Letters to the Editor
Write to: Letters to the Editor, New 杏吧原创, King’s Reach Tower, Stamford Street, London SE1 9LS, or fax to 0171 261 6464. Please include a daytime telephone number, and cite the date of the articles mentioned. We reserve the right to edit longer letters. Your letters may also be published in New 杏吧原创 newsletters.
Whistle blower
Re your article on the so-called “thalidomide hero” (Review, 29 October 1994). On the 18 January 1958, two and a quarter years before the horrific reports of Widikund Lenz in Hamburg and William McBride in Australia, James McCash Murdoch and I described in the British Medical Journal (1, 84), work suggesting that Thalidomide might have deleterious human effects on the grounds of our studies upon thyroid function. This publication was considered so important that an eminent American editor, Gilbert S. Gordan, wrote in the Year Book of Endocrinology for 1958-59):
“Use of the drug is not justified.”
For those interested in a detailed account of a massive and largely unappreciated scandal, New 杏吧原创 readers are referred to The Sunday Times “Insight Team” book, Suffer the Children 鈥� the Story of Thalidomide (Andre Deutsch 鈥� 1979) and its review in the BMJ of 9 June 1979, page 1553.
Who then might be defined as “heroes”? Two doctors who warned in a journal of world stature with reputable international support, that a drug might be dangerous, or someone who 鈥� two and a quarter years later 鈥� described the gross evil that the drug had actually caused?
Incidentally, any book that refers to Murdoch and my,self as “eminent medical men” should be prescribed reading for intellectual New 杏吧原创 contributors!
Digital degradation
Andy Lawrence describes L. Tuner’s Universal Data Identifier (UDID) and reports that “representatives from the MCPS [Mechanical Copyright Software Society] have listened to digital recordings with and without UDID and found no sound deterioration (Forum, 18 February).
May it be so! But this claim has been heard so often, and it has always been wrong. The cassette anti-piracy system developed by CBS (“Copycode”) was an analog example. In digital, my friend Bart Locanthi, the late well-known audio engineer, delighted in pointing out audible flaws in various data-compression schemes for broadcast or studio recording.
In our lab, we have heard two recent compression devices, one for professional, the other for consumer use. These also were claimed to create no audible degradation; but like the others, they did degrade the sound.
If UDID changes the digits then there is a possibility that it will change the sound. Finding out whether and how much it does so requires listening tests with a high resolution audio system and a wide range of source material including a “live feed” direct from the microphones. Such tests will minimise the chance of adopting a system whose audible defects suddenly become clear to users six months later.
Red hot patents
My colleagues and I at the UK Patent Office Search & Advisory Service were interested to read J. H. Evans’s plea for an update on an anti-fouling agent for boat hulls and other underwater structures, which contains an additive based on chilli peppers (Letters, 25 February).
This seemed to be a good opportunity to demonstrate the usefulness of patent information as provided by the Search & Advisory Service.
The inventor, Ken Fischer from Ohio, has a US Patent No. US 5226380 dated July 13, 1993, and he has also filed a PCT [Patent Cooperation Treaty] application for the same invention, published as WO 94/08840 on 28 April 1994 and designating some 25 countries. The PCT patent application lists a great many capsicum derivatives which produce the desired effect, and one of these, namely capsaicin, has certainly been used previously in similar applications. Japanese Patent No. JP S5105601 discloses an anti-fouling, stain-inhibiting composition for seawater structures which contains capsaicin or its derivatives.
Evans was interested in this invention because of its green credentials, there being no doubt about the eventual biodegradability of the active ingredient, so I think he may also be interested in Japanese Patent No. 60028467 which is for a non-toxic antifouling paint containing 1 to 5 per cent dry egg white. Apparently seagoing encrustations can’t cling on to this coating. Disappointingly, “the reason adherence is lost to seagoing ship bottoms is still to be clarified”.
As a by-product, this little patent searching exercise has revealed that capsaicins are remarkably versatile. Their fiery properties have led to them being used in compositions for repelling cats and dogs, for stopping rats gnawing electricity cables, birds eating seeds, people biting their finger nails and pigs eating other pigs, although it is not clear whether the anti-cannibal effect applies only to pigs.
