Brain damage, blindness and death: the global trail of trauma left by methanol-laced alcohol

For Bethany Clarke, poison tasted like nothing. There was no bitter aftertaste, no astringent sting at the back of the tongue. If anything, she thought in passing, the free shots she and her friends were drinking at a hostel bar in Laos had probably been watered down – she wasn’t detecting a strong vodka flavour through the veil of Sprite she had mixed it with.All in all, Clarke remembers drinking about five of those shots, sitting with her best friend, Simone White, and a crowd of others at the hostel’s happy hour. CCTV footage shows the group laughing in the warm air of the open bar in the town of Vang Vieng, green and red lights dancing over their shoulders

Londoners told to be vigilant with messages after cyber-attack on council

A London council has urged thousands of residents to be “extra vigilant” when receiving calls, emails or text messages after confirming that data had been taken in a cyber-attack.The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBKC), which has 147,500 residents, said some data had been copied from its systems in an attack this week.The council said it believed the theft related to “historical data” but it was checking whether it contained any personal or financial details of residents, customers or service users.“With advice from the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), we are encouraging all residents, customers and service users to be extra vigilant when called, emailed or sent text messages,” the council said.Three London councils have been affected by cyber-attacks this week, with RBKC and Westminster city council saying a number of systems had been affected across both authorities, including phone lines

The loss of access to and respect for autonomous midwifery is tragic | Letters

I’m an NHS midwife, despairing over your article (Influencers made millions pushing ‘wild’ births – now the Free Birth Society is linked to baby deaths around the world, 22 November). My key frustration, though, is how, as with any successful charlatanism, there is truth and real fear being exploited: medical overreach blights lives, women can and should trust their bodies, and a healthy body rarely grows a baby it can’t birth.However, physiology is not a perfected endpoint. Evolution continues with genetic variation spreading through a population by “survival of the fittest”. In the brutal “wild”, the least “well-adapted” (whether by health or circumstance) do not survive

We older people are always a footnote | Brief letters

As one of your older readers, I was looking forward to reading the interesting article on the five epochs of brain development (Brain has five ‘eras’, scientists say – with adult mode not starting until early 30s, 25 November). But why was I not surprised to find the final two epochs given just one sentence between them?Dave HeadeyFaringdon, Oxfordshire I was delighted to find out that the Royal Opera House is replacing its 26-year-old stage curtains. Perhaps the old ones could be reused to make new riser cushions for the stage of Huddersfield town hall. We’re still waiting to be levelled up. (See my Guardian letter, 14 February 2022

Expert panel advises against prostate cancer screening for most men in UK

Prostate cancer screening should not be made available to the vast majority of men across the UK, a panel of expert government health advisers has said, to the “deep disappointment” of several charities and campaigners.The UK National Screening Committee (UKNSC) has instead recommended that there should be a targeted screening programme for men with a confirmed BRCA1 or BRCA2 faulty gene variant, which means they are more at risk of faster growing and aggressive cancers at an earlier age. Men in that category could be screened every two years between the ages of 45 and 61, they said.The committee found that the “harms would outweigh the benefits” if it were to recommend prostate cancer screening for all men or for men with a relevant family history of cancer, as it could lead to a small reduction in the number of prostate cancer deaths but “very high levels of over-diagnosis”.When it came to screening black men, who have an elevated risk of prostate cancer, the committee found current evidence to be “lacking and uncertain”

What is prostate cancer and should I be worried if I wee a lot at night?

Prostate cancer is cancer that starts in the prostate gland, a small gland that sits just below the bladder and makes part of the fluid that forms semen. It is the biggest cause of cancer in men in the UK, with about 55,300 diagnoses and 12,200 deaths a year. It is the second most common form of cancer, after breast cancer. In many men, prostate cancer grows slowly, but in some it can grow and spread more quickly.The incidence of prostate cancer has risen by 55% since the early 1990s