Atoms
Shades Is there are teleological reason for the (apparently uniquely human) need to categorise, to place in a symmetrical box to which a label can be adhered? I can’t prove this, though it is patently at odds with the continuum that is (let’s call it) reality. As any statistician will tell you, if an analysis can be undertaken using continuous variables rather than the cardboard sides inherent (and often unavoidable) to categorisation, then the reward in terms of yield is paid back many times over. So, whatever your nuance of choice (pastels, greys and many more on offer) enjoy the flavours of this issue. Fear of flying In a masterpiece of myth busting, Paul Turner and Nigel Dowdall present the headlines from a systematic review prepared specifically for the Civil Aviation Authority to inform airline policy around in-flight nut exposure. There is understandable anxiety (epinephrine, endogenous)...
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Preparing for our centenary
What happened in January 1926? Scottish inventor John Logie Baird astonished members of the Royal Institution with his mechanical television system; in Germany, the Rhine flooded Cologne; and the first issue of Archives of Disease in Childhood (ADC) was published.1 At its inception, the ambitions which still hold true today, with remarkable foresight, were (1) to collate the major advances of child health scattered across many publications, (2) to provide a platform for paediatric departments to publish their observations and studies, and (3) to be a guide to transform new evidence into ‘practice for the public good’. Articles in the heady first decade, the 1920s, were dominated by observational studies, especially of rickets, infections, infant feeding and physical signs such as hypertelorism. As biochemistry analytics advanced, compositions of accessible body fluids such as urine, blood and cerebrospinal fluid were reported and nascent associations were made—no calculators, no...
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Assisted dying in the UK: please dont ignore the impact on children and young people
The Leadbeater Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, the latest UK bill on assisted dying, passed its second reading in the House of Commons in November 2024 after a short period of intense debate and extensive high-profile media coverage. However, these discussions in the UK about assisted dying have largely ignored the potential impact on babies, children and young people, now and in the future. The article ‘The Dutch Model for Regulating Paediatric Euthanasia’ by Verhagen and Lantos1 highlights why children should not be forgotten about in these debates. The age range for euthanasia in the Netherlands has widened over the years; it has been officially tolerated for adults since 1985 and for neonates since 19952 before being legalised for those aged 12 years and older in 2002. Verhagen and Lantos describe the new framework, in place since Feb 2024, that allows euthanasia for...
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Freezing hope
‘Cryonics’, describing the freezing of the freshly deceased in the hope that they may in the future be reanimated, is cryopreservation taken to its extreme. No public funding is available, although adherents may be able to raise funds to assist the process. There is a single decided English case1 related to a child undergoing this process. The reason it came to court was that the competent child’s father opposed his daughter’s wish for cryonic preservation, and the hospital sought a determination on whether it could rely on the child’s decision, and that of her mother, in these circumstances. JS was 14 with a rare cancer. Having been treated, she was now receiving palliative care, and knew that her death was imminent. JS had investigated cryonics and wished to have her soon-to-be-dead body frozen ‘... in the hope that resuscitation and a cure (for her malignancy) may be...
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