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Is Lansley’s public health plan ‘worthless, regurgitated, patronising rubbish’?

The health headlines on Friday 14 October.

Health experts have attacked the Government's attempt to get people to eat and drink less in attempt to tackle obesity and ill health due to excessive alcohol intake as lacking any substance, the Guardian says.

Dr Terence Stephenson, president of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health, said: ‘The plan has no clear measures on how the food and drink industry will be made to be more responsible in their aggressive marketing of unhealthy food.'

Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, who was attacked by Andrew Lansley for his efforts to improve school meal, said the health secretary's call for people take responsibility for their own diet were: ‘worthless, regurgitated, patronising rubbish'. Read our own digital editor's take on the Government's plans here (hint: he is not a fan).

Imperial College London research covered in the Telegraph suggests that 400 women a year may be ending healthy pregnancies unnecessarily each year after being told wrongly that they have miscarried.

Researchers say that current guidelines are not always reliable in determining whether women who are in pain or bleeding have suffered miscarriages early in pregnancy.

The same paper reports that  wives are saving their husbands from dying of cancer by pestering them to see a doctor when they have unexplained pains, a study indicates.

University of Oslo researchers found men who had never married were up to 35% more likely to have died of the disease than those who were married. For women the maximum difference was 23%.