In the mould
It appears to be becoming fashionable to downgrade the role which Alexander Fleming played in the discovery of penicillin. Here, however, are some simple facts of which Mitchell J. Notaras appears unaware, or merely chooses to ignore (Letters, 8 July).
First, Fleming observed the penicillin effect and acted on his observation. Secondly, he wrote a paper reporting the inhibitory effect of crude penicillin on pathogenic bacteria and then suggested that penicillin might find a use in medicine. He also attempted, without success, to purify crude penicillin and used crude penicillin-rich filtrates to treat infections.
Even more importantly, Fleming preserved the penicillin-producing mould and was happy to supply it to anyone who asked for it. Finally, Fleming spent much of the decade following his discovery of penicillin searching for new antibacterial agents produced by airborne moulds.
Without Fleming’s work, Ernst Chain would likely have been a forgotten 茅migr茅 and Howard Florey would have been remembered today only by a few physiologists. It is also worth pointing out that Florey knew of Fleming’s work from its inception, and was reminded of the likely therapeutic effect of penicillin by Cecil George Paine, yet he did nothing about it until the late 1930s. If the miraculous effects of penicillin were so obvious, why did Florey wait so long? Nor could the purification step worked out by Heatley and Chain be described as having been particularly complex.
In the event, the Nobel prize committee got it right when they acclaimed all three. As for Gwyn Macfarlane’s book, the last chapter provides a superb hatchet job on Fleming which could hardly be described as impartial.
Mad as a dentist?
Kate Charlesworth (Life, the Universe & (Almost) Everything, 24 June), misses the point in suggesting that “Alice’s Mad Hatter could have been a dentist demented by mercury fumes 鈥�”. He was not, for he was definitely, as stated, a hatter. At the time Alice in Wonderland was written, mercury was used in the processing of felt, and hatters frequently suffered the consequences described, just as dentists still do. Hence the characterisation.
Attention please
Steve McKillup has my sympathy in his attempts to survive in lecture theatres of dubious quality (Forum, 8 July), but it seems that a large part of the blame for the quality of his presentations is encapsulated in his statement that he has lectures lasting two hours.
It seems that modern theories of learning have not infiltrated to the nether reaches of Queensland, or it would be known that students’ attention spans are only of the order of 20 minutes, thus casting doubt on the traditional one hour lecture, let alone two hours.
In addition, and even more significantly, it is now well known that students learn more if they are directly involved in their learning and that, accordingly, the lecture is the worst method available for teaching. At the University of New England, Armidale, there are some interesting developments involving the replacement of lectures by interactive workshops of various kinds; perhaps Steve might like to redesign his units in a similar manner and stop using the bad theatres, rather than develop guidelines for designing more.
Your illustration showed the revolving fans over the speaker at the lectern. I was addressing fifty women health workers in Madras, engrossed in explaining the effects of paralytic poliomyelitis. As I showed the typical “equinus” foot due to the shortening of the leg and the turning of the ankle, I realised they could not see my leg as they were sitting at desks.
As they strained forward, I jumped on the table, carefully keeping my balance and showing the typical polio foot. The deep gasps rather surprised me, but, I thought, Hindu women are not used to seeing a visiting lecturer leap on the table. The shouts and pointing arms caused me to look away from them 鈥� to see on either side of my neck the two enormous fans whirring silently.
I am sure they will remember the speech, although they may have missed my beautiful mime. Not many lecturers risk their necks to make a point.
Biscuit protocol
The answer to the “biscuit” problem posed by Robert Eastaway (Letters, 15 July), is easy to set down, but very hard to put into practice.
One should always act as though everyone else in the same situation will act similarly and morally. Individuals (and governments) are not entitled to say, “but if I don’t, someone else will” in an attempt to justify nefarious deeds. Equally, one should not refrain from a good deed on the grounds: “What difference does it make, if I am the only person doing it?”.
The moral problem at the tea party given by the vicar’s wife therefore applies only to the first person offered a biscuit; she should take a plain biscuit because in taking a chocolate one she must assume that the others will do likewise, and that the fifth guest will lose out. The others then have no problem since there are enough chocolate biscuits for all.
Eastaway, in writing what appears to be a light-hearted tailpiece for your letters section has in fact posed a problem of very considerable importance in the conduct of social and national interrelations.
