Letters: When do I pay?
When will I have to start paying royalties for using the patented genes
in my body? Or, is it only when I use the genes to make a new human being
I will have to pay?
I think it can be proved that the gene Francis Collins and Lap-Chee
Tsui have patented (This Week, 23 January) existed before they started working
on it and therefore is not patentable.
Stig Valstad Skogn, Norway
Letters: Solvent solution
Your editorial of 6 February is a timely and commendable reminder of
the continuing tragedy of solvent abuse.
The importance of education cannot be overemphasised. However, the problem
will remain with us until acceptable alternatives are not only invented
but developed to a point where they are commercially viable.
This takes both time and persistence, as we have discovered with our
own environmentally friendly aerosol propellant, Polygas (New 杏吧原创,
Technology, 21/28 December 1991). A non-flammable product operating with
bag-in-can technology, it was formulated specifically with prevention of
solvent abuse, environmental protection and safety in mind.
Since its inception, many months have been devoted to transforming a
technically viable product into a commercially acceptable proposition. However,
I am confident it will be only a matter of months before aerosols filled
with Polygas are on supermarket shelves.
Evelyn Shervington BOC Limited Guildford, Surrey
Letters: Tax-free R&D
The absence of tax incentives for research and development represents
only one of the problems facing high-technology companies in Britain (‘Give
industry a break’, 6 February). Another difficulty is that the Inland Revenue
makes no provision for the setting up of company ‘R&D funds’, which
would permit the profits made on one product to be carried forward for investment
in new products in future years. Tax must be paid on profits in the latest
financial year, and can only be reclaimed if there are losses in subsequent
years. If R&D funds were given the same tax-protected status as pension
funds, there would be a terrific incentive to keep money in a company,
and to use it productively. This happens in other countries, why not in
Britain?
G. D. W. Smith Eynsham, Oxfordshire
Letters: Escape Clause
The last two sentences of Cynthia Rosenzweig and Daniel Hillel’s review
of Fred Pearce’s book The Dammed (Review, 30 January) typify a view which
I find exasperating and sad. ‘Merely blaming the environmental degradation
of the planet’s river basins on engineers and politicians is unconvincing.
The inescapable fact is that an ever-growing human population requires prodigious
amounts of energy and food,’ they write, and in so doing tacitly excuse
the catastrophic mismanagement of people, resources and money which is at
the heart of the world’s environmental problems.
To infer that people go hungry because the human population has exceeded
the carrying capacity of the planet, and that this necessitates environmentally
harmful activity, is dangerous and misleading. No one knows how far sustainable
and non-exploitative practices could go towards providing food, water, shelter
and work for the world’s people, because they are scarcely ever adopted.
Amidst the confusing economic melee which constitutes our condition lies
the real ‘inescapable fact’: gross exploitation of the majority at all levels.
As long as this continues, people will starve and the environment will
suffer, regardless of population size. Calling to account those who have
the power to make changes is the only way to make significant progress.
Blaming an ‘overpopulation problem’ gives the managers an escape clause
which they will not hesitate to use.
Paul Walton Hillhead, Glasgow
Letters: Unfair to Nevada
You are grossly unfair to the good people of Nevada in your remarks
about the number of subscribers you have in Arkansas (Feedback, 16 January).
Nevada has only half the population of Arkansas, so that to have the same
number of subscribers would imply double the interest in science.
C. Lloyd Thomas Barton, Cambridge
Letters: Daily data
Can anyone among your readers make use of (or suggest a use for) a set
of meteorological records recently discovered in our family’s archives.
On a day-to-day basis, over the 1920s and 1930s, they give a virtually complete
account of weather conditions and environmental notes in the coastal area
of Ayrshire, Scotland.
My grandmother, to whom these records were given, would be greatly pleased
if someone could use them for research purposes, be they scientific, historical
(or sociological).
James Garry Knebworth, Hertfordshire
Letters: Not fencing
‘A young man of Novorossisk Had a mating procedure so brisk, With such
super-speed action The Lorentz contraction Foreshortened his prick to a
disk.’
H. Bridges Morges, Switzerland
Letters: Not fencing
Re the claim in Feedback (9 January) that John Gribbin wrote the limerick
about the ‘fencer called Fisk’, and the subsequent letters by Edward James
and David Jones (6 February), I have a volume of limericks printed in the
US (Citadel Press) which quotes the following limerick with a date of origin
of 1946, the year of Gribbin’s birth.
Letters: Witch's stick
I write to endorse Frank Lesser’s doubts concerning the exactitude of
John Mann’s ‘Murder, Magic and Medicine’ (Review, 9 January). The contemporary
account of the trial for witchcraft of Alice Kyteler includes no mention
of a greased stick for riding on. The greased stick does not enter the story
until some 200 years later, at the peak of the European witch craze. The
trial is notable because it is the first instance of a woman being accused
of acquiring magical powers through sexual intercourse with the devil. This
became a standard element of the image of the witch. The charge was brought
by the bishop, newly arrived in Ireland from France, and was vigorously
resisted by the secular authorities, who ensured Alice’s escape. The charge
does not appear to have reflected popular belief, let alone popular practice.
It was almost certainly an invention of the Church. Anyone interested in
the details of this fascinating case should refer to the book by myself
and J. O. Ward.
L. S. Davidson University of Sydney Australia
Letters: Made by myth
I think Alison Brooks is risking opening the floodgates with her article
complaining about the lack of urban myths involving scientists (Forum,
23 January). I can think of three straight away.
Surely Alison has heard of the medical student who to her horror finds
she has just dissected her grandfather’s cadaver? Or the zoologist who
is bitten on the arm by a spider, leaving a hard lump which swells slowly
for weeks until one day it bursts to release a swarm of tiny spiderlings?
