Source: The Conversation – UK – By Philip Broadbent, Wellcome Multimorbidity PhD Fellow & Public Health Registrar, University of Glasgow
By twelve votes, the Scottish parliament rejected the assisted dying for terminally ill adults bill on March 17.
The debate that preceded it was emotionally charged and, at moments, genuinely moving. MSPs spoke of parents, partners, faith and fear. Much of it turned on the contents of the bill – safeguards, eligibility criteria and conscience clauses. The structural conditions in which terminally ill people in Scotland actually make decisions received less attention, and what attention they did receive struggled to translate into demands that any future legislation must meet.
Scotland is an unequal place to live. In its most deprived communities, life expectancy has been falling since 2013; a gap of more than 13 years now separates the richest and the poorest. And the people at the bottom of that gap do not simply die younger.
A 2012 study of 1.72 million Scottish patients found that having multiple long-term conditions begins ten to 15 years earlier in the poorest communities than in the wealthiest. Among the most disadvantaged of our society, the diseases that lead to terminal illness arrive sooner, in greater number and are compounded by poverty.
Scotland is also, by the measures that matter most, a deeply unequal place to die. Around 6,400 terminally ill Scots spend their final months below the poverty line. One in five die in fuel poverty. The additional costs of dying (equipment, housing adaptations, heating, transport, care) amount to between £12,000 and £16,000 in the final year of life for many households at precisely the moment income collapses.
Simultaneously, new research finds that almost one in three people in Scotland die with unmet palliative care needs. Around 18,500 people a year. A separate 2024 Scottish government service mapping survey found that three NHS boards have no specialist palliative medicine doctor at all, that out-of-hours advice is unavailable in around half of Scotland’s health and social care partnerships and that over half of specialist palliative services depend on charitable rather than public funding.
Following the vote, former prime minister Gordon Brown described a “moral obligation” to make urgently needed improvements to end-of-life care, warning that the “postcode lottery” means high levels of hospice and community care are available in some areas but not others.
These are not footnotes to the assisted dying debate. They are its foundation.
When safeguards aren’t enough
The standard case for assisted dying rests on autonomy: people should be free to choose, provided they have mental capacity and are not being coerced. The Scottish bill included extensive safeguards: two independent doctors, reflection periods, requirements to discuss alternatives and enquiries into social conditions.
Safeguards are designed to detect individual coercion: the controlling relative, the financial pressure applied by a family member. What they cannot detect is a different kind of pressure. That of a person who requests an assisted death, not because dying is what they want, but because the system has left them nothing else they can bear.
The Equality and Human Rights Commission, which submitted evidence at every stage of the bill’s passage, put the problem precisely: “coercion or pressure is not always something applied directly by other individuals. People with disabilities may feel subtle coercion to end their lives prematurely due to attitudinal barriers as well as the lack of appropriate services and support.”
It is instructive to look at Canada, which has had legalised assisted dying since 2016. Consider Sean Tagert, a Canadian man with motor neurone disease, who chose medical assistance in dying after his local health authority refused to fund the full hours of home care his doctors said he needed. The shortfall cost £200 a day, which he could not afford. He said, explicitly, that his decision was shaped by the failure of care funding.
A female veteran with military service related mental health conditions reported being offered assisted dying when she asked for a wheelchair lift.
A woman in Ontario died after years of failing to find housing that didn’t worsen her chronic illness, four doctors wrote to the government describing their response as “unconscionable”.
In none of these cases did safeguards fail. The issue is that the safeguards were not designed to ask whether people were choosing death because every other option had been removed removed by systemic failure.
In the US, Oregon has had assisted dying since 1997. Its 27-year dataset (the longest-running of any jurisdiction) provides a further, troubling signal. The proportion of patients on government insurance – a strong proxy for lower income – has grown steadily over the law’s lifetime, reaching 77% in 2024. This is nearly double the state average.
Financial concerns stated as a reason for requesting assisted dying reached a record high that same year. Psychiatric evaluation, required in 27% of cases in 1998, now occurs in less than 1%. Oregon does not collect income data; it destroys case records annually. Patterns of inequality are difficult to find when nobody is looking for them.
I do see Scotland returning to this question (the bill failed by only twelve votes). When it does, the inequality argument must do more than determine how people vote. It must shape what is proposed.
Any future bill deserves scrutiny not just of its safeguards, but of the conditions those safeguards operate in: whether palliative care is genuinely available, whether dying people are financially supported, and whether the data exists to know, in real time, whether structural disadvantage is shaping who requests an assisted death and why.
A choice made because there is no other bearable option is not a free choice. In Scotland today, for thousands of people at the end of their lives, that is precisely the situation. The assisted dying debate has the wrong question at its centre. The right one is: what kind of dying does Scotland currently provide, and for whom?
Philip Broadbent receives funding from the Wellcome Trust Multimorbidity Doctoral Training Programme 223499/Z/21/Z
A former colonel in Syria’s Air Force Intelligence Directorate appeared in court this month in a landmark crimes against humanity case.
Salem Michel Al-Salem, 58, faces multiple charges, including murder as a crime against humanity and torture. The charges relate to his alleged participation in violent crackdowns on anti-government protests in Damascus in 2011. Al-Salem appeared at Westminster Magistrates Court in London earlier this month, where his case was sent to the Old Bailey. He has yet to enter pleas to the charges.
This case is significant, not just because of the global effects of the Syrian conflict, which caused the deaths of more than 400,000 people and displaced 13 million. It is also the first case of prosecution in the UK for crimes against humanity allegedly committed by the defendant abroad.
For 25 years, the UK has had the power to prosecute individuals for crimes against humanity under the International Criminal Court Act 2001. It does not matter where in the world the alleged crimes took place, as long as the accused is a UK national or resident.
In recent years, there has been a wave of related prosecutions in Europe and beyond. In 2022, Germany sentenced a former Syrian intelligence colonel, Anwar Raslan, to life imprisonment for crimes against humanity. Similarly,France successfully convicted three Syrian senior officials to life imprisonment. Sweden held accountable a Swedish national who joined Islamic State in Syria, sentencing her to 12 years in prison for genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. Many other countries have carried out similar investigations.
These have all been under the principle of “universal jurisdiction”. This principle is recognised in customary international law – unwritten rules that arise from established practice. It gives criminal courts in any state the power to prosecute for serious crimes under international law, regardless of where they were committed.
Universal jurisdiction applies only to the most heinous crimes recognised as such by the international community: crimes against humanity, war crimes, genocide and torture, for example. It reflects the idea that such crimes harm the international community as a whole and cannot go unpunished.
The UK’s legal framework falls slightly short of universal jurisdiction, which is why it has – until now – been absent from the list of countries prosecuting for alleged crimes against humanity in Syria. The reason for this lies in the UK’s legal framework under the International Criminal Court Act 2001.
A limited legal approach
The 2001 Act was introduced by the Tony Blair government to enable the UK to ratify the Rome Statute, the founding treaty of the International Criminal Court. It made it an offence in England and Wales for any person to commit genocide, a crime against humanity or a war crime. It applies to offences committed after 2001, in England and Wales or abroad. However, for crimes committed outside the UK, prosecution is only possible if the alleged offender is a UK national or resident.
Before 2001, these crimes were not absent from UK law. Genocide and war crimes were prohibited under the 1969 Genocide Act and the Geneva Conventions Act 1957.
However, these did not allow for prosecution if the crime was committed abroad. Additionally, no UK law specifically criminalised crimes against humanity. Even if someone had committed an act identifiable as a crime against humanity, the UK courts had no power to charge them with that specific offence.
