World
Cancer patient’s long wait for treatment highlights frustration with UK government as election nears
LONDON (AP) — Nathaniel Dye believes he probably won’t live to see Britain’s next election. But the music teacher diagnosed with stage 4 bowel cancer is doing everything he can to make sure the Labour Party wins this one.
Dismayed by delays in his diagnosis by the National Health Service, the 38-year-old says he feels let down by the Conservative-led government, which health policy experts say has failed to adequately fund the NHS. As a result, he played a central role in the launch of Labour’s election platform earlier this month, going on national television to urge voters to back the party.
Nathaniel Dye shows his body scan photos at home in London, Tuesday, June 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
“I’ve seen underfunding of the NHS and mismanagement of the NHS cause real problems in the way I’ve been treated,” he told The Associated Press. “And I suppose I consider it the most natural thing in the world to talk to people on a personal level and say, ‘What can we do to improve things?’”
Dye’s story illustrates voters’ frustration with Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party, which opinion polls show is significantly trailing in parliamentary elections set for July 4.
After 14 years of Conservative-led government, voters blame the party for the litany of problems facing Britain, from sewage spills and unreliable train service to the cost-of-living crisis, crime and the rise in migrants entering the country illegally after crossing the English Channel on inflatable boats.
But no public service is as central to life in the United Kingdom as the NHS, and it is failing to deliver on its promise to provide free health care to everyone.
Over 50 countries go to the polls in 2024
The NHS is creaking under the weight of an aging and growing population, years of funding constraints, and fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic. That means people are waiting longer for everything from primary care appointments to elective surgery and cancer treatment. Some 52% of people were dissatisfied with the NHS last year, 29 percentage points higher than in 2020, according to the British Social Attitudes Survey, conducted annually since 1983.
That is good news for Labour, according to Tim Bale, a professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London.
The Labour Party election manifesto is seen at Nathaniel Dye’s home in London, Tuesday, June 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
“The Conservatives have got nothing to crow about,” he said. “People’s lived experience of the NHS is very, very negative at the moment. However, they retain a great deal of faith in the NHS, and they want to elect a government that they think is going to rescue it.”
Founded by a Labour government in 1947 to fulfill the Conservatives’ wartime pledge to build a fairer society for the men and women who fought to preserve democracy during World War II, the NHS has virtually untouchable status.
If you are British, chances are you were born in an NHS hospital and got your childhood vaccines from a doctor paid by the NHS. If you have a heart attack, you call NHS paramedics and are transported to the hospital in an NHS ambulance. Should you be diagnosed with cancer or any other disease, NHS specialists will likely treat you. And you will never receive a bill.
But because the NHS is so much a part of people’s daily lives, it is also the most glaring example of how the social contract in Britain is fraying.
Since the Conservatives came to power in 2010, the U.K. budget has been buffeted by the global financial crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, the war in Ukraine and inflation, all of which increased government expenditures, slowed economic growth and curtailed revenue.
As a result, the health care budget has grown by an average of 2.8% annually over the past eight years, compared with 3.6% over the previous 50 years.
That has squeezed the NHS at a time when demand for its services is rising. On top of that, the NHS is still recovering from the pandemic, which forced many people to defer treatment as doctors and hospitals focused on COVID-19.
In March, more than 7.54 million people in England were waiting for elective surgery such as cataract removals or hip replacements, 65% more than before the pandemic.
But the problems extend far beyond elective surgery.
Newspapers are filled with stories of people waiting weeks to get appointments with their family doctors, children being hospitalized for emergency tooth extractions because they weren’t able to get preventive dental care, and patients who spend hours in the back of ambulances waiting for emergency room backups to clear.
All of that translates to higher avoidable mortality rates than in other major developed nations except the United States, driven by below-average survival rates for many types of cancer, heart attacks and strokes, according to The King’s Fund, an independent think tank devoted to improving health care.
Reversing those trends is the top priority for most voters, said Charlotte Wickens, a policy adviser at the fund.
“And it’s because everyone experiences ill health and everyone needs NHS services,” she said. “Whoever forms the next government will have to do something to change the situation that the health service finds itself in.”
The Conservatives say many of the pressures on the NHS are out of their control and have promised to build 50 diagnostic hubs around the country and boost funding by more than inflation during each year of the next government. Labour plans to tackle the backlogs by spending 1 billion pounds ($1.27 billion) to fund 40,000 more operations, scans and appointments each week, while pledging to train thousands of new general practitioners.
