Planned Parenthood’s president, Cecile Richards, gave a damning verdict on the Republicans’ healthcare bill to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act on Thursday, saying: “Being a woman is going to be now a pre-existing condition in this country.”
Speaking hours after the American Health Care Act was narrowly passed in the House of Representatives, the activist – who is a key figure in the campaign for American women’s health and reproductive rights – received a standing ovation as she arrived on stage to address a packed audience at the New School in New York as part of PEN America’s World Voices Festival.
Richards said the bill, which won by a margin of just four votes, was “jammed through” without proper scrutiny or debate, adding: “To say it’s unpopular is really an understatement.”
Opening the talk, Richards tried to strike an optimistic tone by saying to cheers and applause that the delay to the bill – which failed to win sufficient support in March – proved that “the resistance is working”.
However, she went on to describe the damage that the bill, which she described as “a vampire resurrected”, could go on to cause if it gets past the Senate. Preventing that outcome, she said, was now the key focus for campaigners’ energies.
She told the audience: “Today, of course, for those of you who have been blissfully off of Twitter, the House of Representatives jammed through a bill that really very few members of Congress, I think, had read. Certainly the Congressional Budget Office hadn’t even scored in terms of its impact – both fiscal impact and impact on folks.”
She added: “There’s a lot of things in the bill, we can talk about them, but of course one of the things that has been foremost on the mind of some of the leaders and Speaker [Paul] Ryan was ending access to Planned Parenthood for women on, patients on Medicaid.
“That means millions of folks who come to us for cancer screenings and for family planning, particularly in medically underserved areas, will no longer be able to go to Planned Parenthood for that care.”
She said based on the evidence she has seen in her home state, Texas – where more than half the abortion clinics have closed – the effects of the new healthcare plan would be “devastating”.
“The impact is immediate on women and particularly women on low income, women of color,” she added.
Citing figures that estimate 24 million people will lose their health insurance coverage under the bill, she talked about its other possible implications.
Richards said the equity “we fought for so hard under President Obama” had been “thrown out”, gender ratings enabling insurance companies to charge women more would return, and it would be more difficult for women to have access to maternity coverage and family planning.
“Supposedly the pro-family party just passed a bill that will basically make it harder to not get pregnant, harder to have a healthy pregnancy and harder to raise a child,” she added.
Although Richards said the Senate was “a place where cooler heads prevail”, where she claimed the bill is “wildly unpopular”, she feared the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, would “try to get it through” regardless.
She urged opponents of the bill to “tell the story of what happened”, adding: “The more this gets out there, the more people hear about it, the less popular it is and the more people that, when these guys go back home, because of course they’re mainly guys, they go back home and they have to deal with a lot of women in pink pussy hats, Planned Parenthood signs and patients telling their stories, and they don’t like that.”
The event, which had been scheduled long before the bill’s outcome was known, featured a discussion between Richards and the PEN America executive director, Suzanne Nossel, about the body politic.
When I was 16, I spent two months in Italy with my maternal grandparents – then both 88. My grandmother had fallen over some months previously and was bedridden, but my grandfather was still active, physically and mentally; we would regularly play Scopa – an Italian card game – together. His memory rendered him unbeatable.
The family would take it in turns to attend to my grandmother; the more senior adults doing the more serious jobs such as cleaning her, with me doing the softer jobs: combing her hair, giving her a manicure, applying lip salve. When she was very sick, my young cousins and I took it in turns to do the nights. The community nurse, Sabino, visited daily, taking coffee with us in between administering medications. Thirty years later, we are still friends with him. Both grandparents died aged 89, cared for almost exclusively at home (at the very end, my grandfather went to hospital) and by the family.
So it has been for all my elderly relatives in Italy, all of whom lived with, or close to, family. So far, pretty idyllic. That wasn’t the case for my London-based aunt who, because of geographical sprawl and tragedy, ended up in a residential home at the age of 92 – sagacious but frail – and died there three months later. Her main carer, before that, had been my 86-year-old father who most days made the unsustainable three-hour round trip to see her. The last time I saw her in the home, she lamented the lack of family around her. Surrounded by apricot paint and floral soft furnishings, neither of which she had chosen, I cried, feigning a bad cold. The home was nice, but she didn’t leave her life as she had entered it, surrounded by loved ones. And when family matters to you, as it did to her, that is a big deal.
Elder care are two words that strike fear into even the most optimistic soul, because, who really wants to think about getting old and frail, aching and dependent? And when you do have to think about it, because you are at that gate, or a loved one is, you realise you are looking at a fairly challenging landscape. In the next 20 years, the number of people in England over 85 – the most likely to need elder care – is set to more than double, projected to rise from nearly 1.3 million people to just under 2.8 million. This is our fastest growing group (remember that when I talk about the ballot box later).
Added to this, there was a £160m cut in real terms in spending on social care for older people in England in the past five to six years, meaning fewer of them now have the help they need. Age UK predicts that an extra £4.8bn a year is needed just to meet the most basic of elder care needs (such as helping an older person get dressed or washed). Instead, further cuts are predicted. The recent budget promised an extra £2bn over three years, which is a) not enough and b) there’s no indication of where it’s going to come from. Unless it’s “new money” it will just be taken out of someone else’s budget.
Get cancer and your care is paid for. Get dementia and it’s a different story
Sally Greengross, chief executive of the International Longevity Centre, says, “Things have changed enormously because the population has changed – there are many more older people than there were. Part of the trend now is to live longer but one in three of us is going to get some form of dementia [those with dementia account for 80% of people in nursing homes in England, Wales and Northern Ireland] and we will need some sort of care.”
The NHS was founded in 1948. Right at its birth, social care, from whence elder care is funded, and health – doctors, hospitals – were separate branches of the NHS family tree. Nevertheless, in the past 10 years or so, the NHS, like a helpful sibling, has been propping up the social care system to the tune of 16% in 2015-16, equivalent to £1.33bn, something that insiders say is unsustainable and undesirable. If you are ill, your care is free. If you are old, your care might not be – it all depends how much you are worth. Get cancer and your care is paid for until you get better or die. Get dementia and it is a different story. This wasn’t so obvious, 10, 20 years ago when there were far fewer elderly people, but now it matters very much indeed. The Local Government Association estimates that there will be a £2.6bn gap in three years between the money needed and the money in the pot. Caroline Abrahams, charity director of Age UK, says, “If you or I have a medical problem, we go to the GP, who refers us [to a specialist], and we don’t pay. But with social care, very early on it’s about how much money you’ve got in the bank.”
But hang on, you might be thinking. This all sounds a bit negative – I read reports recently that say we’re all living longer, especially if we are from South Korea. That’s true, but there is a difference between life expectancy (going up) and disability-free life expectancy (going down) all with less access to help. In other words, yes, we are living longer, but with increasing needs. By our late 80s, one in three of us will have difficulties with five or more activities of daily living such as washing, going to the toilet or eating.
