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Avoidable grief
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Avoidable grief Some stillbirths can be prevented - if doctors know enough to act in time, says Jop de Vrieze WHEN my son Mikki was born on 27 August last year, he made me as proud as I was sad. Mikki was born in silence. Two days earlier, my wife and I were told he had died in her womb after 34 weeks of pregnancy. At no point during those weeks did we think this might happen to us. Knowing what I now know about stillbirth, it seems our son could have had a chance. When Mikki’s movements decreased, instead of reassuring us that all was well, his condition might have been monitored and his birth induced before it was too late. In my country, the Netherlands, as in the UK and other highincome nations, stillbirth tends to be regarded as “nature’s way”, and unavoidable. About 1 in 200 babies are stillborn in most European countries – 11 per day in the UK alone. These children were thought to be too weak to survive,
and the experience considered negligible compared with the death of a child after birth. Yet it looks as if up to 50 per cent of these tragedies could be preventable. It is true that some babies die in the womb as a result of severe congenital problems. But most do not. In those cases, as with our son, a dysfunctional placenta is to blame. As a result, growth and development stagnate, which can cause premature birth or, as happened to Mikki, a fatal combination of starvation and lack of oxygen. So-called “fetal growth restriction” cannot be treated, but babies like Mikki can be saved by inducing birth, or carrying out a caesarean section. But only if their condition is diagnosed in time. So I applaud the Saving Babies’ Lives guidance launched by the National Health Service in England last month. It contains
Send in the drones? Small, self-charging drones could hold territory in war zones, says David Hambling THE choice between soldiers and technology is a key political issue. Donald Trump has insisted that the US needs ground forces in Syria, while Hillary Clinton favours a remote war. Cruise missiles were used in 1998 to strike Al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan without risking pilots. Drones got laser18 | NewScientist | 16 April 2016
guided missiles in 2001. Now air strikes can target individuals, such as Islamic State killer Mohammed Emwazi. Air power is often the only option when it is politically unacceptable to deploy soldiers – but aircraft cannot hold ground. Wars cannot be won without “boots on the ground”, say
military analysts and critics of the Allied air campaign against IS. Long term, that may change with efforts like the US air force’s Micro Munitions Program, which is developing small, lethal drones able to occupy an area and hold it. Drones like the 2.5-kilogram Switchblade used by US special forces have already proven effective against light vehicles and people. The new models will be just as deadly, but able to stay in action for weeks or months.
“Air power is often the only option when it is politically unacceptable to deploy soldiers”
Resembling the beetle and bird drones deployed in the film Eye in the Sky, which examines the moral case for drone warfare, at least two prototypes have been built. An insect-like 1.5-kilogram drone made by AetherMachines of New York perches on power lines to recharge while sending video. Its rotors turn into wheels, allowing it access to buildings. The Perching Micro Air Weapon from Design Intelligence Incorporated of Oklahoma looks like a bird, and recharges using solar cells. There is a small version for intelligence-gathering and a larger one with a warhead. Persistent drones could sit on
For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion
Jop de Vrieze is a science writer in the Netherlands
buildings or trees and keep watch indefinitely – with a better vantage point than a Predator drone hovering at 10,000 feet. Precise, miniature warheads have a better chance of striking targets without harming civilians, the central dilemma of Eye in the Sky. The technology expands the potential for intervention without foot soldiers, but it may lessen the inhibitions that can stop military action. Do we want every foreign policy issue to be settled by sending in the drones? n David Hambling is the author of Swarm Troopers: How small drones will conquer the world
INSIGHT Economics
Guy Corbishley / Alamy Stock Photo
useful and clear information on what professionals and parents can do to help prevent stillbirth, by improving their lifestyle and symptom awareness. The aim is to halve rates by 2030. Hopefully, the increased attention will break the taboo and improve dialogue about stillbirth. But this is just a start. We also need post-mortems and evaluations of cases to better understand the cause and to improve pregnancy, and birth care. We need better diagnostic methods, such as better ultrasounds scans and the use of sensitive biomarkers in maternal blood and urine, to identify abnormal pregnancies and prevent unnecessary interventions. We also need to understand what causes the placenta to malfunction and how that could be treated or prevented. To achieve this, stillbirth should become a serious research topic. Stillbirth has a huge economic, social and psychological impact. Seven months after the birth of our son, our hearts are still filled with grief. Stillbirth has way too much impact to be belittled. It is time to break the silence and do all we can to save these babies. n
–Money can’t buy you morals –
Fix capitalism to deliver a low-carbon world Fred Pearce
be. What can investors and companies do to ease the ride? Greens have always seen capitalism as a threat to the climate. For financiers, the idea that the opposite is true used to be a fringe one. But a sustainability summit entitled “Adapt or die?” in the City of London’s Banking Hall last month was packed with chief executives and people from all parts of the finance ecosystem. They were there to discuss how environmental and social sustainability
