David Taylor obituary

My husband, David Taylor, who has died of cancer aged 78, missed out on a planned career in medicine but ended up making almost certainly a greater contribution to public health through research and policy development, latterly as professor of pharmaceutical and public health policy at University College London.David had a rare ability to work with people of different professions and persuasions to achieve consensus without compromising his own values and goals. He was adept at popularising complex pharmaceutical issues and bridging the policy and industry worlds. An inspirational lecturer and mentor to research students, he was a passionate champion of marginalised groups.Born in Kingston upon Thames, south-west London, David was the eldest son of Doris (nee Manser), a hospital pharmacist, and Edwin (Bill) Taylor, a research chemist

‘Generational shift’: UK gyms busier than ever as gen Zers ditch pub for pilates

Record numbers of Britons are going to the gym, as the desire of many gen Zers to socialise while getting fit instead of drinking in the pub drives an unprecedented surge in membership, a report shows.In all, 11.5 million people aged 16 and over– a new high – now belong to a gym in the UK, a rise of 1.6 million from 2022. It means one in six people have taken out a membership

Doctors urge government to fight poverty after rise in patients with Victorian diseases

Doctors have reported a rise in the number of patients with Victorian diseases such as scabies, as the Royal College of Physicians urged the government to do more to fight poverty.The survey of 882 doctors found 89% were concerned about the impact of health inequalities on their patients, while 72% had seen more patients in the past three months with illnesses related to poor-quality housing, air pollution and access to transport.The Royal College of Physicians found 46% of respondents said that at least half of their workload involved illnesses linked to social factors.One doctor said that they had seen patients with two Victorian skin diseases, erysipelas and scabies, over the past three months. Another said they were seeing more people “with poor nutritional status due to poverty”, eventually leading to “prolonged and impaired recovery from acute illnesses”

Conversation on assisted dying ends if bill voted down, says MP

If the bill to legalise assisted dying is thrown out by MPs later this month then “the conversation ends” on the subject, with dreadful consequences for many terminally ill people, the MP leading the process has said.Speaking at a press conference organised by supporters of the bill, which has its third reading on 25 April when MPs will vote on amendments, Kim Leadbeater said her colleagues in the Commons have a “duty as parliamentarians to change the law now”.The Labour MP dismissed the idea that if the bill was defeated, the subject could return as government legislation or a royal commission, noting the long gap between the last time assisted dying was debated in the Commons, in 2015, and her efforts.“What worries me is, if the bill doesn’t pass, the conversation ends, and that would be really dreadful for so many people, for so many reasons,” she said.A lengthy and sometimes gruelling committee stage in which a group of MPs considered amendments to the bill has already brought significant changes, including scrapping the requirement for a high court judge to scrutinise every case in favour of an expert panel

Don’t reinforce the idea that grown men don’t cry | Brief letters

Since the release of Adolescence on Netflix, there has been a lot of discussion about what it is to be male and toxic masculinity, which the Guardian has participated in. I was therefore particularly disappointed to see that the headline on your article about pigeon theft (1 April) began with “I cried like a little boy”. I appreciate that it comes from a quotation of an interviewee, but please don’t use subediting to reinforce ideas that grown men don’t cry. Surely we are all seeing the damage these nonsensical societal messages inflict on men, and all of us.Dr Imogen KearnsNHS clinical psychologist, London Ruth Ogden’s article is very insightful on the unsettling effect on humans of changing the clocks (Changing your clock? Scientists are only just beginning to understand what this does to us, 29 March)

Young women in England and Wales projected to have just one child by 35

Young women in England and Wales are likely to have just one child by the time they are 35, according to groundbreaking analysis of past and projected fertility trends by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).Girls who turn 18 this year are projected to have an average of one child each by the age of 35 – unlike their mothers’ generation who had an average of one child per woman by the time they reached 31.Projections from the ONS suggest that the birthrate in England and Wales will continue to drop, with women having smaller families after having babies later in life than previous generations.Young women turning 18 this year are projected to have most of their children after turning 30 years old, in contrast to previous generations who had had most of their children by that age. Women born in 1978 had about half their children by the age of 30, while their mothers (born in 1951) had had three-quarters of their children