A new take on doctor-patient confidentiality | Brief letters

Given that prescriptions are free to children under 16 and to those aged 16-18 in full-time education, could the government be persuaded to allow sanitary pads and tampons to be counted as an eligible prescription item? Then we could all contribute – through our taxes – to providing the funds to help girls get this most basic but important necessity (Letters, 22 March).
Jane Woddis
Birmingham

• Rather than suggesting My Ding-A-Ling was not “the real Chuck Berry” (Letters, 23 March), Mike Pender should celebrate it for what it is – Berry’s only properly British hit song for a nation brought up on innuendo under centuries of government censorship. The lord chamberlain’s rule had ended four years earlier in 1968, but an oddly shaped vegetable or a ding-a-ling still gets ’em going.
Mark Lewinski
Swaffham Prior, Cambridgeshire

• I’m a stranger to social media but even I know that Giles Fraser (Loose canon, 24 March) was a bit daft to think he could maintain a prayerful state of mind and keep up with Twitter at the same time.
Dr Brigid Purcell
Norwich

• Ian Mitchell writes that he lies to his doctor about how much he drinks (Letters, 24 March). I sometimes encounter my Hausarzt (GP) in a bar we favour, when we both quickly conceal our cigarettes under the table and pretend that the large glass of wine is our first. Any overt reference to our peccadilloes is met by him threatening a prostate examination.
Brian Smith
Berlin

• I wonder if Ian Mitchell’s GP reads the Guardian?
Tim Lidbetter
Kingston upon Thames, Surrey

• I’m pleased to assure Rev Philip Welsh that “anent” is part of my core vocabulary. I even use “aroint” occasionally, too.
Henry Malt
Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire

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