Although both health and social care are paid for by our taxes, the way they are handled is different. The NHS is funded centrally and social care funding is given to local authorities (councils) from the Treasury according to various criteria. There is no separate allocation for elder care within social care, and how much is allocated to it is decided at local authority level depending on what else is needed within that borough. There may be some adults with disabilities whose needs are very high, for example, who, quite rightly, need a lot of the social care budget. This is why there is such a discrepancy around the country.
The NHS, justly, gets a lot of press, but elder care? Not so much. This is probably because of a mixture of things: healthcare seems relevant to all of us, but elder care is something we can shove into a drawer to think about later. “It’s not a very sexy issue,” says one campaigner, “and we don’t like to think of ourselves or our parents getting old. And politicians know that, even if they put a lot of money into it, they won’t get a lot of reward at the ballot box.” Perhaps that will change when you consider the sheer number of elderly people who can still vote, and the power that they will hold.
While facts and figures are all very good, what does this mean for you or your loved ones? Let’s imagine someone called Donald, who lives in England. Donald is 85 and frail. He needs help to carry out basic tasks such as dressing and washing. Or maybe, later, his care needs will be more encompassing and he will need to go into a home (a nursing home and a residential home are two different things: the former provides medical care and costs more). What then? Donald’s local authority, accessed via social services, should provide him with an assessment of needs, regardless of his financial status.
That is really the only free bit and, even then, there have been cases of some desperate local authorities trying to charge for this (which they are not allowed to do). After assessment, he should have options and these may include a carer at home. But wait! This will only apply if Donald is worth less than £23,250 – that is including all his savings, his house, everything. (In Wales, the figure is £23,750 and in Scotland £25,250.) There were talks of this rising substantially, to £118,000 in 2020, but that has, according to an insider, been kicked into the long grass. If Donald has any more than that, he has to fund, and pretty much find, the care himself.
According to Paying For Care, weekly fees for a home start at £600. In London, £1,000 is not unusual. And in 96% of cases, self-funders tend to pay more – 43% more – than the local authority would have to pay for a room in the same home. In effect, the self-funders are propping up the local authority, which has bargained to drive down the price it pays for beds in homes to stay within budget.
The picture for LA-funded care, at home or in homes, is bleak; this is because it is not financially viable for a lot of home care providers and nursing/residential homes to provide LA places when the private market is so much more lucrative. If you were a nursing home and you could get nearly 50% more for a place and you had a business to run, would you take a private client or a local authority one?
There are now more than nine million carers in England looking after family members
Part of the huge problem we are facing – funding is the big one – is that our health and social care are not integrated and many people now think they should be. “We think it’s a good idea to join things up,” says Abrahams. “We think that for a very simple reason. The people who typically need care are older than 85 and the reason they need social care is because they’re not very well: they may have heart disease, arthritis and may be struggling to look after themselves. Many are spending lots of time engaging with the NHS and they are in need of social care. So it’s much more helpful if all those people are talking to each other. I’m sure if we started again [with the NHS], we’d have it all in one place.” But you still need funding to integrate, and funding comes from taxes and no politician wants to touch that hot potato.
There are now more than nine million carers in England caring for family members; two million of them are over the age of 65 and 417,000 are, like my father was, caring for his sister, over the age of 80 – more than a third of these over-80s provide 35 hours of caring a week. Old people caring for old people. Furthermore, two-thirds of older carers have a health condition or disability themselves. “Without these carers, the whole system would fall to bits,” says Greengross.
You don’t have to be a social scientist to work out that if very old people are caring for older people, that will affect their health, which in turn will make them more in need of help. It is all rather short-sighted.
That rather idyllic scene I described at the beginning isn’t possible or desirable for many – the culture in the UK is usually different, which makes that sort of pooled help, the sharing of the “burden” I described, more difficult. In Italy, none of my elderly relatives are isolated because their children all live with them or are so close that they can bring each other a cup of coffee without it getting cold. Some old folks in this country have no family to look after them or the family simply can’t. In an ideal world, those who can and want to should be able to look after elderly loved ones, but with help as and where needed – with the heavy lifting for instance – not just left to languish and having to fight bureaucracy. There was a letter to the Observer last month from a reader who had looked after her elderly mother in 1993, talking about “the gulf between the soft-focus image of caring for an elderly relative and the grimy reality” and the “lavish by today’s standards” help she got from the council, “but I still suffered from sleep deprivation, stress and physical exhaustion. I was expected to lift my mother from her bed on to a commode, a task usually undertaken by two paid workers.” This woman lasted six weeks before giving in to her mother’s “pleas to be put in a nursing home”.
Before we all rush to book one-way tickets to Dignitas when we are 80, it is important to remember that many older people have no social care needs. I asked everyone interviewed for this piece what they were doing, knowing what they did about old age, to prepare for it. The advice went something like this: make a will, make a living will, put in place power of attorney, have a pension, avoid being overweight, don’t smoke, drink moderately, stay active, think about your needs in old age before you get there and, if necessary, downsize and move to somewhere more suitable, don’t stick your head in the sand about old age, have a social network, stay mentally active, keep out of hospital if you can (a geriatrician told me that 10 days in hospital is equivalent to 10 years of muscle wasting in elderly people), work for as long as you can, and find what you enjoy and do it. That is as much as we have control over. Except, knowing all this, we may also want to start voting for a political party that invests in elder care. You know, just in case.
Since news of the UK’s looming departure from the European Union hit, lots of industries have spoken out about fears of losing European workers. On Monday academics from Oxford University said staff would go if they were not reassured about their future. It comes amid news that EU citizens working in the NHS are thinking of leaving in the next five years.
We asked you about how the loss of European workers may affect, or is already affecting, your sector. We heard from a variety of people, including professors and doctors, who expressed concern that workers are already leaving. Here are a selection of your stories.
Construction worker
John, 51: The unwelcome atmosphere is turning people away from construction
I am an Irish national who has lived and worked in London for nearly 30 years. I’ve made my life and family here. I’ve added to the community and to the industry. Throughout the UK, there is a lack of adequate training or interest from many in joining the construction industry. There has always been a strong interest from migrant communities. In my experience, the unwelcome atmosphere is turning people away and we do not train or encourage people into this industry. We need migrant workers.
Photograph: Martin Dalton/REX/Shutterstock
Financial consultant
Andy, 39: We had a large number of Europeans working here but now they are nearly all gone
I work for a medium-sized financial provider who deals with a very diverse client base from around Europe. I am an EU citizen myself, but I am still in the UK. At work we had a large number of Europeans working in our customer support and sales teams but now they are nearly all gone (they have either progressed somewhere else in London or have left the country). We have now two non-Europeans who both can speak French in customer support. Only one guy in the sales department speaks German. He now does everything for the German client base. If he is sick or on holiday we have no German front office. We have no more Spanish or Italian speakers. The sad part is that overall we have actually increased the number of EU employees, just not in the UK. Around 40-50% of the overall workforce has left as we moved technical departments and finance functions (even director positions) abroad to keep access to our European markets. Most of those who lost their jobs were English. And with every job that moves abroad the London office loses relevance.
