guidance by the nanny state’s National Institute for Curbing Expenditue (NICE)  that sex education should be introduced from the age of five.

Trevor Stammers, chairman of the Christian Medical Fellowship and a GP in south London, told The Sunday Times: “If sex education is introduced in primary schools in the way being proposed, we will see many more 11-year-old girls seeking contraception without pointing out the risks…. We are going to make matters worse.”

He added: “These figures illustrate the fact that the UK is facilitating the sexualisation of young people at an ever younger age.”

The latest figures came from the General Practice Research Database, which collects information on medical records from 500 GP practices.

The data also shows that at least 58,000 15-year-olds were on the pill last year – more than double the number in 1999.

By law, doctors are bound by a duty of confidentiality towards children – even if they are under the legal age of consent – unless they suspect abuse.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/Huge-rise-in-11-year-olds-on-the-pill

The only scientist in the House of Commons has called for all MPs to be required to take a crash course in basic scientific techniques.
Julian Huppert, a research biochemist who became the Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge at the last election, said he was alarmed at the lack of scientific knowledge among colleagues.

In an interview with The Independent, he also accused political leaders of paying “lip service” to the importance of scientific proof and warned that looming cuts to university research budgets could provoke a “brain drain” from Britain.

Although there are other backbenchers with scientific backgrounds, Dr Huppert is the sole MP to have practised past PhD level, specialising most recently on DNA structures.

He said it was a real concern that the Commons – which is full of career politicians, lawyers and economists – lacked scientific expertise. Dr Huppert, a fellow of Clare College, Cambridge, argued that all MPs should be obliged to take a short science training course, covering areas such as how research is conducted, numeracy and the use of statistics.

“It would be really important for all MPs to have some exposure, because some of them will not have studied any science since they were 15 and it’s important to understand how to engage with it,” he said. “You would then have a lot of MPs who were able to understand the information they were being presented with.”

Accusing some MPs of being “anti-science”, he said: “They have a set of beliefs and they will argue that regardless of the science.”

Dr Huppert said political leaders tended to come up with a stance and then tried to make the evidence fit it, rather than being driven by the science. He cited the previous government’s decision to make the drug mephedrone a banned substance after claims about the role it played in the deaths of several young people.

“What we saw was a policy based on media reports, rather than based on evidence, and that does happen too much, ” he said. “As a researcher I will come up with a hypothesis, which I may talk about to people, I’ll then do some experiments and test it and will then change my hypothesis based on what I find. If you do that in politics, that’s a U-turn and a defeat.”

Although he absolved the Science minister, David Willetts, from criticism, he said a “tricky” relationship had developed between MPs and scientists. “Generally, they are two separate camps who do not communicate,” he said.

Dr Huppert gained a seat on Cambridgeshire County Council when he was 22 – the same age at which he gained his PhD. He pursued the two careers in parallel until the election in May, when he succeeded fellow Liberal Democrat David Howarth, who stood down as the MP for Cambridge to return to academia.

Dr Huppert said: “Science in some senses is what I am good at, but politics is what I care about.” He also hit out at suggestions that university research budgets could fall victim to the public spending squeeze being undertaken by the Government.

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/only-scientist-in-commons-alarmed-at-mps-ignorance

The coalition Government ignored scientific advice on the questionable value of homeopathy by continuing to allow the NHS to fund homeopathic treatment despite there being next to no evidence that it works.
Last week, health ministers refused calls from the House of Commons science and technology committee to stop the NHS funding homeopathic treatment on the grounds that such a ban would limit patient choice and contradict the Government’s stated aim of devolving more power to the Primary Care Trusts (PCTs) of the NHS.

However, the Government’s own chief scientific adviser, Sir John Beddington, said that he had spoken informally to coalition ministers about his grave concerns about homeopathy and the Department of Health’s policy of allowing it to be prescribed under the NHS.

“I remain of the view that the evidence of efficacy and the scientific evidence base of homeopathy is highly questionable. It is vitally important that the public can make informed choices on their use of homeopathy, so the evidence base must be freely available in an easily-accessible format,” Sir John said.