But fixing the NHS will take more than money.
It needs to rethink the way it provides care, making better use of technology and focusing on keeping people healthy, rather than treating them once they get sick, according to The King’s Fund.
Without such changes, more people will have stories like Dye’s.
Dye, who used to run ultramarathons, first sought medical help after he noticed that he was getting slower and slower for no apparent reason.
After blood tests and a stool sample that revealed he might have cancer, Dye experienced several delays before he began chemotherapy.
“Amongst all that is this quiet, uneasy truth that I waited over 100 days in total, from GP contact to having chemotherapy … and the target is 62,’’ he said. “And it’s possible that that wait will shorten my life.”
Nathaniel Dye poses for a photograph during an interview in London, Tuesday, June 18, 2024. (AP Photo/Kin Cheung)
Tests this week found that Dye was tumor free. But he considers it a temporary reprieve because chances are high that his cancer will return. Doctors say only about 10% of patients in this situation survive for five years.
“I don’t know exactly what needs to happen to give people better outcomes, but I can certainly use my example to say we really need to push for that as soon as possible,” he said.
Dye hopes to do that by telling his story with dark humor that softens the ugly details.
Before becoming an advocate for Labour, Dye focused on raising money for cancer charities, including running the London Marathon while using a colostomy bag and playing a green trombone. He took requests along the route.
His playlist included “Livin’ on a Prayer.”
Outdoing many healthy people who weren’t encumbered by musical instruments, he completed the 26.2-mile course.
“You could say that … there’s no point in me getting politically involved, I’m not going to see the result,” he said. “But I don’t care because I think it comes down to hope.”
Veteran politician Andy Burnham has taken another step towards becoming the UK’s next prime minister, after the majority of Labour MPs nominated him to replace Keir Starmer.
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The 56-year-old’s Labour leadership bid was backed by 322 Labour MPs on Thursday and he remains the only person to publicly declare themselves a candidate to replace Starmer, who announced he was quitting last month.
Burnham appeared on course to be crowned Labour leader unchallenged on the first day of nominations.
If Burnham reaches at least 323 nominations then it would no longer be mathematically possible for another challenger to get the 81 signatures required to join the race out of the total of 402 Labour MPs.
“It is all starting to feel very real,” Burnham said in a social media video posted shortly after the process opened on Thursday morning.
Nominations close on 16 July. In the absence of a contest, Burnham will be crowned Labour leader and prime minister in waiting at a special conference the following day.
He would then replace Starmer at 10 Downing Street on 20 July after meeting King Charles, becoming Britain’s seventh prime minister in a decade.
“There’s no one else,” one Labour MP told the AFP news agency on condition of anonymity after nominating Burnham.
Armed forces minister Al Carns, thought to be Burnham’s final remaining potential challenger, ruled himself out of the running late on Wednesday.
He had expressed hope a leadership contest would give the party the “opportunity for a proper debate.”
“But months of internal Labour politics isn’t what the country needs right now,” he said.
Burnham, nicknamed the “King of the North” for winning three consecutive Greater Manchester mayoral elections, has vowed to “bring about the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen.”
His signature proposal is the creation of a “No. 10 North” to coordinate greater devolution, a reference to the UK prime minister’s address at 10 Downing Street.
Burnham has pledged fiscal discipline and to reduce the country’s ballooning welfare bill, having already sought to calm markets by committing to the government’s current borrowing limits.
But he will face the same challenges that buffeted Starmer’s premiership, notably anaemic growth, a cost-of-living squeeze and an unpredictable US president in Donald Trump.
He has also indicated he could stake out a different path to Starmer on Israel, which enjoyed solid backing from the Labour government even as criticism grew of its war in Gaza.
“I am sorry about that,” Burnham told the Guardian newspaper in an interview published on Thursday. “The response has too often not been good enough. We need to do better.”
Starmer, under pressure for months over policy U-turns and questions about his judgement, announced on 22 June that he was resigning after losing the support of Labour MPs.
His move came after Burnham won a by-election that allowed him to return to parliament to launch a widely expected leadership challenge.
On the day Starmer announced his resignation, Burnham was sworn into parliament, becoming an MP again following his stint between 2001-2017.