Since this is the vicar’s wife’s tea party, surely the first person to be offered the biscuits should make the virtuous choice of a plain one. He or she can then enjoy the sense of moral wellbeing that accompanies self-denial.
The remaining guests, now free to take a chocolate biscuit each, can feel no guilt 鈥� only a twinge of envy for the person who had the chance of making a sacrifice.
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Still at risk
We read with interest your recent Focus article entitled “Deadlier than the harpoon?” (1 July), but we query your statement: “Baleen whales which consume plankton, may be at lower risk from the chemicals.” Because it is assumed that filter-feeding whales feed low in the food web and that these food items should contain lesser amounts of organochlorine residues, it leads to an assumption that baleen whales are at lesser risk. This is reinforced by the lower concentrations of organochlorines in baleen whale blubber samples compared to toothed whales.
This scenario of exposure and biomagnification is much too simple for baleen whales. Some baleen whales consume phytoplankton and zooplankton. But for most, these organisms represent a small portion of their diet. Euphausiids (krill), amphipods, squid and fish can comprise a substantial portion of the diet, each of which, when measured on a Lipid adjusted basis, have comparable concentrations of DDT DDE, and PCBs.
The simple scenario is further complicated by the natural history. Humpback, blue, fin and gray whales undergo an annual migratory cycle that includes bouts of gorging on the summer feeding grounds followed by fasting periods that may extend over five months. During fasting periods the whales must mobilise their accumulated fat reserves, increasing the organochlorine concentrations in their blood and organ lipids. To date, estimates of concentrations of chemicals in baleen whales have been reported on the feeding grounds or at the end of the fasting cycle, but no data are available on the range of fluctuations within a whale during these cycles.
Lastly, low-dose exposure to organochlorine chemicals can interfere with regulation of gene expression and have profound effects on the numerous developmental pathways that lead to the formation of neural, hormonal, immune, and reproductive systems in the offspring. Although no research has been done on baleen whales to document such alterations, associations with hormonal, immune, and reproductive changes have been reported for small cetaceans, pinnipeds, and other aquatic species. Pathways and mechanisms for these effects have been extensively documented in laboratory animals.
Ironed out
Fred Pearce’s piece on the latest iron fertilisation experiment in the Pacific makes interesting reading (This Week, 1 July), but he misquotes me. In this experiment, a dense algal bloom was triggered by the addition of very low concentrations of iron to the sea, whereas a similar experiment 18 months ago showed a much smaller effect. However, I did not describe these outcomes as respectively “success” and “failure”.
The purpose of the project was to perform experiments to find out whether iron is a limiting nutrient in the waters of the equatorial Pacific. Both experiments were “successes” in the sense of helping to provide an answer to that question. The wording makes it sound as if the only purpose of the exercise was to perfect an eco-engineering technique for withdrawing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. This was, in fact, the last thing on the minds of the experimenters.
To give due credit, I’d also like to point out that the British component was led by Philip Nightingale of the University of East Anglia and David Cooper of this laboratory, not myself.
Selective security
Your forays into politics are naive and dogmatic (Comment, 15 July). I recommend that you stick to science.
Fetching my copy of New 杏吧原创 from the newsagent, I saw a picture in one of the papers of a young Bosnian woman hanging from a beech tree. She had had enough.
An alternative explanation of the French nuclear tests is that the French put their faith in their own strength. The sorry lesson of the collapse of “safe havens” in Bosnia is that the ideal of collective security is dead, and the UN is dead with it.
It may not be. But the French are not prepared to gamble on the long shot.
Merely an adjunct?
Not just a “kidnapping of science” (Comment, 15 July), but in our view the relocation of the Office of Science and Technology within the Department of Trade and Industry signals a singular contempt for science as a whole. The move clearly signals that the government sees publicly-funded basic research as an adjunct of industrial policy, rather than an area of activity which is most effective when carried out independently of outside interference.
Your editorial makes many very pertinent comments on this short-sighted decision, and you will be pleased to know that the Labour Party’s campaign for an integrated approach to research and development in science, engineering and technology under a Minister for Science will continue.
What is really needed is a coordinated strategy for science that reaches across government departments. Science has a value to society beyond that of just wealth creation. The pursuit of novel environmental research ideas in a government department traditionally hostile to the implications of its results must be at risk, as your editorial also points out.
