12 February 2014 Last updated at 16:07

Article written by Fergus Walsh Medical correspondent

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A nation of pill poppers?

 

Around 7 million Britons take statins

A sensible step that will cut deaths and disability or a mistake that will medicalise millions?

There are starkly opposing views of proposals from the health watchdog the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to dramatically increase the numbers offered statins.

They are already the most commonly prescribed medicines in the UK, which work by lowering the level of cholesterol in blood.

Around seven million people are on the tablets which cost less than 10p a day.

It is estimated they prevent around 7,000 deaths a year from heart attacks or strokes. Add to that the tens of thousands of people who are saved from disabling non-fatal attacks and you can see why health experts are keen on statins.

A generation ago cardiovascular disease was common in early middle age. As a result of statins and treatments for reducing blood pressure, the condition has been delayed by around 20 years.

That means two decades more of healthy life for millions of people.

QRISK2

The current guidance from NICE says adults with at least a 20% chance of having a heart attack or stroke in the next 10 years should be offered statins.

That is being lowered to a 10% chance of cardiovascular disease over 10 years.

So how is the risk calculated? You can work out your individual risk by going online to the QRISK2 calculator.

Input factors like your age, sex (men are at greater risk), ethnicity, blood pressure, Body Mass Index, family history, cholesterol level and so on.

It also includes your postcode: heart disease is strongly linked to poverty and deprivation so that will alter your risk too (though clearly you would expect your doctor to take account of your background, rather than just relying on your address).

My risk was well below the 10% trigger for statins. But any smug feeling was quickly despatched when I added a decade to my age.

Once you hit your sixties you can virtually guarantee that your 10-year risk will place you in the statins category no matter how healthy you are.

The effect of the proposals - which have gone out for consultation in England - would be to add millions to the numbers already on statins.

Mark Baker, from NICE, who helped draw up the guidelines said: "You'd probably need to treat about 60 people with statins for 10 years to prevent one heart attack or stroke."

That might not sound like it is worth it, but let's say you treated another six million people, that would prevent 100,000 heart attacks or strokes over a decade.

Diet & exercise

Estimating the health benefits of statins is difficult, and those figures could be an over-estimate. But you can see that - taken over an entire adult population - the potential health benefits are enormous.

So that's the argument in favour. Now the opposite view.

Putting people onto statins is akin to medicalising them for life. Rather than taking a pill to lower cholesterol, the same effect can be achieved through changing their diet and exercise levels.

Even small modifications to lifestyle - taking the stairs or getting off the bus one stop further from your destination - can make positive changes.

Offering sedentary patients a quick fix may simply store up problems for later.

"It's a very bad idea", said Dr Aseem Malhotra a London cardiologist. "Eighty per cent of cardiovascular disease is due to lifestyle and NICE should be concentrating on that aspect rather than offering pills to millions."

Dr Malhotra believes up to one in five people on statins will suffer side effects such as muscle pains, stomach pains or increased risk of diabetes.

NICE says the figure is far lower and serious problems with statins are rare. NHS Choices says "statins are generally well tolerated and most people will not experience any side effects." It lists the range of possible adverse reactions.

Ultimately it will be up to patients to decide, following consultation with their GP. One likely option for many will be to try statins and see whether they trigger any ill-effects.

Statins are saving lives and preventing disability every day. So they are a powerful tool in promoting good health. But people will need to consider carefully before deciding to take a daily pill for decades to come.

VIDEO: How I recovered The Scream

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The Scream: I found the stolen painting

12 February 2014 Last updated at 00:27 GMT

In 1994 Edvard Munch's famous painting The Scream was stolen from a Norwegian art museum. It was recovered in a daring undercover operation by British detectives. Charles Hill was one of those detectives who posed as an art dealer to trick the thieves into returning the painting.

Witness is a World Service radio programme of the stories of our times told by the people who were there.

Produced by Lucy Burns and Directed by Claire Tailyour

How the car industry outlawed crossing the road

12 February 2014 Last updated at 00:13

Jaywalking: How the car industry outlawed crossing the road

By Aidan Lewis BBC News, Washington

Continue reading the main story

The idea of being fined for crossing the road at the wrong place can bemuse foreign visitors to the US, where the origins of so-called jaywalking lie in a propaganda campaign by the motor industry in the 1920s.

The California Vehicle Code states: "No pedestrian shall start crossing in direction of a flashing or steady "DON'T WALK" or upraised hand symbol." It also forbids crossing between controlled intersections, or "jaywalking".

Late last year, police began a concerted effort to enforce the rules in central Los Angeles. Pedestrians had been "impeding traffic and causing too many accidents and deaths", one traffic police official said. Fines range from $190-$250 (£115-£152).