After 2001, the UK courts could finally prosecute crimes against humanity, but only if the alleged offender is a UK national or resident. This rule does not apply if the person is travelling through the UK or staying in the UK for a short period of time. The UK chose a minimalist approach for genocide and crimes against humanity.
In the UK, full universal jurisdiction is reserved only for crimes recognised by certain international treaties, like grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, or the UN Convention against Torture. For these crimes, it does not matter where the alleged perpetrator lives.
There is a reason for this limited approach. At the time it introduced the 2001 Act, the government did not want UK courts to assume a broad role as global enforcer. From a practical perspective, prosecuting foreign nationals for offences committed abroad requires costly investigations across multiple jurisdictions.
However, it does create loopholes for potential perpetrators. First, a suspect of these crimes can freely visit the UK without fear of prosecution, as they need to be either a resident or a citizen to be prosecuted. Second, the UK has no jurisdiction to prosecute crimes committed before 2001.
Before the Al-Salem case, the International Criminal Court Act 2001 had only been used once. In 2006, seven British soldiers were charged with war crimes following the death of Iraqi civilian Baha Mousa. Corporal Donald Payne, pleaded guilty to inhumane treatment, while the other six soldiers were acquitted.
The Al-Salem trial is a landmark moment, but it appears to be an exception, rather than a turning point. A single prosecution for crimes against humanity in 25 years reflects the UK’s limited commitment to accountability for mass atrocity crimes. Survivors from Syria, Ukraine, Darfur, Myanmar and Palestine have been directly affected by the UK’s inertia.
The UK legal framework needs structural reform. The International Criminal Court Act 2001 should be amended to allow prosecution regardless of the nationality, residence status or location of the alleged perpetrator – committing to true universal jurisdiction like so many other countries.
Rossella Pulvirenti does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
An Australian tech entrepreneur has helped create what appears to be a made-to-measure cancer vaccine for his dog, Rosie, using artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT as part of the process.
The science behind this sounds intimidating – DNA sequencing, mRNA vaccines, “neoantigens” – but at its core, it is about reading the instructions inside a tumour and then writing a new set of instructions to help the immune systemsee it.
Rosie is an eight-year-old rescue Staffordshire bull terrier cross that developed aggressive mast cell cancer, a common skin cancer in dogs. She had surgery and chemotherapy, but the disease kept coming back and she ended up with large, ugly tumours on her leg.
Vets told her owner, Paul Conyngham, that she probably had only months to live. Instead of accepting that, he decided to use the tools he knew from his day job in tech – data analysis, AI and coding – and apply them to his dog’s cancer.
Decoding the tumour
The first step was to understand what made Rosie’s tumour different from her healthy cells.
Every cell in the body carries DNA – a long, chemical molecule that acts like a biological instruction manual. You can think of DNA as a very long string of letters written in a four-letter alphabet. Cancer happens when enough of those letters change, by chance or through damage, so that some cells start to grow and divide out of control.
Sequencing a tumour’s or normal cell’s DNA is essentially reading through that long string of letters and comparing it to the “normal” version to see where it has gone wrong. A lot of my own research has focusedon this. Conyngham paid a university lab to sequence the DNA from Rosie’s tumour. That produced a huge file listing the mutations – the spelling mistakes in the cancer’s instruction manual – that set her tumour apart from her healthy tissues.
On their own, those files are just data. The question is what to do with them. This is where he turned to an AI chatbot. He asked it how scientists design personalised cancer vaccines and how he might go from a list of mutations to specific targets for a vaccine for Rosie.
A cancer vaccine in this context is different from the childhood vaccines we are used to. Traditional vaccines prevent infections: you give someone a harmless version or fragment of a virus or bacterium so their immune system can “learn” to recognise it in advance. A cancer vaccine, by contrast, is usually therapeutic rather than preventive. It is given to someone who already has cancer, with the aim of training their immune system to spot markers on the cancer cells that it has previously ignored and then attack them.
This is where mRNA comes in. If DNA is the master instruction book, mRNA (messenger RNA) is more like a photocopied page that gets sent to the cell’s protein-making machinery – think of it as a short piece of code that carries a single command: “make this protein”.
Some of the COVID vaccines use mRNA: they deliver a strand of mRNA that tells our cells to make the spike protein from the coronavirus, so the immune system can practise on it. The body then breaks down the mRNA; it does not change your DNA.
When this mRNA is injected, cells take it up and briefly make those tumour-linked protein fragments. The immune system can then see these fragments and, ideally, begins to treat any cell displaying them as abnormal and dangerous. In effect, it is using mRNA to give the immune system a “most wanted” poster for that individual cancer.
With help from AI tools, Conyngham sifted through Rosie’s tumour mutations to pick out candidates that might make good neoantigens. He also used protein structure prediction software to model how some of these mutated proteins would look, trying to guess which ones would be visible to her immune system.
Crucially, he did not manufacture a vaccine in his garage. Once he had a shortlist of targets, he approached researchers at the University of New South Wales, including experts in RNA technology, who reviewed the data and designed an mRNA construct based on it. Their team turned this digital design into a physical mRNA vaccine in the lab.
It was a one-off product, made just for Rosie, encoding several of the mutations in her tumour. She then received this experimental vaccine at a veterinary research centre, with booster doses over the following months.
Reports from her vets and owner suggest that several tumours shrank markedly, her overall tumour burden fell, and her energy and behaviour improved. One resistant tumour has prompted a second round of analysis and a follow-on vaccine targeting a different set of mutations.
Promising, but not a cure
It should be noted that this is a single dog, not a controlled study, and mast cell tumours can behave unpredictably. We cannot be sure how much of Rosie’s improvement is due to the vaccine, how long it will last, or whether the same approach would help other dogs, let alone humans.
The AI did not “cure cancer” by itself. It acted as an always-available guide and assistant, but qualified scientists still had to check its work and do the hard parts in the lab.
Even so, this case is a vivid example of several ideas coming together. DNA sequencing allows you to read the specific mutations in an individual cancer. mRNA technology lets you quickly write a custom set of instructions to show those mutations to the immune system.
AI systems make the complex biology more navigable for non-experts, suggesting possible targets and explaining concepts – though their outputs still require expert scrutiny. Put those together, and something that would once have required a major pharmaceutical programme – a bespoke cancer vaccine – can now be attempted, at least experimentally, for a single animal.
For the informed public, perhaps the most important point is not that AI has magically solved cancer, but that the basic ingredients of high-end personalised medicine are becoming more accessible. A motivated dog owner can now order tumour DNA sequencing, ask an AI to help interpret it, and partner with an academic lab to turn that interpretation into an mRNA vaccine.
A significant scientific and ethical challenge ahead is to develop methods for testing such approaches properly, protect patients and animals from false hope and unsafe experiments, and determine who should have access if they prove to be effective.
Justin Stebbing does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Vincent Durac, Associate Professor, School Of Politics & International Relations, University College Dublin
One of the most notable aspects of the war in Iran so far has been the extent of Tehran’s isolation in the region. This has been exemplified not only by the widening divide between Iran and its Gulf Arab neighbours, but also by the highly variable responses to the conflict by Iran’s proxy groups.
Iran has relied on a network of proxies to protect and bolster its position in the region since the earliest days of the Islamic Republic in 1979. The most important elements in this network have been Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, Syria under the rule of the Assad family, Iran-aligned militias in Iraq and the Houthis in Yemen.
However, this network is in serious disarray as a result of various conflicts in the region since late 2023. Hamas has been devastated by the Israeli onslaught that followed the October 7 terrorist attacks in southern Israel, with a succession of its leadership killed during the conflict. This has left the group unable to play a part in the Iran war.
