Fears grow over NHS plans future

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26 January 2012 Last updated at 01:23 GMT The health bill is working its way through Parliament Talks between ministers and medical leaders have taken place over concerns about changes to the NHS in England.

The Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which represents 20 groups, held a meeting on Tuesday night to discuss their opposition to the plans.

A draft statement was drawn up which the BBC understands said the medical establishment could not support the overhaul plans in their current form.

However, it is unclear whether it will be signed off.

The view of the royal colleges, which are the professional bodies in the NHS that set standards in areas such as training, is seen as key in the current climate.

'Serious concerns'

Unions have already come out to say the overhaul should be scrapped, but ministers said this had been motivated by the row over pay and pensions.

This week an influential group of MPs said the changes were hindering the NHS as it attempts to make the savings it needs to safeguard patient care.

If the medical royal colleges toughen their stance, it could provide a devastating blow to the government's attempts to get its changes through parliament.

The bill underpinning the changes is due back in the Lords next month.

The meeting on Tuesday night was followed by a series of discussions between ministers and the colleges on Wednesday.

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Changes are needed and we want the NHS to be able to make them in the interests of patients”

End Quote Department of Health spokesman The BBC also understands some colleges are not convinced a hardening of their position is the right move. The Royal College of Surgeons has made it clear it would not sign up to the draft statement.

The academy, which in the autumn said it had serious concerns about the plans, particularly in the areas of accountability, competition and training, is now due to meet the three key health unions on Thursday night.

The academy confirmed it had had discussions about its "continuing concerns", but would not be making a statement at the moment.

But the government has indicated it was ready to push ahead with the changes regardless of what happens.

A Department of Health spokesman said: "There will always be some people who oppose changes to the status quo in the NHS.

"We have listened and we have made changes which have been widely welcomed including by professional bodies. But this process cannot go on forever. Changes are needed and we want the NHS to be able to make them in the interests of patients."

The developments came after the prime minister and Labour leader Ed Miliband clashed during Prime Minister's questions on Wednesday.

Mr Miliband said it was time for the bill should be scrapped.

Source BBC

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Baby Name Game: How a Name Can Affect Your Child's Future

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All parents like to think that their baby is unique — the cutest, brightest, most engaging infant ever born. And one way parents seek to reflect their child's uniqueness is by bestowing them with equally distinctive, sometimes weird, names.

How best to ensure your child's moniker is special? Google, of course.

Last week, the New York Times wrote about how parents-to-be routinely use the search engine to evaluate baby names. Worried about their unborn child's future digital footprint, parents are also using online searches to vet the spellings of names they're considering. "A quick search can help ensure that a child is not saddled with the name of a serial killer, pornography star or sex offender," wrote the Times. One couple shunned "Kalia" in favor of their own creation, "Kaleya," after the former popped up images of busty women in thongs.

Parents have struggled with what to name Junior for eons, and for good reason. According to Judaism's Talmudic tradition, a baby's name is its first gift. Though it has always been an important decision, the Times suggests the digital age has made it even knottier:

[W]hat's new is the level of complexity that Google and other search engines have brought to the name game. Some parents want names that are unique so their child will rise to the top of future search results. Others want names that are uncommon enough to bestow uniqueness, but not so exotic that they would be considered weird on the playground. A rare few want their child's name to get lost in a virtual crowd…

Uniqueness seems to be a primary motive and has spurred an unspoken competition among parents to find the most original names, said Laura Wattenberg, author of The Baby Name Wizard, a guide for selecting a name. "Parents thinking of a baby name will type it in and say: 'Oh, no, it's taken. There are already three others with that name.'"

If the scientific research on the topic is any indication, parents may be doing the right thing by stressing over name selection. Names can have profound and lasting implications over the course of a person's life. "Name your kids what you love, but be aware there are consequences," says David Figlio, an economics and education professor at Northwestern University who has researched the effect of names on children.

MORE: Who's Your Baby Daddy? New Paternity Test Can Tell at 12 Weeks

In one study, Figlio analyzed the effects on children with so-called "linguistically low-status" names. Across all races and ethnicities, there are certain letter combinations that are more likely to be given by high-school-drop-out moms. Among white families, Alexandra may be spelled Alekzandra; the "kz" combo is almost never seen in middle-class families. For African Americans, it may mean use of the prefix "Sha" rather than the more highly regarded "La."

Figlio found that teachers treat kids with low-status names differently: they're more likely to be referred for special education, less likely to be recognized as gifted and they perform poorer on tests, according to research published in 2005 by the National Bureau of Economic Research.