Then in New York officials responded to several pedestrian deaths last month by issuing a flurry of tickets for jaywalking. The campaign quickly ran into controversy when an 84-year-old Chinese immigrant who had been stopped for jaywalking suffered a gash to his head during an altercation with the police.

Enforcement of anti-jaywalking laws in the US is sporadic, often only triggered by repeated complaints from drivers about pedestrian behaviour in a particular place. But jaywalking remains illegal across the country, and has been for many decades.

The first known reference to it dates to December 1913, says Peter Norton, a history professor at the University of Virginia and author of Fighting Traffic - The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City. That month a department store in Syracuse hired a Santa Claus who stood on the street with a megaphone, bellowing at people who didn't cross properly and calling them jaywalkers.

"I don't know how this got to Syracuse, but in mid-western slang a jay was a person from the country who was an empty-headed chatterbox, like a bluejay," he says.

The word was first used to describe "someone from the countryside who goes to the city and is so dazzled by the lights and the show windows that they keep stopping and getting in the way of other pedestrians".

The use of jaywalking as a term of ridicule against pedestrians crossing roads took off in the 1920s.

A key moment, says Norton, was a petition signed by 42,000 people in Cincinnati in 1923 to limit the speed of cars mechanically to 25mph (40kph). Though the petition failed, an alarmed auto industry scrambled to shift the blame for pedestrian casualties from drivers to walkers.

Local car firms got boy scouts to hand out cards to pedestrians explaining jaywalking. "These kids would be posted on sidewalks and when they saw someone starting to jaywalk they'd hand them one of these cards," says Norton. "It would tell them that it was dangerous and old fashioned and that it's a new era and we can't cross streets that way."

A card handed to pedestrians in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1921

Clowns were commonly used in parades or pageants to portray jaywalkers as a throwback to rural, ignorant, pre-motor age ways.

Another ruse was to provide local newspapers with a free service. Reporters would submit a few facts about local traffic accidents to Detroit, and the auto industry's safety committee would send back a full report on the situation in their city.

"The newspaper coverage quite suddenly changes, so that in 1923 they're all blaming the drivers, and by late 1924 they're all blaming jaywalking," Norton says.

Soon, he adds, car lobby groups also started taking over school safety education, stressing that "streets are for cars and children need to stay out of them". Anti-jaywalking laws were adopted in many cities in the late 1920s, and became the norm by the 1930s.

In the decades that followed, the cultural ascendancy of the car was secured as the auto industry promoted "America's love affair with the automobile". Car makers portrayed them as the ultimate expression of personal freedom, an essential element of the "American dream".

Meanwhile, an overriding goal of city planners and engineers became allowing traffic to circulate unhindered.

"For years, pedestrians were essentially written out of the equation when it came to designing streets," says Tom Vanderbilt, author of Traffic - Why We Drive the Way We Do.

"They didn't even appear in early computer models, and when they did, it was largely for their role as 'impedance' - blocking vehicle traffic."

This made US cities unusually hostile to walkers, says Vanderbilt. Jaywalking became an "often misunderstood umbrella term", covering many situations in which the pedestrian should in fact have the right of way.

Some countries have followed the lead of the US and imposed anti-jaywalking measures. Police in China began a fresh push to stop jaywalking last year, fining offenders and in Shanghai, making them read out traffic regulations aloud.

Beijing was one Chinese city where police began fining jaywalkers last year

Elsewhere, in Cairo say, or Calcutta, a lack of rules, enforcement and pedestrian infrastructure mean that the only way to cross the road is often by launching oneself into the oncoming traffic.

The UK is among those countries where jaywalking is not an offence. But the rate of pedestrian deaths is half that of the US, at 0.736 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2011 compared to 1.422 per 100,000 in America.

Even in Singapore, where repeated jaywalking offences can lead to a $1,000 fine or a six month jail term, rules are routinely flouted.

There has been resistance in the US too. Newspaper reports from the 1920s show that many were irritated by the cards handed out by boy scouts, says Peter Norton.

In New York, an earlier effort to crack down on jaywalking under former mayor Rudy Giuliani met with opposition from police officers who said they had better things to do. And in Los Angeles, the setting for The Pedestrian, Ray Bradbury's dystopian science-fiction short story from 1951, walkers and cyclists have recently become more common downtown.

When the LAPD advertised the anti-jaywalking campaign on its Facebook page, responses accused the police of seeking an easy source of revenue by fining people with the means to pay, and of wasting their time.

