Letter: Drink and worry
I wish to reply to Richard Weinstein’s letter about food additive concerns
in the 17 November issue. The book review in question was a welcome contribution
from someone who clearly has a good understanding of the safety of food
additives versus ‘natural’ components. This would appear to contrast with
Weinstein’s perception, as suggested by his references to food ‘purity’,
urethane and the implication that chemicals are somehow different from food.
How, for instance does one define ‘purity’ and ‘natural’? A piece of
slightly burnt toast will contain hundreds of chemicals not found in the
bread, even if that was made from ‘organic’ flour – does this make the toast
pure?
Weinstein also misses the point regarding urethane. It is not a brewing
additive but a natural product of fermentation, along with many others.
I am sure that many additive worriers regard home-brewing as natural and
industrially produced beer as chemically polluted when the only significant
difference is one of scale (although no doubt the master brewers would consider
home brew much more likely to cause ill health through inadequate hygiene
control).
The ill effects of alcohol abuse are well documented, but excessive
concern about food additives is a cause of much more distress than moderate
brandy consumption will ever be.
Simon Pugh Worcester
Letter: Bracken blues
I very much enjoyed ‘A frond farewell to bracken’ (Forum, 27 October).
More power to Willie Stanton’s bracken-pulling elbow: he might find goats
would eat up his thistles.
However, two notes of caution: his hay will be deadly poisonous it if
contains ragwort, so please keep it out of the crop. It can be hand-picked
earlier in the season before the hay, but remember it is also very poisonous
to people. Bracken also has a bad name, both as a carcinogen and as a refuge
for the vectors of lyme disease.
Jessica McGinty Bath Avon
Letter: Tomorrow people
I feel I must comment on David Wood’s letter, which criticises Tomorrow’s
World (Letters, 3 November). This is not a programme for New 杏吧原创 readers.
The aim is surely to bring science to a wider audience. Wood is obviously
already converted, and need not watch the programme. The items must be kept
short, and less complex to be accessible to as many people as possible.
It must be successful in this respect, because of its time slot, and ever
increasing variety of items.
My younger brother (not scientifically motivated, and only 14) loves
Tomorrows’s World. I am studying for science A-levels and have moved away
from the programme, towards your magazine, Scientific American and programmes
such as Antenna, and Equinox.
So, please do not criticise Tomorrow’s World. It fulfils its requirements
excellently.
Chris Jones Irby Merseyside
Letter: Tomorrow people
I was deeply annoyed at David Wood’s letter. I am only 15 and so I am
an ‘amateur’, but I always watch Tomorrow’s World as I find it very interesting.
It tells me what has happened in the scientific world over the past week,
and provides me with basic facts, which are all I want to know.
I will agree, though, that Antenna is an excellent programme, and should
be shown on a weekly basis.
William Hague Canterbury Kent
Letter: Age old problem
In the past we had numerous prejudices to overcome. Namely, sexism and
racism. Now it would appear there is another – ageism. As a mature student,
I hope not only to complete my degree but also go on to study for an MSc,
or the dizzy heights of a PhD. However, it seems that the possibility of
obtaining these qualifications as a full-time student may be slim. I refer
to several advertisements in your journal: the Royal Society university
research fellowship, applicants ‘must be at least 26 but should not have
passed their 33rd birthday’; University of Dundee, MSc in biochemistry,
‘postgraduate students under the age of 25’; and British Antarctic Survey,
‘candidates must be male, single, physically fit and aged between 21 and
35′.
The last of these is not only ageist but sexist too. It may seem old
fashioned but I always believed scientists were judged by their intellectual
powers. Demographic changes may well see the return to work of a larger
number of women: some may wish to achieve further educational advancement.
Will this door be closed to them?
Vanessa Higgins Hartlepool Cleveland
Letter: Body double
Ariadne states correctly that Westminster is wrongly called the mother
of parliaments (the epithet refers to Britain), but later falls into the
common error of giving the name ‘Yeoman of the Guard’ to the Yeoman Warders
of the Tower (17 November). The confusion between these similarly attired
bodies probably dates from the operetta by Gilbert and Sullivan, who chose
the snappier title. Thanks, however, for not calling them Beefeaters.
R V Taylor Abingdon Oxfordshire
Letter: Explosive work
John Nicolson is quite correct: chemists find explosions fascinating
to talk about (‘The mark of a chemist’, Forum, 10 November). Moreover, since
explosion is a physical hazard, and therefore apparently excluded by COSHH,
they will doubtless continue to do so.
But they do not write about explosions enough, or give sufficient detail
when they do. So there is a tendency for them to blow themselves, and their
students, up by methods wellknown to our grandparents but later forgotten.
The major compendium of unexpected explosion, Leslie Bretherick’s Handbook
of Reactive Chemical Hazards, is published in Britain. This text is well-known
and well-used in industry, though academics generally appear unaware of
it. But it cannot include that which is not reported, and it seems probable
that only a minority of hazards are notified. Even industry, which predicts
and then controls and avoids many hazards, seems reluctant to boost of its
safety-conscious success.
I have taken over as editor of this tome. So may I appeal to your chemical
readers to start writing to me or the publishers (Butterworth Heinemann,
Bury Street, Guildford GU2 5BH). Anonymity is assured, if desired.
