I read with deep sadness Sonia Sodha’s article (Comment), in particular her notion that we “live in a society where there is so much guilt, shame and fear around child sexual abuse that there are powerful collective instincts to try to minimise it”. Attitudes, it seems, have changed little since I was brought up in “care” in Scotland (Falkirk) and England (Northampton) in the 1960s and 1970s. Sexual abuse and violence at the hands of adults (men and women) was rife. It was not just in children’s homes, foster care and the church, but also in the wider community. Yet as Sodha so astutely identifies, then as now, child abuse and cruelty simultaneously seem to be everywhere but nowhere: indifference, silence and blame by adults and abusers.
Nobody, not then, not now, ever wanted to know, so one quickly learns to stop talking altogether. Even today, some of the cruelties are difficult to explain and describe. It’s often hard to shut these experiences out, let alone try to communicate them, even if someone was willing to listen. So, as the headline to the article rightly puts it: “As long as we avert our gaze from sexual abuse, we will continue to fail children.”
Dr John Finlay
New Town, Edinburgh
In 2016, our 14-year-old son told us he had been sexually abused by my husband’s father, which made complete sense of what my intuition had been telling me about my father-in-law’s devoted grandfather act, constantly buying gifts, wanting to spend more time alone with our son. We immediately cut all ties and found specialised therapy for our son through Rape Crisis. Several child protection charities, a trusted deputy headteacher, our GP, the therapists at Rape Crisis knew of the abuse but my son was adamant he did not want to go to the police and seeing our son relive his trauma without a guarantee of a conviction was enough to convince us we could not pressure him to act otherwise.
This is what I find most problematic – that there is a responsibility put on to the victim, not the abuser, to protect potential future victims – because the taboo of sexual abuse weighs heavily on the victims in our legal system and abusers can walk among us protected by society’s belief that it happens to “other people”.
Name and address supplied
What about green gas?
It was welcome to see an article discussing hydrogen and home heating, but why was there no mention of so-called green gas, which can be made from ordinary grass in a digester (“The great hydrogen gamble: hot air or net zero’s holy grail”, Business)? This is basically biomethane, has low emissions and is being trialled to fuel and run standard existing domestic boilers.
In contrast, hydrogen would require an expensive new boiler and possibly pipe work and is probably best suited to heavy transport and other uses, although a proportion could be added to green gas, especially if made from eco-sourced electricity.
Stuart Bell
Wallingford, Oxfordshire
When discussing the possibility of replacing natural gas with hydrogen for home heating, there was an assertion that “no one talks about the fact that to switch over 24m homes will take decades and decades”. The last time we switched, from town gas (largely hydrogen) to natural gas, for home heating, it took precisely eight years from 1968 to 1976. We did it then; we could do it again now.
Owen Wells
Ilkley, West Yorkshire
The benefits of vaping
Your editorial about vaping does not match the science (“Before we embrace vaping, we need to know more about its long-term risks”). No credible scientist says vaping is “completely safe” – few things are. The point is that vapes are far, far less harmful than smoking. Moreover, the public health consensus that vaping is a “much less harmful” alternative to smoking is based on robust independent reviews of the scientific evidence, not “assumptions”.
The evidence on whether vaping helps smokers to quit is not “mixed”, as your editorial suggests. The weight of high-quality evidence – from Cochrane, among others – shows e-cigarettes are more effective than nicotine replacement therapy in helping smokers quit. Cochrane reviews are a highly trusted source of objective health evidence used by policy makers worldwide.
Vaping is a harm reduction option for people trying to quit deadly tobacco smoking and the availability of e-cigarettes in the UK has helped many to do this. If all smokers switched to vaping, many lives could be saved and much cancer, heart and lung disease avoided.
The UK’s “liberal approach” very clearly does not recommend use of e-cigarettes by people who have never smoked. The public health community is united in the need for measures to make e-cigarettes less available and appealing to children. Smoking drives preventable death, disease and health inequalities. We need to maximise use of all available tools to help people quit smoking – including e-cigarettes.
Prof Ann McNeill, professor of tobacco addiction, King’s College London; Dr Jamie Hartmann-Boyce, associate professor, University of Oxford; Prof Caitlin Notley, professor of addiction sciences, Norwich Medical School, UEA; Prof Nick Hopkinson, professor of respiratory medicine, Imperial College, London; Prof Paul Aveyard, professor of behavioural medicine, University of Oxford; Prof Linda Bauld, professor of public health, University of Edinburgh; Prof John Britton, professor emeritus of epidemiology, University of Nottingham; Dr Leonie Brose, reader in addiction education and nicotine research, King’s College London; Prof Jamie Brown, co-director of the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group, UCL; Dr Katie East, research associate, King’s College London; Prof Peter Hajek, director of the Tobacco Dependence Research Unit, QMUL; Dr Sarah Jackson, principal research fellow, Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group, UCL; Dr Debbie Robson, senior lecturer in Tobacco Harm Reduction, King’s College London; Prof Lion Shahab, co-director of the Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group, UCL; Dr Erikas Simonavičius, research associate, King’s College London; Eve Taylor, research assistant, King’s College London; Prof Robert West, professor emeritus of health psychology, UCL
Menopause for all
Eleanor Mills writes of coffee mornings and posh white women discussing menopausal symptoms, sharing experiences, Davina and breaking the taboo (“Menopause is not a dirty secret. Period”, Focus). And she’s right, I’m one of them! Women’s health was, and still is, the preserve and the privilege of an advantaged section of society.
The platform on which the likes of Davina et al stand is a powerful one. But it must be broadened. And where are the mass of influential men championing this medical crisis in a woman’s life? Warming their hands with their backs to the fire?
Doctors from all backgrounds urgently need educating. They simply don’t know enough about the condition. Sexual health in the national curriculum must include the menopause extensively, not fleetingly. My teenage children live with a menopausal mother; I educate them, normalising the menopause, that their mother is not going crazy.
Radical change is needed; starting at a grass roots level in education, increased funding and targeted inclusiveness. Only then will all women benefit.
Siân Miller
Guildford, Surrey
The call of the wild
Terry Woods of Fox-a-Gon is quoted as saying that the fox mating season, “usually in December or January, may be voluble but is very short” (“On the trail of the real urban fox”, Focus). I beg to differ: the pair outside my bedroom window are at it every night.
Richard Chatten
London SE19
