Letter: GIFT regulation
I refer to Derek Morgan’s letter ‘Is GIFT illegal?’ (9 June). The Interim
Licensing Authority has been licensing in vitro fertilisation (IVF) clinics
since 1985 and, since 1988, has kept a register of GIFT (gamete interfallopian
transfer) clinics: the authority has neither the resources nor the manpower
to inspect and license those centres offering GIFT alone, although it considers
that some form of regulation or control is desirable. The authority recently
carried out a survey of the 81 centres registered as offering GIFT (36 centres
licensed for IVF and 45 unlicensed centres) asking their opinions on the
regulation of GIFT. Replies were received from 57 centres (70 per cent)
of which 98 per cent favoured some form of regulation and 88 per cent favoured
regulation by the new authority. It would therefore appear that, contrary
to Morgan’s belief, the medical profession does in fact favour the security
of a legal framework which could be incorporated within the Act forming
the new Statutory Licensing Authority.
Mary Donaldson, Chairman Interim Licensing Authority London
Letter: Taking art
I was very interested to read Chloe Marshall’s article (‘Crossing the
great divide’, Forum, 14 April) concerning the difficulty of mixing the
sciences and a language at A-level and then at university. At the moment
I am in my lower sixth year and am studying A-level chemistry, biology and
English literature. Although this may seem to be an unusual combination,
I felt that it would be the one which I would enjoy studying with most enthusiasm.
Throughout the process of choosing GCSEs and A-levels we are told ‘to
keep our options open’ and yet in practice this is very hard to do. I am
grateful to the school for eventually allowing me to do this combination
of subjects but I did have to push quite hard.
Now, after one fraught period of choosing A-levels, I find that I have
an even bigger problem – university degree courses. Many simply do not allow
for the fact that I have not taken A-level maths or physics and yet wish
to take a chemistry degree. So far, I have only found one university which
offers a joint degree in chemistry and English.
The National Curriculum is designed to discourage specialisation too
early, but it seems that this idea has not yet filtered through to universities.
If they want to attract more students they are going to have to provide
courses that bridge the gap between arts and sciences.
Judith Kerr Ampthill, Bedfordshire
Letter: Melt down
We wonder if those people who attempt to model and predict the rise
in sea level from melting ice caused by the greenhouse effect include the
Arctic icecap? It must be remembered that as the Arctic icecap is floating,
it has displaced its own mass of water, and therefore will contribute nothing
to any change in sea level if or when it melts. Any rise in sea level can
only come from run-off from melting ice on land. Are we missing something?
Norman Cross, Jonathan Scawin Porton Down, Wilts
Letter: Museum cuts
I have recently heard with considerable shock that the management of
the British Natural History Museum intend closing the palaeobotany section
of the palaeontology department. I understand the collection is to be placed
under a ‘care and maintenance’ basis. This is sheer lunacy and intellectual
vandalism of the highest order. The palaeobotanical collections of the museum
and the expertise of the staff represent the sole remaining specialist palaeobotanical
research centre in Britain. It is one of a very few in the English speaking
world. Globally, palaeobotany is considered ‘peripheral’ and has been in
retreat for some time.
Our society presently faces two great problems: natural resource management
and environmental degradation. Principal among these are the climatic changes
and environmental transformations expected from global warming. The palaeontological
record provides the basis for many of the predictions of global warming,
as in many times in the past the Earth’s climate has been much warmer and
vegetation patterns very different to today in response to the different
climatic patterns.
Initially, much of this information came from marine records of micro-organisms
and oxygen isotopes. Over the past 10 to 15 years there has been a shift
towards terrestrial records – primarily pollen, but more recently plant
macrofossil records as well. The plant fossil record, especially the macrofossil
record, offers a finer resolution view of past climates than is possible
from any other palaeontological record (microfossil or isotope) of past
climates. This is because plant macrofossils represent the local vegetation
and, therefore, the local climate. All other records average climate over
large regional areas. If we are going to increase the resolution of our
present climatic models of a future greenhouse-warmed world, we need to
know more about the climates of the past. Palaeobotany offers this insight.
The museum is seen worldwide as the premier institution for research
on the natural world, and is recognised as the main repository of type specimens
and other records. It is, therefore, a natural focus of international research.
Given the present government’s expressed intention to concentrate research
funding in areas of national and international environmental concern, such
as greenhouse warming, it seems illogical and short-sighted to close such
a vital repository of materials and skills, and also such an important point
of co-ordination between researchers. Over recent years the palaeobotany
section has been very active. Numerous co-operative research ventures have
included work in areas ranging from Australia, USA, and even Fiji. My work
in tertiary climates and the ecology of early tertiary plant communities
has benefited from examining material in the museum and through consultation
with staff and other visitors. There are other much more profound examples
of joint work by other international researchers. To suggest that the work
of the palaeobotany section is ‘peripheral’ and redundant is demeaning,
erroneous, and smacks of anti-intellectual bias and ignorance of the highest
order.
David Greenwood, Curator South Pacific Regional Herbarium Suva, Fiji
Letter: Fossil trade
D. W. Ewer has the wrong end of the stick in his comments on Stan Wood’s
Lizzie, the oldest known reptile, which may be exported from Scotland to
West Germany (Thistle Diary, 5 May). ‘Palaeontologists now dead’ did buy
their specimens, and gladly too, from professional collectors such as Mary
Anning of Lyme Regis. Even ‘amateur’ collectors commonly sold, and still
sell, their finds to museums, whose collections would be immeasurably poorer
without Wood’s predecessors.
Ewer suggests that if Lizzie ‘was an art object of commercial value
it would fall within the law relating to treasure-trove’. This is wrong:
treasure-trove, itself a medieval nightmare of a law, applies only to hidden
gold and silver. Art objects are hardly controlled except that the export
of the best can be temporarily halted to allow a British institution to
buy it.
