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Minerva

BMJ 1998; 317 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.317.7150.90 (Published 04 July 1998) Cite this as: BMJ 1998;317:90

Further evidence that febrile fits in children do no lasting damage is reported in the New England Journal of Medicine (1998;338:1723-8. A population based study of nearly 400 children showed that, at age 10, children with a history of febrile fits did just as well as the rest at a battery of intellectual and behavioural tests. The 94 children with complex or serial fits did equally well.

The BMJ gets permission in writing before publishing any material that might identify a patient, but we have no special policy on family trees (probably because we don't publish that many). We are not alone, according to a survey in JAMA (1998;279:1808-12). Most journals surveyed ignored the issue; even five genetic journals did not ask for consent before publishing pedigrees. The authors conclude that people's privacy is being ignored

The prevalence of multiple sclerosis increases sharply at the border of England and Scotland. World beating rates in Shetland and Orkney have often been blamed, but new data show that rates in Lothian and the Border regions are equally high (Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry 1998;64:730-5). The investigators speculate that Scots …

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