Names may even help predict career paths. When Figlio studied sisters who were both good at math, he discovered that those with more linguistically feminine names were more likely to shy away from math and science and stick with humanities classes compared to their siblings with linguistically androgynous names. If you're set on your daughter Anastasia becoming a doctor, you'll have to be extra vigilant to fight any cultural stereotypes. "She may become the English major and her sister, Jordan, may become the bio major," says Figlio. "That's happening at rates that are too big to ignore."

And think twice before you give your son a girlie-sounding name: boys with names such as Ashley, Shannon, Jamie and Courtney tend to have more behavior problems in middle school, according to Figlio's 2006 study in Education Finance and Policy.

You could always look to pop culture for inspiration, as did 50% of parents surveyed by BabyCenter.com, which just released its list of the 100 most popular baby names for 2011 (Sophia and Aiden topped the girls' and boys' lists, respectively). Nearly 1 in 5 parents surveyed refused to succumb to the cult of celebrity, however, electing instead to go maverick. They said they'd consider inventing a name or plucking one from the dictionary to ensure their child would stand out.

MORE: What's in a Baby Name: 2011's Most Popular Monikers

That's not a bad idea, says Figlio, although his prime recommendation — each year, he fields about 100 emails from parents seeking advice on what to name their kids — is to bequeath a name that's both resonant and meaningful.

That's what my husband and I tried to do when choosing Hebrew names for our three kids. In doing so, we've all but guaranteed that they won't find their names emblazoned on a rack of personalized mugs in the local toy store, but we've also given them names that we hoped would capture their essence — "spring," "song" and "my light."

As a fringe benefit, we seem to have also secured somewhat of a singular identity for them. Even though I know other people with my kids' names, it's almost certain that they'll be the only ones of their ilk in class. (Of course, the Times notes, there's never any guarantee, citing the case of a Jewish lesbian couple who intentionally selected the Hebrew names Asher and Levi for their boys after making sure they didn't appear on the Social Security Administration's most-popular list, only to run into another Asher being parented by two different Jewish lesbian moms.)

Selecting a unique name is paramount for today's parents, says Linda Murray, editor-in-chief of BabyCenter.com, but with 4 million babies born in the U.S. each year, unique can be hard to come by. BabyCenter does what it can to help, offering up the most popular names as a reference — so you'll know what not to name your baby. "We put the list out as a service," says Murray, "so parents know what other parents are doing."

Bonnie Rochman is a reporter at TIME. Find her on Twitter at @brochman. You can also continue the discussion on TIME's Facebook page and on Twitter at @TIME.

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As Kyoto Protocol Ends, An Uncertain Climate Future

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Key provisions of the Kyoto Protocol expire in December of 2012, and experts say there's no real global framework in place to replace the treaty that was supposed to be the first step toward ambitious actions on climate change. Above, a coal-fired power plant in eastern China. China is now the leading carbon dioxide emitter in the world.

As diplomats from around the world gather in Durban, South Africa, for talks about climate change, a big question looms: What will become of the Kyoto climate treaty, which was negotiated with much fanfare in 1997. The treaty was supposed to be a first step toward much more ambitious actions on climate change, but it is now on the brink of fading into irrelevance. That could have major implications for the future of United Nations climate talks.

Even under the best of circumstances, the Kyoto protocol would have made a barely measurable dent in the amount of greenhouse gases flowing into the Earth's atmosphere.

We have very little space left in our atmosphere to be continuing to pollute before we cross certain thresholds where impacts will be inevitable.

- Jennifer Morgan, director, Climate and Energy Program, World Resources Institute

First, the United States decided not to ratify the treaty, so our emissions aren't covered by the pact. Then China leapfrogged the U.S. to become the world's biggest emitter of carbon dioxide. But China is treated like a developing country under the Kyoto treaty, which means it has no obligations. Even so, Europe and a few other nations have been soldiering on.

But Jennifer Morgan, director of the Climate and Energy Program at the World Resources Institute says the treaty's day of reckoning now looms.

"The Kyoto Protocol's first commitment period, its first set of targets, ends next year. So the big question is, 'What happens next?'" she says. "Do the Kyoto countries, like Europe, move forward and put their new targets into a legally-binding treaty?"

The prospects are slim: Canada, Japan and Russia say they are not interested in pledging new reductions under the treaty. The United States and China prefer an alternate approach, which came out of the climate talks two years ago in Copenhagen. They have pledged to take action individually, but not under a binding treaty. However, those commitments aren't enough to prevent a 2-degree increase in global temperature, the internationally agreed upon goal.