They are also used in toothpastes which “keep the mouth refreshed and free from bad breath and fur” 鈥� presumably dog, cat or rat fur. They are also good for your hair and have been used in preparations for the prevention of greasing and dandruff and in shampoos for dry hair which promote hair regeneration. But as a word of warning to prospective users, Japanese Patent No. JP 60181007 describes the use of a related capsicum derivative in a product which inhibits growth of undesirable hair.
These contradictory properties are further illustrated by a patent for a composition for enhancing the appetite and a patent for an appetite suppressant. Although I have not found any such reference in a patent, I should perhaps also mention the use of these substances in aphrodisiacs.
Having attempted to enlighten Evans, I hope the editor will excuse a small plug for the Patent Office Search and Advisory Service. It is true that we have relocated to the main Patent Office site in Newport, Gwent, but we are still very much in business.
Most of our business continues to be conducted by letter, telephone and fax but for the benefit of our London customers who prefer to call in person, a Patent Office examiner will be available for consultation by appointment at our previous address in London on the second and fourth Friday of every month. To make an appointment, please telephone the Search & Advisory Service on 01633 811010 or fax on 01633 811020. We are at present considering provision of such a service in other locations.
Message for Titan
Gregory Benford asks for suggestions for what to put on a plaque that may be sent to Titan and perhaps discovered in a billion years (This Week, 18 February).
For this “message to the unknown future”, one surely needs something that will let it be precisely dated by future discoverers. The exact relative positions of all the planets and moons on, say, January 1st 1997 should tell them that 鈥� the combination ought to be unique. As back-up, one could add some details of the stars of the Plough, and of the fast-changing Orion Nebula, and perhaps the Crab Nebula and its pulsar.
For a longer-term perspective one might include the present position of the Magellanic Clouds as they orbit the Milky Way, and of Andromeda and other galaxies of the Local Group, or even the Virgo Super-cluster. Present-day astronomers would dearly like to know what they looked like a billion years ago, wouldn’t they?
As well as that, the disc should store details of the current temperatures and gaseous compositions of all the moons and planets, along with current changes going on on our planet. So if the future inhabitants of Titan find Earth as hot as Venus, they will at least be able to guess why.
Big but not bad
The article on the Three Gorges dam contains several misconceptions (“The biggest dam in the world”, 28 January).
You say the dam will “drastically change” the flood regime. This will extinguish rare birds and dolphins, devastate farmers, and cause people to endanger themselves by moving into the flood plain.
These concerns are unfounded because the dam’s effect on the downstream hydrologic regime will be negligible except on those rare occasions when there is an extreme flood. Each year the reservoir will be drawn down in May and June in advance of the flood season. Then it will be filled in October when the flood season has passed.
The resulting changes in the river’s flow in these months will be less than 10 per cent and well within the envelope of year-to-year variations. The change in levels in Poyang Lake will be negligible and, in any event, will not occur during the wintering period for the Siberian Cranes. And, as far as the dolphins, alligators and others are concerned, nothing will change.
The farmers in the Yangtze Basin below the dam do not, as suggested by the article, practice flood dependent agriculture. All farming takes place behind the dykes and is intensive year-round irrigated agriculture. Since the floods will continue to happen each year, there is no risk of people moving into the flood plain. There are, indeed, areas that may have to be evacuated in the event of a high flood, but the people are aware of this and they have been living there for many years.
The Three Gorges dam will be a concrete gravity dam, a massive concrete structure sitting on solid rock. There have been no failures of this type of dam in the modern era of dam construction. There is no scientific basis for the concern that the dam could fail due to a landslide or an earthquake. The failure of the Banqiao earthfill dam in 1975 has no bearing on the safety of the Three Gorges dam.
On our bike
Many thanks for the publicity for our conference “Turning the Corner” (Feedback, 11 February) 鈥� though you missed out one of the star speakers, John Whitelegg.
Also our thanks for highlighting why it is we need the conference. Transport in many rural areas is diabolical, so much so, that managing to get to school, work or the shops for many deserves a Duke of Edinburgh award. Laying on a big public event accessible to as many people as possible relying only on public transport is a nonstarter.
