People with conditions such as HIV, TB and malaria should not rely on homeopathic treatments, the World Health Organization has warned.
The group Voice of Young Science Network has written to health ministers to set out the WHO view.
WHO TB experts said homeopathy had "no place" in treatment of the disease.
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"Homeopathy does not protect people from, or treat, these diseases.
"When homeopathy stands in place of effective treatment, lives are lost."
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It is at the forefront of research and education in end-of-life palliative care.
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That is twice as high as in Belgium and the Netherlands.
But while rates of CDS in the Netherlands appear to be rising, the use of euthanasia has declined.
Professor Seale thinks something similar may be happening in the UK.
"In those countries euthanasia is an option - it's legal. In the UK it isn't.
There are fears that CDS is being used inappropriately.
Dr Harrison reached the hospital two hours before his father died.
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"But there was no evidence he was in pain at any stage during his admission."
Despite an apology he is still not satisfied.
Dr Nigel Sykes said one problem was the lack of a clear definition of CDS.
| Matt Walker Editor, Earth News |
 The newly discovered giant pitcher (Nepenthes attenboroughii) |
A new species of giant carnivorous plant has been discovered in the highlands of the central Philippines.
The pitcher plant is among the largest of all pitchers and is so big that it can catch rats as well as insects in its leafy trap.
During the same expedition, botanists also came across strange pink ferns and blue mushrooms they could not identify.
The botanists have named the pitcher plant after British natural history broadcaster David Attenborough.
They published details of the discovery in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society earlier this year.
|  The plant is among the largest of all carnivorous plant species and produces spectacular traps  Co-discoverer Stewart McPherson |
Word that this new species of pitcher plant existed initially came from two Christian missionaries who in 2000 attempted to scale Mount Victoria, a rarely visited peak in central Palawan in the Philippines.
With little preparation, the missionaries attempted to climb the mountain but became lost for 13 days before being rescued from the slopes.
On their return, they described seeing a large carnivorous pitcher plant.
That pricked the interest of natural history explorer Stewart McPherson of Red Fern Natural History Productions based in Poole, Dorset, UK and independent botanist Alastair Robinson, formerly of the University of Cambridge, UK and Volker Heinrich, of Bukidnon Province, the Philippines.
 Big enough to drown a rat |
All three are pitcher plant experts, having travelled to remote locations in the search for new species.
So in 2007, they set off on a two-month expedition to the Philippines, which included an attempt at scaling Mount Victoria to find this exotic new plant.
Accompanied by three guides, the team hiked through lowland forest, finding large stands of a pitcher plant known to science called Nepenthes philippinensis, as well as strange pink ferns and blue mushrooms which they could not identify.
As they closed in on the summit, the forest thinned until eventually they were walking among scrub and large boulders
"At around 1,600 metres above sea level, we suddenly saw one great pitcher plant, then a second, then many more," McPherson recounts.
"It was immediately apparent that the plant we had found was not a known species."
 The summit of Mount Victoria appears through the clouds |
Pitcher plants are carnivorous. Carnivorous plants come in many forms, and are known to have independently evolved at least six separate times. While some have sticky surfaces that act like flypaper, others like the Venus fly trap are snap traps, closing their leaves around their prey.
Pitchers create tube-like leaf structures into which insects and other small animals tumble and become trapped.
The team has placed type specimens of the new species in the herbarium of the Palawan State University, and have named the plant Nepenthes attenboroughii after broadcaster and natural historian David Attenborough.
"The plant is among the largest of all carnivorous plant species and produces spectacular traps as large as other species which catch not only insects, but also rodents as large as rats," says McPherson.
 Unidentified blue fungi |
The pitcher plant does not appear to grow in large numbers, but McPherson hopes the remote, inaccessible mountain-top location, which has only been climbed a handful of times, will help prevent poachers from reaching it.
During the expedition, the team also encountered another pitcher, Nepenthes deaniana, which had not been seen in the wild for 100 years. The only known existing specimens of the species were lost in a herbarium fire in 1945.
On the way down the mountain, the team also came across a striking new species of sundew, a type of sticky trap plant, which they are in the process of formally describing.
Thought to be a member of the genus Drosera, the sundew produces striking large, semi-erect leaves which form a globe of blood red foliage
 The Philippines is one of the countries hardest hit by higher food prices |
Almost two-thirds of people - 60% - in 26 countries say higher food and energy prices this year have affected them "a great deal", a BBC report has found.