"I love how I see people getting jaywalking tickets everyday at the corner of 5th and Broadway by our loft, and yet I can't walk to my car without getting offered… any variety of hardcore narcotics," wrote one woman in a message that ended "#priorities".

Advocates for walking say drivers are most often to blame for pedestrian deaths and injuries, and that there is no evidence to prove that anti-jaywalking campaigns are effective.

That rings true for John Moffat, a former commander of Seattle's traffic police.

Seattle was known for being especially strict on jaywalking, and Moffat calculated that some 500,000 tickets had been issued there between the 1930s and the 1980s. But he oversaw a change of policy in 1988 after a study in the city showed that the most vulnerable pedestrians were the elderly, children and drunks - not jaywalkers. "Are they the ones ending up in the morgue or in hospital?" he says. "The answer is no, and the reason is that most of them are pretty fleet of foot and agile."

Some think that the success of several projects to make US cities more walkable is a sign of hope for pedestrians.

But there is little experimentation with more radical projects such as shared space, which aims to reduce traffic speed by removing the distinction between streets and pavements. And fines for jaywalking look set to continue, says Ray Thomas, a lawyer in Portland, Oregon, who specialises in pedestrian and bicycle law.

"People in law-enforcement tend to identify with a motorist's perspective", he says. Wherever there's a push to protect the rights of pedestrians, officials feel they also need to enforce limits on them.

"It's their version of being fair," he says. "The difference is that no jaywalking pedestrian ever ran down and killed a driver, and by sheer survival strategy most pedestrians don't jaywalk in front of cars."

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VIDEO: Mums v Guns

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#BBCtrending: US mums fight Facebook policy on guns

12 February 2014 Last updated at 14:15 GMT

A lobby group of American mothers has spoofed Facebook's "Look Back" video to campaign against the site's policy on guns.

Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America was formed after 26 children and six adults were killed in a mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012. It says Facebook is allowing users to post pictures of guns for "sale".

Private gun sales are legal in some US states but the group says guns could fall into the wrong hands when offered on Facebook.

A Facebook spokesperson said no financial transactions take place on the platform itself and it urges those promoting an offer of guns to abide by the applicable law.

Anne-Marie Tomchak from #BBCtrending reports.

Produced by Neil Meads

All our stories are at BBC.com/trending. Follow @BBCtrending on Twitter and tweet using #BBCtrending

Why do women murder?

12 February 2014 Last updated at 15:00

Dennehy murder case: Why do women kill?

By Gerry Holt BBC News

Top, left to right: Mary Anny Cotton, Rose West, Myra Hindley. Bottom, left to right: Juana Barraza, Beverley Allitt, Aileen Wuornos

Two men have been found guilty of aiding triple murderer Joanna Dennehy. What makes her case so rare, and why do women kill?

British history is spattered with grim tales of multiple murderers and serial killers.

From the figure of Jack the Ripper, who terrorised Victorian London, to Dr Harold Shipman, who murdered hundreds of his patients without, it seems, any motive - the cases have fascinated as much as they have disturbed.

But they often have one thing in common - the perpetrators are all men.

While serial killings by men or women are rare, the case of 31-year-old Joanna Dennehy, who has admitted stabbing to death three men, appears to be highly unusual.

Smother, strangle or poison

Criminologist Prof David Wilson describes murder as a "man's business".

He says it is usually the preserve of young working class men, who kill other young men of a similar background.

The court heard Dennehy was driven by a thirst "for blood" as she sought further victims

Of suspects convicted of murder in England and Wales over a 10-year period up to 2012 more than 90% were men, Home Office figures show.

And in the rare instances that women do kill, they tend to kill different groups of people to men and use different methods, says Wilson.

"By and large women kill children in their own family - they are intra-familial [killers] - and they tend to smother, strangle and poison, and only occasionally they will stab. That is the pattern generally."

Consultant forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes says women are more "practical and clean" in their killing. They use enough violence to get the job done but nothing more.

"It may be that women are more driven by the end product - of someone being dead and the aftermath of that - [rather] than the actual act of killing itself."

Wilson says men are more likely to use violent methods, like shooting and stabbing, possibly because they have more access to weapons.

Men's victims tend to be strangers because they are more likely to find themselves in aggressive situations, such as trying to fight or resolve conflicts in nightclubs or in the street, says the professor.

"That kind of confrontational murder is not one that one sees when women are in those social spaces."

But what might make a woman kill in a multiple or serial way?

Wilson says the reasons are as diverse for men as they are for women - but Elie Godsi, a clinical psychologist, says the answer is more straightforward. "Women only behave in really brutal and destructive ways if they have been brutalised."

Daynes says there is generally a history of childhood sexual abuse or trauma.

