This week saw the release of a groundbreaking new study, conducted by a joint committee consisting of senior research staff of the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the World Health Organization, the British Dental Association, the American Cancer Society, the Pan American Health Organization, AAPCHO, the Alheimer's Association, the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, the American Lung Association, the International Red Cross, the American Stroke Association, the Arthritis Foundation, the International Health Exchange, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Project Hope, the International AIDS Foundation, and UNICEF. The study, which surveyed over 1 billion children over the past 50 years, concludes that everything is bad for children.

"We were not at all surprised by the results", Dr. Arthur Lemming of the BDA was quoted as saying. "We took a long, hard look at the data, and were stunned to find that every single child in the world at some point has contracted some sort of illness. The surveying was exhaustive, but after we collected all of the information, it didn't take long at all to come up with the conclusion." That conclusion, as summarized by Dr. Lemming, was simple. "Everything's bad for kids. The air they breathe, what they eat, what they drink, the forms of entertainment they choose, every outdoor activity, every indoor activity, sunlight, darkness - literally, all of it can be attributed to some form of ailment or another. For example, paper cuts alone account for some 4,650,000,000 bandage usages a year. Ice cream is the root cause of over 130,000 headaches a minute. Last week, it was reported that 748,000 American kids suffered abrasions after tripping over untied shoelaces. And over 537,982,910 cases of nightmares caused by just one viewing of The Doodlebops have been documented. Clearly, life itself has the potential to cause great harm to kids."

Armed with such knowledge, scientists are feverishly working on a cure. But don't expect results over night, warns Dr. Lemming. "Clearly, we're dealing with an almost infinite number of root causes, since everything that we know of that exists on planet Earth can potentially harm our kids. But we're not giving up hope."