The doctor
May, 43: I predict many doctors will leave, especially those now in training
EU nationals working in the NHS express significant concerns regarding their right to stay and their careers. London used to be a world-open and liberal place, welcoming and supportive. Working in the NHS was stimulating and exciting. The outlook for the future is bleak. And there is zero reassuring communication from the UK government. I predict many doctors – especially in training – will leave. I have worked for the NHS 16 years. I have personally spoken to many doctors and midwives who are strongly considering leaving. I know of people who did not renew research contracts but I have not met anyone who has left already.
European people working for the NHS feel utterly disappointed and disillusioned.
The team spirit in the NHS was and is stimulating. However, it is mainly created by the multinational teams that have in common a love and dedication to their specialty and medicine in general. British people hugely benefited. With the Brexit vote it feels that this effort, hard work and dedication is completely unappreciated and ignored. It is no surprise European and non-European people working for the NHS feel utterly disappointed and disillusioned. They will go where their work is appreciated.
Photograph: Peter Byrne/PA
The entrepreneur
Gerard, 31: I plan to shut down operations in London for Berlin. I don’t want to deal with Brexit
I work for an internet startup across London and Berlin. I see both cities competing already for tech talent. London will definitely lose that battle long-term. I haven’t left yet, but I plan to shut down operations in the UK when article 50 is triggered. I’m lucky enough to have clients in Europe or unlucky enough to have them there – whatever the case I don’t want to deal with Brexit.
Since then I’ve been taking fewer UK clients knowing I will leave. I just feel sadly unwelcome now.
I loved London and I will always remember refreshing the Guardian website while counting the referendum results. It was like everything I was building fell apart. Since then I’ve been taking [fewer] UK clients knowing I will leave. I just feel sadly unwelcome now.
The professor
Simon, 51: I am moving to another EU country to take up another university post
I work in the university sector and the lifeblood of our work is provided by academics and researchers from all over the world, particularly from the EU. In addition, many of our students come to the university to study from abroad. The European Union’s framework funding programmes including Horizon 2020 have been key to ensuring that the UK punches well above its weight in research and development. The loss of EU workers and access to the networks provided by the EU will have a devastating effect on the UK higher education sector.
I am a UK national who has decided to leave. I am moving to another EU country to take up another university post. Although Brexit was not the only reason for this move (the new role will be an advancement in my career), it was a decisive factor in making me apply for the job given the future uncertainties in the UK higher education sector.
The nurse
Karen, 40: Five nurses have left already
Before [the] Brexit [vote] we used to have hundreds of applicants in nursing. Now we hardly see 50. All staff are tired and worried about what will come next. In my department 60% of nurses are EU citizens and already five of them have handed in their notice. I am an EU citizen myself and I’m already making plans to leave UK for good. The healthcare sector will collapse and I don’t want to be part of it.
Web designer
Ben, 25: A European worker recently left. It was a big loss for the team
I work in web design and development. We’ve benefited greatly from the expertise of EU workers in our team. But now one of our main designers, responsible for delivering engaging websites, print media, presentations etc for clients has left. Her husband is in research of some sort (I’m not sure exactly what it is) and his funding was moved out of the UK. Given that she wasn’t feeling welcome in the UK any more, it was a no-brainer for them to simply move. It is a big loss for the team.
Years of heading balls and colliding with other players could be damaging footballers’ brains and putting players at risk of developing dementia, scientists have suggested.
The claim comes from the researchers behind a small study which examined the brains of six footballers who developed dementia after long careers in the sport.
Postmortems found that all six had Alzheimer’s disease, while four also showed evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) – a degenerative disease linked to repeated blows to the head. Both CTE and Alzheimer’s disease are linked to the build up of clumps of particular proteins in the brain – although the location of these proteins is crucial in diagnosing CTE, which can only be done after death.
“Our findings suggest that there is a potential link between repetitive sub-concussive head impacts from playing football and the development of CTE,” said Helen Ling, a co-author of the study from Queen Square Brain Bank for Neurological Studies at the University College London Institute of Neurology.
However, others were quick to warn of the study’s limitations, pointing out that it showed no clear evidence that playing football could increase the risk of developing dementia. What’s more, neither genetic or wider aspects of the players’ lifestyle were taken into account – factors which are known to influence the risk of developing dementia.
The authors admit that it was also not clear whether the players would have gone on to develop dementia if they hadn’t spent time on the pitch.
“The most pressing question now to ask following up [on] this study would be how common dementia is among retired footballers,” said Ling. “If we can demonstrate that the risk is higher than the normal population that we will know we really need to urgently look at who is at risk and put protective strategy in place.”
The impact of blows to the head on the health of those who take part in sports has received growing attention in recent years, most notably in American football and boxing. According to research from the Boston University CTE centre, 90 of 94 former NFL players whose brains were studied tested positive for the disease, and last year the NFL officially acknowledged the link between head trauma and CTE.
In football – or soccer – the issue has received less attention, although the situation is beginning to change. In 2002 an inquest found that veteran player Jeff Astle died from “industrial disease”, ruling that the player’s dementia was the result of repeatedly heading the ball.
Published in the journal Acta Neuropathologica by a team of British researchers and funded by the Drake Foundation – an organisation dedicated to exploring the impact of concussion in sport – the new study found that the six men who underwent postmortems had a variety of other conditions present among them that would have contributed to symptoms of dementia, with all six showing signs of Alzheimer’s. All six showed tearing of the septum pellucidum, a thin membrane in the centre of the brain. “This is a feature very common in professional boxers and it’s been linked to repetitive traumatic brain injury,” said Ling.
With previous studies having shown the rate of CTE in the general elderly population to be around 12% and tearing of the septum pellucidum around 6% in the general population, the scientists say the higher prevalence in the new study could be down to impacts to the head during the men’s football careers.
The authors admit that it is not known how frequently, or with what force, blows to the head could trigger CTE. With only five of the six who underwent postmortem reported to have had concussions during their career, and then only once each, the study suggests sub-concussive blows could take their toll.
But Huw Morris, another author of the research from UCL, played down the need for concern among those who enjoy a kickabout. “I don’t think that in general terms these are findings that can be extrapolated to the general population,” he said. “These are people with very high amount of playing and exposure to whatever the head injury risks are within football.”
The team say more research, and larger studies, will be needed to unpick the issue further and welcomed research attempting to pick up signs of CTE before death.
Peter Jenkins, a neurologist and researcher in traumatic brain injury from Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study, emphasised the small scale of the research, adding that it does not tackle the issue of how common CTE is in footballers, or what sort of blows could cause it. “We need to spend more time really determining how many people get dementia who have a history of head injuries and then how we can determine what is actually attributable to the head injuries and what is just going to happen anyway,” he added.
Morris agreed that people should not hang up their boots just yet. “One of the really important risk factors for dementia is cardiovascular risk. Ex-footballers have much lower cardiovascular mortality – hypertension, heart attacks and strokes – than do the general population,” he said.
