Tag: patients

Alert over Facebook conspiracy theorists scaring women into quitting lifesaving osteoporosis drugs – as experts warn patients are risking death if they stop taking treatment

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Women are quitting vital drugs that treat the bone-thinning disease osteoporosis because of ‘dangerous misinformation’ about their side effects being spread on Facebook, experts have warned.

Scaremongering posts seen by The Mail on Sunday falsely claim the drugs, known as bisphosphonates, are equivalent to ‘rust remover’. Others say the tablets actually worsen, rather than prevent, the disease.

Yet failing to take the medication means patients face serious, life-changing fractures, permanent disability and death, doctors say.

Osteoporosis mainly affects women –

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Texas gender clinic dubbed ‘Frankenstein’s lab’ performs hundreds of experimental surgeries each year – including giving patients a penis AND vagina and ‘Barbie-dolling’ clients by removing both

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A gender clinic in Texas dubbed ‘Frankenstein’s lab’ has performed hundreds of unconventional genital surgeries that many experts describe as ‘dangerous.’

The Crane Center for Transgender Surgery in Austin bills itself as a world leader in operations for non-binary people – those who don’t identify exclusively with one gender.

The surgeries include giving patients a penis and vagina, or completely removing their sex organs, essentially ‘Barbie-dolling your genitals,’ as one critic put it.

The center director, Dr Curtis Crane, has

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The brain chip pioneers who paved the way for Elon Musk’s Neuralink: Brave patients have been getting devices implanted in their skulls SINCE 2006

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Elon Musk captured the imaginations of the world this week when he revealed one of the first volunteers to have his brain chip implanted in their skulls.

But the historic moment is only possible thanks to decades of pioneering scientists and brave subjects that came before it – who had brain-computer interface chips into people’s brains, with much more primitive tech.

Musk has said he hopes that in the very near future his Neuralink device will enable people to control

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The GP really WON’T see you now! Backlash at Rishi Sunak’s pharmacy ‘revolution’ to ease pressure on £118k-a-year doctors as critics warn NHS scheme to send millions of patients to swamped chemists instead is ‘risky’

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Pharmacists should not be considered a substitute for GPs, campaigners said today as Rishi Sunak faced backlash over his ‘revolution’.

Under blockbuster NHS plans designed to free up millions of doctors’ appointments, chemists have been given new powers to hand out prescriptions for seven common ailments.

It means patients battling minor illnesses, such as a sore throat or earache, can now bypass their GP.

But critics have slammed the ‘risky’ scheme, with pharmacists battling their own crisis that has left

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Dragons’ Den entrepreneur who was the first to get 6 offers for device that ‘cured’ her ME is reported to advertising standards for ‘selling snake oil’ as doctors slam BBC show for ‘misleading desperate patients’

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A glamorous entrepreneur who became the first person to receive six offers on Dragons’ Den has been accused of ‘selling snake oil’ and preying on the ‘most vulnerable and horribly ill people in society’.

Giselle Boxer, 31, from Sheffield, appeared on the BBC show last week and asked for £50,000 for a 10 per cent stake in her business, Acu Seeds.

The mother of one said she set up the business, which sells £30 gold plated ear seeds, while on

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Patients with cancer face waiting over a year for lifesaving medication that costs just $10 – as US drug shortages hit record high

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The Bray family had always prided themselves on a positive outlook in life. 

And in 2018, when they received the devastating news that nine-year-old daughter Abby had life-threatening leukemia, they tried to focus on finding a way out of the situation.

She had great doctors and a precise, effective treatment regimen; her outlook was positive.  

Until that is, the hospital ran out of the drugs that were keeping her alive.

Abby’s mother Laura, from Florida, was shocked when, one afternoon

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The children left in agony because the NHS refuses to take out their tonsils: It’s a simple procedure that was once routine… but cost-cutting measures are seeing patients denied the op

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Thousands of children are being denied surgery that would prevent them from needlessly suffering from tonsillitis every year.

Strict NHS guidance has prevented many patients from undergoing the procedure, known medically as a tonsillectomy, since 2018 in a bid to save money.

As a result, seven-times fewer patients are undergoing the surgery now compared to the fifties, despite a landmark study last year finding that the op, which is most commonly offered to children, is both clinically and cost effective. 

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As it’s revealed Dame Diana Rigg made a plea in her final weeks for assisted dying to be legalised, campaigners on both sides and seriously ill patients argue their case… ‘I don’t want my children to have to witness my last months of screaming agony’

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Jenny Carruthers knows starkly the agonising death that may await her. Ten years ago, the mother of three’s partner died at home in terrible pain from terminal bone cancer. Now, Jenny has been told she, too, faces the same.

Her partner, Gypie Mayo, had enjoyed fame playing guitar with rock bands such as Dr Feelgood and The Yardbirds.

He was diagnosed first with liver cancer in 2010 when he was 60. He had surgery and chemotherapy, but in December 2012

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Doctors must stop over-prescribing antidepressants to patients who are just lonely, demand leading experts

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Doctors must stop prescribing antidepressants to patients with mild mental health problems to curb the country’s overreliance on pills, experts said today.

Antidepressant prescriptions have almost doubled in England over the last decade with 85.6million dished out in the last year alone.

Experts blame ‘overmedicalising’ issues like loneliness for the steep rise, with unnecessary drugs putting patients at risk of harm while failing to tackle the root causes of problems.

Instead, lifestyle changes alongside greater use of social prescribing, such

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Electrical brain implants may help patients with severe brain injuries

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For people with traumatic brain injuries, cognitive functions like memory, attention and mood regulation can become exceedingly difficult. But “there is no therapy for this kind of problem, even though it’s so prevalent,” says Nicholas Schiff, a neurologist at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.

Now, in a small study of individuals who have suffered moderate to severe brain injury, five patients scored better on a test of attention and information processing after having electrodes surgically implanted into

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