Letters : Peppering pests
Stockholm, Sweden
I read the article entitled “Is CS the wrong solution?” with great
interest (Focus, 30 March, p 12). You note that: “The British Home Office
rejected pepper because the research on it is limited.” I think that this
statement does not reflect the whole truth: in fact, in the past few years we
have witnessed important breakthroughs in pepper research. Much to our regret,
however, neither the general public nor the Home Office seems to be aware of
these advances.
Almost simultaneously with your Focus article, Chemical & Engineering
News featured an article about our work with resiniferatoxin, which
ultimately led to the recognition of a “vanilloid” (pepper) receptor. However,
its author put the emphasis on the use of hot pepper to repel squirrels from
eating birdseed and ignored pepper’s potential use for repelling attackers.
Letters : Voice from the grave
Victoria, Australia
It pains me to find yet another otherwise well-meaning person repeating
the slanders about me and my brave associates who, in the early years of the
last century, tried in their own way to remedy the evils of an unbridled
industrialism dedicated to profit and greed rather than to meeting human needs
(Feedback, 6 April, p 80).
I and my supporters, the Luddites, didn’t just smash “automatic looms”
because they “threatened to destroy our jobs” in 1811, as you say in your
scurrilous article (This Week, 16 March, p 9). We smashed the old “wide frames”
which were misused to turn out shoddy goods which were then sold to fellow
workers who couldn’t afford anything else; knitted stuff cut out and stitched
together for clothes which fell to pieces as soon as people started wearing
them. It wasn’t just a fight for jobs, but for the quality of life of our
families and fellow-humans, that got us transported, hanged and murdered on the
say-so of informers and provocateurs.
I believe, from the grave, that things have got worse, not better, since
then. No wonder you’re still trying to make us out to be mindless and selfish
machine smashers. That lie has been repeated since 1812, when it was first
spread to pull the wool over people’s eyes.
If you don’t believe me鈥攁nd believing me could be dangerous, with MI5
in the wings 鈥攜ou can get the truth from Cole and Postgate’s The
British Common People (University Paperbacks, 1961). Meanwhile, think of
the power you could generate by harnessing the energy from us old-timers who are
turning in our graves at being misrepresented.
Letters : It's tough to talk
What is this “telephone” of which you speak (Editorial, 13 April, p 3)?
It must be a new version of that talking bone thingy that used to be so
popular.
However, with its unmemorable multidigit addresses (“You want my phone
number? Hang on, I’ve got it in a file here somewhere”), and the routing
problems you describe, it seems this new VoiceNet has some years to go before it
becomes a mainstream technology.
Wouldn’t it be simpler just to use e-mail?
Letters : Case of consensus
Strasbourg
In his article entitled “Whose research is it anyway?” (Forum, 30 March,
p 48), John Gray suggests that the European Science Foundation is engaged in
some “top-down” conspiracy to impose research agendas on Europe’s marine and
polar scientists when he writes: “Self-appointed `independent’ bodies are
devising and approving ambitious projects with little reference to the views of
these scientists, and little evidence of democratic accountability.”
Unfortunately, he doesn’t appear to have done his research. The ESF isn’t a
“self-appointed” body. It is an organisation that is made up of 59 of Europe’s
top research funding agencies and academies. Collectively they represent most of
the public funds invested in European basic science and the views of the vast
majority of Europe’s scientists.
The decision to launch initiatives such as the European Marine and Polar
Boards, of which Gray is so suspicious and scathing, is arrived at by a process
of consensus amongst these organisations, reflecting the wishes of the
scientific community. It is patently ludicrous to suggest that the ESF approves
“ambitious projects with little reference to the views of these scientists”.
Indeed, the three research councils with which Gray says he has been associated
are members of the ESF and contributed to the setting up of the European Boards
for Marine and Polar Science.
The boards have been established so as to maximise the value of Europe’s
dwindling science budget through collaboration. While collaboration exists at
the level of individual scientists and at international level (for example the
International Council for the Exploration of the Sea), until now there has been
no formal coordination between European institutes. It is these institutes that
control national research resources, funding and time spent on ships, and they
are able to pledge these resources to agreed European science programmes.
By the same token, the four “Grand Challenges” cited by Gray were the product
of a joint ESF/EC initiative, the European Committee for Ocean and Polar
Sciences (ECOPS), that was supported by our member organisations.
Since 1990, ECOPS has organised more than 20 workshops and 11 European
research conferences, attended by some 100 scientists each, precisely to ensure
that scientists were fully involved in defining and agreeing Europe’s future
marine and polar science priorities.
Admittedly, this first set of priorities might not conform to Professor
Gray’s personal research priorities, but they do reflect the concerns of the
marine and polar scientific community at large. They were arrived at by a
democratic process called consensus.