The BBC World Service global study said that while all nations had felt the burden of the higher costs, the problem was most acute in poorer countries.
The Philippines was one of the worst hit of those nations questioned.
Elsewhere, the aid agency Oxfam said, more than 900 million people faced starvation because of soaring prices.
A report by the UK-based charity also found that spiralling inflation in the cost of basic foods such as rice and cereals had pushed an extra 119 million people into hunger this year.
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Since the BBC survey was conducted between 8 July and 15 September, energy prices have fallen back from record highs.
Food costs are also now expected to start to decline, as lower oil and petrol prices mean cheaper fertiliser and reduced distribution costs, among other contributory factors.
Eating less
The study found that many people in the developing world have simply been forced to eat less this year owing to the higher cost of food.
|  While governments around the world are now preoccupied with the financial crisis, it is clear that many of their citizens feel they aren't doing enough to relieve the burden of high food prices  Doug Miller, chairman of polling firm GlobeScan |
This situation was most acute in the Philippines and Panama, where 63% of respondents said they had cut back on what they ate.
Kenya was the next most affected, with 61% saying they were eating less, followed by Nigeria, at 58%.
Across all 26 countries, 43% of people said they had altered their diet.
This was most apparent in Panama, with 71% switching to cheaper foods, followed by Egypt, 67%, Kenya, 64%, and again, the Philippines, 63%.
'Unhappy'
Elsewhere, 27% of those questioned in Australia said they were now cutting back on what they eat due to higher prices, compared with 25% in the UK, and 10% in Germany.
Cost of food: Australia's drought crisis
The survey also showed that 70% of people across the world were "unhappy with what their national government is doing to keep food prices affordable".
Dissatisfaction at a perceived lack of government action to tackle food prices was most apparent in Egypt, where 88% of those questioned said they were unhappy with their leaders, followed by the Philippines, on 86%, and Lebanon, on 85%.
In the developed world, the French respondents were the most dissatisfied with their government, with 79% saying they were unhappy.
Energy woes
Respondents were equally unhappy at higher energy costs, which increased sharply in the first half of this year, but are now falling back. Some 60% of people across the 26 nations said they were being affected "a great deal", exactly the same percentage as for higher food costs.
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The Philippines was again the worst-hit nation, with 96% saying they were being hit a great deal, followed by Egypt on 93%, Indonesia on 84%, Kenya on 83%, and Mexico on 81%.
Majorities in several developed countries also said they were being affected a great deal by higher energy costs - 61% in Italy, 59% in France, and 58% in the US.
Doug Miller, chairman of polling firm GlobeScan, which helped carry out the survey for the BBC, said the problem of higher food and energy bills was being overshadowed by the continuing crisis in the financial sector.
"While governments around the world are now preoccupied with the financial crisis, it is clear that many of their citizens feel they aren't doing enough to relieve the burden of high food prices, which is falling on those who can least afford it," he said.
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The Philippines has been particularly affected by higher food prices this year, as with its rapidly growing population and shortage of suitable land for crops, it is the world's largest importer of rice.
Rice prices soared to record highs in the first half of 2008 due to a series of poor harvests that saw major exporters such as Vietnam and India put limits on exports to ensure sufficient supplies for their own populations.
The BBC's economics correspondent, Andrew Walker, said that there were reasons to suppose the food crisis may have eased somewhat.
But for many people it was still the case that food was painfully, even dangerously, expensive, said our correspondent.
The survey spoke to 27,319 adults in the following countries - Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Costa Rica, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Kenya, Lebanon, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Panama, Philippines, Poland, Russia, South Korea, Spain, Turkey, UAE, US, and the UK.
The Programme on International Policy Attitudes also worked on the study
 Pirates say they fear the clan conflict may affect their activities at sea |
Overnight gun-battles between rival clans in a pirate stronghold on the coast of Somalia have left at least 17 dead and 30 injured, reports say.
Local residents in Haradheere fled as fighting, reportedly over land and the alleged rape of a woman, intensified.
Pirates who operate in the area, a port off the shipping lanes linking Europe to Asia, said they were worried the conflict could affect their activities.
Somalia, torn by civil war since 1991, lacks an effective central government.
