20 NEWS Talking points
THE WEEK 7 May 2022It’s hard to recall that until
recently, discussing “the
change” was taboo, said
Eleanor Mills in The Daily
Telegraph. Today, you can
scarcely move for firms
boasting about their
menopause support schemes,
or for headlines screaming
about the shortage of hormone
replacement therapy (HRT).
“Even Rod Stewart is banging
on about it.” It’s a welcome
development. Thanks to the
efforts of campaigners – in
particular Davina McCall,
who made a “groundbreaking”
documentary on the subject
last year – everyone is better
informed about possible menopause symptoms:
hot flushes, brain fog, anxiety, depression,
insomnia. And greater awareness is leading
many more women to seek effective treatment.These campaigns have fuelled an amazing rush
on HRT, said Ben Spencer and Zoë Crowther in
The Sunday Times. The therapy, first introduced
in the 1960s, hasn’t always been popular. Use of
the treatment fell off a cliff 20 years ago after
studies found it increased the risk of cancer.
But HRT is now back in favour as a result of
research showing that those risks were greatly
overstated. In the past five years, demand for
HRT has doubled, said The Observer. Around
a million women in Britain now take it, via gels,
patches or pills, and supplies are failing to keepup with demand. This has
led some women to procure
supplies on the black market,
meeting in car parks to buy
and share medicines. The
Government responded to the
crisis last week by appointing
a “tsar” to tackle the problem,
but it should have acted far
sooner. These shortages “are
not new or unexpected”.The belated response is further
evidence of the low priority
given to women’s health
concerns, said Alice Thomson
in The Times – but things are
slowly getting better on this
front. There’s now an all-party
parliamentary task force on the menopause, set
up by Labour MP Carolyn Harris, that has
successfully campaigned to cut the cost of repeat
HRT prescriptions. “Harris’s goal is to get Jacob
Rees-Mogg to say ‘vaginal dryness’ in the House
of Commons.” But there’s still a lot of room for
improvement. It’s wrong, for instance, that
medical students are still barely taught anything
about the menopause, and that pharmacists
aren’t allowed to dispense substitutes if a
pres cribed HRT product is out of stock.
Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon,
recently said that she was anxious about
reaching “the foothills of menopause”. But
provided she can get HRT, she has no need to
fret. It’s politicians who “don’t take menopausal
women seriously who should worry.”Pick of the week’s
Gossip
HRT: the politics of the menopause
In the early months of the Covid-19 pandemic,
Matt Hancock, who was then health secretary,
famously claimed to have thrown a “protective
ring” around England’s care homes. But those of
us with relatives in this overstretched sector have
long known that was “a sick joke”, said Andrew
Grice on The Independent. Now we’ve had it
confirmed by a “landmark ruling” in the
High Court, which found that the decision
which led to 25,000 patients being discharged
from hospitals to care homes in March and April
2020, many without being tested, was unlawful.
I saw this tragedy up close when my 95-year-old
mother caught Covid in her care home: she
recovered, but five of her fellow residents died
from the disease. This court ruling is a serious
blow to the Government’s record of handling
the pandemic. The overall reckoning, though,
will have to wait until the official inquiry reports- and that won’t be until after the next election.
Regardless of what happens next, this “seismic
verdict” has vindicated the two women who
brought the case, Cathy Gardner and Fay
Harris, said Tom Ough in The Daily Telegraph.
Both their fathers died of Covid in early 2020
while in residential care. Dr Gardner saw her
father, Michael Gibson, for the last time through
a care home window, the day before he lost his
life: family visits were banned at the time. In total,about 20,000 elderly care home residents died
from the disease in the first wave, said the Daily
Mail. Many spent their final hours “confused and
alone”. Why were patients rushed from hospital
back into care homes, where they carried a
risk to other residents – without even being
quarantined? Because the health establishment
had a “monomaniacal focus” on freeing hospital
beds and “propping up the NHS”.A spokesperson for Hancock claimed that he
had been cleared of wrongdoing. He blamed
the now-defunct Public Health England for
failing to tell ministers that there was a serious
risk of the disease being transmitted by
asymptomatic patients. Last week, Boris
Johnson mounted the same defence, telling
MPs that “we didn’t know” about asymptomatic
transmission back then, said Michael Savage in
The Guardian. But we did. The risk was often
discussed. At a press conference on 25 March
2020, when untested patients were still being
sent to care homes, Johnson raised the issue
with the Chief Scientific Adviser Sir Patrick
Vallance. This ruling could pave the way for
“Britain’s biggest-ever class action lawsuit” and
a £200m pay-out to relatives, said John Siddle,
Dan Hall and Jack Clover in The Mirror. But as
one legal expert said, for bereaved families this
isn’t about money. It’s about answers.Care home deaths: a “seismic verdict”
Donald Trump was anxious
about being hit by bananas,
pineapple and tomatoes at
his campaign rallies, and
put his security on alert,
because flying fruit is “very
dangerous”, court papers
have revealed. While giving
testimony to lawyers
representing protesters who
claim to have been assaulted
by his guards, the former
president was asked why
he had urged his supporters
to “knock the crap out of”
anyone who seemed bent
on lobbing a tomato. “I
wanted to have people be
ready because we were put
on alert that they were going
to do fruit. Tomatoes are
bad,” he noted, but “some
fruit is a lot worse.”Kim Kardashian stole the
show at this year’s Met Gala
by turning up in the very
dress that Marilyn Monroe
wore to serenade John F.
Kennedy on his birthday in- But having lost 16lb
to fit into the priceless
garment, she got cold feet
and only wore it for a few
minutes – before changing
into a replica. “’I’m
extremely respectful to
the dress,” she explained.
Anna Wintour, the editor
of US Vogue, organises
the Met Gala, and it is a lot
of work. According to her
biographer Amy Odell,
Wintour selects the 700 or
so celebrity invitees, and
in about 80% of cases, she
approves their outfits, too.
She also manages the
menu. Parsley, garlic, onions
and chives are banned “in
case they get stuck in
guests’ teeth or make their
breath smell”. Waiting staff,
too, are carefully vetted.
“God forbid if they’re fat,”
a former Vogue staffer
confided. “If they are
unsightly, they have to go.”Davina McCall campaigning