Hezbollah, on the other hand, entered the conflict early on. The group has launched rockets, missiles and drones at Israel since March 2 in response to the killing of the Iranian supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, in an Israeli airstrike days earlier. But Hezbollah finds itself damaged to the point it constitutes a far greater threat to Lebanese stability than it does to Israel.
Hezbollah was subjected to an Israeli military campaign after attacking Israel following the start of the war in Gaza. Its political and military leadership were targeted, culminating in the assassination of the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah, in 2024. Hezbollah’s capacity to launch missiles into Israel was also degraded.
The resumption of Hezbollah’s attacks on Israel now poses a very significant threat to Lebanon on political and humanitarian levels, while being largely ineffective in Israel to date. Lebanon’s health ministry says Israeli attacks have killed 968 people since March 2. No deaths have been reported in Israel, though two Israeli soldiers were killed in a Hezbollah ambush in southern Lebanon.
The Lebanese president, Joseph Aoun, announced on March 2 that Hezbollah’s actions were unlawful. He also demanded that the group hand over its weapons, and spoke of Lebanon’s willingness to engage in formal negotiations with Israel to avoid the Israeli military imposing new security arrangements on the country.
But the current conflict has exposed the Lebanese state’s limited capacity to control events in its own territory. Meanwhile, Israel has announced plans for an expanded ground campaign in southern Lebanon, fuelling fears of an extended occupation and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people.
Like Hezbollah, Iran-aligned militias in Iraq joined the conflict soon after the US and Israeli assault on Iran began. They have targeted Israel, as well as US military bases in Jordan and Iraq, with drones and missiles. Iranian Kurdish groups in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq have also been attacked following reports that the US might arm them to fight the regime in Tehran.
In response, Iraqi militias have been targeted by US and Israeli airstrikes. As in Lebanon, a weak central government in Iraq is struggling to maintain a balance between domestic and external forces. Elections in November 2025 saw a coalition of Shia parties emerge as the largest bloc in the Iraqi parliament.
However, their nominee for prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has been rejected by the US. This is due to the widely-held perception that he stoked sectarian tensions when he was last in office from 2006 to 2014 and is too close to the regime in Tehran.
In the meantime, the caretaker government is struggling to contain the influence of pro-Iran militias while the war devastates Iraq’s oil sector. The Iraqi economy is heavily dependent on the sale of hydrocarbons, with oil revenues accounting for roughly 90% of government revenue. Oil production has reduced sharply since the start of the conflict.
Houthis in Yemen
The final Iranian ally of substance in the region, the Houthis, have been conspicuous by their absence from the fray. When the war in Gaza broke out in October 2023, the Houthis mounted a series of attacks on shipping in the Red Sea. The group also targeted Israel with long-range missile strikes, which were largely ineffective.
The outbreak of the current war with Iran has led to protests and declarations of condemnation in Yemen, with Houthi leadership warning on March 5 that their “fingers are on the trigger”. But, so far, this has not been followed with concrete action. There are a number of possible explanations for this apparent reluctance to offer support to the regime in Tehran.
Analysts such as Nadwa al-Dawsari of the US-based Middle East Institute have suggested that Iran may be holding any intervention by the Houthis in reserve. She argues that Tehran may be doing so on the basis that longer-range missile and drone attacks against the Gulf states and Israel will prove more effective later in the conflict.
But it is also possible that Houthi leadership are fearful of the impact of US and Israeli retaliation should they become directly involved in the conflict. Previously, in August 2025, Israeli attacks killed at least 12 senior members of the Houthi leadership ranks. This included Ahmed al-Rahawi, the prime minister of the Houthi-controlled government in the Yemeni capital of Sana’a.
However, whether the Houthi leadership has the capacity to withstand Iranian pressure to enter the conflict is doubtful. So they may ultimately be dragged in, if somewhat reluctantly.
Vincent Durac does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Farooq Sher, Senior Lecturer, Department of Engineering, School of Science and Technology, Nottingham Trent University
When people talk about tackling climate change, the images are often solar panels, wind turbines and electric cars. But the bigger question is whether economies can grow without releasing more carbon. This hinges on “decoupling” – the idea that economic growth can be separated from greenhouse gas emissions.
At first glance, that sounds almost magical. How can a country expand without using more energy or producing more emissions? Yet decoupling is already happening. According to analysis from a thinktank called the Energy & Climate Intelligence Unit, economies responsible for roughly 92% of global GDP now show some form of decoupling. This means that emissions either rise more slowly than output or fall while GDP grows. So the historical link between growth and emissions can be weakened.
This is not abstract theory. In the UK, greenhouse gas emissions were around 54% lower in 2024 than in 1990 while the economy expanded. Falling emissions alongside rising GDP show that growth no longer always equals more pollution and that net zero targets could be achieved without forcing economic stagnation.
However, there is a distinction to make. This distinction is between relative decoupling and absolute decoupling. Relative decoupling is when growth slows relative to economic growth. Absolute decoupling, which is required to achieve net zero, is a reduction in emissions while economic growth increases. This is the only decoupling that can help achieve climate targets.
Earth systems scientist Mark Maslin explain the concept of net zero.
One way decoupling can occur is through a transformation in the energy sector. This is necessary to move towards renewable electricity sources. This is because there has been an increase in the use of clean energy sources relative to fossil fuels in some countries. However, this is not enough, as there is a need to make better use of clean energy through an improved grid system to avoid energy waste.
Energy efficiency is another major component. Across transport, buildings and industry, measures such as better insulation, efficient equipment and smarter process control can cut energy use for the same output. According to the International Energy Agency, energy intensity (the energy needed per unit of economic output) needs sustained declines of about 4% per year this decade to meet net zero goals. This shows that significant efficiency gains remain achievable.
Another important factor is technological innovation. For example, clean hydrogen, carbon capture, smart grids, and the electrification of transport can help an economy grow while emissions fall. However, it is only possible if it is integrated into the entire system, rather than being seen as a separate technology. It is similar to traffic flow. For example, building more roads is not a solution if traffic is a problem. Similarly, deploying renewables is not a solution if the entire energy system is not seen as a single system.
Zooming out and focusing in
Decoupling is not automatic. For example, sectors such as aviation, cement, steel, chemicals, electricity and heat are among the most carbon-intensive parts of industrial manufacturing. These are widely considered “hard-to-abate” sectors, as their emissions remain closely tied to high-temperature processes and fossil fuel use.
Even in easier-to-abate sectors, such as electricity generation and road transport, there can be a rebound effect. This means that efficiency gains or lower energy costs lead to increased overall demand. To overcome these challenges, it is critical to focus on the performance of the entire system.
The good news is that decoupling is becoming increasingly visible. There is evidence of this across many economies, including the UK, US, Germany and France, where emissions have declined while GDP has continued to grow. In the UK, emissions have fallen while GDP has grown. This indicates that growth and climate protection need not be in conflict, and that good engineering and system design can support both.
Decoupling economic growth from reliance on fossil fuels is a major undertaking but must become the norm. Quality Stock Arts/Shutterstock
To deliver net zero by 2050, absolute decoupling must become the norm. This means going beyond renewable targets and considering system design, infrastructure, flexibility, efficiency and integration across energy, transport and industry.
Combined with policy and investment approaches that reward lower carbon intensity, these strategies could substantially cut cumulative emissions. For example, if global energy intensity improves by around 4% per year through 2035 (meaning economies use less energy to produce the same level of output, such as through better building insulation, more efficient industrial equipment and electrification of transport) billions of tonnes of CO₂ could be avoided while GDP continues to grow.
Similarly, if countries achieve reductions comparable to the UK’s 54% cut in emissions since 1990 – which was driven largely by phasing out coal in power generation, expanding renewables, improving energy efficiency and shifting towards lower-carbon fuels – net zero pathways could become far more feasible. This makes decoupling a practical roadmap for the green transition.