But legally Lizzie is not even a ‘cultural’ object. Even if she was,
the geological sections of British museums would need to be funded to take
part in this ‘control system’. But the geological departments of British
museums are so badly funded that money would be better spent putting their
house in order.
Finally, it is unfair to Stan Wood to compare him to looters of archaeological
hoards. He is more like a rubber tapper or a miner who discovers and works
a resource; after all, he discovered the vertebrate fauna at the locality,
worked the quarry, and pays his cut to everyone, including the local authority.
Mike Taylor Leicester
Letter: Fossil trade
The recent near-loss from this country of an outstandingly important
fossil, the earliest known reptile, has clarified the position regarding
the export of such material. Natural science material, and in particular
geological specimens, are not covered by the Export of Goods (Control) Order
1989, and therefore all such material, no matter how significant, is free
for sale abroad. This is markedly at variance with the position regarding
the man-made heritage, where export controls have long been in force for
outstanding artefacts. Prompted by this current issue, the Reviewing Committee
on the Export of Works of Art has been asked by the Minister for the Arts
to consider this problem and to make recommendations. It is anticipated
that such outstanding natural heritage items would only rarely come before
any such body for consideration, say perhaps once every 10 years. It would
help us considerably in presenting our case to the committee to have case
histories of previous losses of such specimens, or brief accounts of material
saved from such loss, to inform the committee.
Would anyone knowing of any such cases please send brief details to:
Dr W. D. Ian Rolfe, Keeper of Geology, National Museums of Scotland, Chambers
Street, Edinburgh EH1 1JF.
Ian Rolfe Edinburgh
Letter: True or false?
I am most disappointed by Ariadne in her comments on the proposition
‘natural vitamins are better for you than laboratory-made ones’ (5 May).
For once, her powers of clear and rational thinking appear to have deserted
her. If readers were presented with a second proposition: ‘laboratory-made
products can be less good for you than natural ones’, I am sure that they
would state this to be ‘true’ and recognise this response to be logically
incompatible with a ‘false’ response to the first.
If this is still not convincing, consider a series of emotionally neutral
propositions which relate to the first proposition. ‘With a balanced diet
of fresh food and moderate exposure to sunlight, vitamin supplements are
unnecessary.’ ‘Vitamin supplementation can lead to problems of overdosage
and/or poor diet control.’ ‘Most natural vitamins are enantiomerically-pure
chemicals.’ ‘Some laboratory-made bioactive products are not enantiomerically-pure
chemicals’ (remember Thalidomide). ‘Industrial production of bioactive compounds
can lead to impure products’ (remember Agent Orange).
Although I am myself dependent on the chemical industry for a living,
I would not be happy to stake my life on stating that the first proposition
is false without qualification.
Allan Wells The Hague Holland
Letter: Sneeze cure
Reading the article ‘The big sneeze’ (2 June) and having ceased to suffer
from hay fever after 22 years, I refer you to the articles ‘Cooking up a
storm’ (8 July) and ‘Another man’s poison’ (15 July). It was after reading
the articles that I embarked upon an exclusion diet and discovered food
intolerances that included milk and wheat. Within one week of excluding
these foods my hay fever, asthma, and other ills had disappeared. (I now
find that if I eat correctly I do not get hay fever.) I would also like
to draw attention to the theories of William Hay about eating ‘fundamentally’
and about keeping our fat and protein intake down, so that 80 per cent of
our diet consists of fruits, vegetables and salads. In doing this the body
is functioning naturally and, being less stressed, is less likely to succumb
to allergies and illness. Diet does not seem to have been considered as
the link by the researchers into the causes of the increase in hay fever
sufferers.
Affluence and diet could well be the link. For example, it could be
said that small familes can afford more protein than bigger families and
that an only child might be fed more milk and meat than children from a
large family.
D. M. Holder Purley, Surrey
Letter: Kinder killing
Clive James once wrote of a fictional character’s nonstop bad language:
‘It was not like having ordure poured over you; it was like having ordure
poured over you all day’. The moralist within us maintains that a single
death is as important as a thousand. But anyone who has visited a slaughterhouse
is most struck by the incessant mechanical and a awful progression of life
after life into death, and the utilitarian within takes over, insisting
on making the best of a bad job (‘Kinder ways to kill’, 19 May).
In view of this it seems extraordinary that anyone should even suggest
carbon dioxide suffocation as a humane method of mass slaughter. We all
know that it is not lack of oxygen which induces panic, but the build-up
of carbon dioxide in the blood. The use of argon for suffocation seems like
a step in the right direction, but why go to the expense of using an inert
gas that has to be obtained by fractional distillation? Surely it would
be cheaper to burn the oxygen out of ordinary air, scrub the resulting carbon
dioxide with sodium or lithium hydroxide, and then suffocate the unfortunate
animals in the resulting nitrogen: an inexpensive, painless and drunken
death.
On the other hand, we could all take the view that anything derided
by John Selwyn Gummer must have something good going for it, and become
vegetarian. I wonder if he would be happy to have his hamburger-eating daughter
shown round one of those slaughterhouses.
Adrian Bowyer University of Bath
Letter: Stony ground
I found your article ‘The physics of muesli’ (26 May) very interesting.
I now understand why, in spite of removing every large stone in my flower
border every time I weed, I find just as many to take their place within
a month. As this has been happening for 15 years, is there hope that I will
not be confronted with yet another crop of stones?
Valerie Walker Golden Common Hampshire
We welcome short communications and reserve the right to edit the longer
ones. Write to: Letters to the Editor, New 杏吧原创, King’s Reach Tower,
Stamford Street, London SE1 9LS.