And what about the astronomer who after years of patiently studying a fuzzy
object finally focuses it well enough to read ‘Made in Japan’ on the lens.
In Australia, by the way, the microwaved pet is a cat – not a poodle
– and the man coming to with a mysterious scar and a missing organ is attending
a conference in South America. He wakes up on a beach sans kidney (not lung)
after a hard night’s carnivalling with a beautiful local woman.
There’s a competition in this somewhere, although it’s bound to be spoiled
by the inevitable rash of clumsy myths about the well-funded laboratory,
the far-sighted politician, the efficient bureaucrat and so on.
David Mussared Burra Creek, NSW, Australia
Letters: Doctor's friend
I found Donald Gould’s musings on ‘doctors’ useless badges of office’
(Forum, 30 January) inaccurate and offensive. I have been working as a
hospital doctor for over six years and, like most of my colleagues, rarely
‘drape’ a stethoscope around my neck, if there is time to put it in my
pocket between examining patients.
As for the ‘wondrous range of probing and analytical machines’ that
we are supposed to have to replace the stethoscope, I would certainly like
to know where they are. If Gould means the expensive radiological and endoscopic
examinations that we have access to in the NHS for a few of our patients,
could he please let me know how we screen our patients to decide who merits
such investigation – other than with a stethoscope?
Mark Whiteley Weston, Bath
Letters: Consulting chemists
I was most surprised to read your Comment (13 February) suggesting pharmacists
are unsuited for counselling patients to give up smoking.
I can think of no one better suited, in fact. Pharmacists are the health
professionals who can be approached daily by the public at any time and
without any appointment; not so with doctors. Their training in health care
is excellent and this is why the government has quite correctly decided
that they should be utilised exactly for this kind of work.
Andrew King London
Letters: Another prospectus
I am a GCSE student hoping to study physics at university. Early in
November I sent off 38 identical letters to various universities asking
for information on their physics courses – departmental brochures, course
details, timetables, reading lists and open day dates. Over two months later
I have just received the latest reply. One university has yet to reply.
Of the 38 universities, 16 sent only a prospectus, which I didn’t ask
for, as I had already collected many of these at the Sheffield Education
Fair. The rest gave various replies, mostly including the inevitable prospectus.
It seemed to me that many of the universities hadn’t read my letter properly.
Only 5 of the 38 universities came close to sending what I actually asked
for.
If universities wonder why they can’t attract students to study physics,
perhaps they could be more helpful to prospective students.
John Bye Bradford, West Yorkshire
Letters: Laureate amateurs
‘Investigating paranormal claims’, says critic Wendy Grossman (Review,
6 February), ‘is typically undertaken by amateurs.’ In the same section
you devote a whole page to a review of the 738-page history of hypnotism
– the first ever of its kind – by Alan Gauld, a senior university lecturer
and past president of the Society for Psychical Research.
No amateur he, nor such of his predecessors in the field as Nobel laureates
Rayleigh, Richet, Bergson and the Curies; Crookes, Lodge, William James,
Sir Alister Hardy and many more of comparable professional standing.
Criticising those who investigate anomalous experiences and phenomena,
on the other hand, is indeed typically undertaken by amateurs. Grossman,
for example, is a folk singer.
Guy Lyon Playfair London
Letters: Solvent solution
Almost impossible to kill yourself accidentally with nitrogen? Technologists
have learnt, from bitter experience, that no gas causes more accidental
fatalities.
It is only necessary to add another 10 per cent of nitrogen to air to
make the mix unable to support human life. However, it produces no physiological
response whatsoever, so the victim continues happily breathing, at the normal
rate (and spraying more into the paper bag from which he hopes to inhale
a kick) until he drops, with his brain already damaged from oxygen lack.
Nitrogen is noncombustible, nonexplosive, nontoxic, odourless and absolutely
deadly, because it gives no kick or other response but just gets on with
the job of asphyxiation (which is the name with which we glorify death from
nitrogen).
Of the gases we daily respire, carbon dioxide is the best propellant
and is already sometimes used. It too may freeze the throat, and it too
produces a physiological response which some may interpret as a thrill.
But that response includes faster and deeper breathing, so asphyxiation
is not so likely as with nitrogen.
P. G. Urben Kenilworth, Warwickshire
Letters: Topsy-turvy
The photo of the vampire bats in ‘How vampire bats acquired a taste
for blood’ (New 杏吧原创, Science, 9 January) was printed upside down .
. . that is to say, the bats are shown as roosting rightside up. In other
words . . . oh, never mind.
Ronald Pine Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy Aurora, Illinois
Letters: Saying something
I enjoyed the Feedback note on the minimal summary to the scientific
paper on the Ising problem (23 January). However, the implicit information
content of the statement ‘No’, is considerably greater than that of the
summary for the paper ‘A New Algorithm for Optimisation’ (tact constrains
me from naming the author) published in Mathematical Programming, vol 3,
no 1 of August 1972. This read merely: ‘Observations concerning the subject
matter of the paper have been presented.’
Eric Solomon London
Letters: Made by myth
Alison Brooks asks: ‘Did anyone really believe that even a naive little
old lady . . . would dry a pet dog in an oven, let alone in a microwave?’
I too found this story a little hard to swallow.
At least I did until I turned to page 19 of the same issue (Technology),
where I read that ‘a Canadian researcher has devised a cure for pigs suffering
from hypothermia: pop them in the microwave’.
A case of life imitating art?
Peter Calver Wealdstone, Harrow