Letters to the Editor
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Climate clash
The letters published on 5 November commenting on John Emsley’s article (New 杏吧原创, Science, 8 October) show that there is some discrepancy between the contributors’ views. I have read John Houghton’s book Global Warming (as part of my homework) in which he claims that radiation from CO2 occurs substantially at altitudes as low as 5 kilometres. Anthony Slingo claims that this is irrelevant and that only radiative emission at high levels is important.
Keith Shine attributes significance to a 0.2 掳C between the average temperatures in 1940 and 1980, an amount within the accuracy of thermometer readings. His estimate of 10 掳C global warming arising from the presence of 0.035 per cent of CO2 in the atmosphere is surprising considering that there is normally 2 per cent of water vapour present and that the infrared absorption of water is much stronger and broader than that of CO2. John Emsley’s reported estimate of 1 掳C due to CO2 is undoubtedly very close to the correct figure.
Valdes and Sellwood might change their opinion that increasing CO2 is the main climate factor in the next 100 years when the next catastrophic volcanic eruption occurs.
It is not surprising that computer models produce alarming forecasts. Many reputable scientists not working in the field of climate forecasting are critical of the premature publication of results of climate forecasts which are subject to much uncertainty and which have had serious political and economic consequences.
My paper in Spectrochimica Acta raises a serious doubt about the proper application of spectroscopic theory to the problem. Hopefully it will promote a thorough scientific examination of the basis of the climate models and will lead to results which are acceptable by the whole scientific community and will not mislead governments and industries into premature and potentially economically imprudent decisions.
Mobile security
Barry Fox is wrong when he says the electronic serial number (ESN) of a mobile phone is secret (This Week, 5 November). It is usually printed on a label affixed to the phone, frequently printed on the box, and commonly written down on the customer’s air time contract.
Re-chipping a phone is easy because the ESN is stored in erasable memory chips, instead of write once (WORM) chips. The manufacturers further facilitate re-chipping by providing a convenient data entry socket on the phone. The major network operators are also quite happy to accept a re-chipped phone back onto the network system, no questions asked. And the service providers fuel the level of thefts by paying huge frontend commissions, allowing unscrupulous dealers to pay up to 拢100 for a stolen phone.
Re-chipping is a symptom of a deeper problem and making it illegal will not stop it, any more than the Theft Act stops car crime. The industry must put its own house in order and tighten up its security practices if it seriously wants to reduce mobile phone crime.
Medicinal secrets
The health minister, Tom Sackville, misses the point when he asserts that the secrecy clause in section 118 of the 1968 Medicines Act “by no means excludes proper implementation of the general duty to safeguard the public health” (Letters, 12 November). What it does is hide the exercise of that duty from scrutiny.
Section 118 blocks the release of any information obtained under the act’s powers. Citing it, ministers have refused to reveal: what research has been received on the effects of AZT; what reasons the Committee on the Review of Medicines gave for refusing to renew a licence for Pegina, a herbal medicine; what research on organophosphorus sheep dips has been supplied to the Ministry of Agriculture; what information is held on the sale of counterfeit medicines; what information was considered during a review of alcohol levels in gripe water; which pharmaceutical plants have been inspected by medicines inspectors; which hospitals are taking part in clinical trials of a new drug; and what discussions have taken place about safeguarding myxomatosis vaccine supplies for pet rabbits.
Last year the government blocked Giles Radice’s Medicines Information Bill, designed to regulate drugs more openly. It now claims that a Europe-wide disclosure measure is the answer. But the European proposals are deeply disappointing. They will apply only to the minority of new products approved under the new centralised licensing procedure. There will be no disclosure under the decentralised procedure, which will deal with the vast majority of new drugs.
Sackville argues that government secrecy has not adversely affected public health, and claims that Britain has taken the lead to promote more openness in the new European medicines control system.
This seems preposterous, for it was Sackville who last year orchestrated the sabotage of Radice’s bill. Sackville warned MPs “to be careful 鈥� that we do not err too much on the fashionable side of openness”. Are we to believe that the Department of Health is promoting in Europe the very measures it opposes at home?
Secrecy in the British medicines control system is pervasive; the authorities withhold all information relating to licensed drug products and even restrict disclosure “regarding any alleged importation, sale or production of counterfeit medicines”.