"They have pathological needs for attention, control or to express their anger," she says.

She adds: "Women serial killers tend to have some form of relationship with their victims - lovers, children, people they are employed to care for. They are more likely to kill at home or their place of work."

'Angel of Death'

Beverley Allitt carried out four deadly attacks on children while working as a nurse at a hospital in Grantham, Lincolnshire, in 1991.

The serial killer, who had Munchausen Syndrome by proxy, where sufferers crave attention, was dubbed the Angel of Death in the aftermath of the case.

Daynes says women are most often Angel of Death-type killers, adding: "We just don't get this with men, probably because typically men do not value or get so much affirmation from being in the role of carer."

The three men Dennehy killed were said to have fallen "under her spell" - but she later went on to select two further men at random to kill.

In some murder cases, there may be a sexual motive, however this is far less common among women. And even then, it may be a man's sexual interests - rather than the woman's - being served.

In Dennehy's case, she was said by a consultant forensic psychiatrist to have paraphilia sadomasochism, in which sexual excitement is derived from the infliction of "pain, humiliation and bondage".

Lone female killers are rare. Women more often kill as part of a couple - a folie a deux, French for "a madness shared by two" - where the murders are shared or the woman becomes infatuated with a more dominant male figure. In this case they kill for much the same reason as men - power, control or financial gain, says Daynes.

Both Rose West and Myra Hindley gained notoriety for the serial killings they carried out with their partners, though West, for example, is known to have killed independently of her husband Fred.

But sometimes power, control and hedonism have nothing to do with serial murder. A so-called comfort killer murders to gain financially or in other ways.

Victorian serial killer Mary Ann Cotton poisoned three of her husbands and 15 children as part of what appears to have been an early insurance scam.

Joanna Dennehy also admitted two attempted murders

It might be surprising to learn then that Cotton, who was hanged for her crimes in 1873, is regarded as Britain's first serial killer, notching up more victims than Jack the Ripper, and yet few people would recognise her name.

'Aberration of nature'

Female serial killers are so rare that it is difficult to compare Dennehy to other notorious cases.

Dr Elizabeth Yardley, senior lecturer at Birmingham City University's centre for applied criminology, says a "loose comparison" might be Aileen Wuornos, who was executed after killing seven men in Florida in 1989 and 1990.

"In terms of the characteristics they displayed, they were both violent drifters who were disconnected from society."

A mental health assessment found Dennehy had psychopathic, anti-social and emotional instability disorders. Prosecutors also told the court she had little capacity for remorse and she was said by one witness to have been driven to kill by a thirst "for blood".

Whatever her reasons for killing, it appears she does fit into the rare bracket of serial killer.

Adam Gregory, behavioural investigative adviser at the National Crime Agency, attended an FBI-led symposium in the US in 2005 where a global definition of the term was drawn up.

It is "the murder of two or more individuals by the same offender on separate occasions" he says, adding: "If this is the case in this trial then I would say that Joanna Dennehy was a serial murderer."

This label, says Wilson, has the power to attract and fascinate as much to cause abhorrence.

But the most shocking element, it seems, is her gender.

"It shakes to the very core our stereotypes and our cultural frameworks about womanhood and femininity. As far as we are concerned women don't do these sorts of things. Women care, women treat and look after and empathise," says Godsi.

Daynes says: "We will always be more shocked by the idea of a female serial killer because women are viewed as nurturers and givers of life. To repeatedly take lives, particularly those of children is seen as an aberration of nature."

VIDEO: Stadium 'rail-seat' design explained

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Safe standing football terraces rail-seat explained

12 February 2014 Last updated at 10:33 GMT

In many European countries, football fans are allowed to stand at top-level games, something which is not allowed at premiership and championship matches in the UK.

All-seater stadiums were introduced in the UK following the Hillsborough disaster in 1989.

But campaigners say they have come up with a system which will make it safe for people to stand on the terraces.

Jon Darch, of the Safe Standing Campaign, demonstrates the "rail seat", which is due to be unveiled at Bristol City's ground on Wednesday.

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VIDEO: The 'matter of fact' killer

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Joanna Dennehy: The 'matter of fact' killer

12 February 2014 Last updated at 15:09 GMT

John Rogers met killer Joanna Dennehy and lived to tell his story. While walking his dog near his home in Hereford, Dennehy set upon him with a knife stabbing him multiple times.

He spent weeks in hospital recovering from his wounds. He told the BBC's Ed Thomas that his abiding memory of the attack was how 'matter of fact' Dennehy had been throughout.

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Joanna Dennehy ditch murders: Peterborough helpers guilty