Farooq Sher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Millions of people have a heart rhythm disorder called atrial fibrillation, which causes the heart’s upper chambers or atria to beat chaotically rather than in a smooth, coordinated rhythm. For many, the symptoms can be mild with palpitations, fatigue or breathlessness, but the greatest danger is something far more serious – a stroke.
Tucked inside the heart is a tiny pouch called the left atrial appendage. When the heart beats erratically, blood can pool and sit still in this pouch instead of flowing normally – and still blood tends to clot. If one of those clots breaks free and travels to the brain, it can block bloodflow and cause a stroke. Atrial fibrillation makes you about five times more likely to have a stroke. The question for researchers, then, has been whether that pouch could simply be taken out of the equation.
Researchers recently revealed one possible answer – a new technique, so far tested only in animals, in which a magnetically guided liquid is injected into the heart, hardening to permanently seal the pouch from the inside. Early tests in rats and pigs suggest that this method could one day lower the risk of stroke in people with atrial fibrillation.
Current treatments are effective but imperfect. Today, most patients are prescribed blood-thinning drugs, such as anticoagulants. These drugs reduce the ability of blood to clot and significantly lower the risk of having a stroke.
However, anticoagulants come with trade-offs. They increase bleeding risk, which can be dangerous for some patients – particularly older adults or those with other medical conditions such as stomach ulcers, hypertension, liver or kidney disease and cancer. Some people cannot tolerate them or must stop treatment because of bleeding complications.
Another option is a procedure called left atrial appendage occlusion, in which doctors implant a small device to plug the appendage. The most widely known devices are delivered using a catheter and expand like a small metal umbrella to seal the opening.
These devices can be effective, but they are not perfect. Because the appendage varies widely in shape and size between patients, rigid implants may not always create a complete seal. Sometimes a little blood can leak around the edges, and small clots can form on the surface of the device. The parts that hold the device in place can also damage the heart tissue.
The newly reported approach takes a radically different path. Instead of inserting a rigid implant, researchers inject a magnetically responsive liquid, sometimes called a magnetofluid, directly into the left atrial appendage through a catheter.
Once inside the cavity, an external magnetic field helps guide and hold the fluid in place, so it fills the entire appendage, even against the force of circulating blood. Within minutes, the liquid reacts with water in the blood and transforms into a soft “magnetogel” that seals off the cavity.
Because the material begins as a liquid, it can adapt precisely to the highly irregular shape of each patient’s left atrial appendage. In theory, this allows it to create a more complete seal than conventional rigid devices. The gel also appears capable of integrating with the heart’s inner lining, forming a smooth surface that may reduce the chance of a clot forming.
Encouraging early results
So far, the technique has only been tested in animals. Researchers first evaluated the concept in rats and then progressed to experiments in pigs, an important milestone in cardiovascular research.
In the pig study, the magnetogel remained stable inside the appendage for 10 months with no evidence of a clot or leakage. The heart’s inner lining grew over the surface of the gel, creating a continuous, apparently healthy layer.
When compared with conventional metal occlusion devices in pigs, the magnetogel produced a smoother lining and avoided the tissue damage associated with anchoring barbs. Equally important, the researchers did not observe harmful biological effects in the animals.
Pigs are widely used in cardiovascular research because their hearts closely resemble human hearts, being similar in size, structure and function. Showing that the magnetofluid works safely in a pig heart therefore provides a valuable proof-of-concept. But it does not yet guarantee that the technology will be safe or effective in people.
Despite the promising results, the technique remains firmly in the experimental stage. Before human trials can begin, researchers must demonstrate long-term safety, refine how the material is delivered and ensure it behaves predictably in larger animal studies.
There are also some practical problems to fix. For example, the magnetic material can affect MRI heart scans, making parts of the heart harder to see. Problems like this need to be solved before it can be used in patients. Also, medical devices have to go through a lot of testing, so it will probably take many years before it can be used in real treatments.
If the technology ultimately proves safe and effective in humans, it could offer a new way to protect people with atrial fibrillation from stroke. A catheter-delivered liquid seal might provide an alternative for patients who cannot tolerate anticoagulant drugs and could overcome some of the limitations of existing occlusion devices.
Given that atrial fibrillation affects tens of millions of people worldwide, even modest improvements in stroke prevention could have a substantial impact on global health.
For now, the magnetic gel remains a laboratory innovation rather than a clinical therapy. But it highlights how advances in materials science and biomedical engineering are opening new possibilities for tackling one of cardiology’s most persistent challenges.
David C. Gaze does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Sinan Aşçı, Postdoctoral Researcher at the Anti-Bullying Centre, Dublin City University
The Irish government has signalled that it is exploring options to introduce age restrictions on social media use for under-16s. The proposal sits within the government’s new National Digital and AI Strategy 2030, which frames online safety and age verification as part of Ireland’s broader ambition to act as a European digital regulatory hub.
The proposals include a “digital wallet” age-verification system. Detailed technical specifications have not yet been published. However, digital identity wallet models typically work by allowing a user to verify their age once through a trusted authority. After that, they can share only a simple confirmation – such as whether they are over 16 – rather than handing over full identity documents. The government has not set out the final architecture, but the stated aim is to reduce repeated data sharing with individual platforms.
Ireland is not alone in looking at age restrictions. Australia introduced a statutory ban, and other European countries are considering stricter access rules. But Ireland’s position is distinctive. It hosts the European headquarters of many major technology companies. It also plays a central role in EU enforcement of the Digital Services Act, which requires very large platforms to assess and mitigate systemic risks to minors.
The debate is not simply whether social media is good or bad for children. Blanket restrictions for under-16s raise an important question: are bans the most effective way to reduce harm? Or do they offer reassurance while leaving deeper problems – such as platform design – unchanged?
The Irish context
Ireland’s situation is significant because structural regulatory tools already exist at European level. Under the EU Digital Services Act, very large platforms must conduct systemic risk assessments, including risks to minors, and implement mitigation measures. Ireland plays a key role in this through Coimisiún na Meán, the country’s statutory media and online safety regulator.
Established under the Online Safety and Media Regulation Act 2022, the regulator has powers to oversee video-sharing platforms, develop binding online safety codes and investigative non-compliance by the technology companies based in Ireland. This includes in relation to the EU Digital Services Act in Ireland. This raises the question of whether new access restrictions are set to be introduced before these structural obligations are fully deployed.
Ireland’s proposed digital wallet pilot also intersects with EU plans for a European Digital Identity framework. The EU’s forthcoming European Digital Identity Wallet is intended to support digital proof of certain facts about a person, such as their age. No specific design for any Irish pilot has been produced. However, alignment with EU interoperability standards would be required if it is to integrate into the wider European system.
Evidence driving the debate
Ireland’s proposed ban is framed primarily in child-protection terms. These include concerns about youth mental health pressures, exposure to harmful or age-inappropriate material, and risks such as online grooming and exploitation. These concerns are not unfounded.
A 2020 review of research studies found associations between heavy social media use and anxiety or depressive symptoms. However, large-scale analyses suggest that average effects on wellbeing are small and highly variable. They can differ significantly depending on context and individual vulnerability. Risks exist, but they are not uniform.
Exposure to harmful content, including self-harm material, misogynistic narratives, or extremist content, is often shaped by how platforms recommend and amplify posts. Research from my colleagues in the DCU Anti-Bullying Centre shows how recommender systems can contribute to the circulation of toxic content.
Social media platforms are not neutral spaces. Their business models rely on maximising engagement and attention. Recommender systems prioritise emotionally charged material, and feedback mechanisms reward visibility and interaction.