Letters : Safe in sewage
Cincinnati, Ohio
I was disturbed by the recent communication on Procter & Gamble’s fat
substitute Olestra (Letters, 30 March, p 54). Extensive research has shown that
Olestra is environmentally safe. Olestra is effectively removed during
wastewater treatment, it is not toxic to plants and animals in the environment,
it is biodegraded, and it will not accumulate in the environment. It is broken
down, as a sole carbon and energy source, by common environmental bacteria and
fungi, including Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
The environmental safety of Olestra was reviewed by both the United States
Environmental Protection Agency and the US Food & Drug Administration as
part of the Olestra food additive petition. The research shows, and both the EPA
and the FDA agree, that Olestra will not have a significant impact on the
environment.
Letters : Embryonic issue
Aboyne, Aberdeenshire
Your piece “It’s the healthy bird that fathers more sons” in the 23 March
issue is a good demonstration of the dangers of commentators quoting out of
context ideas proposed by researchers.
Clutton-Brock did suggest that his work with the red deer on Rhum indicated
that hinds in good condition raised more stag calves. However, there was no
evidence of influence on the sex of the embryo, conceived approximately 232 days
earlier. What was actually suggested was that male calves, usually born larger
(as with lambs in sheep), were more likely to survive with a hind in good
condition producing plenty of milk, and less likely to do so in a reverse
situation, whereas with the latter the smaller female calf has some
advantage.
The discovery of any significant influence upon the sex of mammalian young
will generate great wealth, and problems.
Letters : Organ shortage
Richmond, Surrey
The letter from Joyce D’Silva (Letters, 30 March, p 52) gives a
misleading view of the efforts made to increase the number of organs for
transplantation.
There are over 6000 people in Britain waiting for an organ transplant. It is
important that your readers understand that many of the people waiting on the
list have suffered kidney, heart or liver failure as the result of a genetic
disorder and not, as Joyce D’Silva suggests, as a result of poor diet. Major
organ failure is rarely a self-inflicted injury by the patient.
A study conducted by Gore et al (British Medical Journal, vol 299, p
1193) found that the refusal of relatives was a main reason for nonretrieval of
organs and that this happened in 30 per cent of cases. In a two-year study
conducted by the United Kingdom Coordinators’ Association and British
Association of Critical Care Nurses, it was found that a major reason for
relatives’ refusal was that it was the known wish of the patient not to become a
donor after their death. A system of opting out would not address this issue.
More education might, though, and both health professionals and voluntary groups
are actively working on education programmes.
The point is that however hard we try, through education, to make the
existing organ donation system work better, there will never be enough human
organs to meet the needs of the growing numbers of people who are waiting for
transplants.
We look forward, with great interest, to see what potential there may be for
xenotransplantation in the next century.
Letters : Pills aplenty
White Gum Valley, Western Australia
I was interested to read your article on American schools being flooded
with “behaviour pills” (This Week, 9 March, p 7). The flood has also hit schools
in Western Australia.
As a school psychologist I have had contact with students consuming between
seven and eight Ritalin (methylphenidate) a day, students prescribed Ritalin for
reasons other than behavioural/attention problems (for example, as a panacea for
poor parenting skills or for students with other identifiable conditions),
schools where up to 10 per cent of students take stimulant medication and
parents administering doses to their children according to their own needs or
giving it to their other children. I have also heard rumours of a growing “drug
trade” in some of our schools.
A large survey conducted in 1993 in Western Australia on child health and
wellbeing found that nearly 1 per cent of children aged between 4 and 16 were
taking prescribed medication for hyperactivity or attention deficit disorder.
Significantly, this figure was between two and five times higher than rates of
prescribed medication for all other states and territories in Australia.
In Western Australia, unlike other states, there seems to be no system of
monitoring an individual doctor’s rates of prescribing stimulant medication to
children. In many cases no information is sought by the medical practitioner
other than the word of the parent and a brief observation of the child, and no
attempt seems to be made to put any behavioural modification system in place.
Few teachers or schools are involved in any formalised monitoring system for the
prescribing practitioner and in some cases, the school is not aware that the
student is taking medication at all.
Unfortunately, the comment published in your article from the UN’s
International Narcotics Control Board that, “doctors presented with disruptive
children seem far too willing to give the child methylphenidate . . . rather
than try behavioural therapies” could equally apply to Western Australia.
Letters : Tricky test
Halesowen, West Midlands
I can’t help feeling that the optimistic tone in your article about the
test for BSE (This Week, 6 April, p 4) may have ignored some of the
practicalities of such a test.
I write from a standpoint of ignorance as far as bovine medicine is
concerned, but by extrapolating from the methods used in human medicine to
harvest cerebrospinal fluid, I would foresee considerable difficulties in
testing large numbers of cows.
Unlike blood or urine, cerebrospinal fluid, certainly in humans, is not
readily accessible. To extract it, using a lumbar puncture, requires a
considerable degree of dexterity. The operation also requires cooperation from
the patient, who has to keep still in a posture designed to maximise access
through the vertebrae, even though they may be in discomfort. Sedation or
anaesthesia may be required in uncooperative or young patients.