"We have very little space left in our atmosphere to be continuing to pollute before we cross certain thresholds where impacts will be inevitable," she says. "So no matter what you're looking at, the current commitments are really quite inadequate."

The Future Of The Kyoto Protocol

The European Union has been the Kyoto Protocol's biggest champion, but it has ambivalent feelings about it now. Michael Grubb, a professor of climate change and energy policy at the University of Cambridge, says on the plus side, Europe likes the treaty because it has spelled out international rules, such as standards for counting carbon emissions. Europe uses those rules to limit its own emissions.

"Europe does not want to kind of jump into a void where there aren't any really agreed rules that bind on anything," Grubb says. "It's very reluctant to kill off the only actual legal framework that we've got."

On the downside, Europe is disappointed that the rest of the world did not follow its example. And Grubb says the economic crisis there has diminished the continent's appetite for more aggressive action.

"So there's a feeling that Europe is in a bit of a holding position on climate change, I'd say."

The real fight over the Kyoto treaty comes from nations in the developing world. They see the pact as a critical symbol of commitment by the rich nations to clean up a problem they largely created. South Africa's foreign minister, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, is presiding over the climate talks in Durban. And she says it's vital to these talks to either rekindle the Kyoto treaty, or to make progress on a successor.

"If this question is not resolved, the outcome on other matters in the negotiations will become difficult. A solution must be found," Nkoana-Mashabane says.

Her choice of words is quite diplomatic here: In fact, some nations have been threatening to pull the plug on the whole process if the Kyoto treaty is not reinvigorated. And they can do that, since the United Nations operates by consensus.

Alden Meyer, director of strategy and policy at the Union of Concerned Scientists, says that move would affect everything that's on the table at Durban, which is much more than commitments to limit emissions.

"If you think about it, it's actually counterproductive for developing countries to not move forward on adaptation, on reducing deforestation, on climate finance, because those are all things in their own self-interest. But the level of emotion and anger could be so big that they wouldn't think in those kind of terms and they would sort of block everything."

Technical structures set up by the Kyoto Protocol would live on even if nations didn't adopt new commitments under the treaty. But by now, the pact governs less than 20 percent of global emissions. So even if nations keep the treaty on life support in Durban, it has already lost its practical role as the foundation for a more ambitious climate agreement.

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'Physics Of The Future': How We'll Live In 2100?

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How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100

by Michio Kaku

Hardcover, 389 pages | purchase

close Physics of the FutureHow Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100Michio Kaku

Imagine being able to access the Internet through the contact lenses on your eyeballs. Blink, and you'd be online. Meet someone, and you'd have the ability to immediately search their identity. And if your friend happens to be speaking a different language, an instantaneous translation could appear directly in front of you.

That might sound farfetched, but it's something that might very well exist in 30 years or less, says theoretical physicist Michio Kaku.

"The first people to buy these contact lenses will be college students studying for final exams," he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross. "They'll see the exam answers right in their contact lenses. ... In a cocktail party, you will know exactly who to suck up to, because you'll have a complete read out of who they are. President Barack Obama will buy these contact lenses, so he'll never need a teleprompter again. ... These already exist in some form [in the military]. You place [a lens] on your helmet, you flip it down, and immediately you see the Internet of the battlefield ... all of it, right on your eyeball."

But Internet-ready contact lenses aren't the only futuristic item we're likely to see. Kaku describes some of the inventions that may appear throughout the coming century — based on developments currently taking place in nanotechnology, astronautics, medicine and material science — in his book Physics of the Future. Kaku details some of these inventions, including disposable computers, space elevators and driverless cars — which will likely be ready in the next decade and will completely eliminate the need for high school driver's ed classes.

"In the future, you'll simply jump into your car, turn on the Internet, turn on a movie and sit back and relax and turn on the automatic pilot, and the car will drive itself," he says. "Unlike a human driver, it doesn't get drunk, it doesn't get distracted and certainly does not have road rage."

The cars will be equipped with radar in the fenders that will communicate with road signs and sensors along highways.

"When the car comes to an intersection, the GPS system will alert the computer [inside the car] that there is an intersection coming up," he says. "[The GPS system] will look onto the [roadside] sensor and then slow down."

Kaku also explains how, in the future, our brains might be able to interface with artificial intelligence. He describes one study in which computer chips were placed into the brains of paralyzed stroke patients at Brown University. The patients learned that by thinking certain thoughts, they could manipulate a cursor on a computer screen.

Enlarge Andrea Brizzi/Doubleday

Michio Kaku is an author and the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York. His books include Hyperspace, Visions and Beyond Einstein.