Sackville claims that the DH did adequately explain the precipitate withdrawal from the market of the sleeping pill, Halcion. Yet the Drug & Therapeutics Bulletin (which is DH-supported) argued at the time (11 November 1991) for “a calmer, more gradual and less secretive approach”. More to the point, there has never been a public inquiry after a drug disaster, not even after thalidomide. How can this be justified, when public inquiries are routinely held after a plane or train crash, or a disaster in a stadium or at sea?
Finally, whatever became of Sackville’s claim during the terminal reading of Radice’s bill that the department had “begun to discuss” with the pharmaceutical industry a voluntary code on disclosure? In his letter to New 杏吧原创 he doesn’t refer to this. So far as one can tell amid the secrecy, no real discussion had taken place.
In my view, secrecy in the department remains obsessive and a menace to public health.
One aim of Radice’s bill, which Sackville helped to defeat, was to amend Section 118 of the Medicines Act which, despite Sackville’s assurances, does indeed interfere with the provision of information necessary to safeguard public health. The former chairman of the Committee on Safety of Medicines, Sir William Asscher, has long experience of the Medicines Act. He told The Guardian in April 1993 that: “Many times I have been frustrated in trying to communicate because section 118 would confine me to prison for two years.”
After fighting against positive legislation in Britain, Sackville is now advocating European legislation. This change of heart can perhaps be best explained by Sackville’s own admission that it is “not clear what information will be made available to the public” about medicines under the new procedures due to come into effect in January next year. Because of this, European governments want to wait and see how the new procedures operate before committing themselves further.
In other words, the drafting of European legislation will be several years down the road, if ever. That means more years of unnecessary secrecy, more years of putting the interests of industry before the interests of the public’s health.
It’s a strange message to be coming from a spokesperson from the DH, whose letterhead proclaims that it is “improving the health of the nation”.
Same old story
I read your Comment “Escape from the killer car?” (5 November) with great interest, because of course we must all bring pressure to bear to get more efficiently run public transport.
You mention the 1974 Commission on Transport and its findings, but you might be interested to know that in the late 1950s the then Minister of Transport (it may have been called Roads), Ernest Marples, set up a Rural Bus Commission to look into the question of enlarging the service or not. The members of the commission travelled in various countries of Europe looking at their bus systems. Most of these countries were keen to have the buses as an important focal point. The conclusion the members came to was that the bus system most certainly should be subsidised to a greater extent.
Needless to say at the end of the year’s work, the report was placed in the minister’s files and the conclusion never was given breathing space. My father was on this commission.
True worth
I received a folder promoting New 杏吧原创.
The promotional line “You are what you know” struck a discord with me 鈥� it is not true. It is truer to say you are what you do. What you do affects other people. This is a basis for judging the value of your actions by others and yourself 鈥� and gives you feedback on the utility and truth of your “knowledge”. What you know may help what you do, but it is purely personal.
Wrong scanner
As a technician working in the Microstructural Studies Unit at the University of Surrey, regularly operating three different scanning electron microscopes (SEMs), I was most interested to read the article “Smarter microscopes move in for a closer look” (Technology, 5 November).
In it, it is stated that SEM’s work by moving a very fine tip over the surface of an object which has been given an electric charge 鈥�”. This confuses scanning electron microscopy with scanning tunnelling microscopy, which does, indeed, work in this way. Scanning electron microscopes work by scanning a beam of electrons over the surface of a sample, the various types of signal generated then being processed to form an image on a cathode-ray tube.
Extinction theory
The proposed cyclic behaviours of the black hole at the centre of the Milky Way (New 杏吧原创, Science, 22 October) suggests another explanation for the mass extinctions at the end of the Permian and Cretaceous periods. The Alvarez meteorite and catastrophic lava flow theories cannot explain the long-term decline of the dinosaurs before the final extinction.
Suppose that the black hole flares for some 1 million years every 200 million years or so: the resulting X-rays would certainly have a longterm effect on life on this planet. The creatures best able to survive it are those with a short lifespan (to avoid dying of cancer), those living underground (such as small mammals) and fish (which are shielded by the ocean).
This is rather difficult to prove. But the mutations caused by the X-rays would increase the speed of evolution of the survivors, so a change of this nature might be detectable.
This cannot explain such things as the soot and iridium layer, which suggest that a meteorite or lava flow dealt the final blow.