Roll the dice
Afterwards, some 200 Labour MPs feted Burnham during a group photo in Westminster, in a clear sign that they expect him to take over.
Former health minister Wes Streeting announced he was dropping his intention to run and backing Burnham.
Burnham, seen as slightly to the left of the more centrist Starmer and more charismatic, is Labour’s most popular politician, surveys show.
Many MPs feel he is the party’s best chance of clawing back support from Nigel Farage’s anti-immigrant Reform UK party before the next general election, expected in 2029.
Reform has led Labour in national opinion polls for well over a year, although the gap has narrowed in recent weeks amid questions over Farage’s finances.
One Labour MP, who asked not to be named, said the party was right to “roll the dice” on Burnham, saying “he couldn’t be worse than Starmer.”
“I hope he’s a breath of fresh air,” the lawmaker told AFP.
NEW YORK (AP) — Launching an artificial intelligence tool to take notes and summarize important information from a virtual meeting can be alluring. Seconds after one of the agents attends an hour-long video conference, it can deliver a recap of key points and outline a to-do list for all the participants.
But the way popular AI notetakers accomplish those tasks makes some people avoid using them. The technology turns everything said during meetings into data. Confidential personnel information, corporate strategies, trade secrets and remarks that could later be seen as incriminating — all of it could end up in the wrong hands.
“There are huge risks to the organization on AI notetakers,” Amy Dufrane, the chief executive of human resources training and certification provider HRCI, said. “I don’t think companies should use it at all.”
An AI notetaker is a software application or device that uses artificial intelligence, speech recognition and large language models to record, transcribe and summarize conversations. The tools are intended to save time and improve participation, but professionals in a number of fields say there are reasons to be wary.
This article is part of AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health. Read more Be Well.
Chief among them is uncertainty about where the collected data is stored and for how long. Privacy advocates worry the companies behind the AI notetakers are creating voiceprints without consent. Voiceprints — a type of biometric profile similar to a fingerprint but tuned to the unique intonations and characteristics of one’s voice — can be used to access restricted or confidential information, including the contents of bank accounts.
Some tech companies resell data from the notetaking tools they created or use confidential meeting transcripts and recordings to train their AI models. There’s also the risk that conversations between an attorney and client could become fair game in legal proceedings; a New York federal judge in February ordered a criminal defendant to provide prosecutors with documents he created for his lawyers because it already had been shared with a third party, which was Anthropic’s Claude.
“People who use AI notetakers, they don’t always know where the data goes,” said Justin Daniels, an Atlanta-based corporate attorney at law firm Baker Donelson. “And in my context, if the data goes anywhere else and they’re not aware of it, that attorney-client-privileged conversation may not be attorney-client-privileged anymore.”
Here are some tips on the etiquette of kicking an AI notetaker out of a meeting, the risks of using one and how to protect yourself.
The first step when you join a meeting is check for bots
When you join a meeting, make it a habit to check whether an AI notetaker is present. It might appear as a meeting attendee, often labeled as an AI notetaker, or a pop-up message on the screen informing participants the meeting is being recorded. The latter could signal the presence of an AI notetaker.
Virtual meeting platforms such as Zoom and Google Meet let users know when recording is underway, but some meeting software does not make it clear when a notetaker is present, according to Thorin Klosowski, the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s senior security and privacy analyst.
Participants also may use personal notetaking devices that are separate from the meeting platform, in which case the other attendees wouldn’t necessarily know a discussion was being recorded and transcribed.
“You hope the other person would tell you that they’re doing that,” Klosowski said. “Asking everyone for consent before doing a sensitive meeting would be the most polite approach to take.”
If you’re unsure whether someone has deployed an AI notetaker, you can ask. You can also state at the beginning that a meeting is not authorized for recording.
A polite way to establish such a boundary is to say, “Our company policy is that this meeting cannot be recorded,” Dufrane suggested. This relieves the employee, such as a salesperson who wants to make a good impression, of having to be the “bad guy,” putting the onus on the company instead, she said.
Another option is to allow the notetaker for part of the gathering but turn if off at the end to dedicate time for more delicate topics.
“I won’t start talking about anything substantive until it’s shut off, because I just don’t want to take the risk,” Daniels said.