“So it remains the case that football is overall beneficial for your overall health. Ex-footballers have a lower mortality than the general population, but nevertheless we need to understand a lot more about these brain diseases, especially as we are all part of an ageing population.”
The president of the Australian Medical Association, Dr Michael Gannon, says it has been disappointing to see a growing “demonisation of pharmaceutical companies” by the anti-vaccination movement in an attempt to promote distrust of proven medicines.
Gannon made the comments in response to the NSW health department recommending reforms that, if implemented, would see parents of high-school students compelled to provide details of their child’s vaccination status, and give public health officers the power to exclude unvaccinated children from high schools during disease outbreaks.
This policy already applies to children in childcare and primary school, but may be extended under the Public Health Act to apply to high schools. A bill reflecting the recommended changes will be drafted and considered by the parliament in 2017.
Gannon told Guardian Australia he supported the changes, which would see unvaccinated children banned from childcare and school for up to two weeks if they come into contact with a child suffering a vaccine-preventable disease — even if they aren’t sick themselves.
“I’m reluctant to make the comparison between anti-vaxxers and climate change deniers, but it almost seems if you can shout louder than the careful, temperate advice from medical professionals and scientists you might get support for your non-scientific views,” he said.
A report from the NSW Child Death Review Team, published on Tuesday, found that in the decade to 2014, 23 child deaths may have been prevented had the children been vaccinated.
Gannon said he believed there was a growing distrust of the medical profession and of big pharma which may be fuelling the anti-vaccination movement.
“Let’s be clear that the pharmaceutical industry is not without sin,” he said.
“But it is disappointing to hear this demonisation of vaccinations as a result of this distrust, and overall the pharmaceutical industry improves and saves tens of millions of lives, without exaggeration, each day.
“The processes by which vaccines get approved and by which the relevant commonwealth government departments decide which medicines to spend tens of millions of taxpayers’ dollars on is very careful, and has to be.
“Vaccines approved have to represent value for money and have to be safe. The idea that big pharma rolls into town and that their latest idea gets approved without scrutiny is ludicrous.”
He said vaccines and their safety were continuously scrutinised and reviewed at a level that “many other things in the community aren’t”.
The director of communicable diseases for NSW Health, Dr Vicky Sheppeard, said that in recent years the incidence of some diseases preventable by vaccine, such as measles, had been higher in high-school-age children than in younger children.
“All recent measles outbreaks in NSW have tended to affect high-school children rather than primary-school children,” she said.
“Since then, catch-up measles vaccination has been offered in all NSW high schools, further reducing the risk of outbreaks occurring in this setting.”
I can hear the roar already from the football fraternity for what I am about to say, but hear me out. Maybe it’s time for head-safety gear for footballers – particularly children. The alternative being discussed is to stop youngsters from heading the ball altogether, but that would not safeguard against the moment that a ball comes tantalising close at head height.
A study carried out by the University of Stirling has identified that heading a ball can significantly impair brain function and memory. The researchers found inhibitory and cognitive changes in the brain after players headed the ball 20 times. Memory function fell by up to a staggering 67% in the 24 hours after heading practice, before normalising
This suggests that students playing football the day before exams would be better off not heading the ball frequently. The study’s co-author, the neuropathologist Dr Willie Stewart, has advised parents to consider letting children miss football training ahead of important tests.
We already have codes of practice within football and rugby that take concussion seriously. It’s now time to take on the effects on the brain of frequent knocks and bangs to the head during a football match. The Stirling study – the first to detect direct changes in the brain after heading the ball – has outlined something that not even the researchers themselves were expecting to find: heading sessions could halve memory function for a day.
It’s still not yet known if repeated exposure to headers could have long-term consequences, but the Football Association is planning further studies.
There is already concern at the potential link between brain diseases such as dementia and sport. Researchers have already stated that they feel such brain changes following repeated headers are significant to brain health. An estimated 270 million people around the world play football: could that be 270 million people predisposed to developing dementia? In order to protect them it is imperative to know what risks they are exposed to, in both the short and long term.
The incidence of brain disease is increasing globally, and the onset is in some cases occurring at ever younger ages. We still are nowhere near a definite cure, so preventative measures against scientifically established causes and links are our best weapon currently. The findings of this study should therefore lead to action.
Jeff Astle celebrates after scoring the winning goal for West Bromwich Albion against Everton in the 1968 FA Cup final at Wembley. Photograph: Mike McLaren/Getty Images
One British case where a coroner specified that the brain disease suffered by a professional footballer was due to heading what was then a leather ball – calling it an “industrial disease” – is that of Jeff Astle, a striker for England, West Bromwich Albion and Notts County. He died at the age of 59 from brain trauma in 2002, after developing early-onset dementia. After his death, Astle’s brain was found to show evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which had been found in deceased boxers and players of American football and rugby.
In the US there is a ban on under-11s heading the ball, something that Gordon Smith, the former Scottish Football Association chief executive, has suggested his country should consider. But he admits that, even with the latest knowledge, he would still play the same way. “I think if I was given the choice to play again with the scenario that you were heading the ball and it could do some sort of damage, I would still agree to play.”
So is it enough to simply attempt a ban? We wear head protection for riding bikes, we put them on the heads of the wee ones on the ski slopes, we strap on helmets when rock climbing. So is it really a step too far to design and then require the wearing of protective headgear, particularly for youngsters?
The results of this study are clear. We still do not know the long-term effects, but the door is open now for further research to look into this. As football’s governing bodies work together with science to look into new approaches for detecting, monitoring and preventing cumulative brain injuries in the beautiful game, one question remains. How is the long-term health of football players at all levels and ages going to be safeguarded?
This is a question that Jeff Astle’s daughter, Dawn Astle, asks too. “Would I be surprised if damaging effects of heading are found? No. The question is: what are they doing to do about it? What are the authorities going to do to protect our children?”
Let’s accept the science and think about headgear.
The head of the NHS in England has rejected Theresa May’s claim that the health service has been given more funding than it requested to meet rising demand for care.
Simon Stevens told MPs that the NHS would receive an additional £8bn between now and 2020-21, not the “£10bn extra” the prime minister said. Moreover, it would get less money than it needed between 2017 and 2020, meaning it would be “more challenging” than expected to keep services running.
The chief executive of NHS England disagreed with the prime minister’s statement, which she repeated on Monday, that “the government has not just given him £8bn extra, we’ve given him £10bn extra”. The £8bn was pledged last year by the then chancellor, George Osborne.
Stevens told the Commons health select committee that the NHS had only received the money it had asked for in two of the five years covered by the £8bn: 2016-17 and 2020-21.
For those two years the budget increases the NHS is due to get are “in the zone” of the sums it needs to implement its Five Year Forward View plan to transform patient care to keep the service sustainable.
“But for the [other] three years we didn’t get the funding we requested,” Stevens said pointedly. “As a result we have a bigger hill to climb. It’s going to be more of a challenge in 2017-18, 2018-19 and 2019-20 [than NHS chiefs expected],” he added.
