A WIDE range of technologies are now available to make firearms safer and restrict their use to authorised owners (快猫短视频, 12 July, p 8). Caroline Flint, the Home Office minister with responsibility for firearms policy, expressed great interest when I showed her the news item. However, she emphasised that regulations are far tighter in the UK than in the US.
Flint said that gun controls in the UK are designed to ensure, as far as possible, that people without a licence do not get hold of a firearm. Gun certificates are issued with the proviso that when the weapon is not in use it is locked away in a purpose-built cabinet to which only the certificate holder has access. Moreover, the certificate holder usually has to fit an alarm system to their cabinet so that an intruder can be detected before he or she gains access. In practical terms, this ensures that youngsters do not have access to a firearm. Accidents involving children and firearms in the UK are mercifully rare, Flint said.
The minister added that experts in the Home Office鈥檚 Forensic Science Service keep a careful watch on all aspects of gun development. Well, I sincerely hope so. According to the news item, Nanovia, a company based in New Hampshire, offers a pulsed ultraviolet laser system to engrave a unique code of micrometre-scale letters on a gun鈥檚 firing pinhead, breach face and inside the chamber where the bullet rests. It makes good sense to do this if it helps to trace the causes of any future gun tragedy.
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TWO researchers at the Wolfson Institute of Preventive Medicine in London have hit on a radical drug cocktail that could save millions of lives. But Nicholas Wald and Malcolm Law鈥檚 鈥減olypill鈥�, which combines five tried-and-tested drugs and a well-known vitamin, is provoking fierce criticism (快猫短视频, 5 July, p 3). The researchers conclude that their concoction, if taken by anyone aged 55 and older and everyone with existing cardiovascular disease, could largely prevent heart attacks and stroke. They claim their polypill would be safe, and with widespread use could have a greater impact on disease prevention in the western world than any other treatment.
Lord Warner, the Department of Health鈥檚 minister with responsibility for research and development, tells me that his department is evaluating the polypill. The DoH is exploring these proposals in greater depth with interested parties, including patient groups.
The polypill idea has already been the subject of fierce debate among clinicians and the drugs industry. Numerous drawbacks have been suggested, including its social desirability and likely side effects. However, it deserves a clinical trial.