My limited knowledge of bovine intelligence would suggest that most cows lack
the insight to cooperate while someone inserts a large needle into their back,
even if it might save them from slaughter. A “mad cow” presumably would be even
less likely to cooperate.
I would be interested to know how common a procedure lumbar puncture is in
cows and how keen vets would be to perform it on 200 cows in a herd so as to be
able to certify the herd as free from BSE. The ability of laboratory scientists
to “test 400 to 500 animals a week” may be irrelevant if the process of
harvesting the samples involves sedating large numbers of cows and spending,
say, 30 minutes retrieving the specimen.
On top of this, the procedure is risky. A proportion of these cows may have
severe headaches afterwards.
The bottom line may be that the cost of this procedure plus the laboratory
analysis could well be prohibitive. I would be interested to hear how veterinary
surgeons see this as a possible screening technique.
Letters : . . .
Blawith, Ulverston, Cumbria
“鈥arash Narang, a Newcastle microbiologist, considered such an
expert in BSE that he was invited to join a Nobel prizewinning US research team.
Working from the Newcastle Public Health Laboratory, he found evidence that the
infectious agent causing BSE was present in DNA and could thus be spread to all
parts of a cow’s body.”
So wrote a respected team of reporters in a two-page spread in The
Observer (24 March), the first Sunday after the latest BSE crisis
erupted.
Since then I have been searching in various journals for confirmation or
refutation of that claim, but without success. Was the article incorrect, or are
we witnessing another example of political muzzling?
Letters : Managing pain
East Coker, Somerset
With reference to your Focus report “Give a drug a bad name” (6 April, p
14), I would like to make some observations.
The first paragraph states that thousands of cancer patients die in agony
each year in Britain. This is not the same as saying 88 per cent of patients in
Julia Addingtonhall’s survey experience severe pain at some time before death.
As a GP working in Somerset I look after many terminally ill patients. I have
never yet seen anyone die in agony.
The survey also comments that patients dying in hospital have little better
chance of pain relief than those cared for at home. This seems to presuppose
that hospital should be the better place to die. It is not. Most people prefer
to die at home cared for by their families and their GP.
The article discussed the use of morphine particularly rather than pain
control in general, but it may have left readers with the frightening impression
that pain control in Britain is inadequate and can be achieved simply by using
more opiates.
The control of pain in terminally ill patients involves far more than
prescribing morphine. The involvement of community and hospice nurses working
with family doctors can alleviate pain by preventing pressure sores, muscle
contractures, sepsis, incontinence or constipation, vomiting and coughing. When
pain occurs, the early use of opiates in adequate doses is certainly important
but not the only answer.
Pain-relieving drugs can be administered by tablets, liquid, skin patches,
suppositories, intramuscular injection, under the tongue and in cream form.
Patients do have access to “patient-controlled analgesia” in their own homes
with continuous subcutaneous infusion via motorised syringe drivers.
The article does not mention that more than one type of pain exists. Cancer
patients often experience neurogenic pain, which is largely insensitive to
opiates. This and the pain of sympathetic dystrophy requires alternative drugs
such as tricyclic antidepressants or anticonvulsants. Pain may also be relieved
by local radiotherapy, regional nerve blocks, transcutaneous nerve stimulators,
ultrasound and heat.
The article begins by commenting on deaths in Britain but then mostly
discusses problems in Europe. I think a false and frightening impression has
been given of the care of cancer patients in Britain.
Letters : Watered down
Wareham, Dorset
As one of the authors of the recent report to the European Commission on
contamination of aquatic systems by Chernobyl fallout, I read your article on
floods putting “millions at risk” (This Week, 23 March, p 4) with great
interest.
The article is exaggerated and misleading. Only after five paragraphs of doom
and gloom suggesting that “30 million people are at risk of being contaminated
by radioactivity now sweeping downriver from the Chernobyl nuclear power
station”, do we get to the crucial point that “current levels of radioactivity
in the water are not a health hazard”.
One of the main findings of the post-Chernobyl studies on the Pripyat-Dnieper
system is that the population of Ukraine greatly overestimate the dangers of
drinking the water from their reservoirs. This causes people enormous stress.
Anecdotal evidence suggests that annual flooding of the Pripyat causes an
increase in the number of stress-related heart attacks in the city of Kiev 100
kilometres downstream of the reactor. More formal studies have clearly shown
that people living in areas affected by Chernobyl are much more stressed than
unaffected populations. Much of this anxiety, fed by misleading media reports in
both eastern and western Europe, is out of all proportion to the real risks.
The risk of contracting cancer by regularly drinking water from the Kiev
reservoir is around one in a million each year, around 100 times smaller than
the risk of being killed on British roads and 5000 times smaller than the danger
of smoking 10 cigarettes per day. In other words, it is completely negligible in
comparison with the other risks of everyday life. The media should report
tragedies such as Chernobyl in a responsible way, and assess “risks” in their
proper context. The people living in the contaminated regions of Belarus,
Ukraine and Russia need accurate information, not media hype.