The Government does not know how many PCTs prescribe homeopathic treatment or how much it costs but the total annual funding is believed to run into millions of pounds.

Earlier this year, the Commons’ science committee recommended that the NHS should stop funding homeopathy on the grounds that it is a waste of money and it gives patients the false impression that such treatment works.

“When the NHS funds homeopathy, it endorses it. Since the NHS Constitution explicitly gives people the right to expect that decision on the funding of drugs and treatments are made ‘following proper consideration of the evidence’, patients may reasonably form the view that homeopathy is an evidence-based treatment,” the select committee’s report said.

In its response to the report, the Government said that it will keep the position on NHS funding under review. “However, we believe that providing appropriate information for patients should ensure that they form their own views regarding homeopathy as an evidence-based treatment,” it said.

Scientists point out, however, that if patients are told clearly that there is no credible evidence to support homeopathic treatments, this may undermine the only benefit that homeopathy is likely to provide, namely the well-established “placebo effect” where someone feels and gets better because they believe a treatment is working.

“Doctors are not allowed to prescribe an honest placebo, even if they think that is the best they can do for the patient. But they are allowed to prescribe a dishonest placebo by referring the patient to a homeopath,” said Professor David Colquhoun, a pharmacologist at University College London.

“Certainly you may feel better after the pill, because you were getting better anyway, or because of the placebo effect. That can’t justify your doctor giving a pill that contains nothing whatsoever,” Professor Colquhoun said.

“If there is no evidence that homeopathy works beyond the placebo effect, why does the Government pay for it? The answer given to that is ‘patient choice’. I dare say the patient would cheer up if the NHS paid for a bottle of Chanel No 5,” he said.

Professor Edzard Ernst, a specialist in complementary medicine at the Peninsula Medical School in Exeter, said: “If the Government is serious about putting patient choice over evidence, it not only displays a profound misunderstanding of both these issues but should then also give cream cakes to diabetics and cigarettes to someone with a lung disease.”

Evan Harris, a former Liberal Democrat MP who sat on the science select committee when it carried out its inquiry, said that the decision to continue NHS funding homeopathy by the Government is not a good start for the health secretary Andrew Lansley.

“How does the Government justify allowing treatments that do not work to be provided by the NHS in the name of choice, when it allows medicines which do work to be banned from NHS use?” Dr Harris said.

From:  http://www.independent.co.uk/government-ignored-our-advice-on-homeopathic-remedies-say-experts

Hospital waiting times have begun to rise again after years of decline following the introduction of European rules on junior doctors’ working hours.Waiting times in the NHS had been dropping since the 1990s but the rules limiting junior doctors to a 48-hour week, which were implemented last August, had reversed the trend.

Thousands more patients were now waiting longer than 18 weeks for surgery because of eu red tape.

Ministers were seeking to renegotiate Britain’s position on the European Working Time Directive, including a possible opt-out for NHS staff. The Royal College of Surgeons carried out the first comprehensive analysis of how the directive had affected waiting times.

According to the research, the proportion of NHS patients having to wait longer than the 18-week target for non-emergency surgery such as hip replacements had almost doubled from 1.5 per cent 18 months ago to nearly three per cent in March this year.

Waiting times reached an all-time low at the end of 2008, with patients waiting just a few weeks for surgery on average.

However, since the EU directive cut junior doctors’ hours from 56 to 48 per week, these gains had been wiped out, the Royal College said.

According to data from the Department of Health, the number of patients waiting longer than 18 weeks — from GP referral to being treated as an inpatient — fell steadily from April 2007, when almost 34,000 people were waiting, to 8,674 in December 2008.

The figure remained stable at about 10,000 until June 2009, just before the new rules came in, when the rise began.

In March this year, it had risen to 17,515, a level last seen in September 2007.

John Black, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said the increase was predictable.