While the NHS would get only “modest” extra sums in 2017-18 and 2019-20, “2018-19 will be the most pressurised year for us … [because] we will have negative per-person NHS funding growth.”
His remarks contrast sharply with what May told the Manchester Evening News during a visit to the city on Monday, in which she repeated the government’s longstanding insistence that it had given Stevens all the money he asked for to fund the Forward View and then £2bn more. The health select committee, health thinktanks and NHS organisations have all disputed both claims.
“Simon Stevens was asked to come forward with a five-year plans for the NHS. He did that, so that’s been generated by the NHS itself. He said that it needed £8bn extra – the government has not just given him £8bn extra, we’ve given him £10bn extra,” she told the MEN.
“As I say, we have given the NHS more than the extra money they said they wanted for their five-year plan.”
The health secretary, Jeremy Hunt, speaking to MPs alongside Stevens, refused to comment on the Guardian’s disclosure last weekend that May has already told the NHS boss that the service will not receive any funding increase in next month’s autumn statement. “It was a private meeting,” he said.
Asked by MPs about May’s belief, which she outlined at the meeting on 8 September, that the NHS could learn from the Home Office and Ministry of Defence’s recent experience of efficiency drives, Stevens dismissed any parallels. While crime had fallen in recent years, demand for NHS care had risen, was still growing and would continue upward, he said. For example, demand for cancer care had risen 55% over the past five years.
He also pointed out that the £8bn figure was at the lower end of projections of the NHS’s needs. “The original modelling suggested a funding requirement in five years’ time of between £8bn and £21bn, depending on the level of efficiency which could be produced, the continuing availability of social care relative to rising need, the availability of capital investment to lubricate new service models – particularly investments in GP services and out-of-hospital care – and the availability of preventative services through local authorities, but also the role the NHS itself has to play.”
Sally Gainsbury, a senior policy analyst with the Nuffield Trust health thinktank, said that while NHS trusts had cut their unit costs by 13% since 2010, their income had gone down by 18% over the same period.
Hunt dropped hints that the autumn statement might yield extra money to prop up the ailing social care system in England, which the Care Quality Commisison last week warned was “approaching a tipping point” and denying growing numbers of elderly people vital support they need to keep them healthy.
“I do accept the broad point that however great the pressures are in the NHS, they are even greater in social care,” said Hunt. He is thought to privately share Stevens’s public view that if ministers do find extra cash, it should be put into social care rather than the health service.
Hunt also gave the clearest indication yet that the 55,000 EU nationals working in the NHS, including 10,000 doctors and 18,000 nurses, would be allowed to stay once Britain leaves the EU.
Labour said that Stevens’s comments showed that, contrary to the government’s repeated claim, it was underfunding the NHS. “We now know the truth: the Tories have failed to give the NHS the money it needs to protect patient care,” said Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary.
“Despite all of the government’s spin, the chief executive of the NHS made clear that the NHS did not get the funding it asked for over the next four years and has a ‘hill to climb’ to maintain current services.
“The dramatic decline in NHS finances over the past few years has left A&E departments at breaking point, hospital wards dangerously overcrowded and millions of patients having to wait months for essential operations.”
Young barristers are heavily in debt and becoming vulnerable to depression, the chair of the Bar Council’s youth wing warns.
In an address to the organisation’s annual conference on Saturday, Louisa Nye will say many find it “difficult to stop worrying” at a time when lawyers are characterised in the media as a “scourge on society”.
Young barristers start their careers with accumulated debts of up to £70,000, she will go on, at a time when many are earning the “lowest of sums” for important work that is undervalued by society.
Nye, who is chair of the young barristers’ committee of the Bar Council of England and Wales, will admit that she herself had suffered from anxiety and depression.
“I have lost a close friend who took her own life, in part under the strain that this job and circumstances can place on people,” she will tell the conference.
“Today’s cohort of young barristers is in a particularly vulnerable position. They are financially vulnerable – as a consequence of tuition fees and increases in the [Bar Professional Training Course] fees, we now know that young barristers can have anywhere from £30,000-£70,000 debt when they start out in the profession.
“Many are making repayments over their first five years of practice, if not substantially longer. Young criminal and family barristers are receiving the lowest of sums for carrying out important work, and many are struggling to maintain a living.”
Nye, who is a member of Landmark Chambers in London, will add: “Parts of the media have reports almost daily where lawyers are criticised for the work they do and characterised as a scourge on society.
“Young barristers live in deeply uncertain and difficult times … And it is difficult against that background not to feel somewhat lost and somewhat depressed.”
She will point to the Wellbeing at the Bar report published last year which highlighted high levels of stress and anxiety felt by barristers.
Nye will say: “The survey found that one in three barristers finds it difficult to control or stop worrying. One in six barristers said that they felt low in spirits most of the time.”
An immunotherapy drug hailed as a potential “gamechanger” in the treatment of cancer could soon offer new hope to patients with currently untreatable forms of the disease.
Nivolumab was found to extend the lives of relapsed patients diagnosed with head and neck cancers who had run out of therapy options. After a year of treatment, 36% of trial patients treated with the drug were still alive compared with 17% of those given standard chemotherapy.
Patients with advanced head and neck cancers resistant to chemotherapy are notoriously difficult to treat and generally survive less than six months.
Trial participants treated with nivolumab typically survived for 7.5 months, and some for longer. Middle-range survival for patients on chemotherapy was 5.1 months.
The phase-three study, the last stage in the testing process before a new treatment is licensed, provided the first evidence of a drug improving survival in this group of patients.
Prof Kevin Harrington, from the Institute of Cancer Research, London, who led the British arm of the international trial, said: “Nivolumab could be a real gamechanger for patients with advanced head and neck cancer. This trial found that it can greatly extend life among a group of patients who have no existing treatment options, without worsening quality of life.
“Once it has relapsed or spread, head and neck cancer is extremely difficult to treat. So it’s great news that these results indicate we now have a new treatment that can significantly extend life, and I’m keen to see it enter the clinic as soon as possible.”
Before it can be offered on the NHS, the treatment will have to be approved by the European Medicines Agency and the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice), which vets new therapies in England and Wales for cost-effectiveness.
Of the 361 patients enrolled in the trial, 240 were given nivolumab while the remaining 121 received one of three different chemotherapies. UK patients were assigned the chemotherapy drug docetaxel, the only treatment currently approved for advanced head and neck cancer by Nice.
Patients whose tumours tested positive for the HPV virus, which is linked to cervical cancer and may be spread by oral sex, did especially well. They typically survived for 9.1 months, compared with 4.4 months when treated with chemotherapy.
The findings were simultaneously published in the New England Journal of Medicine and presented at the European Society for Medical Oncology (Esmo) conference in Copenhagen.
In 2012 around 11,000 new cases of head and neck cancer were diagnosed in the UK and 3,300 Britons died from the disease. The cancer can effect the lips, mouth, nasal cavity, back of the throat, and voice box.
More than half of patients relapse within three to five years.