These systems operate regardless of age. If a 17-year-old and a 15-year-old encounter harmful amplified content, the risk doesn’t go away for one user just because they’re over 16.
Age restrictions may form part of a broader safeguarding approach. However, on their own, they do not address recommender systems, addictive design features or the amplification of harmful material.
Risk and opportunity
At the same time, research consistently shows that risk and opportunity are intertwined. Children who are more active online may encounter greater exposure to harm. On the other hand, they may also gain more social connection and access to information. That complexity matters when designing policies intended to reduce harm without undermining participation.
Research on children’s own experiences suggests that many see social media as a normal part of their lives and use in-app safety tools to manage risks. Many also say they prefer safer platform design and clearer accountability rather than outright bans.
Children’s rights bodies in Ireland have similarly emphasised the need to balance protection with participation. They also point out that children’s views should be considered in the development of any pilot measures.
Ireland’s proposal reflects a broader shift away from relying solely on platform self-regulation. However, the key question is whether systems that amplify harmful content and reward attention can be effectively governed.
Ireland’s Digital and AI Strategy 2030 positions the country as both a host to global platforms and a digital regulatory leader. That dual role gives particular weight to how these measures are designed and enforced. Ultimately, the effectiveness of Ireland’s approach will depend not only on age thresholds, but on how robustly structural risk obligations are implemented.
Sinan Aşçı is employed as a postdoctoral researcher by DCU Anti-Bullying Centre on the Observatory project funded by the Department of Justice.
Source: The Conversation – UK – By Francesca Lessa, Associate Professor in International Relations of the Americas, UCL
Nearly 50 years have passed since Argentina’s former president Isabel Martínez de Perón was overthrown by a civic-military coup on March 24, 1976. A military dictatorship led by Jorge Videla, Emilio Massera and Orlando Agosti seized control of the country.
There had been five previous coups in Argentina between 1930 and 1966. But the regime that came to power in 1976, calling itself the “process of national reorganisation”, stood out for its systematic campaign of political violence and terror until the end of its rule in 1983.
The dictatorship violently dismantled political parties, trade unions, social and student movements and guerrilla opposition groups. Censorship was also widespread. The military controlled the media, supervised universities and persecuted thousands of intellectuals and artists or forced them into exile.
The extent of the atrocities committed under the dictatorship remains debated. The National Commission on the Disappearance of Persons (Conadep) documented 8,961 victims, who are known as the desaparecidos, while human rights organisations put this figure closer to 30,000.
Around 250,000 people were forced into exile to escape the dictatorship and roughly 500 children, abducted alongside their parents or born in detention, were illegally adopted and had their identities changed.
After transitioning back to democracy, Argentina transformed into a pioneer of accountability. In 1983, the newly inaugurated president, Raúl Alfonsín, created the Conadep and ordered the prosecution of nine military commanders for the crimes of murder, unlawful deprivation of freedom and torture committed between March 1976 and June 1982.
The Conadep became the first truth commission in the world to complete a final, publicly available report in 1984. And the following year, five of the nine military commanders on trial (including Videla and Massera) were convicted. Argentina’s supreme court confirmed this verdict in 1986, officially acknowledging that systematic political repression had unfolded throughout the country.
However, progress soon slowed. Rising tensions within the armed forces led to the parliamentary sanctioning of a “full stop law” in 1986. This effectively halted investigations into atrocities committed by members of the security forces. The full stop law was followed by a “due obedience law” in 1987, which granted immunity to military personnel for crimes committed during the dictatorship. Two rounds of presidential pardons occurred in 1989 and 1990.
Survivors, their relatives, human rights groups and lawyers maintained their demands for accountability throughout this period. These efforts culminated in a 2005 supreme court decision that invalidated the impunity laws and reopened criminal trials for past atrocities.
Since then, 361 verdicts have been issued. Over 1,200 people have been convicted for their crimes, including Videla over the theft of babies from political prisoners. Almost 1,000 people are still under investigation. Argentina became a global leader in what has become known as the “justice cascade”, the worldwide shift towards increased accountability for past human rights abuses.
Progress under threat
After becoming Argentina’s president in 2023, Javier Milei has taken steps to dismantle the country’s human rights policy. He has simultaneously launched a strong and vicious smear campaign against the victims of the dictatorship and their relatives, as well as human rights groups.
Since entering office, the Milei administration has downgraded Argentina’s National Secretariat for Human Rights to a sub-secretariat. This change in status means the secretariat now has fewer powers and resources, and has lost nearly 60% of its staff. It no longer participates actively in trials, witness support has been reduced and the recording of hearings has been halted.
Under Milei, there has also been a high rate of home detention sentences or acquittals. In 2025, 84% of those currently detained in Argentina for crimes against humanity committed under the dictatorship (425 out of 504 people) were being held under house arrest. And 51 of the 60 people whose cases were decided that year were acquitted.
Meanwhile, the ministry of defence has dismantled the team responsible for surveying the archives of the armed forces. This team had played a fundamental role in identifying those responsible for “death flights”, where drugged prisoners were thrown from aircraft into the Atlantic Ocean. Similar teams working across other ministries have likewise been dissolved.
And in January 2025 the navy was authorised to destroy documents that are held in its general archive. Some of these documents could contain information regarding crimes committed during the dictatorship. Federal judge Alicia Vence has since ordered the navy to preserve documents that could serve as evidence of dictatorship crimes.
The return of military officials to key decision‑making roles in defence and security is another notable setback. Argentina had implemented substantial reforms to promote democratic civilian control of the armed forces and reduce the military’s political involvement. But in 2025, army chief Alberto Presti was appointed as defence minister, making him the first active-duty officer to assume the role since 1983.
Argentina has suffered setbacks in its human rights policy before. The administration of Mauricio Macri, which governed between 2015 and 2019, had introduced a similar pattern of defunding key policies combined with denialist discourses from government officials. But Milei’s actions display a different speed and depth compared with his predecessors.
Together with the prospect that Milei may sign a presidential pardon for military officers convicted of crimes against humanity on the eve of the anniversary, these developments raise concerns about the future of memory, truth and justice in Argentina.
What happens next will show whether this moment represents a temporary interruption or the beginning of a new chapter in Argentina’s struggle to safeguard the achievements secured over four decades of democracy.
Francesca Lessa’s projects “Operation Condor” and “Plancondor.org” received funding from University College London, the University of Oxford John Fell Fund, The British Academy/Leverhulme Trust, the University of Oxford ESRC Impact Acceleration Account, the European Commission under Horizon 2020, and the Open Society Foundations. Lessa is also the Honorary President of the Observatorio Luz Ibarburu, a network of human rights NGOs in Uruguay, as well as the principal researcher and the coordinator of the Plancondor.org collaborative project.
Lorena Balardini does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
I thought when someone was bereaved it was the first couple of months and then everything was okay again. I was so naive. It is so different.
When I met Ella, it had been ten years since her father had died by suicide. She was 17 at the time, repeating important school exams. Although her parents had separated when she was young and contact with her father had been limited, they had started rebuilding their relationship.
She described that period as a happy one: her father was making more effort, both parents had new partners, and things felt “in a good place”. Then he died.
The aftermath was not contained to the weeks after the funeral. Ella missed half a school year as she struggled with the shock and strain of bereavement.
A decade later, she spoke to me about her grief in metaphors, as something ongoing rather than completed, a process that had shifted shape over time but had not ended.
Ella’s experience is not unusual.
Emily was 12 when her father died suddenly. She was present when it happened. Growing up in the Republic of Ireland in a family of five, she returned to school carrying not only the shock of his death but a growing sense that her grief was somehow too much.
“I just started hiding it because I thought that that was the right thing to do,” she told me, 42 years later.
What stayed with Emily was not only the grief itself, but the feeling that her sadness had been somehow inappropriate.
