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A summary of the new Australian Guidelines for Assessment and Diagnosis of Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder has been published in the Medical Journal of Australia.

Annika Howells

The recent childhood vaccine changes in the USA, which substantially reduce the number of routine childhood vaccines, will sow more seeds of doubt and confusion in the community about the safety, efficacy and even the need of vaccines. We should not follow the opinions of politicians and of unsubstantiated antivaccine groups, but follow the science.

Gary Grohmann, Robert Booy

The term ‘bikini medicine’ originally highlighted the narrow reproductive focus of women’s health research, but has since broadened into a much-needed campaign for equitable inclusion of women across all aspects of health care. Continued use of this patronising pejorative term may paradoxically diminish rather than augment the overall push for better women’s health. So it’s time to abandon the bikini and in the 21st century seek sex- and gender-specific medicine for the whole person.

Nicholas M Fisk, Caroline de Costa

Globally, one-in-nine incarcerated people have a history of IV drug use. In Australia and New Zealand, it’s one-in-two. The University of New South Wales (UNSW) has become the first to quantify, in two systematic reviews, both the prevalence of blood-borne diseases for incarcerated people, and access to a handful of well-known healthcare programs. It found that no country, worldwide, had all the programs available.

Becca Whitehead

Public trust in doctors and health services is shifting slowly, but in the wrong direction in both Australia and the US. At the Australian Ethical Health Alliance (AEHA) symposium in May 2025, the message was clear, that as health professionals, we need to take swift action. As panellists speaking on the rise of misinformation and disinformation, we explored how trust has always been the ethical currency of medicine; however, once you start to spend it, everything else, including vaccination, screening, shared decision-making and even discharge planning to aged care, becomes harder.

Adrian Cosenza, Emily Kirkpatrick 

A sleek, colourful product offers a “sweet, ripe watermelon taste” with a “cool and icy kick” that will “tease your tongue and make your whole mouth quiver with joy”.

Michelle Jongenelis, Stefan Bode, Daniel Feuerriegel

Clinical guidelines and consensus statements provide systematic aids to making complex medical decisions. These documents integrate various forms of evidence—including from scientific research, clinician experience, and patient perspectives—with the aim of improving patient care and health outcomes. In this issue of the MJA, Anneliese Synnot and colleagues report findings from their scoping review on the extent and nature of consumer engagement in the development of Australian clinical practice guidelines. Despite recommendations from major guideline bodies that the guideline development process include people with lived experience, Synnot and colleagues found that extensive lived experience engagement was not reported for the majority of guidelines that they assessed. These findings suggest the need for guideline developers and publishers to pay much closer attention to lived experience engagement in Australian guideline development.

Elizabeth Zuccula

Concerns are rising over patients’ use of AI tools such as ChatGPT for health information, but with little awareness of the risks.

Nance Haxton

The cosmetic surgery industry in Australia has undergone significant regulatory reform in recent years in direct response to horrifying media reports of appalling patient stories and devastating outcomes. Plastic surgeons have been advocating for various reforms to the industry for many years, informed by our own experiences of seeing patients who had been harmed by those with inadequate surgical training and experience.

David Morgan