Letters: Yoga and asthma
Your article on the asthma epidemic focuses on dangers from beta-2 agonist
drugs (such as Ventolin), which give quick relief from spasms (‘Are asthma
drugs a cure that kills?’ 6 April). You suggest that preventive therapy
with steroids is preferable. However, steroids also have some adverse effects,
and neither class of drugs cures asthma.
There is increasing evidence that yoga therapy can help manage, and
in some cases cure, asthma. Nagarathna and Nagendra reported a trial in
which 53 patients with asthma underwent training for two weeks in an integrated
set of yoga exercises, and continued practising daily at home. They were
compared with a control group of 53 patients with asthma matched for age,
sex and type and severity of asthma, who continued to take their usual drugs.
There was a significantly greater improvement in the group who practised
yoga in the weekly number of attacks of asthma, scores for drug treatment,
and peak flow rate. Benefits persisted for at least 54 months.
The yoga therapy methods used in the first of these studies are described
in our book Yoga for common ailments. They include aerobic, postural, breathing
and relaxation exercises. There is a sequence for relief, at the time of
attacks, as well as progressive programme for long-term management. To be
effective these practices must be taught by experienced yoga therapists.
Robin Monro Yoga Biomedical Trust Cambridge
Letters: Warm start
While having no experience with the auxiliary devices for car engines
mentioned by Chris Bowers (Letters, 13 April) I can report good results
from a device I have used for 40 years on various cars. It is an immersion
heater inserted in the bottom hose, switched on at 5.00 in the morning.
A warm engine and no condensation makes it well worthwhile. Also, the
much higher rate of bore wear in the first 5 minutes is avoided.
A. W. Thomas Rugby Warwickshire
Letters: Finger on the trigger
Colin Tudge’s article comparing the attitudes to science conditioned
by Buddhism and Christianity reminded me of an experience many years ago
when monkeys were more commonly used for medical reserach (Talking Point,
13 April). At the medical school where I worked there was an English doctor
who had converted to Buddhism. He wanted a monkey’s skeleton, but he refused
to kill the animal because of his philosophy. He stood by while someone
else gave the injection and then went off happily with the carcass.
But countries with strong Hindu and Buddhist traditions now use animals
for medical research, while Eastern philosophies are penetrating Western
value systems.
G. A. Butcher Imperial College, London
Letters: Nuclear review
Many of your readers will not realise that the letter from MPs Chris
Butler and Doug Hoyle about the closure of the Nuclear Structure Facility
at Daresbury Laboratory, added words to the SERC’s press release on the
matter when they quoted from it (6 April). The result appeared to give the
impression that the review announced in the press release would be limited
to the Nuclear Structure Facility. Actually, it was to be into future support
for nuclear structure physics, and that is what is to be started very soon
now.
Mark Richmond, Chairman SERC, Swindon
Letters: Cure chances
While agreeing with Donald Gould that the NHS cannot expect to continue
an endless spiral of rising costs, I must disagree with him on two grounds
(‘Curing within our means’, Forum, 16 March).
Firstly I would disagree that treating somebody with a one in thirty
chance of long term remission is a waste of resources. One of the drugs
which is now part of the routine treatment that cures testis cancer used
on it’s own only produced 1 in 30 cures but now in combination with two
other drugs which were no more efficient it produces 9 out of 10 cures.
The situation is that we have to find a way of living within our means and
yet still not miss out on such possible gains.
The second issue is that we shouldn’t even try to pursue everything
that we may be capable of doing but should go on doing things the way they
were done before. It has been estimated that 拢300 000 a year is being
squandered by small-scale use throughout the country on an ineffectual drug
which is given to more than 80 per cent of kidney cancer patients who might
benefit from interleukin-2. Although that money could only treat 100 of
the 300 patients that might benefit each year, next year IL-2 would be cheaper
because part of the research costs would have been paid off.