“If you have the same number of patients, no more doctors and ask them to work less then it is inevitable that the time available for elective procedures will reduce and waiting lists grow,” he said.

Almost two thirds of consultants now frequently operated without assistants because departments were so stretched.

Mr Black said most European countries had bypassed the legislation by either not monitoring compliance or, as in Germany and Holland, finding ways around the directive.

“We look forward to this happening in the UK,” he said.

Sir Richard Thompson, the new president of the Royal College of Physicians, said the directive had been a “complete disaster” for both patient care and the quality of training for doctors.

“We are not providing the service or the training that we require,” he said. “I cannot overemphasise the damage to service provision and to training.”

According to the survey, 80 per cent of consultant surgeons and two thirds of surgical trainees said patient care had deteriorated since the directive was implemented.

Dr Matt Jameson-Evans, a spokesman for Remedy UK, a junior doctors campaign group, said the impact of the directive on services was inevitable.

“Patients are simply not being treated by as many doctors as before,” he said. “A second consequence of this and equally important is that doctors are not receiving as much training as they were and this has serious implications for the future quality of care.”

The Royal College of Surgeons has argued for an opt-out to allow trainees to work up to 65 hours per week because they were not getting enough practical experience on a 48-hour week.

The Coalition has abolished the 18-week target, saying it was not backed by evidence that it benefited patients.

Dr Mark Porter, the chairman of the British Medical Association’s consultants committee, said the drive for cuts within the NHS was also a factor in the rise in waiting times.

From: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/NHS-waiting-lists-rise-after-doctors-hours-cut

Whistleblowing doctors are being gagged as NHS managers attempt to divert attention away from complaints – as the Patients Association said that the scale of the problem is “deeply worrying”.
Whether it is a complaint about a fellow surgeon botching operations or over a manager distorting waiting times, NHS whistleblowers are meant to be protected by law. They are not allowed to be gagged.

But last night in a joint investigation with the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, Channel 4 News revealled that doctors are being gagged after they have blown the whistle.

And in a number of cases their reputations are shredded as NHS managers apparently attempt to divert attention from the problem raised in the first place.

In a number of requests made under the Freedom of Information Act we discovered that over the past decade 170 doctors signed a settlement, or compromise, agreement with their trust. We were given 64 heavily redacted contracts to review.

Of those 55 – that is nearly 90 per cent – contained gagging clauses.

The trusts did not tell us if these all involved whistleblowers. But from discussions with doctors and medical law experts, we know that staff who blow the whistle are often asked to sign these confidentiality contracts.

There is a Public Interest Disclosure Act (PIDA) that is meant to be the government’s guarantee to the whistleblower that he or she will not be sacked. An FOI of 400 trusts in England asked how many staff had blown the whistle and gone to an employment tribunal, using PIDA, over the past decade. We were told of 19 members of staff who settled before their cases could be heard.

Again we were told that it is standard practice to include a gagging clause in a settlement agreement. Yet these were, by the very nature of the act they were using to take action against their employers, whistleblowers.

“Gagging clauses have absolutely no place in the NHS when it comes to concerns about patient safety”, a Patients Association spokesman told Channel 4 News.

“No Trusts should be offering them and no healthcare professional should be accepting them if it keeps problems about care kept under wraps. Doctors have a professional duty to raise concerns about patient safety.

“The scale of the problem unearthed by this investigation is deeply worrying. There should be strict rules about the circumstances in which gagging clauses can be used and all of them should be scrutinused by an external independent body with a remit to protect patient safety. The Care Quality Commission could perform such a role.”

“All the protection and legal safeguards in the world won’t reassure staff if they know for the rest of their careers their CV will always be at the bottom of the pile when applying for another job if they speak out.

“Proving that is happening to whistleblowers is next to impossible, so little can be done to protect them from this unofficial victimisation.  Addressing that will take more than just a change in the law or a new set of guidance from the Health Secretary.”

