Medical News: Joy Kills

I am indebted to the BBC News website for tidings of the latest killer lurking in our midst - joy. It seems a moment of intense joy can trigger a potentially fatal heart condition. The list of trigger situations makes chastening reading; I particularly like the last - news of a CT scan giving the all-clear: 'Why doctor, that's such fantastic - -' [thud]. The cross-head 'More Research Needed' could be wheeled out for absolutely any medical/ scientific 'research' story (for 'research', read 'money'). But as we're only talking about a subset of those potentially at risk from a 'rare event', this is perhaps not the most obviously urgent of research projects. And there's a lot to be said for dying happy - isn't there?