We will not, by the way, be providing car lifts from Truro railway station to the conference. Because of the lack of public transport, car ownership in Cornwall is extremely high (and because of the mega unemployment and abysmal wages, the average age of those cars is higher than anywhere else in Britain). Nevertheless most of the organisers don’t drive.
Instead, we will be forcing both ordinary human beings and junior transport minister Steven Norris 鈥� should he choose to accept our invitation 鈥� to share a minibus with facilities for the disabled. The conference timetable has been ordered around train times, and we are more than happy to provide reps from New 杏吧原创 with a bicycle for the eight (not twelve) mile trip from Truro.
Mental retreat
The article celebrating E. M. Forster worries that reality has begun to resemble his vision of a time when we physically retreat from both the outside world and direct experience into a world of individual isolationism and secondhand reinterpretation (Forum, 25 February). The truth is more subtle.
Two weeks ago, I had the dubious pleasure of attending a ski racing school which was also attended by two cellular telephone salesmen. One, an aggressive type, was continually bellowing at underlings on a conventional cellular handset. The other had somehow wired himself in a manner which allowed him to communicate using equipment which was completely invisible to the observer.
Although both were competent skiers, neither were truly present. In their own minds, they were not on a mountain, they were in an office. For all the mountain touched them, they may as well have been on exercise bikes in one of Forster’s windowless cubicles.
Here is the difference between the 1990s and Forster’s vision; rather than retreat physically from the world we are retreating mentally from it. The danger lies not in virtual reality, but in reality becoming, to us, virtual.
Men and girls
Robin Dunbar is spot on when he says that men find childlike looks attractive in women (“Are you lonesome tonight?”, 11 February). This is clear when one looks at the child sex abuse figures, the prevalence of child pornography and the plummeting ages of models.
However, he falls down with the commonly given explanation that young means more fertile. He says, “Many of these female traits are characteristic of children and could act as signals of higher fertility.” This may hold up when you consider women over 20, but a child is not sexually mature; that is the definition of “child”.
Even in our industrialised civilisation where the constraints of natural selection have been loosened to the extent that the average age of menarche has fallen to around 13, teenage mothers are still twice as likely to die in labour as older women. Also, babies born to teenage girls tend to be significantly underweight and have an increased risk of mortality.
If, as Dunbar claims, men have evolved this preference to increase the number of children they have, then why not invest their energies in providing for and protecting a mate who has a good chance of having live births?
Question of colour
The article on presentations by Nicholas Birch was useful in many ways (Forum, 18 February). But I was especially pleased that he mentioned the problem of colour blindness, since it affects around 10 per cent of males and is generally not appreciated in a wide range of professions and activities.
With two sons who are afflicted, I have found teachers ignorant of the condition and its significance for their work. In the average mixed class, it means that at least one of the boys will be affected. It would be relatively simple for teacher training to deal with such an issue.
There are many areas where as our sons grow older we realise life is unnecessarily made more difficult for them. For instance, shades of red, brown and green are commonly used in diagrams and maps (in books, and on television). It happens in museums too. For example, the recent “Story of the Earth” exhibition at the Natural History Museum had a world map using red and green lights to show the distribution of earthquakes and volcanoes. Five per cent of the population could not make use of it at all. More seriously, British 拢10 and 拢20 notes are a nightmare.
The popular colours used in maps and displays are precisely the most difficult for a significant number of people to distinguish between. A simple remedy would be to use blue and yellow (though blue should not be shaded with red to form purples as these too are confused). I will leave it for others to comment on traffic lights.
Carry on crusading
Richard North’s excellent insights into the changing green agenda only tell part of the story (“End of the green crusade”, 4 March). Science may, as he asserts, be able to provide the answers 鈥� though sceptics might say they have heard that one before. The problem is that the scientific approach is not universally acceptable.
This is because science is only one system some people use for making decisions about the environment. Religious fundamentalists rely on the authority of “what is written”. Others may prefer their intuition or their own direct personal experience. It is these last who feel they are using the evidence of their own eyes not discounting it, as North maintains.