Nivolumab is one of a new class of antibody drugs called “checkpoint inhibitors” that help the immune system fight cancer. It works by blocking signals from tumour cells that stop the immune system attacking.
The drug is already licensed for the treatment of advanced melanoma skin cancer and non-small-cell lung cancer in the UK.
However while Nice has backed its use on the NHS for melanoma it has so far refused to recommend making the drug freely available to lung cancer patients.
Prof Paul Workman, chief executive of the Institute of Cancer Research, said: “Nivolumab is one of a new wave of immunotherapies that are beginning to have an impact across cancer treatment. This phase-three clinical trial expands the repertoire of nivolumab even further, showing that it is the first treatment to have significant benefits in relapsed head and neck cancer.
“We hope regulators can work with the manufacturer to avoid delays in getting this drug to patients who have no effective treatment options left to them.”
A major study of bike helmet use around the world from more than 64,000 cyclists has found helmets reduce the risks of a serious head injury by nearly 70%.
The study also found neck injuries are not associated with helmet use and cyclists who wear helmets reduce their chance of a fatal head injury by 65%.
The compulsory wearing of bike helmets in Australia has long been a source of frustration for some cyclists, who argue it reduces participation rates. Previous studies have indicated helmet use encourages risk-taking behaviour or does not reduce serious injury to the brain.
But a comprehensive review by Australian statisticians Jake Olivier and Prudence Creighton from the University of New South Wales that drew together data from more than 40 separate studies found helmet use was associated with dramatically reduced odds of head injuries.
The findings were presented in Finland this week at Safety 2016, the world conference on injury prevention and safety promotion.
Olivier’s findings were particularly significant for serious or fatal head injuries and found the reduction was greater for these kinds of more serious injuries.
“Helmet use is associated with odds reductions of 51% for head injury, 69% for serious head injury, 33% for face injury and 65% for fatal head injury. Injuries to the neck were rare and not associated with helmet use,” the study found.
“These results suggest that strategies to increase the uptake of bicycle helmets should be considered along with other injury prevention strategies as part of a comprehensive cycling safety plan.”
The researchers cautioned that helmets were not a “panacea for cycling injury” and did not eliminate head or face injuries or offer protection to other parts of cyclists’ bodies. But it does make the case more difficult for those who oppose mandatory helmet wearing, they said.
“The legislation of mandatory helmets for cyclists is a controversial topic and past research on its effectiveness has been somewhat mixed,” the study said. “Irrespective of past research, the results of this review do not support arguments against helmet legislation from an injury prevention perspective.”
However, critics claim that helmet laws put people off cycling, causing far wider weight-related health problems due to Australians favouring driving, or not moving at all. One study found that 16.5% of people say they would ride more often if they were not required to wear a helmet at all times.
Chris Rissel, a professor of public health at the University of Sydney, told a 2015 Australian Senate inquiry into the subject that cycling numbers dropped after the helmet laws were introduced in the 1990s, which made remaining cyclists more vulnerable.
“In safety terms there is a phenomenon called safety in numbers,” he said. “As more people cycle, our roads become safer for these cyclists.
“Drivers become used to seeing cyclists and adjust their behaviour, and infrastructure tends to be improved to better cater for cycling. Even if cyclists wear helmets they are less safe with fewer cyclists on the road than they would be with more cyclists about.
“Helmets are a barrier to new riders, particularly for occasional and non-regular riders. The need to wear a helmet reinforces the message that cycling is dangerous – with perceptions of danger a major reason people give for not cycling.”
The NSW government has recently reviewed cycling laws and introduced harsh new penalties for a range of offences. The fine for not wearing a helmet has risen from $ 71 to $ 319.
As a well-adjusted middle-aged man, I like to define myself by the things I don’t have. I don’t have a scarlet Lamborghini or a conspicuous tattoo or a 22-year-old girlfriend to jumpstart my libido. Nor do I possess a penchant for extreme sports or expensive psychotherapy. Midway through my fifth decade, I’ve avoided the obvious pitfalls and reckon I’m coping quite well, which is why I am on my way to discuss the male midlife crisis with the therapist Andrew G Marshall, who has written a book on the subject. It’s a task that requires a cool and dispassionate eye. We will be like two doctors, I decide, objectively diagnosing the problems of others.
Inside his therapy room, Marshall directs me to an armchair and stoops to pour out some water. First impressions could hardly be more reassuring: Marshall is a soothing, sober man in colourful clothes. He asks about my background and my health, moving from my childhood to my present circumstances. I respond as honestly as I can, still confident I’ll be given the all-clear. I tell him I sailed past my 40th birthday with no problem at all. After that, admittedly, there was a difficult spell, one that lasted perhaps four years. I list all the things that happened. I tell him that my relationship broke down and I moved out of my home. I tell him my best friend died suddenly, which threw me for a loop. I mention that my father fell ill. Oh, and that I also got married. I tell him that I then had a second child to set alongside my 11-year-old daughter from the previous relationship. I tell him I quit my job and quit London, and that we now live out west. I tell him I think that’s about it, although there might be some stuff I’ve forgotten. But by now I’m out of breath, shaken. Recited as a list, those past four years sound positively existential.
Marshall jots notes in his pad. He asks who I turned to for help during this difficult period. I tell him I didn’t really turn to anybody: I went through the worst parts alone. Why would I want to have people seeing me as a mess?
“It’s quite interesting,” he says. “You belonging to what we nowadays call the metropolitan elite. Most of my clients, by your age, have had at least three therapists. Whereas you went through this incredible period and not only did you not seek professional help, you actually detached yourself from your friends.”
Lots of people flunk the test. They anaesthetise themselves – with drink, generally. Or computer games, or porn. Or work
I nod dutifully, and yet something he said has already stuck in my craw. I don’t consider myself part of the metropolitan elite, and I’m annoyed that he would blithely stick me in that box. Nor, for that matter, am I convinced I’ve had a midlife crisis, despite the bald evidence of those torrid four years. But that’s the nature of cliche. We may see ourself as one thing, unique and specific; the world sees us as another – as a social demographic or a cluster of symptoms.
Marshall’s own interest is based on both personal and professional experience. His partner died when he was in his late 30s and this pitched him into what he describes as “the bleakest period of my life”. Meanwhile, all around, his patients were navigating a similar set of hurdles. The Office for National Statistics reports that 40- to 59-year-olds are the most anxious age group. Marshall believes this anxiety is sparked by a sudden awareness of mortality and a fear of failure; the nagging, nightmarish sense that we will never fulfil our true potential.
No one wants to own up to a midlife crisis: the condition is redolent of too many bad jokes. On setting out to write his new book, Marshall even deliberated before putting the term in the title, concerned that the mere mention might scare readers away. Finally, he opted for a cunning disguise, referencing the condition while denying its existence. The book is called It’s Not A Midlife Crisis, It’s An Opportunity, subhead: “How To Be Forty- Or Fifty-Something Without Going Off The Rails”.
