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In this essay, Richard Smith observes that being a parent, like so much else in our late-modern world, is required to become ever more efficient and effective, and is increasingly monitored by the agencies of the state, often with good reason given the many recorded instances of child abuse and cruelty. However, Smith goes on to argue, this begins to cast being a parent as a matter of "parenting," a technological deployment of skills and techniques, with the loss of older, more spontaneous and intuitive relations between parents and children. Smith examines this phenomenon further through a discussion of how it is captured to some extent in Hannah Arendt's notion of "natality" and how it is illuminated by Charles Dickens in his classic novel, Dombey and Son.

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A former BMJ editor reflects on what Margaret Thatcher’s years as prime minister meant for medicine and healthcare

The anaesthetic potencies of binary mixtures of the gases argon (Ar), nitrous oxide (N2O) and sulphur hexafluoride (SF6) have been measured using mice. The mixtures SF6-N2O and N2O-Ar showed additive behaviour, whereas the constituents of the mixture SF6-Ar were non-additive, having a smaller total potency than expected. Further experiments on this mixture with Italian Great Newts and on the carbon tetrafluoride mixtures CF4-Ar and CF4-SF6 with mice suggested that the anomalous potencies may arise from specific pulmonary effects associated with the breathing of SF6 accompanied by a high pressure of some other gas.