Often the origins of environmental conflict lie in attempts to foist a “scientific” decision on a group or community. Perplexed regulators or professionals simply don’t appreciate that people can’t accept a scientific decision if they are making their own choices on, say, an emotional basis 鈥� a different basis to the scientist but one which is real to them.
Some may scoff at such an assertion. Yet people do apply different value systems in different contexts: the most assiduous scientist may use pure emotion when deciding on a life partner. Indeed North may unwittingly have fingered this point when he said that road protests are more about landscapes than emissions. The local destruction of much-loved areas during road building results in what he calls medieval displays of the “fury of the impotent” precisely because powerful emotions are invoked over what is being lost.
The challenge for environment organisations is responding to the more solutions-focused environment agenda North implies. The pragmatic recognise that though science will play a crucial role in finding answers, people will only “buy in” to the way forward if their concerns are heard. This means starting where people are, with all the complications their existing values systems might bring to a choice, rather than wishing they all respected “the science”.
At first glance, the adversarial decision-making culture prevalent in Britain does not bode well for a more sympathetic handling of sensitive issues and disputes. Indeed current mechanisms for dispute “resolution” like public inquiries are inherently adversarial and consequently often akin to fighting fires by throwing petrol on them. However, the growing success of round tabling and consensus-building techniques shows that contrary to North’s conclusion, sweet reasonableness may 鈥� sometimes 鈥� prevail.
North claims that humans are “destined” to alter the world on a scale never seen before. He then accuses environmentalists of behaviour akin to religious fundamentalism.
Greenpeace believes that the disruption of the natural world by human behaviour is determined by choice rather than destiny. Our four million supporters and other environmentalists all over the world have made a choice. Unlike North, they have chosen to value clean air and seas and the protection of the natural world.
Of course, North is entitled to his opinion, and even to a lack of “sweet reasonableness” in his invective. He is not entitled, however, to claim that science is on his side.
Environmental damage 鈥� whether it is due to oil spills, acid rain, dioxins or overfishing 鈥� is real and measurable. There is no such thing, however, as a purely “scientific verdict”. The verdict depends crucially on what is measured, how it is interpreted, and the values of the interpreter.
This is neatly illustrated by North himself, who dismisses a whole host of environmental problems on the basis of his own prejudices. The US Environmental Protection Agency’s report on dioxins, for example, did not merely discuss “slightly greater” risks 鈥� but found evidence of dioxins acting like female hormones, with low dose effects on reproduction and embryo development. Whether we act on these findings does not depend on science alone, nor is it simply a question of “personal taste”. Decisions are based on personal values as well as knowledge. Greenpeace’s values are known and shared by millions. Perhaps North should be more open about his?
North says of humanity’s relationship to the rest of nature: “We are bound to be intrusive, and certain to make mistakes.” He seems to feel the worst consequences of these mistakes are the offence that over-sensitive ecological souls might take.
Try telling that to the low-lying island states who find they can’t get any developments built because insurance companies, worried about the mistake of allowing an atmospheric build-up of carbon dioxide, won’t insure a brick; or to the people of Bougainville whose fishing streams have been silted up and killed stone dead by the mistakes made when tailings have spilled over from an intrusive bit of copper mining. Oh don’t worry, we should say, the system is pretty robust really.
If it wasn’t rather sad, it would be comical to see the desperate attempts to discredit environmentalists by comparing them to 14th century flagellants suffering from “displaced religious urges”, followed by a touching exposition of Richard North’s own faith 鈥� he believes in politicians, poor man.
Even if spiritual sensibility were not 鈥� and I think it is 鈥� a useful, intelligent way to perceive, understand and manage complex systems (like nature) without having to go to the reductionist lengths of recording and measuring every single relationship between every single component, even if it were not directly useful intellectually, spiritual sensibility and passion play a central role in the political process.
Since when did politicians coolly listen to the suggestions of objective scientists (and don’t tell me all “scientists” are objective) and override political pressures to take sensible, far-sighted action? Do us a favour! Passion, scaremongering even, is essential to get things moving. We are a few years away yet from North’s rational Utopia. He’ll have to carry on praying, I fear. And keep on taking the dioxin tablets.