Letters : Absurd price tags
London
Should a tree be valued according to our willingness to pay (WTP) to
protect it, or our willingness to accept (WTA) compensation if it is cut down?
Adrian Bowyer (Letters, 2 March, p 49) demolishes the WTP approach, but
unfortunately asserts that WTA is perfectly reasonable and gives ordinary people
some control over their lives.
By allowing anybody to name their price, however high, WTA offers
everybody a veto on development. A veto for everybody amounts to no control
for all but a tiny minority. If WTP is a form of protection racket, then WTA is
like a ransom demand鈥攅ach of us can “kidnap” the hypothetical tree and
demand whatever we like for its return to the rest of society.
WTA is unworkable in practice: I oppose the Newbury bypass and, were I to be
asked, I would declare my willingness to accept the scheme only in return for
compensation of 拢10 million. But this bid to stop the road would be
matched by others vetoing all the alternatives, leading to a stalemate鈥攖he
one result that no one wants.
My willingness to pay is less than 拢10 million, but it depends on how
much money I have, who else is being asked and what other parts of nature,
culture and heritage I am also asked to pay for. If I could have a rebate on my
share of expenditure on nuclear weapons, for which I am willing to pay zero, I
would be able to chip in a little more to protect the trees of Newbury. Whether
WTA or WTP is used, the resulting numbers are arbitrary or depend, like all
opinion polls, on what question is asked.
WTA also fails as a basis for valuing life. Bowyer’s understandable valuation
of “an infinite amount” for the life of his daughter does not help his local
hospital decide how much to spend on keeping her alive should she fall ill. We
cannot spend an infinite amount on her health, but nor do we value her life by
asking what he can afford to pay. A more complex and subtle approach is required
to ration healthcare.
The alternative is necessarily imperfect, but lies in rejuvenated democracy
and participation. It is still not possible to vote for a sustainable transport
policy that sets out how the conflicts between development, environment,
mobility and access are to be resolved in the long term. There is no overall
vision against which the Newbury bypass can be evaluated. In healthcare, it
would be refreshing to see debate in the next election rise above “Jennifer’s
ear” and address the problems of prioritisation more openly.
We, the public, need to get used to facing difficult choices, listening to
complex arguments, and then voting responsibly in elections and referenda. Sadly
we are some way from such a mature society, but contingent valuation is a
gimmick offering no more than an escapist illusion of objectivity and
rationality.
Letters : Dearth of donors
Petersfield, Hampshire
I must take issue with your claim that animals provide the only answer to
the apparent shortage of replacement organs for humans (Editorial, 9 March, p
3). That view fails to take into account several practical moves which could
happen now, not at an unknown future date.
Every country could operate an opt-out organ donation scheme, rather than
Britain’s current opt-in scheme, which only produces 46 per cent of possible
human donors.
A far greater number of intensive care beds could be made available.
Professor Roy Calne from Addenbrooke’s Hospital reports that in just over a year
he has turned down 29 livers because of a shortage of beds. The liver from
ecstasy victim Leah Betts was flown to Spain although a British patient was
waiting to receive it, but no bed was available.
An honest commitment to reducing fat and salt in the national diet could
prevent disease, yet too often we have seen governments axing outspoken quangos,
failing to publicise critical reports on nutrition and generally preferring to
stay in bed with the food industry.
Your editorial also fails to tackle the ethical issues of species
“superiority” and parasitism, the sentiency of animals and their ability to
suffer.
Letters : Safe salmon
West Newton, Massachusetts
I read with great interest your article, “Can we make supersalmon safe?”
(Focus, 27 January, p 14). However, there were a number of errors that should be
corrected. There is also an argument to be made for the positive value to the
environment and to consumers of “supersalmon” which ought be considered.
I was distressed by the article’s error in stating: “A/F Protein thinks the
fish should be managed like standard salmon.” This is not the case. We have
consistently stated our belief that commercial rearing of AquAdvantage salmon
should occur in entirely enclosed tank systems or should occur in net pens only
where the fish have been sterilised. We are not interested in having fertile
AquAdvantage fish escape into the oceans, for both environmental and commercial
reasons.
In that light, it is important to correct the impression given that after the
initial breeding of AquAdvantage salmon by our Scottish licensee, Otter Ferry,
they might be put in net pens. One of the key reasons we are working with this
firm is that they maintain entirely land-based facilities and the continued
breeding and growing of AquAdvantage salmon will be in recirculating tank
systems from which escape into the oceans will be all but impossible.
