Health
Smokers are paying for your pension
Axa will no longer invest in the tobacco industry: the French insurance giant will sell €184 million of shares and…
Warning: rationality could be bad for your health
Almost every popular commercial product owes its success to two different qualities. First, it does the job it is ostensibly…
The vaping craze isn’t about nicotine. It’s about gadgets
Probably you never visited the flats of middle-class student drug dealers in the 1990s, because crikey, neither did I, and…
I used to back Jeremy Hunt’s digital NHS plan. Now I know it’s a disaster
My baby and I excel at blood tests. He (tiny, jaundiced) stretches out naked under the hospital’s hot cot-lamps like…
Books aren’t medicine. They’re more powerful than that
If we claim books can heal, we must accept they can also harm
It’s not work that’s stressful. It’s offices
It’s not work that’s killing us. It’s the irritation and confusion of modern office life
After 50 years, I’m out of the agony-aunt business
It’s clear that Vladimir Putin has had a facelift, which might explain why Wendi Deng would take an interest in…
How Seneca got to sleep
As if we did not have enough to cause us sleepless nights, the Royal Society for Public Health has demanded…
Hate tax havens? Try imagining a world without them
However wicked tax evasion is and however distasteful some tax avoidance may be, people should imagine a world without tax…
An old man’s guide to living dangerously
At 77, it is clear to me that increased longevity can be a curse rather than a blessing
A dispatch from a family of fooshers
I’d like this to have been one of those Spectator diaries that gives the ordinary reader a glimpse into the…
I adore sport. I can no longer stomach boxing. Here’s why
In most sports, injuries happen when things go wrong. In boxing, they’re the ultimate goal. It isn’t right
The scan said my baby wouldn’t live. It was wrong
When my unborn baby was a five-month-old fetus, twisting about in the internal dark, he was given a death sentence…
No second EU referendum? Tell that to the Danes and the Irish
Vote no, vote often David Cameron scorned Boris Johnson’s idea that voting to leave the EU might result in further…
What I learned while nearly dying
There’s some journalistic research you’d really never do by choice. Spending four days in an NHS hospital with a life-threatening…
Spectator Christmas letters: from Daesh to zakuski
Just call them Daesh Sir: I was interested to read Sam Leith’s article in which he appears to argue that…
Jeremy Hunt is spoiling for a fight. He’s picked the wrong one
Jeremy Hunt is right to fight for NHS reform. But he’s going after the wrong people, on the wrong issue
I’m a junior doctor and I used to trust the Tories. Not any more
Like many of my fellow junior doctors, I trusted a Conservative government with the NHS. If it’s to stay strong…
The ME lobby is just a symptom of our stupidity about mental illness
Do you ever wake up worried that you have tiny fibres growing beneath your skin, all along your spinal column?…
Make-up, chocolates, deodorant and sand: two weeks in cancer scares
Killer facts The World Health Organisation added processed meats to its list of ‘known’ carcinogens. A few of the other…
One in ten British babies will soon be born via IVF. So why is it taboo?
Pretty soon, one in ten British babies will begin life in a Petri dish. So why is it still such a taboo subject?
Paula Radcliffe is a victim of our hypocrisy and confusion about drugs and sport
Do you want to see Paula Radcliffe’s blood? If so, you’re not alone. Radcliffe, three-time winner of the London Marathon…
A licence to kill - the slippery slope of 'assisted dying'
If you don’t think legalising ‘assisted dying’ is a slippery slope, you haven’t been paying attention
Not just a fad: the dangerous reality of 'clean eating'
The ‘clean eating’ revolution is more likely to make you ill than healthy
Dear Mary: Is there a tactful way to tell a dear cousin she needs a lump removed from her face?
Q. How can you tactfully tell someone that the large skin tag or blob they have grown in the centre…