P G Urben Kenilworth Warwickshire
Letter: Explosive work
John Nicolson has been looking at the wrong hand. A colleague and I
are chemistry graduates of the 1970s and 1980s and we both bear Primo Levi
marks, but on the palms of our right hands. In my case, quickfit was beyond
the resources of my garden-shed budget, though explosions (unintentional
or otherwise) were not. The days of true chemist are not over yet.
Andrew Jay Norwich Norfolk
Letter: Servicing the deaf
It would be appreciated by all involved with hearing-impaired children
and their families if articles about their education and habilitation managed
to contain a balanced account of the subject. This field has been beset
by the debate between advocates of manual and oral communication for 100
years. We are tired of seeing one polarised position or the other appearing
in the media. Unfortunately, your article was also of this type and did
little to enlighten the debate (‘Signs of change’, 27 October).
It is a simple, incontrovertible fact that many deaf children learn
oral language and thrive in the hearing world. It is equally true that BSL
users have a proper language and thrive using that. Attempts to try to insist
on one ‘right’ communication method for all deaf children, fuelled by the
kind of one-sided argument in the article, are detrimental because each
child and his family have different needs, goals and hopes.
Our efforts at the Royal Berkshire Hospital, as at many other centres,
are directed to providing the very best audiological service for our hearing-impaired
infants. We aim to maximise the use of their residual hearing. We respect
parental choice, and as the vast majority of hearing-impaired children are
born to hearing families, we find most parents want their children to acquire
spoken language. for many this is a realistic goal, particularly now we
can detect deafness and fit hearing aids very early in life. It is also
true that many hearing-impaired children from signing deaf families seek
this goal as well. Of course, we recognise that for some children a signing
system is the most appropriate means of communication and we support them
equally well.
Rather than expending energy on this sterile debate we should be concentrating
on improving diagnostic and rehabilitative services, and on responding to
the needs of the individuals and their families.
Graham Sutton, Jacqueline Stokes Royal Berkshire Hospital Reading
Letter: Carbon copy
Please tell David Bateman that most archaeologists loathe using BP (Before
Present) for radiocarbon dates (‘Half-living in the past’, 17 November).
It is the radiocarbon scientists who have forced this unnatural habit on
us, with successive protocols from international carbon-14 conferences.
Cherry Lavell London
Letter: Patent checks
I was interested to see your report on cold fusion and Martin Fleischmann’s
comment: ‘We have reproduced all our original results and the work is now
the subject of patents. How can you talk about a set of results that are
the subject of a patent investigation?’ (This Week, 3 November). He implies
that because his work is the subject of patents or patent applications,
his results are unimpeachable.
As a patent attorney, I feel that I must point out that patent examiners
are neither empowered nor equipped to challenge or test the reproducibility
of results presented in patent specifications, or used in argument during
examination of applications. They rely on the fact that the patent applicant
is under an obligation to tell the truth and on the fact that false suggestion
or fraud on the patent office is a ground of invalidity of any patent which
may be granted.
Fleischmann’s suggestion is extremely misleading. As researchers who
have tried to patent inventions will have discovered, the standard of evidence
required to support a patent application is normally much lower than that
required to publish the same piece of work in a reputable, refereed scientific
journal.
Vivien Santer Griffith Hack & Co Melbourne Australia
Letter: 1984 and all that
From your report of cuts at the British Library it appears that this
is starting to go the way of the Science Museum library (This Week, 3 November).
A visitor there will find row after row of current journals terminated by
a card reading ‘series closed 1984’. Perhaps current journals are not considered
essential for a library specialising in the history of science and technology
but in 20 years time, when these have all been moved to the closed stacks,
an historian will find row after row of empty shelves, and may well sum
up science in Britain by a pile of cards declaring ‘series closed 1984’.
P Wood Wembley Middlesex
Letter: Green trade-in
While there is much to applaud in your comparatively recent conversion
to environmentalism in all its forms, on several occasions you have been
guilty of overstating the green case.
One such case was the article ‘Trade deals a blow to the environment’
(10 November), which attacked the current Uruguay round of negotiations
(translation: political bun fight) over the General Agreement of Tariffs
and Trade, for not paying enough attention to the environment.
As a financial journalist who has had to make some effort to understand
the GATT negotiation process, I found the article curious. Despite what
it said, there has never been any serious suggestion that GATT would interfere
with export restrictions genuinely designed to protect a specific part of
the environment, such as rainforests. However, the other GATT countries
would have every right to treat with suspicion the banning of log exports
without banning the actual act of cutting them down, as an attempt to reserve
the logs for local industry rather than preserve the forests.
The article also suggested that, somehow, the GATT process would suddenly
result in the wholesale removal of trade restrictions, particularly on beef.
That event, we were told, would lead to wholesale destruction of rainforests
as Third World farmers took advantage of newly opened markets for beef.
This is nonsense. The GATT process will lead to little more than a slight
reduction in farm protection, if that. As farmers already know only too
well, any resulting loosening of the agricultural market can easily be served
by increased production in areas already under cultivation. Supply can very
quickly exceed demand in agriculture. There is no need for wholeale clearing
of any forests. In addition, while beef prices may swing widely, for many
decades they have been declining gradually in real terms.
A great deal more could be said, particularly about the suggestion that,
in effect, GATT should be biased to those with stricter industrial environmental
regulations. But for the moment it would be better to leave the politicians
to their in-fighting and try not to make the process more painful and complicated
than it already is.
Mark Lawson Sydney Australia