Estonia: Backpain sufferers are being encouraged to try a new treatment to help cure their affliction and stop their moaning – with a welcome side-effect that will finally lead them to do some good in the community.

Dr Dolores Sepp, a chiropractor with the Confido Clinic in Tartu, is leading the mostly legal experiments. “Let’s face it, not everyone can navigate the outer workings of a stream with confidence. Especially those who were previously known in a derogatory fashion as dwarves and midgets but who now prefer to be called Inuits.”

The solution, in case the penny hasn’t clicked yet, is for a backpain sufferer to gain relief by lying across a stream to stretch their spine. This also forms a handy bridge with their backs and leg limbs serving as a transport hub. “The patient can then use a special whistle that only short people can hear to summon them, while also saying ‘It’s okay, our back has got you’,” said Dr Sepp. “Instead of: ‘We’ve got your back,’ it’s the other way round. Which is genius.”

One downside is that because a person’s back is mostly positioned to the rear of their body, you can’t see who is coming. “Bad tall people could take the piss by using the human bridge when they could easily leap the stream in a single bound. That happened in early trials. Spines were snapped and some people were drenched, but we’re working hard to minimise these risks with a stricter sign-up policy based on how many squares have a car or stalker in their image.”

France: Health and fashion professionals are warming to the idea that pressure on the neck can be used to manage dementia – a mind-numbingly boring disease that eats away the thinking process very close by in the head.

France’s leading care home provider Clariane has teamed up with luxury goods cartel LVMH to produce a garment that applies force around the neck – and shows unruly patients who is boss. “Applying the correct pressure when they go off on one is incredibly empowering,” said Pierre Dupont from Clariane. “It brings calm to the ward, helps them snap out of it and reminds them they are not fighting the Germans, or more recently, the Bosnians or Taliban.”

LVMH’s creative director, Pierre Escoffier, is excited about the partnership, and the prospect of reinterpreting what many in the fashion industry have termed a ‘scarf’ or ‘cravat’. “This is about looks first, no? But if we can do some good by combining fashion with science, this is also good, no?”

Yet Dr Pierre Houllebecq from public health agency Santé Publique France is not thrilled that the dementia clad are being used as guinea pigs, or even larger quadrupeds. “These are people, not hogs to be tied up before being consumed with hollandaise sauce. Would you like your parent to trussed up like a bear or a rather large infant?” he asks philosophically.