Letters : Consumer pays
Newcastle upon Tyne
Norwegian concern about acid rain from ships’ fuel is fascinating but
entirely misplaced (This Week, 22 June, p
4). Where does Norway think the oil
comes from? Norwegians consume about 8 tonnes of oil and its equivalent in
products derived from it per head of population鈥攁mong the highest in the
world. They also export 16 tonnes of oil per head, complete with the sulphur,
which ends up in the heavy fuel oil used in ships. This makes the
Norwegians, in
spite of the fact that their oil is rather low-sulphur crude, among the worst
per capita polluters in the world.
The answer is clear: the Norwegians must remove the sulphur at source. This
would make far more sense than retrofitted flue-gas desulphurisation, which is
one of the most expensive options.
One of the things that this demonstrates is the nonsense of the “polluter
pays” principle. It does not matter whether the polluter is defined as the
oil-producer or the electricity generator. The cost is added to the price
of the
end product. It is the final customer who pays, you and I, but it is a
convenient fudge for single-issue campaigning groups to forget this, and even
otherwise sane and sensible politicians like Tam Dalyell
(Thistle Diary, 8 June, p 50) manage to
overlook it.
Letters : Weighty problem
Farnham Common, Buckinghamshire
I remembered a Department of Transport report when I read the article on
heavier lorries being planned for Britain’s roads (This Week,
4 May, p 9). The report stated that the road wear from vehicles is
proportional to the sixth power of the axle weight.
A 44-tonne lorry, as proposed, with six axles, will therefore cause about 30
million times as much wear as a 1-tonne car with two axles doing the same
number
of miles. With 10 axles it is still 2.3 million times as much wear.
Even if only 1 per cent of the road fund licence is for road repair this
ought to imply prohibitively high fees for lorries. As lorry road fund licences
are not this much higher, perhaps this is the hidden subsidy that makes the
lorries economical compared to railways.
Letters : Fat and fit
South Wirral, Cheshire
The first paragraph of your short on hip fractures stated: “Elderly women who
lose a lot of weight after middle age could dramatically increase their risk of
a hip fracture” (In Brief, 15 June, p 13).
This had to be another reference to osteoporosis, yes? But no. The researchers
had come to the conclusion that a drop in weight was probably linked to
sickness,
which of course would increase your chances of falling over.
Maybe their second hypothesis was closer to the truth鈥攖hat is, that
weight loss may “simply” reduce the mass of women’s bones, making them prone to
fractures.
Let’s look at the clues in this study. First, the problem is significant in
women. Secondly, changes in weight from when they were 50 years old and the
incidence of hip fractures in the next eight years were recorded.
So what happens to women in their fifties? The menopause. Production of
oestrogen, that vital hormone for strong healthy bone, grinds to a halt and in
susceptible women the onset of osteoporosis begins. However, all is not lost.
Oestrogen is still produced in the fatty tissue deposits that all women love to
hate, and so long as this extra weight is combined with a daily brisk walk with
the dog, life should continue as normal for at least a few years.
Unfortunately, there is another problem: women love to diet, and although
they have been showing willing for years, for some of them it’s only in their
fifties when they can really get to grips with it. The kids have flown the
nest,
the grandchildren ask Grandma why she’s so fat, and the really serious diet
begins. The pounds gradually roll off and along with them goes the capacity for
oestrogen production.
OK, so I’m speculating, but maybe this hypothesis is a little closer to the
truth. Perhaps those researchers in Washington DC should put a little more
thought into it. After all, if there really is a great advantage to the
middle-age spread maybe we should throw away those strict diet books, eat
healthily, and enjoy ourselves for a change.
Letters : Laxity and the law
Godalming, Surrey
The doubts about forensic tests for explosives (This Week, 25 May, p 4)
further confirms the place of science as the outcast of British public
life.
As Mick Hamer implies, ever more sensitive analyses must be matched by ever
stricter procedures to ensure the cleanliness of the test environment. It is
appalling to discover that the Fort Halstead test laboratory was seriously
contaminated.
But, in the brief and unsatisfactory media debate about this disgraceful
case, there has been no examination of the role of defence lawyers. Their
common-sense questioning of expert testimony ought to be the scourge of sloppy
science. In any one of the cases now tainted by the revelations at Fort
Halstead, a demand by the defence to know whether control samples had been
identically processed would have uncovered the shaky procedures that will now
threaten the credibility of all forensic chemistry.
It seems that otherwise clever and well-informed advocates lack the
confidence to pose the most elementary questions when dealing with
science. This
timidity illustrates a damaging paradox of British society: its strength grew
from science but those in charge today just don’t want to understand its
methods.
Each failure to employ science properly in the public arena brings further
popular mistrust鈥攚itness the current BSE eradication fiasco. Urgent
action
is needed to bring science back into the mainstream of national life. Maybe a
good start would be for the 10-year-old COPUS (Committee on the Public
Understanding of Science) to open a working dialogue with the legal
profession.
Letters : Happy to hurt
Nottingham
Why are most doctors so uninterested in pain control
(Letters, 8 June, p 54)?
In a previous letter (27 April, p 54), Peter Weale says with regard to
lumbar
puncture: “Sedation or anaesthesia may be required in uncooperative or young
patients.” The rest of us鈥攖hose who are too polite to make a big
fuss鈥攋ust have to put up with the pain. His very choice of the word
“uncooperative” is indicative of the attitude of many hospital staff to those
of us who see no reason why we should suffer needlessly.
A member of my staff had her thumb broken and had to have it pinned.