Andrea Brizzi/Doubleday Michio Kaku is an author and the Henry Semat Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York. His books include Hyperspace, Visions and Beyond Einstein.

"It takes awhile — it takes a few hours — but after a while, you realize that certain thoughts will move the cursor in certain directions," he says. "After a while ... [the patients] were able to read email, write email, surf the Internet, play video games, guide wheelchairs — anything you can do on a computer, they can do as well, except they're trapped inside a paralyzed body."

Similar technology could be used in the future to control robots that can go places where humans can't, says Kaku.

"It's very dangerous to put astronauts on a moon base where there's radiation, solar flares and micro meteorites," he says. "It'd be much better to put robots on the moon and have them mentally connected to astronauts on the Earth. So you'd go inside a pod, you mentally make certain thoughts, which then [could] control the robots on the moon."

Kaku, a professor of theoretical physics with the City College of New York, also talks about his childhood, his work with Edward Teller, a member of the Manhattan Project, and his work on the development of string field theory. He is the author of several books, including Physics of the Impossible, Parallel Worlds and Beyond Einstein. He has also hosted scientific documentaries for the Discovery Channel, the BBC and the Science Channel.

On Moore's Law and the future

"I'm a physicist, and we have something called Moore's Law, which says computer power doubles every 18 months. So every Christmas, we more or less assume that our toys and appliances are more or less twice as powerful as the previous Christmas. For example, your cellphone has more computer power than all of NASA when they put two men on the moon in 1969. And a birthday card that sings 'Happy Birthday' to you — that birthday card has a chip in it with more computer power than all the Allied Forces of 1945. Hitler, Stalin, Churchill would have killed to get that chip that you simply throw away in the garbage. Because of Moore's Law, we physicists can project 10, 15 years into the future with near mathematical precision."

On recorded memories

"Two months ago, history was made when [scientists] were able to put a memory directly into a mouse. This is the first time in history it has been done — it's something right out of science fiction. What they did was, they looked at the hippocampus of a mouse, and tape-recorded impulses as it learned a task. That's the gateway for memory: All memories first go through the hippocampus. They tape-recorded the impulses. Then they gave it a chemical which made the mouse forget the task. Then they took this tape-recording, shot it back into the mouse, and the mouse immediately knew how to do the task.

"This is the first time it has been demonstrated that you can actually tape-record a memory and then reinsert the memory into a mouse and have the mouse perform the task that it previously forgot. The implications of this are enormous. ... It means that memories, in principle, might be tape-recorded and then shot right back into your brain or somebody else's brain."

On building a particle accelerator in his garage in high school

"When I was 16 years old, I assembled a 2.3 million electron volt beta particle accelerator. I went to Westinghouse, I got 400 pounds of translator steel, 22 miles of copper wire, and I assembled a 6-kilowatt, 2.3 million electron accelerator in the garage. When it was finished, I would plug it in, there was this huge crackling sound as I consumed 6 kilowatts of power, I blew out every circuit breaker in the house. All the lights were plunged in darkness. And my poor mom would come home every night, see the lights flicker and die, and say to herself, 'Why couldn't I have a son who plays baseball?' "

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A new book looks at the life of the beautiful and brainy movie star Hedy Lamarr.

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Women freezing eggs for future

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"It's an insurance policy," Dr. Rachel Wellner says of freezing her eggs. An estimated 5,000 women nationwide are using egg-freezing technologyProcess costs thousands of dollars and it doesn't always workAmerican Society for Reproductive Medicine hasn't endorsed egg freezing

(CNN) -- When Dr. Rachel Wellner got a text from her brother Tuesday night that his wife was in labor, she was speaking at a fancy charity event for breast cancer research. As soon as her speech was over, she raced in her evening gown to Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan to watch her nephew, Lincoln Jacob Wellner, come into the world.

Holding the newborn baby in the delivery room, Wellner, 36, was overwhelmed with joy, but it was tinged with sadness as she wondered when -- or whether -- she would ever have a baby of her own. An accomplished breast surgeon, Wellner has no husband in sight.

Then she relaxed as she remembered what awaited her 50 blocks away: 13 eggs frozen in a bank at New York University Fertility Center.

If by the time Wellner gets married the eggs in her ovaries are too old to work, she can thaw out her frozen eggs, have them fertilized with her husband's sperm and implanted into her uterus, and hope that her younger eggs will succeed where her older eggs failed.

Freezing eggs for one's own future use has become a growing trend, with an estimated 5,000 women nationwide making use of the technology, according to Dr. Daniel Shapiro, medical director of the egg bank at Reproductive Biology Associates in Atlanta.