"The two clans are fighting over land and a girl who was raped in the forest," a local man, Farah Aden, told Reuters news agency.
"Unfortunately, the battles spread into town. Fighting is going on fiercely."
A pirate, who gave his name as Mohammed, told Reuters that those involved in piracy around the port were concerned that their activities would be damaged.
"We are all members of these two clans, and we are worried that this fight might end up being taken out on to the ocean," he said
| By Victoria Gill Science reporter, BBC News |
 The fossil record of marine bivalves dates back to the Jurassic period |
Whole "chunks of life" are lost in extinction events, as related species vanish together, say scientists.
A study in the journal Science shows that extinctions tend to "cluster" on evolutionary lineages - wiping out species with a common ancestor.
The finding is based on an examination of past extinctions, but could help current conservation efforts.
Researchers say that this phenomenon can result in the loss of an entire branch of the "tree of life".
The message for modern conservation, say the authors, is that some groups are more vulnerable to extinction than others, and the focus should be on the lineages most at risk.
Lead researcher Kaustuv Roy, a biologist from the University of California, San Diego, focused on marine bivalves - including clams, oysters and mussels. The fossil record for these creatures dates back almost 200 million years.
By tracing this documented timeline of evolution and extinction, the team was able to see the effects of "background extinctions" as well as the mass extinctions, such as the one around 65 million years ago during which the dinosaurs finally died out.
| It's like a casino of extinctions, with the odds rigged against certain groups Richard Grenyer, Imperial College London |
Many species have become extinct during the relatively stable periods between those global calamities.
But even during such quiet periods, the team found that extinctions tended to cluster into evolutionary families - with closely-related species of clams vanishing together more often than would be predicted by chance.
Richard Grenyer, a biologist from Imperial College London, who was not involved in the study, told BBC News that by going "way back into the fossil record" this study provided important evidence of the patterns of extinction.
"Big groups of organisms tend to be similar to one another," he explained. "Look at the large cats for example."
But genetic similarities also mean, said Dr Grenyer, that "a bad effect that affects one of them, will likely affect all of them".
"It's like a casino of extinctions, with the odds rigged against certain groups."
Life's library
According to this pattern, the study's authors point out, extinctions are likely to eliminate entire branches of the evolutionary tree.
Professor Roy said: "If you have whole lineages more vulnerable than others, then very soon, even with relatively moderate levels of extinction, you start to lose a lot of evolutionary history."
 Conservation of one endangered species could help its close relatives |
Julie Lockwood, an ecologist from Rutgers University in New Jersey, US, who did not take part in this study, explained that because extinction events "hit certain lineages extremely hard... we lose whole chunks of life."
"There are examples of modern species where the same thing is happening," she told BBC News.
"In seabirds for example, the same drivers - climatic change and habitat loss - are threatening whole groups of species."
Richard Greyner likened this loss to a fire in a library.
"Because whole sections are lost - the whole of the physics section, or all of the romantic fiction, the overall loss is much worse than if you randomly burned every 400th book."
But Dr Grenyer said that this evidence could help to drive more focused, and therefore more effective conservation efforts.
"We can use this information," he said.
"It doesn't make the conservation of individual species any easier, but if we know the sorts of things that affect tigers, we can infer conservation biology about the tiger's close relatives."
 Leukaemia targets cells in bone marrow which form blood |
Scientists have shown just how mind-bogglingly complex are the genetics underpinning the development of cancer.
For the second time a team from Washington University has decoded the complete DNA of a patient with a form of leukaemia.
But the suite of key genetic mutations they found were completely different from those uncovered following analysis of their first patient last year.
The study appears in the New England Journal of Medicine.
| What we find may lead us to completely restructure the way we define tumour types Dr Elaine Mardis Washington University |
The latest study does reveal some potentially significant findings.
One of the new mutations found in the second patient was also found in samples taken from 15 other patients with the same disease, acute myeloid leukaemia (AML).
The same mutation is also thought to play a role in the development of a type of brain tumour called a glioma.
A second new mutation was also found in another AML patient.
By using a state-of-art gene sequencing technique, the Washington team became the first to decode the entire genome of a cancer patient last year.
Once they have the full menu of DNA from cancer cells, the researchers can compare it with DNA from healthy cells to pinpoint genetic mutations which probably play a key role in the development of the disease.