Marshall has seen many casualties in his time – people who, when faced with the challenges of middle age, promptly crash and burn. “A lot of people flunk the test,” he says. “They anaesthetise themselves – with drink, generally. Or with computer games, or pornography. Or with work. And if you don’t answer the questions, you become bitter, closed off and cynical.”
Fail and you suffer an L-shaped life, you plummet and flatline. Pass, and win the U-shaped life: a brilliant late bloom
I start to wonder whether I flunked the test. Marshall certainly seems to think I was guilty of closing myself off. He says, “I’m getting a very strong message that you’re not allowed to be vulnerable. That you need to be loved, yet, when things get difficult, you withdraw from everybody. It’s a strange dichotomy. Because on the one hand you’re an open book in a rather controlled way, in that you’re a journalist and therefore in charge of the words. But the rest of you is completely closed.”
“I don’t think I was completely closed,” I say. “I just didn’t want people to see me in disarray.”
“I’m sorry,” he says firmly, “but that’s completely closed. You only wanted people to see the mask.”
“OK,” I say. “Fine.”
And yet, actually, it’s not fine: his whole premise is bullshit. Look at us here. Look at what we are doing. Almost shouting, I say, “It’s a ridiculous thing, you saying I’m closed. I’m going to write this bloody session up for everybody to read.”
Marshall smiles, unperturbed. “Yes, well,” he says. “Often in the second half of our lives, we have to do all of the things we didn’t do in the first.”
***
The term “midlife crisis” was coined in 1965 by the Canadian psychologist Elliott Jaques. Marshall believes the label has now outlived its usefulness. He prefers to call it “the midlife passage”. Approached in the right spirit, he says, this is a chance to engage with the big questions: who am I? What are my values? What gives my life meaning? You can meet your true self. You can become your own person.
Marshall has devised exercises to smooth our progress. He describes a simple counting meditation to reduce anxiety, explains how to “record your feelings”, and the events that trigger them. He also invites us to chart the highs and lows of our lives on a graph, moving from infancy through to middle age. I try this last one myself. The line leaps and dips with abandon. It makes my life look like a series of cardiac arrests.
The way Marshall tells it, there are three obvious routes through the midlife passage. Fail the challenge, and you suffer what he describes as an L-shaped life, where you plummet to Earth and then essentially flatline until death. Pass the test, and you win the U-shaped life: a glorious upswing, a brilliant late bloom. Then there is the third option, the joker in the pack, the switchback ride of the W-shaped life. This occurs when you reach for the quick-fix solution (the thrilling affair, the scarlet Lamborghini), or what Marshall calls “the myth of the great other”. The effect can be instant, galvanic. But it’s an artificial high, a dead cat bounce that leads only to more heartache.
Naturally, this makes me wonder about my own circumstances. The storm has passed; I have a new life in a new city. My days are a whirl of nappy changes and country rambles, augmented with odds and sods of semi-regular work. I’m pretty sure it’s not an L-shaped life. But is it a W or is it a U?
Is the midlife crisis a first-world problem? Marshall disagrees: ‘It’s intrinsic in mankind. It hits you over the head’
Out of the blue, I find myself telling Marshall about a man named Miroslav Novotny. I think he’s originally from the Czech Republic; he speaks rudimentary English. I picture Miroslav Novotny as something out of an Edward Hopper painting, a study in urban loneliness. He wears his trousers too high on his waist. He uses too much hair tonic, smokes discount cigarettes. I explain that my wife and I devised a game we would play when driving the outskirts of south London, in which we work out where Novotny would most like to live. So we place him in that impersonal block of flats out by the A20, or eating egg and chips inside some sad greasy spoon. Novotny, of course, does not exist – we made him up – yet the uncomfortable truth is that he’s the alternative me. He asks nothing of anyone and gives nothing in return.
All at once, I can see it clearly. “If I had taken a different route out of all this, I’d be Miroslav Novotny,” I say. “And I’m glad I’m not. But there’s a certain comfort in being Miroslav Novotny.”
Marshall nods. He says, “Life is small but it’s safe.” And I nod back in relief, because that’s it exactly.
Did I have a midlife crisis, I ask Marshall.
“Yes, you did.” He adds that it is not always advisable to throw absolutely everything in the air, as I seem to have done. But that’s by the by. Stable door, horse bolted. “You have been through it and navigated it and have had a reasonably soft landing.”
He asks if I have any further questions. So I ask whether he sees the midlife crisis as a peculiarly first-world problem, a kind of luxury accessory afforded to those with too much time on their hands. I’m not sure you have one if you’re under siege in Aleppo.
Marshall has his doubts. “It’s not a case of having too much time on your hands,” he insists. “It comes with a great mallet and hits you over the head. So I think it’s something intrinsic in mankind. The first world-third world distinction is the wrong idea.”
My second question is more personal: I ask if he believes it’s possible to be both horribly anxious and basically happy, because that’s how I’ve been feeling for the past year or so.
“Yes, I think you can,” he answers. “But if we were to continue working together, the anxiety is something we would be looking at. I think that anxiety and anger could be the keynotes for you.”
If you’ve done the work of the middle passage, then you’re in a very good place, the sunny uplands of life
He is keen to accentuate the positive, though. “It sounds to me like you have completely transformed your life. You’ve gone from closed to open. From work focused to family focused. From self-sufficient to more connected. From the small world of…
“Miroslav Novotny.”
“From the small world of Miroslav Novotny to the larger world of family and children and a new city. But the anxiety is something I would be working on. Anxiety and depression are like brother and sister.”
I walk back to the tube in something of a daze. I feel as though I’ve spent the past 90 minutes being dangled upside down by the ankles, watching all the detritus falling from my pockets. Some of this clutter was harmless ephemera, but other bits were jagged and rusted. Some were foul-smelling, some smeared with dried blood. With them gone, I feel lighter.
***
One month later, I meet Marshall again, this time in a bookshop above a cafe. It’s late August, and the therapist is on holiday. He’s bare-kneed in tan shorts, with a natty straw hat perched on his pink scalp, a copy of Graham Swift’s Waterland parked in the crook of one arm. Seeing him here is slightly disconcerting, like bumping into a teacher away from school.
He asks how I’ve been and I assure him I’m fine. I tell him, in fact, that I’ve been suspiciously fine. I’ve started to wonder whether the session itself was a kind of quick fix. I worry I painted myself in too positive a light; I worry he moved too quickly to endorse my depiction. This would normally be about a six-month process. We went through it in about 90 minutes flat.
“Well, yes,” Marshall agrees. “It’s not the best way of doing it, so you have to be careful. I mean, if I had been aware of some really horrible stuff, I would have skated over it, because I don’t want to open up that can of worms. If we saw there was a total car crash in the wings, I might well have acknowledged it – but I wouldn’t go up and peer through the window.
“But, happily, there wasn’t. And even if there was, I had the sense you’d come through it relatively unscathed.”
I feel I’ve made peace with my crisis, but what comes next? I want to know what other hurdles I’m going to face in my 50s, to steer clear of more trouble, if I can.