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Ella and Emily’s stories were part of a research project which involved in-depth, in-person interviews with 13 adults in Ireland who had lost a parent or sibling while in primary or secondary school.
I heard versions of their stories again and again.
Years, and in some cases decades, after the deaths participants were still grappling not only with grief, but with the fear that they had not grieved “properly”. Ella even told me:
I thought I was doing it wrong. Like I’d skipped a stage or something. Everyone else seemed to be moving on, and I just felt stuck. I kept thinking, ‘Is there something wrong with me?’
The people I spoke to were worried they were falling behind an invisible emotional timetable. That they had missed a “stage”. That they had failed to arrive at the elusive destination of “acceptance”.
Beneath these anxieties lies a powerful cultural story: that grief follows a recognisable path and, in time, comes to an end.
Yet for many of the people I spoke with, no matter how many years had passed, grief did not end.
It certainly changed, it sometimes resurfaced or intensified, particularly at unexpected moments (exams, milestones, becoming a parent themselves). But it did not disappear. The problem for many people I spoke with was not the enduring grief – it was the expectation that it should have finished.
Silence from fear
I have been thinking about grief in both a personal and professional capacity for the last 20 years. It began in 2006, after an experience early in my teaching career that, in hindsight, changed the direction of my thinking entirely. I realised then that many children come to school carrying far more than the bags on their backs.
It was a bright May morning in 2006 when I began a substitute teaching position in a primary school in Ireland, teaching a class of eight-year-olds. That morning, the principal took me aside to let me know that one pupil would be returning after the death of her mother by suicide. I remember the principal saying: “Good luck, I know you will be great.” How could she know I would be great at handling this situation? I certainly didn’t feel like I would be great.
I stood in the classroom, lesson plans in hand, heart in my throat, with no training, no manual, and no idea what to do. I saw the child immediately, her small shoulders hunched, her eyes averted. I never said anything to her about the death that day. I honestly did not know what to say and I was afraid that I would make things worse.
Instead, I tried to be extra kind. I smiled more at her. I offered extra academic help. I also overlooked behaviour I would normally address in the classroom. I now know that this can make things worse (if peers see a student getting preferential or special treatment).
My silence, though well-intentioned, came from fear. And in hindsight, it came at a cost because I look back now and feel like I did not do all that I could have to support this young girl.
As the author C.S. Lewis wrote after the death of his wife: “No one ever told me that grief felt so like fear.” Faced with someone else’s grief, our uncertainty can often turn into silence. We wait and we avoid. We hope grief will run its course and that the person will eventually be “over it”.
This experience stayed with me long after I had left that school. It prompted questions that would become the foundation of my academic journey: why are we not taught how to support grieving children? Why is death, one of the most significant human experiences, absent from so many parts of our lives?
Research shows that grief is different for everyone and doesn’t follow a simple path. Shutterstock/Madiwaso
Two years later, when given the opportunity to complete an undergraduate dissertation, I chose to explore childhood bereavement and the role of the teacher. That early project led to several years of classroom teaching and, eventually, to my research exploring childhood bereavement in Irish primary and secondary schools.
I kept returning to the same unanswered questions about grief that I was encountering in everyday school life. What I began to realise is that grief is everywhere in our schools and in our lives – and yet it is largely invisible.
Why we expect grief to end
If we want to understand why we expect grief to end, we need to look beyond psychology textbooks and towards history, culture, and the stories we keep telling ourselves.
Our ideas about “normal” grief are deeply shaped by the world we have inherited. When psychology was emerging as a discipline in the late 19th century, it promised order and understanding in a world that had become profoundly unstable.
It is no coincidence then that many of our dominant grief models took shape in this moment. If we look back to Victorian Britain and Ireland, we can see that death was very much visible and part of everyday life. Mourning was public, it was prolonged, and it was socially recognised. Black clothing signalled to everyone that you had experienced a death. Memorial jewellery held hair or photographs of the dead. It was not uncommon to pose the dead and take photographs of them.
Grief had a shared language, but most importantly, it had a permitted place in public life. People were not expected to hide their sorrow or to rush through it to the finish line. But that visibility did not survive the 20th century.
When two world wars arrived, they brought death and grief with them on an unprecedented scale.
A sea of poppies: Art installation, entitled Blood Swept Lands and Seas of Red at Tower of London in 2014 which features 888,246 ceramic poppies, each represents a British WW1 military war dead. Shutterstock/BBA Photography
It was not surprising then, that the response to this experience was that the pain of grief had to be contained. In some cases, public mourning was often replaced by stoicism, and silence.
In this context, grief came to be managed rather than expressed, echoing stoic traditions that view excessive sorrow as disruptive to one’s responsibilities. Such restraint has been defended in philosophical and religious ethics as promoting gratitude and has been known to provide comfort to some experiencing grief. But it does not provide a universal model for responding to grief.
Cross-cultural bereavement research shows significant variations in how emotions are displayed and supported publicly, suggesting that stoic containment of grief reflects a cultural model, rather than an inevitable response to grief.
So, it was not surprising to me that some people I spoke to mentioned wanting to hide their grief.
Caoimhe, for example, grew up in the Republic of Ireland in a family of five which included her parents and two brothers. Caoimhe’s father died when she was nine after being ill for four years. Caoimhe was in primary school at the time of the death. When I met her, it had been 41 years since her father’s death.
She said she felt that, even now, she has not dealt with her grief because her family did not acknowledge her father’s death and spoke about him in a way that made her feel that he was still alive and this made her feel like she had to suppress it:
I was very much aware that I did not want to cause grief for my mother so I think I did withdraw a little bit. I did pull away from friends and spend a lot of time in my room just thinking and wanting to be on my own.
Emily too talked about how when she returned to boarding school, she felt like she had to hide her grief:
It wasn’t something that I was encouraged to talk about, I learnt very quickly when I came back that none of the nuns and none of the adults were going to engage with me at any level, so even as a child I realised this is how everyone deals with this and just get on with it.
Grief framed as ‘work’ and ‘stages’
In his seminal 1917 essay Mourning and Melancholia, Sigmund Freud suggested that healthy grieving required detachment from the deceased. The bereaved, he argued, must gradually withdraw emotional energy from the person who has died so that life could continue.
Grief was framed as work: something difficult, but purposeful, with a clear endpoint. Later, Erich Lindemann’s research with survivors of mass tragedy reinforced the idea that grief followed recognisable patterns and could be managed through “grief work”.
These ideas found their most enduring cultural expression in Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’s five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Although originally developed in her work with people facing a terminal diagnosis, the model was quickly adopted as a universal roadmap for bereavement. It was comforting because it reassured us that grief would unfold in order and it would, eventually, end.
It became prominent in popular culture: we see in an episode of The Simpsons (Season 4, Episode 16), as Homer’s enforced abstinence from beer results in behaviour that mirrors the stages of grief – a pattern Lisa recognises and explicitly identifies as the five-stage model. Even Bridget Jones is not immune. In Mad About the Boy, Bridget’s friends gather around a wine bar table and gently inform her that she is nearing the “final stage”: acceptance. The moment is played lightly, but the message is clear – grief is something you progress through and there is an end-stage.
The five so-called ‘stages’ of grief: shock and denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Shutterstock/Madua
It is easy to roll your eyes at scenes like this, but their appeal runs deep. In moments of profound powerlessness, stage models give us a sense of control. They offer a map when we feel lost, and the promise of an ending when the pain of grief feels endless. Wouldn’t it be comforting if grief really did come with a calendar? A final checkpoint. Roll the credits. Life resumes.
The problem is not that these models were created, but that they became expectations. When grief returns, lingers, or refuses to soften, people often turn the discomfort inward.
