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Hundreds of experts back car smoking ban, papers continue reporting care.data concerns and a cause for cat ladies to be concerned

‘Hundreds’ of health experts have got behind calls for it to become illegal to smoke when ferrying the little ones around by car, reports the Telegraph this morning.

Writing in an open letter in the BMJ, 700 or so doctors, nurses and other healthcare workers have called on MPs to vote in favour of a ban in the House of Commons on Monday.

The experts said parents have no ‘right to force children to breathe tobacco smoke’ and that the practice was causing illness and deaths.

The newspapers also continue to follow up on care.data this morning after the Daily Mail followed up a Pulse story on its front page yesterday.

The Guardian writes that the police will be able to gain ‘backdoor’ access to patient records, without doctors’ consent, even if patients have opted out of the scheme.

Lastly, a warning goes out to middle-aged women with cats (and possibly to GP practices too), as the Daily Mail reports that cats can inject bacteria deep into the joints and tissue even with a tiny bite.

According to researchers, middle-aged women run the largest risk of being bitten, and they now urge people to go see a doctor if bitten by a cat ‘no matter how insignificant the bite might seem at first’.