It is our firm belief that with the acceptance of our technology, the
economics of raising salmon in recycled inland water systems will become so
attractive that oceanside rearing will be recognised as a net economic
disadvantage. Use of recirculating systems can eliminate many of the water-borne
diseases salmon are subject to, the negative impact of changes in water
temperature on salmon growth and the increasing problem of pollution by-products
associated with estuaries and coastlines.
I also contest the view that the placement of our gene in the salmon allows
“the salmon’s growth hormone to run riot”. Numerous measurements of circulating
growth hormone in AquAdvantage salmon show that the amounts are well within the
range found in wild salmon. The mechanism for increased growth is more
associated with the new production site (the liver) than with an absolute
increase in growth hormone levels.
The UN has estimated that the world will need to increase sevenfold the
amount of fish we currently produce in order to meet demand by the year 2025.
This cannot be done through traditional fisheries without totally destroying the
ecology of the oceans. Clearly, only aquaculture can meet this demand. However,
unless the productivity of aquaculture is increased dramatically, only the
relatively wealthy will be able to afford farm-raised fish. It is through the
advent of technology such as ours that productivity will increase sufficiently
to eliminate overfishing of the oceans and provide relatively inexpensive
seafood.
I would like to correct one other implication: that the genes “may give
transgenic salmon harmful characteristics”. We have had more than a decade of
experience with these animals and there is no evidence of “harmful
characteristics”. Like any salmon farmer, as we move from generation to
generation, we select which are robust, healthy and have commercially desirable
characteristics. Our fish show every indication of continued health and high
quality.
Letters : Wide of the mark
Fordingbridge, Hampshire
There was a serious mistake in your article on grouse shooting, “The
shooting party takes aim” (9 March, p 14). The Game Conservancy Trust was
referred to as “a charity devoted to preserving game birds for sport”. This is a
fundamental misrepresentation of our activities.
In line with our trust object we aim “to promote for the public benefit the
conservation and study of game species, their habitats and the other species
associated with those habitats”. To preserve game birds for sport is not a
charitable activity and the organisations which aim to do this are not
charities.
Many people in this organisation do not shoot game. They, like me, came into
it and remain in it because through research they have concluded that for most
species in the wider countryside, game conservation provides the most effective
buffer against continuing pressures from development and agriculture. Game, and
the host of species that share their habitats, cannot otherwise be sufficiently
protected, whether by legislation or by sanctuaries.
Relating more specifically to the subject of the article, raptors, it is
obvious that what are needed most at present are opinions informed by objective
research rather than by prejudice. Despite much of what we have to read, the
issue is not at all one-sided. As our manifesto says, we “work towards
recognition of the long-term conservation needs of game and their predators, and
seek to achieve a balance between them which is of overall benefit to man and to
the natural environment”.
I would also like to point out that contrary to what may be implied in your
article, The Game Conservancy Trust is closely collaborating with Peter Hudson,
the trust’s former manager of upland research, on a number of joint
projects.
鈥� 鈥� 鈥�
In response to the Scottish landowners seeking to protect their grouse,
the number of which are falling, why not shoot the people who shoot the grouse?
This surely would resolve the problem.
Ruth Hadman
Bungay, Suffolk
Letters : Journal rejoinder
Paris
You recently published a comment from your correspondent in Paris
concerning a paper that appeared in our Comptes Rendus on the problem
of the origin of Caulerpa taxifolia in the northwest Mediterranean
(This Week, 10 February, p 6).
We would like you to note thatLes Comptes Rendus de l’Acad茅mie des
Sciences makes space available to every scientist who wishes to present
findings that run counter to a paper that has previously been published,
providing these are based on scientific results which are amenable to
examination and criticism by appropriate referees.
Such an opportunity has naturally been offered, in the present case, to
Alexandre Meinesz, who, for reasons that were not clear, did not initially
accept this proposal. At least this was so at the time of your article; he has
since changed his mind and hence will publish in our Comptes Rendus his
own data and opposing view about the problem.
The fact that Meinesz did not want to record his view with a paper from his
own laboratory was not mentioned in the article by Tara Patel. Therefore the
reader was left with the impression that Comptes Rendus does not behave
as an objective and democratic journal, a judgment which our academy obviously
cannot endorse.
Letters : Indian numbers
Balmain, New South Wales
In his letter defending the assertion that “science is a product of
European thought and culture”, Paul Davies writes: “In the most developed
science, physics, a set of mathematical laws links widely disparate phenomena”
(Letters, 10 February, p 47).
It is true that modern physics is intrinsically mathematical. But is modern
mathematics conceivable without the system of numerals based on place values and
a digit for zero 鈥攖he system which we know as Hindu-Arabic numerals,
invented almost certainly in India, but quite certainly outside Europe.