IT’S a kick to the bulls for investment markets. If we bust the 2 °C warming limit set at the Paris climate summit last year, it could wipe anything from $2.5 trillion to $24 trillion from the value of the world’s financial assets, environmental economists warned last week. That’s up to a fifth of the current global economy. Some of that financial meltdown would come as agriculture succumbs to drought, industrial zones are ripped “In Sweden, high-carbon apart by hurricanes and cities are investments produce flooded by rising sea levels. The rest less profit than low-carbon would come from oilfields and coal investments” mines becoming worthless as the world is forced to give up fossil fuels (Nature Climate Change, doi.org/bd4s). could find common cause with capitalism red in tooth and claw. This dystopian view is increasingly As an executive of one of the heard at capitalism’s coalface. For example, last year, the governor of the world’s largest insurance companies put it amid the Banking Hall’s Art Deco Bank of England, Mark Carney, told a splendour: “A four-degree world is meeting in the City of London that uninsurable.” Risk is good for insurance climate change was an “emerging mega-risk” to markets. In Paris, he said companies – but not too much risk. Capitalism’s strongest advocates we were on an inevitable “transition hold that free markets can solve all the to a net-zero world”, meaning zero world’s problems, and that government greenhouse gas emissions. The only interference is bad. Even those who issue was how bumpy the ride would
don’t accept that ideology point to the growing profitability of green technologies such as wind power. Per Bolund, Sweden’s minister for financial markets, told the summit: “Sustainability is profitable. In Sweden, we see that high-carbon investments produce less profit than low-carbon investments.” But the idea that unconstrained capitalism can curb climate change and transform our rapacious use of scarce natural resources is still pie in the sky. “We have to change market structures,” said Steve Waygood of Aviva, one of the world’s largest insurance companies. Some see tinkering with the market as sacrilege. Capitalism is a law of nature, akin to Darwinian forces of evolution, they say. That is nonsense. Markets are machines for delivering what society wants. Their main entities are “limited liability” companies, which can go bankrupt without bringing their investors down with them. There is nothing Darwinian about that. In return for that licence to fail, society can and must impose rules that make markets deliver what we need. In the 21st century, that means not trashing the planet. Markets must be re-engineered, whether through carbon pricing or outright bans on investments like new coal mines. Without that, capitalism is the problem, not the solution. Even in the Banking Hall, they agreed about that. n 16 April 2016 | NewScientist | 19
Avoidable grief Some stillbirths can be prevented - if doctors know enough to act in time, says Jop de Vrieze WHEN my son Mikki was born on 27 August last year, he made me as proud as I was sad. Mikki was born in silence. Two days earlier, my wife and I were told he had died in her womb after 34 weeks of pregnancy. At no point during those weeks did we think this might happen to us. Knowing what I now know about stillbirth, it seems our son could have had a chance. When Mikki’s movements decreased, instead of reassuring us that all was well, his condition might have been monitored and his birth induced before it was too late. In my country, the Netherlands, as in the UK and other highincome nations, stillbirth tends to be regarded as “nature’s way”, and unavoidable. About 1 in 200 babies are stillborn in most European countries – 11 per day in the UK alone. These children were thought to be too weak to survive,
and the experience considered negligible compared with the death of a child after birth. Yet it looks as if up to 50 per cent of these tragedies could be preventable. It is true that some babies die in the womb as a result of severe congenital problems. But most do not. In those cases, as with our son, a dysfunctional placenta is to blame. As a result, growth and development stagnate, which can cause premature birth or, as happened to Mikki, a fatal combination of starvation and lack of oxygen. So-called “fetal growth restriction” cannot be treated, but babies like Mikki can be saved by inducing birth, or carrying out a caesarean section. But only if their condition is diagnosed in time. So I applaud the Saving Babies’ Lives guidance launched by the National Health Service in England last month. It contains
Send in the drones? Small, self-charging drones could hold territory in war zones, says David Hambling THE choice between soldiers and technology is a key political issue. Donald Trump has insisted that the US needs ground forces in Syria, while Hillary Clinton favours a remote war. Cruise missiles were used in 1998 to strike Al-Qaida training camps in Afghanistan without risking pilots. Drones got laser18 | NewScientist | 16 April 2016
guided missiles in 2001. Now air strikes can target individuals, such as Islamic State killer Mohammed Emwazi. Air power is often the only option when it is politically unacceptable to deploy soldiers – but aircraft cannot hold ground. Wars cannot be won without “boots on the ground”, say
military analysts and critics of the Allied air campaign against IS. Long term, that may change with efforts like the US air force’s Micro Munitions Program, which is developing small, lethal drones able to occupy an area and hold it. Drones like the 2.5-kilogram Switchblade used by US special forces have already proven effective against light vehicles and people. The new models will be just as deadly, but able to stay in action for weeks or months.