Trying to understand the sharply increasing prevalence of asthma, or the role of diet in heart disease, or the cause of Alzheimer’s disease, are not issues related to industrial competitiveness. Therefore it is essential that universities can provide clear independent guidance which is free from short-term vested interests to maintain informed debate on controversial topics. For how else can government form a balanced view?
The successful transfer of technical innovation into application within business is of paramount importance to our nation’s future, and this must surely be the concern of the DTI However the necessarily short-term perspectives of businessmen are hardly likely to provide the most suitable criteria from which to select our best original science.
The DTI has already cut its own research budget by two-thirds since 1986. This news is scarcely likely to lift the morale among British scientists, already at an all-time low. Confidence will be further damaged by any threat to high-quality basic research from clumsy attempts to use market forces to extract short-term gains from basic science. We call on the government to give an immediate guarantee that funding for basic research will be protected from further cuts or diversion into short-term projects.
Praiseworthy project
Your article on skills shortages in South Africa is incomplete (This Week 8 July) More than a dozen years ago, the South African Institution of Civil Engineers began a programme that continues even today. It began a pilot scheme of educational enrichment for nonwhite schoolchildren which was very quickly supported by all the Associated Scientific and Technical Societies of South Africa.
Many of the businesses that relied on technologists poured large sums into Protec (Programme for Technological and Engineering Careers). The money was used throughout the country to offset poor facilities inadequate teaching and classroom boycotts. Pupils gave up every school-term Saturday and one week of every school holiday.
The objects were to enable the non-white portion of the community to provide technical skills from within itself; to break the inability to consider only the three “traditional” professions as targets for service and advancement and to offset as far as possible poor expectations and low motivation.
I personally set up the East Rand Branch of Protec, which in 1986 had over 300 children registered during their final three school years. We employed teachers, used the services of personnel staff from companies, even the chief training-pilot from South African Airways. We instituted a careers fair attended by bus-loads of youngsters from high schools in all the Eastern Highveld.
Soweto had a larger group than us, and the other major centres were also active. Today there are still youngsters in Protec. They are still sought after as being more likely to get through the tertiary system of education, and to be able to enter their chosen careers.
During the collapse of apartheid, economic conditions made it difficult to raise money and create motivation, but this was done. What has been achieved, as in Britain is not enough, but it is wrong to ignore the efforts of hundreds of people who raised or donated millions, and provided thousands with better chances of contributing to their country.
Permit problems
Few would doubt the benefits overall that have accrued from the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in terms of protecting wildlife. However, there are times when the rigidity of its regulations, especially those relating to the movement of “recognisable derivatives”, can prove counterproductive.
Examples of this occur regularly in our work at the Centre V茅t茅rinaire des Volcans (Rwanda) with the mountain gorilla (Gorilla gorilla beringei). The gorillas inhabit three contiguous countries and may move through the forest from one to another 鈥� a habit that can have profound effects on veterinary investigation and diagnosis.
I may, for example, be summoned to examine a gorilla (live or dead) in Uganda or Zaire but am prevented from taking blood or other “recognisable derivatives” from it back to Rwanda for laboratory examination unless I have a valid CITES permit from both countries. Sending specimens from the animal farther afield for tests that are not available locally presents similar difficulties: without permits even tiny samples of tissues cannot be despatched to Europe or North America and, as a result, prompt diagnosis of a disease in the gorillas may be impossible.
Under conditions of war or political instability, these problems are compounded. When my wife and I were evacuated by road convoy from Rwanda in April 1994, because of CITES we felt unable to take diagnostic and other pathological material from the centre with us. As a result, valuable specimens from gorillas and other species were lost or damaged during the fighting.
The reader may comment that all that is needed to avoid these difficulties is to apply for, and to obtain, the necessary CITES permits. This however, is not easy in countries where bureaucracy abounds and procrastination is routine. Veterinary problems in the gorillas may arise without warning and a CITES permit needs to be obtained immediately if diagnostic specimens are to be despatched promptly to the laboratory of choice. During the conflict in Rwanda last year it was, of course, totally impossible either to apply for, or to obtain, a CITES permit.
Our experience suggests that there is a need for the adverse impact of CITES on veterinary work to be recognised and reviewed. The present regulations must be considered counterproductive if they hamper diagnosis of disease and appropriate remedial action in a vulnerable species. Some accommodation within the convention to cover diagnostic tests and other emergency situations is surely overdue.