Let’s go back to Ella who thought, “when someone was bereaved it was the first couple of months and then everything was okay again.”
The harm lies not in grieving deeply, but in believing that continuing to feel a connection or a bond with the deceased is in itself, a failure.
It is against this backdrop of silence, stoicism, and stage-based thinking that more contemporary grief theories began to emerge post-1990. It is important to remember that they did not emerge in order to deny the pain of death, but to offer language for many people who described their grief in different ways – such as holding on.
Why ‘letting go’ isn’t the point
By the 1990s, grief researchers had begun to ask themselves a different question. What if the problem was not that people were failing to “let go”, but that our theories had actually misunderstood what grieving really feels like?
Out of this shift came the idea of “continuing bonds”, developed by psychology researchers Dennis Klass, Phyllis Silverman and psychiatrist Steven Nickman.
Their work named something many bereaved people already knew intuitively: relationships do not simply end when someone dies. Instead, they change. People carry the dead forward through memory, ritual, internal conversation, and the quiet ways they shape their lives around the death.
For others, the bond continues in more private ways, kept hidden not because it is unhealthy, but because grief itself can feel like something you are meant to hide away.
Mia grew up in the Republic of Ireland in a family of five which included her parents and two older brothers. When Mia was 14, her 22-year-old brother died in an accident. Mia’s other brother was 26 at the time and was suffering from mental health problems. Mia felt as if, in some ways, she was suffering a double bereavement for both her brothers.
The overarching emotion that emerged from Mia’s interview was that of anger: anger towards her parents and school for their lack of support during this difficult period. Mia felt that as a result of trying to cope at home, she began to struggle with her mental health: “I became quite depressed … I suppose I hid it very well.”
This oscillation between appearing “okay” and feeling overwhelmed is captured in the dual process model of grief, developed by bereavement researchers Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut. Rather than progressing neatly from loss to recovery, the model suggests that people move back and forth between confronting their grief and setting it aside in order to function.
This is a mode which chimes with another of my interviewees. Sophie grew up in southern Ireland in a family of five which included her parents, and her older brother and sister. She experienced four bereavements between the age of eight and 14. When Sophie was eight her grandmother died, when she was nine her cousin, whom she was very close to, died suddenly. Following this, Sophie’s grandfather died when she was 13 and the following year, when Sophie was 14, her brother died in an accident when he was only 22.
Sophie was in secondary school when the death occurred. She felt that the death of her brother had the most impact on her and recognised that her three previous experiences of death may have prepared her for it in some way. It had been 14 years since the death of her brother when I met her. Sophie discussed her experience without getting emotional. She felt that her family coped well with the death as she received a lot of familial support, particularly from her father who was instrumental in seeking support from Barretstown, a bereavement support service in Ireland. She recognised that her grief is still there, but comes in waves during different stages of her life:
The first six months I had insomnia … I couldn’t sleep and that kind of improved after the first six months and I got back into a routine but I remember being triggered off at certain points … I went through a period where I was getting very upset that he wasn’t around. It subsided and then it was triggered off you know birthdays and stuff or transitions … I think then going to college was particularly a big one because transitioning into adult … being in the place and stage that he was when he died.
The story we tell ourselves
So grief does not disappear. It ebbs and flows, often resurfacing unexpectedly, long after others assume it should have settled.
Psychologist Robert Neimeyer argues that bereavement does not just remove a person from our lives; it shatters our assumptions about how the world works because the future we imagined for ourselves is suddenly gone.
This idea was mentioned by many women who took part in my research who had lost a father. They mentioned, unprompted, that they wondered who would walk them down the aisle when they got married. The future story they had told themselves about how their life would unfold was ripped out and needed to be rewritten. The sense that life is predictable or fair is disrupted.
Earlier, theorist Colin Murray Parkes described this as the loss of an “assumptive world” and for many people, grief becomes the slow, uneven work of trying to rebuild a narrative that can hold what has happened. Ella, in my study captured that feeling of rupture when she said:
A person full of insecurities, full of sadness; I know that the world isn’t this silly dreamy place that it might have been before … you have to look after yourself a lot more.
This is why grief so often returns at moments of transition: birthdays, exams, weddings, or becoming a parent. It is not that we have not moved on; it is that the story keeps changing.
This helps explain what the singer Bob Geldof described in his reflections on death that grief does not simply fade, but can “erupt” without warning, even years later. In this sense, grief is not a single emotional state to be resolved, but a recurring human experience that surfaces as life continues.
These theories help explain why grief lingers and returns, but they also point us back to something more fundamental: most of us encounter grief not through theory, but through formative loss that shapes how we come to understand death at all.
The first death
I was 11 when I experienced my first bereavement: the death of my grandfather, my father’s father. My memories of him are bathed in warmth, he was a gentle, soft-spoken man, kind to his core. The eldest of nine children himself, he went on to raise nine of his own, my father being the first.
He always made time for his grandchildren (of which he had many) with small, meaningful gestures. When we visited, he would often reach into his pocket and produce a square of chocolate or a shiny pound coin (what would be the equivalent of a €1 coin today). Those simple gifts felt like treasures.
Though rooted in traditional rural life, he was ahead of his time in many ways. Family lore tells us that he insisted on pushing the pram when his children were small, an act that scandalised my grandmother, who maintained that such things simply were not done by men of his generation. But he did it anyway. That was the kind of man he was: grounded, thoughtful, and quietly progressive. His death was my first real encounter with grief, and though I did not have the words for it then, I now recognise that it left an imprint on how I understand grief.
I remember being allowed to visit my grandfather in the two weeks before he died. He had developed pneumonia and was struggling to breathe, a consequence of years spent smoking at a time when the true dangers were not known. It was difficult to see him that way, frail and gasping, and I remember finding it upsetting. But looking back now, I see the quiet wisdom in what my parents did.
They gave us the choice to visit, gently involving us in what I now recognise as the process of anticipatory grief. It was their way of helping us prepare, not by shielding us from death, but by offering us a way to begin understanding it.
What stands out most clearly from that time is the gentle support and encouragement of my father. He has never been afraid to talk about death. His calm presence and quiet faith offered us a kind of anchor, not through denial or platitudes, but through openness, steadiness, and trust in something greater. His belief did not erase the pain, but it gave it a shape, a space to be held. In a moment that could have felt frightening or isolating, his comfort gave me strength.
When my grandfather died, I remember his body being brought home and laid out in a large front room, as was tradition in rural Ireland. Through my adult eyes now, I can see the beauty in that ritual, a final gesture of love and inclusion.
But as a child, I was afraid. It took time to summon the courage to go into that room and see him laid out. I remember the stillness of the room, the unfamiliar scent in the air, the cold stiffness of his fingers. Time felt suspended.
I cried a lot, as the truth settled in: the people we love can die. My parents could die. My siblings. Even me. That was the moment when the permanence of death first imprinted itself on my young mind.
The individuality of grief
What continues to strike me in both my personal reflections and research is how profoundly individual the experience of grief can be, even when shared within the same household. In writing about the death of my grandfather, I decided to speak with my siblings to understand how they remembered that time.
One of my siblings, who is characteristically less openly emotional, began to cry as we spoke. This was an unexpected reaction that neither of us had anticipated. They recalled how, even though their belief in God and religion had disappeared, they had spent weeks praying that our grandfather would recover. “I used to pray every night,” they said. “And when he died, I just stopped. What was the point?” Later in the conversation, they added quietly: “Our parents just didn’t talk about him afterwards. They just didn’t talk about him.”
I was struck by how different their experience was from mine. I remembered that period as one of openness and inclusion, marked by quiet support, meaningful rituals, and humorous stories. For my sibling, however, it was defined by silence and confirmation of their disillusionment about religion.