“Air power is often the only option when it is politically unacceptable to deploy soldiers”
Resembling the beetle and bird drones deployed in the film Eye in the Sky, which examines the moral case for drone warfare, at least two prototypes have been built. An insect-like 1.5-kilogram drone made by AetherMachines of New York perches on power lines to recharge while sending video. Its rotors turn into wheels, allowing it access to buildings. The Perching Micro Air Weapon from Design Intelligence Incorporated of Oklahoma looks like a bird, and recharges using solar cells. There is a small version for intelligence-gathering and a larger one with a warhead. Persistent drones could sit on
For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion
Jop de Vrieze is a science writer in the Netherlands
buildings or trees and keep watch indefinitely – with a better vantage point than a Predator drone hovering at 10,000 feet. Precise, miniature warheads have a better chance of striking targets without harming civilians, the central dilemma of Eye in the Sky. The technology expands the potential for intervention without foot soldiers, but it may lessen the inhibitions that can stop military action. Do we want every foreign policy issue to be settled by sending in the drones? n David Hambling is the author of Swarm Troopers: How small drones will conquer the world
INSIGHT Economics
Guy Corbishley / Alamy Stock Photo
useful and clear information on what professionals and parents can do to help prevent stillbirth, by improving their lifestyle and symptom awareness. The aim is to halve rates by 2030. Hopefully, the increased attention will break the taboo and improve dialogue about stillbirth. But this is just a start. We also need post-mortems and evaluations of cases to better understand the cause and to improve pregnancy, and birth care. We need better diagnostic methods, such as better ultrasounds scans and the use of sensitive biomarkers in maternal blood and urine, to identify abnormal pregnancies and prevent unnecessary interventions. We also need to understand what causes the placenta to malfunction and how that could be treated or prevented. To achieve this, stillbirth should become a serious research topic. Stillbirth has a huge economic, social and psychological impact. Seven months after the birth of our son, our hearts are still filled with grief. Stillbirth has way too much impact to be belittled. It is time to break the silence and do all we can to save these babies. n
–Money can’t buy you morals –
Fix capitalism to deliver a low-carbon world Fred Pearce
be. What can investors and companies do to ease the ride? Greens have always seen capitalism as a threat to the climate. For financiers, the idea that the opposite is true used to be a fringe one. But a sustainability summit entitled “Adapt or die?” in the City of London’s Banking Hall last month was packed with chief executives and people from all parts of the finance ecosystem. They were there to discuss how environmental and social sustainability
IT’S a kick to the bulls for investment markets. If we bust the 2 °C warming limit set at the Paris climate summit last year, it could wipe anything from $2.5 trillion to $24 trillion from the value of the world’s financial assets, environmental economists warned last week. That’s up to a fifth of the current global economy. Some of that financial meltdown would come as agriculture succumbs to drought, industrial zones are ripped “In Sweden, high-carbon apart by hurricanes and cities are investments produce flooded by rising sea levels. The rest less profit than low-carbon would come from oilfields and coal investments” mines becoming worthless as the world is forced to give up fossil fuels (Nature Climate Change, doi.org/bd4s). could find common cause with capitalism red in tooth and claw. This dystopian view is increasingly As an executive of one of the heard at capitalism’s coalface. For example, last year, the governor of the world’s largest insurance companies put it amid the Banking Hall’s Art Deco Bank of England, Mark Carney, told a splendour: “A four-degree world is meeting in the City of London that uninsurable.” Risk is good for insurance climate change was an “emerging mega-risk” to markets. In Paris, he said companies – but not too much risk. Capitalism’s strongest advocates we were on an inevitable “transition hold that free markets can solve all the to a net-zero world”, meaning zero world’s problems, and that government greenhouse gas emissions. The only interference is bad. Even those who issue was how bumpy the ride would
don’t accept that ideology point to the growing profitability of green technologies such as wind power. Per Bolund, Sweden’s minister for financial markets, told the summit: “Sustainability is profitable. In Sweden, we see that high-carbon investments produce less profit than low-carbon investments.” But the idea that unconstrained capitalism can curb climate change and transform our rapacious use of scarce natural resources is still pie in the sky. “We have to change market structures,” said Steve Waygood of Aviva, one of the world’s largest insurance companies. Some see tinkering with the market as sacrilege. Capitalism is a law of nature, akin to Darwinian forces of evolution, they say. That is nonsense. Markets are machines for delivering what society wants. Their main entities are “limited liability” companies, which can go bankrupt without bringing their investors down with them. There is nothing Darwinian about that. In return for that licence to fail, society can and must impose rules that make markets deliver what we need. In the 21st century, that means not trashing the planet. Markets must be re-engineered, whether through carbon pricing or outright bans on investments like new coal mines. Without that, capitalism is the problem, not the solution. Even in the Banking Hall, they agreed about that. n 16 April 2016 | NewScientist | 19