R. T. D. Oliver London Hospital Medical College
Letters: Cure chances
It’s no good, Donald Gould: your view of the NHS will not do. It should
not become some sort of grim game of Monopoly, wherein 60 hip replacements
are weighed against one possible cure for cancer, and the latter is found
wanting. This is not something for accountants to haggle over: patients’
lives are too important.
I would be the first to call for changes in the nation’s whole approach
to health and medical care. As a former thyroid patient, I have been helped
more by herbalism than by the drugs offered by the NHS, and I am quite convinced
that more could be achieved in terms of general health by proper funding
of health education, and the provision of good school meals than by any
amount of high tech medicine.
Nevertheless, there will always be a place for complex surgery and expensive
treatments. I know a number of people who are dependent for their survival
on some of these. I defy Donald Gould to sit in the same room as someone
who knows that an expensive operation or course of drugs might save his
or her life, and explain that ‘we’ cannot afford it. It is a complete myth
that this country cannot afford the NHS.
Gail Braybon Lewes, Sussex
Letters: Light losses
I’d like to comment on your article on low energy light bulbs (Technology,
13 April). First, electromagnetic ballasts don’t chop the electricity to
45 kilohertz-that’s the other sort with the good power factors, the electronic
ones.
Second, yes, electromagnetically ballasted, compact florescents do have
lousy power factors and should have correction capacitors. But when replacing
normal tungsten bulbs they still actually decrease transmission losses and
save more energy than they say on the packet.
About 7 per cent of our electricity goes to heating up the wires in
the national grid. This loss is proportional to the square of the total
current circulating, whether it is ‘real’ (in phase with the voltage) or
‘imaginary’ (out of phase). This ‘imaginary’ part is corrected at the power
station by altering the phase of the magnetic field in the generator. The
pollution output of the power station is only proportional to its ‘real’
current production.
If I replace a 60 watt resistive bulb with a 14 watt resistive one (power
factor 1), I save 46 watts (on my meter) and another 3 watts spread up and
down the country. If my bulb instead has a power factor of 0.35, I still
save 46 watts on my meter, but I will draw more ‘imaginary’ electricity.
Even so, the total current will be only about 60 per cent of that of a tungsten
bulb, so I will still be cutting distribution losses, though perhaps only
now by 1.5 watts. I hardly think a 3 per cent discrepancy in savings merits
such a fuss.
Finally, industrial users do not pay ‘heavy penalties’ for having poor
power factors. Typically, ‘imaginary’ electricity is charged for at one
tenth of the price of the ‘real’ thing. Indeed, a user with a high energy
bulb for every low energy one would not be surcharged at all since the average
power factor would be over 0.9.
Bob Everett Open University Milton Keynes
Letters: Error of judgement
I was amazed by the choice of words in your editorial ‘Publish-and be
damned’ (6 April), concerning the sorry saga of, among others, postgraduate
Margot O’Toole and Nobel laureate David Baltimore. It seems that Baltimore
learnt the ‘. . . hard way’ about scientific fraud, and that only after
extensive investigations (that is after the game was up) was he ‘. . . prepared
to swallow his words . . .’. Are we to feel sorry for him or admire his
courage? I can do neither.
Assuming the accuracy of the report, Baltimore ‘. . . added his name
. . .’ to the paper in question. Does this mean that he was simply, by virtue
of his authority, hitching a ride and was ignorant of the methodology and
analysis involved? If this was the case then should his name have been on
the paper in the first place-does a scientist of his obvious intellect really
need to bath in reflected glory?
And what are we to make of his unsympathetic treatment of O’Toole? Was
another publication more important than the truth, or was he embarrassed
by not knowing what an author should reasonably be expected to know? I don’t
think Baltimore’s hard lesson was anything to do with fraud; perhaps indiscretion
might be more to the point. Finally, I wonder about O’Toole’s future-will
she be assured a place in the annals of scientific integrity? Sadly, I doubt
it.