The hope is that armed with this information scientists will be able to develop new drugs to target cancer.
Much work to do
But lead researcher Dr Elaine Mardis said: "Only by sequencing thousands of cancer genomes are we going to find and make sense of the complex web of genetic mutations and the altered molecular pathways in this disease.
"What we find may lead us to completely restructure the way we define tumour types and subtypes."
Her colleague Dr Timothy Ley said: "Currently, we don't have great information about how patients with this particular subtype of AML will respond to treatment, so most of them are treated similarly up front.
"By defining the mutations that cause AML in different people, we hope to determine which patients need aggressive treatment, and which can be treated effectively with less intense therapies."
The patient in the latest study was a 38-year-old man who had been in remission for three years.
Analysis revealed 64 genetic mutations which were most likely to play a role in cancer development.
Of these 52 were found in long stretches of DNA that do not contain genes, but which potentially affect how and when neighbouring genes become active.
The researchers compared the results with samples from 187 other AML patients.
They found the same mutation linked to brain tumours in 15 samples, making it one of the most common mutations yet linked to AML.
None of the mutations uncovered from analysis of the first patient was subsequently found in any other AML patient.
Dr Jodie Moffat, Cancer Research UK's senior health information officer, said: "It's exciting that these detailed studies to understand the genetic basis of cancer are now possible due to advances in technology.
"The genetic factors involved in leukaemia are particularly complex, so anything new we can learn is very welcome.
"But further research will be needed before scientists can reveal which parts of the genetic puzzle can actually be used to improve the lives of cancer patients."
 Root vegetable, and potential lifesaver? |
The key beneficial ingredient appears to be nitrate, which is also found in green, leafy vegetables.
The researchers found that in healthy volunteers blood pressure was reduced within an hour of drinking the juice.
The study, by Barts and the London School of Medicine and the Peninsula Medical School, could suggest a low-cost way to treat hypertension.
| Drinking beetroot juice, or consuming other nitrate-rich vegetables, might be a simple way to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system Professor Amrita Ahluwalia Barts and The London School of Medicine |
Previously the protective effects of vegetable-rich diets have been attributed to their antioxidant vitamin content.
While it took less than an hour to note a reduction in blood pressure in the beetroot juice tests, it was more pronounced after three to four hours and a degree of reduction continued to be observed for up to 24 hours, the report published on the online journal Hypertension said.
Saliva breakdown
The researchers showed that nitrate in the juice is converted in saliva, by bacteria on the tongue, into nitrite.
This nitrite-containing saliva is swallowed, and in the acidic environment of the stomach is either converted into nitric oxide or re-enters the circulation as nitrite.
The peak time of reduction in blood pressure correlated with the appearance and peak levels of nitrite in the circulation.
No such drop in blood pressure was recorded in a second group of volunteers, who did not swallow their saliva while drinking beetroot juice, or for three hours afterwards.
More than 25% of the world's adult population are hypertensive, and it has been estimated that this figure will increase to 29% by 2025.
Hypertension causes around 50% of coronary heart disease, and approximately 75% of strokes.
In total, cardiovascular disease kills over 110,000 people in England every year.
Researcher Professor Amrita Ahluwalia said: "Our research suggests that drinking beetroot juice, or consuming other nitrate-rich vegetables, might be a simple way to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system, and might also be an additional approach that one could take in the modern day battle against rising blood pressure."
Professor Graham McGregor, of the British Hypertension Society, described the research as "interesting".
He said: "This shows that beetroot juice lowers blood pressure in the short term in volunteers with normal blood pressure.
"What we need now is research to see whether it has an effect on people with high blood pressure over a much longer period of time."
Professor McGregor said there was a growing body of work showing that a diet rich in fruit and vegetables had a beneficial impact on hypertension.
But he said previous research had suggested that potassium may be the key mineral.
Victoria Taylor, of the British Heart Foundation, said: "Whilst beetroot juice was used in this study, it is unlikely that people will be able to - or wish to - consume it in the quantities used in the research.
"Although we know that eating a diet rich in fruit and vegetables as part of a well balanced diet is beneficial to heart health, we do not know yet whether there are certain fruits or vegetables that are more helpful than others and so for now, people should continue to choose a wide variety in achieving their five a day."
More patients in Scotland given antidepressants 13 October 2015 From the section Scotland Image copyright Thinkstock Image ca...