But the therapist grins. He’s in holiday mode. “What comes next? Well, wonderful times. If you’ve done the work of the middle passage, then you’re in a very good place, the sunny uplands of life. The next question is not what gives your life meaning, but what gives meaning to everyone’s life. It’s a more spiritual inquiry: the self versus the infinite.” Another grin. “I’m not even sure whether therapy is the right place to answer those questions. You may need to roll up your sleeves and go and do it yourself.”
The house where I now live is perched high on a hill, a steep 15-minute climb from the nearest train station. I try to make this journey on foot as often as I can (if I’m losing my hair, I figure I can at least shed some weight along with it). Sometimes I wonder how I must look to the motorists driving by. A sweaty, middle-aged man with a red face and bad posture, sometimes pushing hard at a buggy for added comedy value. The man is a wreck. Every step’s an ordeal. But near the top of the hill, the road swings out from the shadows. The city drops away and the horizon is endless. And this, I decide, is my favourite part of the journey. One might almost be entering the sunny uplands of life, approaching a house that feels very nearly like home.
Getting pregnant often means continually becoming vigilant for &ldquosomething wrong&rdquo even though making an attempt not to overreact. So if a girl gets a severe headache &ndash one of numerous possible signs and symptoms of preeclampsia &ndash how does she know if it&rsquos worth calling the physician? Most likely, she need to make the get in touch with, specifically if she doesn&rsquot [...]
The 23-yr-outdated player was tackled to the ground for the duration of a game for her crew Longton but walked off the pitch, despite some discomfort. She later on suffered a stroke very likely due to a blood clot and died a month following being harm.
Some have pointed to this as proof that females shouldn’t be playing such a rough sport.
But, with respect to Sarah’s household and close friends, I should disagree.
Yes, rugby is a get in touch with sport it is the nature of the beast. Knocks will happen and a handful of are far more significant than others. As Sarah’s teammate Lesley Thompson said at the hearing into her death: “It was just a tackle, absolutely nothing malicious or heated”.
Anyone who queries the rougher edge and suggests that girls would be much better off steering clear of rugby, is missing the point.
The reality is that we achieve so a lot more, in spades.
Sarah Chesters Photograph: SWNS
We’re encouraged, by our coaches and teams, to search right after our bodies to stretch and problem them in purchase to avoid injury, acquire strength and consume nicely.
The teamwork doesn’t cease, ever. From instruction in the wind and rain on grim February nights to plaiting every single others’ hair on the bus to an away game. These are journeys when we shout, sing, get raucous and share cakes we stayed up producing the night before (it’s not just the staff, one particular of our star bakers is a player’s husband).
You feel ladies can’t perform nicely with each other? There’s no greater way to bust this ridiculous myth than seeing eight girls, working with each other in a pack to earn hard yards for the rest of their team.
We’re invariably called ‘butch lesbians’ and ‘man-hating hulks’.
Masculine, you say? Well, if you’d class strength, determination and a cracking sense of humour as masculine traits, we’d say: “too correct.”
There are even now too many lazy and hazardous stereotypes that surround women’s rugby. But shell out a pay a visit to to any club, and you will locate this kind of a selection of personalities, shapes, ages, sexualities, speeds and skill-levels – it’s the sport that brings us with each other.
Whether it’s busting our guts on the pitch for a single yet another, or busting our lungs singing S Club 7 songs in the showers afterwards although acquiring the mud out of our hair (3 shampoos and a rinse generally does the trick), there is amazing camaraderie that comes hand-in-hand with pushing your self to the limits in the worst climate circumstances Britain has to provide.
That is something that Sarah, who commenced playing rugby as a student at Manchester Metropolitan University, would have skilled initial hand and loved, just as we do.
Bath ladies in action Photo: Paul Hughes
All the ladies I perform with are properly aware of the dangers involved. And they also have knowledgeable a tragic injury. Eight years ago, the team’s captain and a founder-player broke two vertebrae in her neck and broken her spinal cord. Her injuries had been life-changing. But she’s by no means blamed the sport, nor anybody concerned, merely saying it was “one of individuals items.”
In the days following her accident, she informed the crew they have to return to perform their largest rivals the following week. It was hard but they did. And they won.
I imagined of her this week, when I study a comment by Sarah Chesters’ father, right after the inquest. Michael, 65, explained that his daughter ‘loved’ rugby. “Despite her modest stature,” he additional, “she was really strong”.
To propose that ladies shouldn’t play rugby – that we are not physically capable – is to say we’re the weaker intercourse. Tragic accidents do take place in sport, as in numerous other walks of lifestyle. Only last month, 24-year-outdated Bavalan Pathmanathan died following currently being struck in the chest by a ball in the course of a regional cricket match in Surrey.
This kind of incidents need to not be taken lightly, of program. Any sports player is aware that severe damage is a real risk. But, as Sarah’s father rightly pointed out in saying how much his daughter loved rugby, it is just component of throwing oneself wholeheartedly into the game, with passion, enthusiasm and strength.
Sarah Chesters taking part in rugby Photo: SWNS
Confident, as girls we occasionally appeal to a little concern from strangers who clock our black eyes and mutter quietly, “are you alright?”
But once they uncover out you play rugby, it problems their assumptions. It is not a bad conversation starter for your CV, too.
Player security is constantly proper at the best of the agenda. New protocols to deal with concussion are filtering down to grassroots degree from the prime tiers of the sport, with latest higher-profile circumstances – this kind of as the concussions experienced by Welsh player George North and Ireland’s Jonny Sexton – guaranteeing rapid progress.
• Rugby concussions soar by 59 per cent, says report
We have scrum caps, mouth guards, hi-tech strapping. There’s also been important advancement in sports armour for women’s bodies, which will give you even a lot more protection when you get that inevitable elbow to the nipple (ouch). All this means the game has never been safer.
England win Women’s Rugby Globe Cup ultimate Photo: AFP
Following the achievement of the England staff in winning the 2014 Women’s Rugby Globe Cup, a lot more girls than ever are scrumming down.
The Men’s Rugby World Cup lands in England (and Cardiff) this September, with tournament organisers stating that upping participation and engagement is one particular of their key objectives. Soon after that we’ve acquired fast and furious Sevens in the Rio Olympics to seem forward to.
Yes, there are aches, knocks and bruises. There’s crying, there is laugher – most of the time in my group, it is crying with laughter.
And there are the horrible (though thankfully scarce) times, when our community has to come with each other in the encounter of heartbreaking injuries.
But in women’s rugby, there’s also determination, strength, respect and joy. And the most entertaining you could ever have. There’s in no way been a much better time to tackle lifestyle head on.
Bath Rugby Women are element of Bath RFC. Last season, recruitment and advancement of new players was so effective that a Bath Rugby Women IIs staff was formed, and will compete for the very first time in the 2015/sixteen season. New players are extremely welcome – if you would like to come and train with us, just pop along, email bathrugbyladies@hotmail.co.united kingdom or follow on Twitter @bathrugbyladies