"I'm really hoping I find Mr. Right soon, but if I don't, having those eggs in the bank is a big weight off my shoulders," says Wellner, who banked her eggs in June.

"It empowers women," adds Dr. Jamie Grifo, program director of the New York University Fertility Center. "Patients get to be their own egg donors."

(Entertainment journalist Maria Menounos made news last week when she announced she's freezing her eggs, but it turns out she's actually doing something different -- read The Chart to find out what.)

"It's an insurance policy," says Wellner, director of breast services at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary. "Maybe now I'll be one of those lucky girls who has babies later in life."

"I never thought I wouldn't have kids at this point."

Freezing your eggs may be an insurance policy, but it's an expensive one. It costs thousands of dollars (or in some cases, tens of thousands of dollars) and it doesn't always work.

Plenty of things can go wrong. Wellner's 13 eggs might not survive the freezing process. They might not create viable embryos when mixed with her future husband's sperm. And, even more likely, they might not attach to her uterus when doctors implant them.

That's why the American Society for Reproductive Medicine hasn't endorsed egg freezing, calling it experimental and unproven.

"Patients need to be advised there are some things we don't know," says Dr. Eric Widra, a spokesman for ASRM.

Pamela Madsen, founder of the American Fertility Association, says a woman has to decide whether it's worth it to take the financial risk.

"If not having a baby is not an option, then I'd go to Vegas and play my cards, knowing that it's Vegas," she says.

If you're considering preserving your eggs, here are five basic questions and answers:

1. How much will it cost?

Centers charge between $6,500 and $15,000 per cycle, according to Dr. Andrew Toledo, the CEO of Reproductive Biology Associates in Atlanta. RBA in Atlanta charges $7,600 per cycle, and NYU charges $12,000. Some women need more than one cycle to get enough viable eggs.

2. Will it work?

Shapiro at RBA estimates that a woman who freezes her eggs between the ages of 32 and 35 will have a 40 to 50% chance of achieving a successful pregnancy. If freezing between ages 35 and 38, the rate goes down to 35%. If freezing at 39 or 40, it's 20 to 25%, and if freezing eggs over age 40, the success rate will be less than 10%.

3. Can I find out in advance if it's worth the money to freeze my eggs?

A test for levels of anti-Mullerian hormone can help predict whether doctors will get enough eggs to make the procedure worthwhile.

"If the results are unfavorable, we say they're probably wasting their time and money," Shapiro says.

4. What's involved in freezing my eggs?

The procedure involves injecting yourself with medicines for 10 days, visiting the doctor¹s office five or six times. About two days later, doctors will harvest your eggs while you¹re under twilight sedation. Most women feel little pain aside from a bit of cramping and breast tenderness, and go back to work the next day.

5. How do I find the best place to freeze my eggs?

"Make them show you their data," Toledo advises. "How many patients have they treated? How many eggs did they get? What is the data on survivability when they're thawed?"

Wellner says even if her eggs don't work when she thaws them out, it was worth the financial risk.

"I spent all this money on my education. Twelve thousand dollars on my reproductive future is relatively inexpensive," she says.

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HEALTH MANAGEMENT. China's existing system of the reserves keeps getting not wild plants, valuable future could be sources of food and medicines

China needs to change, where it its pages nature reserves, and draw people from the cities to protect of their resources valuable but endangered wild plants according to an article in the September issue of Bioscience published remote villages in the direction.
The article by Weiguo sang and Keping Ma of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Institute of Botany and Jan C. Axmacher of University College, London, lists the seven strategic steps that are required, the future of China's wild plants, secure, who say the authors cannot effectively by the country's existing preserves are protected areas. Many of these areas only on paper and are far from provinces of Yunnan and Sichuan, where rare species in the largest numbers, sang, and his coauthors are found.
Protected area managers in many cases currently missing basic data about the plant species on their reserves and even the exact scope and extent of reserves are present. Consequently, rapid economic development, which related spread of invasive species and the development of tourism of species become extinct could drive the impact of China's, which could be sources of future crops and medicine.
In addition to creating competition rules reserves in relevant areas and develop specific management and monitoring plans for that at the most threatened and promote sustainable eco tourism, the plants, not damaged, argue the authors BioScience promoting the rural poor, who often move accurate data about threats to their species, China should develop resources, predatory in cities. It should also consider temporary protection very rare species in botanical gardens and expand, financing and training for traditional taxonomy, and experimental ecosystem laboratories and management.

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