Med­ical news on chil­dren keeps ar­riv­ing fast and fu­ri­ous, quite a bit faster than the traf­fic from the all-day Flug­tag street fete that stretched from Ch­agua-ra­mas to St James, with young drunk­en Trinida­di­an men drink­ing and jump­ing up in the road while giv­ing peo­ple unasked ad­vice on how to move their cars so that they could dri­ve on. De­spite three (or was it four?) deaths as­so­ci­at­ed with the event, it was so re­as­sur­ing to hear the chair­man of the Ch­aguara­mas De­vel­op­ment Au­thor­i­ty (CDA) say that there was no dis­as­ter in­side Chag, the deaths oc­curred on the way to an event spon­sored by the CDA. So dis­as­ter out­side, no dis­as­ter in­side. In Thurs­day's Guardian, some­one had the bril­liant idea to place the news about the 223 can­cer pa­tients who might have been ex­posed to too much ra­di­a­tion at the Bri­an Lara Can­cer Treat­ment Cen­tre next to a col­umn about a moth­er whose son had drowned while try­ing to reach the Red Bull Flug­tag event in­side Ch­aguara­mas and who was plan­ning to bare her breasts to the sea in a bid to re­cov­er her son's body. "If we all have to put our breasts in the wa­ter to plead with the sea to re­turn him, we would do so at 4 o'clock in the morn­ing," said the boy's sis­ter.

Four o'clock in the morn­ing? Now while I grieve for the moth­er and fam­i­ly of the drowned child and ad­mit there is a cer­tain poignan­cy, a tug­ging at the heart strings, dare I say a mag­i­cal un­cer­tain­ty at the im­age of a moth­er ex­pos­ing her breasts to the sea at 4 am, and while I cer­tain­ly am an ad­vo­cate of breast­feed­ing, the idea of a group of women some­how be­liev­ing that by ex­pos­ing their breasts the body of a loved one would be giv­en back by a body of inan­i­mate, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed wa­ter is a bit lu­di­crous. The poor at­tempts at ex­plain­ing the event in a re­li­gious con­text on­ly served to make mat­ters murki­er. How about stick­ing to some re­al-life is­sues? Like pos­si­ble over ra­di­a­tion of over 200 peo­ple and no one was told? It's bad enough if an­nu­al qual­i­ty checks were not done, es­pe­cial­ly with such a del­i­cate and pow­er­ful piece of equip­ment. It's al­most im­pos­si­ble to be­lieve that no one, in­clud­ing the Min­istry of Health, act­ed on the in­for­ma­tion for over a year? Both in­ci­dents are symp­to­matic of some of the is­sues that face us, prob­lems with the man­age­ment of high tech­nol­o­gy jux­ta­posed on­to a naïve be­lief in mag­ic.

This might just be the lo­cal ver­sion of mag­i­cal re­al­ism, de­fined as "what hap­pens when a high­ly de­tailed, re­al­is­tic set­ting is in­vad­ed by some­thing 'too strange' to be­lieve," and take your pick of which in­ci­dent is which. In this con­fused so­ci­ety of ours, your guess is as good as mine. So on to the lat­est med­ical news on chil­dren. Per­haps out­side there they might be a bit sur­er of what they are do­ing? Not re­al­ly. In the USA, the an­nu­al re­port from the Na­tion­al In­sti­tutes of Health showed that ado­les­cent births, preterm births, binge drink­ing among 17-year-olds and in­jury-re­lat­ed deaths among teenagers have de­clined com­pared with 2009 fig­ures, but a high­er pro­por­tion of eighth graders were us­ing il­lic­it drugs, and more chil­dren were liv­ing in pover­ty, up from 19 per cent in 2008 to 21 per cent in 2009. To­bac­co use, close­ly linked to ad­ver­tis­ing di­rect­ed at chil­dren, con­tin­ues to be a prob­lem: sev­en per cent of 16-year-olds and 11 per cent of 17-year-olds were re­port­ed to be dai­ly smok­ers. On the fas­ci­nat­ing so­cio-eco­nom­ic sub­ject of smok­ing ad­dic­tion, the World Health Or­gani- sa­tion said that while to­bac­co ad­ver­tise­ment reg­u­la­tions have been im­ple­ment­ed in 101 coun­tries and an­ti-smok­ing cam­paigns are al­ready af­fect­ing rough­ly 3.8 bil­lion peo­ple world­wide, to­bac­co use will cause more than eight mil­lion deaths an­nu­al­ly by 2030, "un­less ur­gent ac­tion is tak­en."

While the num­ber of peo­ple pro­tect­ed against smok­ing "is grow­ing at a re­mark­able pace," to­bac­co still ac­counts for the high­est num­ber of pre­ventable deaths world­wide. "Get 'em young and get 'em for life," an­swer the to­bac­co com­pa­nies. Not all the news was bad. Up to now most of the noise about autism, in­clud­ing the now dis­card­ed pos­si­ble re­la­tion­ship to measles, mumps and rubel­la vac­cine, re­lat­ed to chil­dren. The first known epi­demi­o­log­i­cal study of adults with autis­tic spec­trum dis­or­der (ASD) was re­port­ed in May in Archives of Gen­er­al Psy­chi­a­try and con­clud­ed that about one per cent of the adult pop­u­la­tion in Britain has ASD. That's over half a mil­lion peo­ple. ASD is a com­mon com­plex de­vel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ty that typ­i­cal­ly af­fects so­cial func­tion­ing and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. As­perg­er's syn­drome (AS) is re­gard­ed as one of the less se­vere forms of ASD. Adults with AS are of­ten re­gard­ed as smart but dif­fer­ent. They have trou­ble un­der­stand­ing so­cial cues and body lan­guage. They may have ob­ses­sive in­ter­ests and rou­tines and may talk in a mono­logue. Some may be clum­sy and sen­si­tive to cer­tain things like spe­cif­ic sounds, tex­tures and tastes. A com­mon prob­lem is not un­der­stand­ing jokes, not a good thing in T&T, so many adults with AS pre­tend and be­come good at hid­ing their mis­un­der­stand­ings. An­oth­er group wrong­ly ac­cused of poor choic­es that can now come out of the clos­et.

Good.