The contrast was sharp, but it was an important reminder of the individual reality of grief. We had lived through the same bereavement, in the same house, with the same emotional support from our parents, and yet we had constructed completely different narratives around it.
It was the same in my research. Over and over again, participants described the vastly different ways that grief manifested within their families.
What this teaches us is that grief is not experienced equally and it is not synchronised. Each person carries a different understanding of the person who has died, a different level of emotional maturity, and a different internal process.
We must resist the urge to generalise. We cannot assume that because one person in a family appears to be “doing okay,” their sibling must be too. Nor can we assume that a lack of visible distress equates to emotional resilience. Grief is deeply personal, shaped by both internal and external factors, and influenced by what is spoken, what is avoided, and what is felt alone in silence.
What happens if there is no end point?
So what happens when we stop expecting grief to end? The five stages endure because they promise an endpoint when grief makes time feel suspended. It is not surprising that for many of us in moments of profound grief, that promise can feel like a lifeline.
What is striking is that those who write most honestly about grief, those who speak from inside it rather than about it from a distance, rarely describe an ending at all. Freud himself, so often associated with detachment, wrote something very different later in life. In a 1929 letter to his friend Ludwig Binswanger, written after the death of Freud’s daughter Sophie, he acknowledged that grief does not resolve:
We know that after such a loss the acute state of mourning will subside … but we also know that we shall remain inconsolable and will never find a substitute.
The pain may soften, Freud suggested, but the loss is never replaced. The love endures, and so does the absence.
Grief does not neatly resolve, and great thinkers have recognised this. Viktor Frankl, neurologist, psychologist, and Holocaust survivor wrote in his memoir, Man’s Search for Meaning, about his own experience of suffering, and observed that “if there is meaning in life at all, then there must be meaning in suffering,” and that “in some way suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning”.
Grief is not a detour from life to be exited as quickly as possible; it is a form of suffering that can become part of the fabric of a meaningful life. Frankl also reminded us that everything can be taken from us but one thing, the last of the human freedoms, “to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way”.
This is a reminder that how we carry grief matters even when the pain remains. This aligns with what many people who have lived with grief tell us: the pain may become less intense over time, but the love endures.
Nearly a century after Freud, the songwriter Nick Cave wrote publicly about grief following the death of his son, describing it not as something to be mastered or completed, but as a state of profound powerlessness. Grief, he wrote, “is not something you pass through, as there is no other side.” What remains is not closure, but humility.
A recognition that love does not disappear when someone dies, and that the ache left behind is not evidence of failure, but of attachment. Cave speaks of grief as something that changes shape over time, becoming less raw perhaps, but no less real.
Geldof echoed this in his reflections on the death of his daughter Peaches, saying that “time accommodates” the grief, but it “is ever present.”
The distinction matters. Getting on with life does not require leaving the dead behind. It means learning to carry grief alongside love, and absence alongside presence.
Ongoing bonds with the dead are not signs of denial or pathology, but very often the way people survive. When grief is allowed to be ongoing, when the dead can be spoken about, something shifts. People stop measuring themselves against an imagined timeline and they stop waiting to “graduate” from grief.
Perhaps the discomfort we feel around enduring grief says less about the bereaved and more about the rest of us. Grief unsettles us because it reminds us of life’s fragility and our own mortality.
But if we allow ourselves to move away from the idea that grief is a problem to be solved, we make room for a more honest understanding of grief. It is likely that grief does not end because love does not end. What changes is not the bond, but how we learn to live with it.
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Aoife Lynam does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
A huge wall of water and debris swept down the Teesta valley in the eastern Himalayas on October 3 2023, causing widespread devastation and the tragic loss of over 50 people. This powerful flood in India was the result of a landslide which caused a glacial lake higher up the valley to spill over. This phenomenon is known as a glacial lake outburst flood, or GLOF.
In a 2025 study of glacial lakes across the Bolivian Andes, my colleagues and I found that 11 are highly susceptible to producing potentially hazardous GLOFs. Such lakes are increasing in size and number as glaciers retreat around the world. In Bolivia, we saw 60 new lakes form in just six years.
Over the same six-year period, glaciers in the region shrank rapidly. If they continue to melt at the same rate, Bolivia will be entirely ice free by the 2080s. Unfortunately, this is likely to be a conservative estimate.
We modelled the shape of the land surface underneath the existing ice to predict where lakes might form in future. We found more than 50 potential lake sites. Further monitoring will ascertain which of these emerging lakes might pose a risk to downstream populations or infrastructure.
In our study, we used high resolution satellite imagery to monitor glaciers and glacial lakes across the Bolivian Andes. We mapped glacier and lake boundaries at annual intervals between 2016 and 2022.
Bolivia is home to nearly one-fifth of the world’s tropical glaciers. These glaciers are important in their own right, particularly during the dry season, when meltwater provides essential supplies for human consumption, agriculture and industry. Glaciers also play a role in the cultural life and heritage of Indigenous peoples in this region.
We found an alarming rate of shrinkage among these glaciers. Between 2016 and 2022, the total surface area of glaciers in Bolivia decreased by nearly 10% – at an average rate of almost two square miles per year. If these glaciers continue to retreat at the same rate, there will be none left in the region by the 2080s.
Surface area (blue bars) and number of lakes (red line) by year. Jamie MacManaway, CC BY-NC-ND
Yet this represents a best case scenario. As glaciers get smaller, they shrink more rapidly, so the rate of decline will probably increase over time.
Such rapid deglaciation not only threatens water security but may also damage ecosystems. In the Andes, high-altitude wetlands known as “bofedales” store vast amounts of carbon and help absorb water too. Should they dry out as a result of decreasing water availability, they may release the carbon they have been storing – driving further warming of the atmosphere.
As glaciers melted and shrank across the region, the number and size of glacial lakes increased. Around 60 new lakes formed over the course of the study period. Many of these lakes were small and would be unlikely to produce a GLOF capable of doing significant damage, but 120 were considered large enough to represent a potential hazard.
We analysed these lakes in order to assess their susceptibility to producing a GLOF and found that 11 were worthy of further investigation. For example, ascertaining the potential consequences on downstream populations of an outburst flood from one of these lakes could help to inform future monitoring and mitigation efforts.
To reduce the risk of future catastrophe, local communities can prepare in a range of ways. That includes the physical construction of spillways and diversion canals, strategic land-use planning and the design of flood-resistant infrastructure. Disaster preparedness also requires social measures, such as education and awareness raising so that residents understand clearly communicated evacuation plans or early warning systems.
Modelled lakes in the Cordillera Real, Bolivia. Blue lakes are those predicted to form given continued glacier recession, while cyan lakes were correctly predicted by the model to form between 2000 and 2022. Red lakes are those predicted by the model which did not form. Jamie MacManaway, CC BY-NC-ND
Modelling the hollows
Using existing global glacier thickness data combined with our findings, we created a digital model representing the shape of the land surface underneath the ice. Glaciers are immensely powerful erosive agents and can carve deep hollows into the bedrock that they travel over. As the ice retreats, these hollows often fill with water and become lakes.
We found 55 potential future lake sites. Not all of these lakes will definitely form. Shallow depressions may fill with sediment instead of water while deeper ones may be drained by gorges which can’t be detected by modelling because they’re just too narrow for the tech to find. Models would be even more reliable with access to higher resolution datasets which are not currently available for the Bolivian Andes.
Future lakes across Bolivia may represent important sources of water – partially offsetting the consequences of losing glacial meltwater. Nevertheless, these lakes may be susceptible to producing GLOFs, so rapid and sustained international action to reduce the effect of climate change on the world’s glaciated regions is critical.