Letters : Looking down
Alton, Hampshire
Jeff Hecht claims that the “eye in the sky” needs help on the ground
(This Week, 24 February, p 13). The evidence for this claim came from a project
involving the forestry consultant David Wilkie who had used old remote-sensing
imagery (more than 12 years old, because of a restricted archive) to map the
northeastern Zaire rainforest.
I do not dispute the validity of this work. However, I do feel that the
article implied that the errors found by Wilkie were applicable to contemporary
remote sensing. The essence of your report appears in the second paragraph,
which uses the present tense throughout.
Contemporary Landsat images have a resolution of 30
metres鈥攕ignificantly better than the 80-metre resolution imagery used by
Wilkie. Not only are features more accurately represented, but also any error
will clearly be reduced. Where pixel saturation may occur, its effects in real
terms will be restricted to 900 square metres per pixel as opposed to the 6400
square metres used in Wilkie’s estimations.
Perhaps Wilkie should assess contemporary deforestation rather than
concerning himself with what it might have been 12 years ago. The remote sensing
tools that are available to him now are much improved. In addition to Landsat 5,
there has been a great deal of success using the European synthetic aperture
radar satellite ERS-1, which is capable of recording data with 30-metre
resolution day and night and in all weather conditions, overcoming Wilkie’s
other complaints.
At the moment the European Space Agency is building a global database by
operating ERS-1 and the recently launched ERS-2 in tandem, so data should be
available for the area that he is interested in. However, the optimal sensor
platform remains the aircraft because each acquisition can be customised to
maximise resolvable detail depending on target characteristics.
Letters : Fat slicks
Watford, Hertfordshire
Olestra, Proctor & Gamble’s fat substitute, is not broken down by
heat in cooking nor by enzymes in the gut (This Week, 3 February, p 5). This
makes it effectively calorie-free. But are there any microorganisms which will
break it down in the sewage system? Can the undigested Olestra be disposed of
(in the usual fashion) without the fear of our sewers discharging Olestra-slicks
into our rivers and seas?
Letters : What's o'clock?
Fordingbridge, Hampshire
Michael Jackson takes issue with Michael Pinder for referring to 12 am as
the time when the Sun is overhead (Letters, 2 March, p 51).
As am is short for “ante meridiem” or “before midday” and pm is short for
“post meridiem” or “after midday”, it is just as incorrect to refer to 12
o’clock as pm. It should be described as “12 noon”, and the night-time
counterpart as “12 midnight”.
Letters : Correction
Quentin Fuller, who wrote the letter above, was wrongly
credited with the authorship of the letter “Soaring career” which was actually
written by Tony Jeans of Cheltenham, Gloucestershire (Letters,
16 March, p 59).
Letters: Internet hash
I read the correspondence from Keith Franklin and P. F. Perry with interest (Letters, 2 March, p 50). At the risk of being branded an “anorak”. I felt it natural to consult the Net. Two useful sources came to mind: the alt.usage.english Frequently Asked Questions (http://www.lib.ox.ac.uk/internet/news/faq/archive/alt-usage-english-faq.html), and the “Jargon File” (http://locke. ccil.org:80/jargon/).
The FAQ refers to # as being “called ‘number (sign)’, as in ‘the team finished in the #5 position’, or ‘pound (sign)’, referring to weight, as in ‘a 5# bag of potatoes’. Although use of this sign to denote weight has declined, ‘pound’ is the most widely used name for it in the US. But it confuses people who expect that term to mean the symbol for sterling currency (located on many British keyboards in the same place as ‘#’ is found on US keyboards). ‘Number sign’, adopted by ANSI/CCITT, is unambiguous, but little known in both the UK and the US.
“Computer-users in the UK, usually call the symbol a ‘hash’, from its appearance (reminiscent of marks one might make when chopping).
“Finally, in a failed attempt to avoid the naming problem by creating a new name, the term ‘octothorp(e)’ (which MWCD10 dates 1971) was invented for ‘#’, allegedly by Bell Labs engineers when touch-tone telephones were introduced in the mid-1960s. ‘Octo-‘ means eight, and ‘thorp’ was an Old English word for village: apparently the sign was playfully construed as eight fields surrounding a village. Another story has it that a Bell Labs supervisor named Don MacPherson coined the word from the number of endpoints and from the surname of US athlete James Francis Thorpe.”
The Jargon File, under the keyword “ASCII” notes: “Common names are given in rough order of popularity, followed by names that are reported but rarely seen; official ANSI/ CCITT names are surrounded by brackets:.
“#Common: number sign; pound sign; hash; sharp; crunch; hex; mesh. Rare: grid; crosshatch; octothorpe; flash