In the Baby P case, a locum at St Ann’s Hospital in north London failed to spot injuries that led to his death. Yet a paediatrician there, Dr Kim Holt, with three colleagues, had earlier raised concerns about the hospital. She was reportedly later offered £120,000 to leave and stay silent, which she refused. The hospital denies that the payoff was an attempt to gag her.

In Wales, Dr Lucy Dawson, was an accident and emergency doctor at Nevill Hall Hospital in Abergavenny for 17 years. Under the trust’s whistleblowing policy, she raised concerns in 2006 about a clinical incident which she believes could have resulted in the loss of a young man’s life.

She brought two sets of proceedings before the employment tribunal, one of which involved her whistleblowing claim and how it was dealt with.

Before either case could be heard, Dr Dawson was offered a payoff but only if she signed an agreement with a gagging clause. She refused.

Dr Dawson’s case is complex, involving a number of issues and allegations on both sides.  But she says this is not just about her.

“I cannot see a reason why, in a public organisation which is funded by taxpayers’ money, why there is not absolute transparency. I cannot think of a single reason why anybody should be paid to keep their mouth shut in the NHS,” she said.

Under another FOI we asked all 225 hospital trusts in England how much they had spent on settlement agreements over the past decade. Of those who responded, only 71 trusts admitted to entering into these agreements, 40 revealed they had spent a total of £3m. In one case, a doctor was paid a quarter of a million pounds. However, a further 31 trusts simply refused to tell us how much they had paid out.

Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has acknowledged that the scandal of Mid Staffs hospital was allowed to continue because whistleblowers were ignored. One of them was even suspended. The official inquiry report said another whistleblower was given inadequate protection and there was a culture of fear.

Our request for an interview was refused but a Department of Health statement said: “The health secretary has made it clear that patient safety should be at the heart of the NHS and that the improvement of whistleblowing policies is a key part of this.

“He has, therefore, taken action to give teeth to the protection available under the Public Interest Disclosure Act and will reinforce the NHS constitution to make clear rights and responsibilities in respect of whistleblowing.”

But Mr Lansley has also made it clear that he will not be changing the law. Yet all the evidence we have seen is that trusts have been simply ignoring the rules – devastating the careers of doctors, costing the NHS millions. And putting unknown numbers of patients lives at risk.

From:http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/nhs+whistleblowers+apospaid+to+keep+mouth+shut

Almost one in five girls say they have been pregnant at least once by the age of 18, according to a Government survey.
Just under half (46 per cent) decided to keep their baby, while more than a third (36 per cent), had an abortion, the figures show.

The statistics are part of wider research on the experiences of 18-year-olds in England, published by the Department for Education.

The responses of thousands of 18-year-olds questioned for the Youth Cohort Study and the Longitudinal Study of Young People in England were analysed.

The findings show that of the 18-year-old girls questioned about pregnancy, 18 per cent had been pregnant at least once.

Of these, almost eight in 10 (79 per cent) had been expecting a baby on just one occasion, nearly one in five (18 per cent) had been pregnant twice, and 3 per cent had been pregnant at least three times.

The survey concluded there was a “noticeable trend” between the young women who fell pregnant by 18, and their GCSE results.

A third (33 per cent) of those who gained between one and four GCSEs at grades D-G had been pregnant at least once by the time they were 18, compared to just 6 per cent of those who scored eight or more GCSEs at Grades A*-C.

Teenage girls who were eligible for Free School Meals – a measure of poverty – at age 16, or who had parents who left school at 16, were also more likely to get pregnant by the age of 18, the figures showed.

According to figures published by the Office for National Statistics, there were 25.3 births for every 1,000 women under 20, in 2009.

Girls aged 15 to 19 accounted for 39,020 abortions carried out in England and Wales in 2009.

The figures show that 18 per cent of girls who said they were sexually active had been pregnant by the age of 18.

More than eight in ten (83 per cent) of the boys and girls questioned said they were sexually active by the time they turned 18.

From: http://www.independent.co.uk/a-fifth-of-girls-pregnant-by-18-survey-reveals-2032952