She said
that by far the worst part of the whole experience was the injection, when a
needle was rammed into the broken finger.
Yet this is not necessary. My last three (NHS) dentists have all used a
technique where they give the lightest of anaesthetic injections into the very
surface of the gum. After a few seconds they make a deeper injection and
finally
a deep injection right into the gum. Apart from the lightest scratch at the
beginning you feel nothing. This probably takes 15 seconds longer than just
jabbing the needle in, but enormously reduces stress for the patient.
In many hospitals, being brave is seen as being “good”. Asking for pain
relief, or even worse pain avoidance, is seen as a sign of moral weakness.
I am glad that R. M. Buck made a fuss and insisted that appropriate
painkillers were prescribed. If we all follow his example we can perhaps bring
about a change of attitude in both doctors and nursing staff.
Letters : Spare parts
Tonbridge, Kent
There is no need for organ donor cards to change their wording to
include use
of tissue for research (This Week, 22 June, p
6). Such a scheme already exists.
In 1991 the animal rights organisation Animal Aid launched the Humane Research
Donor Card (HRDC), which states that “after my death any part of my body
be used
for medical and scientific research”.
The HRDC is an initiative of animal protection groups because human
tissue is
very much a neglected alternative to animal experiments. In drug research, for
instance, use of human tissue is the exception rather than the rule despite the
limited relevance of most animal tissue studies.
To achieve its full potential, the HRDC needs to be accompanied by a
well-coordinated system of tissue collection, storage and distribution to
prevent donated tissues going to waste. It is our hope that the International
Institute for the Advancement of Medicine scheme, based at the University of
Leicester, will contribute to this end.
Letters : Soaking cells
As Gayle Page and colleagues state, the impact of alcohol on natural killer
(NK) cells has been underestimated (New
杏吧原创, Science, 13 April, p
18). Their study demonstrated that a bout of heavy drinking influenced the
ability of NK cells to destroy cancerous cells among a rat population.
Two years ago another group of researchers, led by W. Bounds, reported
on the
immune response of 10 healthy men and one healthy woman (aged 23 to 45) who had
consumed two 355-ml cans of beer (assorted brands, all 3.5 per cent alcohol)
over 30 minutes while eating pizza. Before the experiment they measured the
activity of lymphokine-activated killer (LAK) cells and NK cells in
peripheral blood mononuclear cells, and again 30 minutes after the subjects had
drunk the alcohol (American Journal of Medical Science, vol 307, p
391). While unstimulated NK activity was not affected, interleukin-2
induced LAK
activity was significantly reduced in the blood samples after alcohol
consumption, compared to before the alcohol was consumed. This effect was not
gender specific.
The small amount of alcohol used in this human study was capable of
impairing
the cytotoxic capacity of peripheral blood mononuclear cells, thereby reducing
the immune system’s ability to clear virus-infected cells or cells that have
undergone neoplastic transformation.
While the immune suppression demonstrated in this study was not likely to
significantly impair a healthy individual, it could predispose such an
individual to the mutagenic effects of environmental carcinogens. Such limited
alcohol consumption could also place individuals with impaired cell-mediated
immunity (which many researchers believe would include women with
endometriosis)
at increased risk of immunosuppression.
Letters : Peace of Minder
Auckland
Perhaps BT could learn a lesson from Telecom New Zealand with regard to the
implementation of its Call Minder service (Feedback, 8 June). After months of
fruitless attempts at persuading a technophobic family member to use an
answering machine, I gave up and subscribed to Call Minder.
The solution to the vicious circle described by your columnist seems very
obvious: Telecom NZ’s Call Minder simply does not call back with stored
messages. Instead, one is alerted to their existence by hearing a
different dial
tone on next picking up the receiver. One can choose whether to dial up for
one’s messages at that point or to delay doing so until a quieter time.
Simple 鈥�
even for my dear technophobe.
Letters : Floating high
Colchester, Essex
The latest problem with Europe’s Ariane programme confirms my belief that we
need to look more widely at methods of putting a payload into orbit. Do we have
to use huge, expensive, noisy, dirty rockets, or could there be a better
way?
At the moment, ideas such as skyhooks, space elevators or laser-powered
ramjets belong firmly in the science-fiction camp. One day they may be
practical, but not yet.
Still, there may be other methods. How high can a balloon go? How low will a
light-sail operate? Is there an overlap between the two zones, or could
there be
with a little technological refining? If so, this could be the basis of a
cheap,
quiet, nonpolluting way into space. The launch would probably be polar rather
than equatorial, with the denser air giving more lift to the balloon, the lower
Sun giving a better angle of attack for the light-sail, and longer hours of
daylight giving a more constant “fuel” supply.
On the ground, huge savings could be made. Everything happens more
slowly, so
there is no need for a large launch team, each monitoring a different aspect of
the launch in order to make split-second decisions. Explosion isn’t a danger,
and noise isn’t a problem, so you don’t have to clear a large area around the
site.
Could it be made practical? I don’t know, but I’d love to find out.
There may
be other alternatives to rockets. Is anyone looking for them, or are all the
experts so committed to rocket technology that nothing else can be
considered?
Letters : Y2K
Cambridge
Following the item about names for the year 2000 and the years coming after
it (Feedback, 8 June), computer
professionals whose job it is to fix the
problems with the rollover from 1999 to 2000 refer to it in typically
abbreviated fashion as Y2K, so maybe we’ll have Y2K, Y2K1, Y2K2, etc.
Perhaps I’ll stick with “two thousand and one”.