Assert your privacy rights to protect voiceprints
Many AI notetakers determine unique acoustic signatures, or voiceprints, for each speaker in the room, said Chris Pluymers, associate attorney at The Dillon Law Group in East Lansing, Michigan. That’s how the companies distinguish one speaker from another, labeling them with monikers “Speaker 1” or “Speaker 2.”
One way voiceprints are used is to verify the identities of bank account holders over the phone. If bad actors got ahold of a person’s vocal signature, they could use it to access files, commit fraud or take over accounts, he said.
Laws in some states govern how voiceprints can be created and stored and provide rights that individuals can assert to object to the use of an AI notetaker during meetings they attend.
In Illinois, voiceprints are considered biometric identifiers, similar to fingerprints, and are covered under the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act, which requires written notice and informed consent before an AI notetaker or other agent collects voiceprints. The law also mandates a documented data retention schedule and destruction policy, Pluymers said. But most companies using the tools have none of those systems in place, Pluymers said.
“In the world of AI, the world of data and privacy, the world of biometric identification, I don’t think you can have such a lax approach to it,” Pluymers said. “I think getting out ahead of it is crucial.”
Under the Illinois law, employees can say they don’t want to attend a meeting with an AI notetaker until they have assurances of where and why the data is being stored, and when it will be deleted, Pluymers said. They can also ask if there is a policy and written consent form to sign.
If an AI notetaker shows up at a meeting unexpectedly, a participant could say, “I prefer we keep this meeting without AI recording or transcript tools and I’d be happy to take my own notes and share a recap if that’s helpful,” Pluymers suggested. “Just being warm and genuine about it and asking them to respect your wishes.”
Know where your data goes
When working with AI notetaking apps, find out whether the companies that built them retain recordings, transcripts or metadata indefinitely or use them to train AI models, said Danielle Kays, a partner at Fisher Phillips who represents businesses on privacy and employment law matters.
“If there is some sort of speaker ID or voice recognition, really understand what that is and how it works,” Kays said.
Even when content is deleted, metadata about meetings can remain stored with the vendor, meaning sensitive business information could influence how the model behaves and in some cases could be memorized or reproduced, she said.
AI notetakers generate text, and that’s easier for outsiders to search through than video or audio files, according to EFF.
“Storing a bunch of video isn’t easy, it’s costly and hard to look through, but text is much easier to search and cheaper to store,” said Klosowski of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
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Share your stories and questions about workplace wellness at [email protected]. Follow AP’s Be Well coverage, focusing on wellness, fitness, diet and mental health at https://apnews.com/hub/be-well
World
Argentinian flight instructor jumps to death from plane, 22-year-old student forced to land alone
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A flight instructor jumped to his death out of a small aircraft over Argentina, forcing the student pilot he was teaching to land the plane herself.
Leandro Andrés Bertazzo, 42, was on board a two-seat Cessna 150G on Saturday when he made the decision to jump out over the province of Córdoba, according to CNN, which cited its Argentinian affiliate TN.
“He made this tragic decision on board an aircraft with another person by his side,” Eduardo Álvarez, director of the Flying Parrot Córdoba flying school where Bertazzo worked, told TN. “It’s impossible to think about it or understand it, but the human mind is so complex.”
An undated photo of Leandro Andrés Bertazzo, a 42-year-old pilot who jumped to his death from a plane on Saturday, July 4 in Argentina. (Instagram/Leandro Bertazzo)
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Rosario, the 22-year-old student, later told authorities that Bertazzo told her, “You know what you have to do, carry on,” before taking off his gear, opening the door and leaping out, according to Álvarez.
Opening the door of a plane midair is incredibly difficult. Álvarez said it would be akin to trying to open the door of a car traveling 124 miles per hour.
Cessna 150m FRA150M climbing out after take-off with flaps deployed and hills behind. (aviation-images.com/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
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Álvarez said that Rosario managed to land the plane safely, despite being in “complete shock.” There was no damage to the plane, according to TN.
Álvarez noted that Bertazzo had gone on a flight with another student earlier in the day.
A view from the main road of the flight school Bertazzo worked at, Flying Parrot Córdoba. (Google Maps)
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Álvarez also told TN that Bertazzo had visited a psychiatric institute, something that was only known by his family prior to his death.
Prosecutors in Córdoba will lead the investigation into Bertazzo’s death. The plane he jumped from is now in police custody.
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