Robert Jupp Coolum Beach Australia
Letters: Volume speak
Ian Stewart’s mind-boggling article sounds like the result of a particularly
hard night’s drinking at the Carthorse & Cord-in-Eights, where pi and
pint is the usual order (‘The ultimate jigsaw puzzle, 13 April). I am in
no way qualified to comment on the 40 pages of the Laczkovich proof, but
concepts such as variable volume and infinite dissection give me the jitters.
First, consider the Hyperwebster. By Stewart’s admission this is an
infinite set of words. It can be dissected into 26 infinite sets and, since
this process can be repeated ad infinitum, into an infinite number of infinite
sets. No problems there.
Next, take the sphere. This can be dissected into six pieces, each with
arbitrarily fine detail and consisting of an indeterminate (possibly infinite)
number of components. Steward compares a Hyperwebster world to a point within
the sphere. Surely a point is merely a positional concept, having zero dimension
(no volume): any finite volume must contain an infinite number of points.
So by invoking the infinite it is possible to transform a sphere into a
cube (or a large rabbit). Volume? No problem! It sounds just like the schoolboy
trick of proving 1=2 (multiply throughout by 0).
What about the circle? Stewart does not say whether the sphere transform
can be achieved with, say, a spheroid; if so, why not flatten the sphere
to a plane and see what happens? Seriously, though, the proof calls for
about 1050 pieces (which, presumably, have the same arbitrary detail). Is
there a difference between a three-dimensional point and a two-dimensional
point? Shouldn’t there be an infinite number of points in any finite area?
The difficult thing to comprehend is why this transform cannot be done with
fewer pieces.
Finally, where does pi come from? I know a formula for determining it.
Is this linked to the concept of a circle as an infinite-sided polygon?
This is a lot more meaningful to me than the Banach measure. I hope Stewart
will give us a follow-up article.
J. A. Philpot Lucas Automotive University of Keele
Letters: Volume speak
In the probably vain hope that I can get ahead of an anticipated wave
of eagle-eyed (authorspeak for smart-alec) readers, I have spotted an error
in my article ‘The ultimate jigsaw puzzle’, 13 April). The volume of two
copies of a sphere is not eight times that of one copy, but twice as big,
as any sane being would anticipate. The Banach-Tarski Paradox may be counterintuitive,
but it’s not that counterintuitive.
The source of confusion is simple: there are two versions of the paradox.
One is that a sphere can be dissected into two equal-sized copies using
six piece. It is the latter that gives an eightfold increase in volume.
Ian Stewart University of Warwick Coventry
Letters: Penicillin day
The penicillin jubilee (Review, 6 April) will also be celebrated at
a Saturday day school, open to all, in the Autumn. Norman Heatley will be
among the speakers. Readers can write to me to receive information.
Tristram Wyatt Department for Continuing Education 1 Wellington Square
University of Oxford
Letters: Killing seas
Michael Cross is wrong to compare the slaughter of whales at South Georgia
with the murder of people at Auschwitz (‘A land doomed by nature and humans’,
Forum 13 April). To do this is to belittle the horrors of the latter, whatever
our feelings about killing whales.
Few people today could defend the destruction of the Antarctic whale
stocks, but while we deplore this we should remember that 40 years ago Western
opinion had not adopted its current conservation ethos. Whaling was generally
seen as a specialised branch of the fishing industry and whalers attracted
no more opprobrium than other fishermen. Indeed, in many communities, they
were highly respected figures. Any comparison of these people with the staff
at Auschwitz is obscene.
Cross goes on to suggest that ecologically the best solution would be
to remove the remains of the whaling stations completely. This was considered
by the government of South Georgia (which is responsible, together with
Christian Salvesen plc, for the clean-up operation). However, the idea was
rejected.
Because of the size of the five main stations, such an operation would
involve several ships, hundreds of men and the removal of thousands of tonnes
of scrap, cinders and rubbish. A vast amount of energy would be used and
the detritus would all have to be disposed of somewhere else. It seems much
better to leave the stations as they are.
Nigel Bonner, Project Director South Georgia Whaling Museum Huntington,
Cambridgeshire