Letter
Here in Australia one of the “official” warnings against solvent abuse of
aerosol sprays is: “Intentional misuse by deliberately concentrating and
inhaling contents can be harmful or fatal.” The Kwik Grip warning appears to
have lost its focus in being modified.
Elevated sex
The discovery that regular sex may prevent colds and flu
(This Week, 17 April, p 6)
did not come out of the blue. Carl Charnetski and Frank Brennan’s
earlier work, in which the psychologists discovered that listening to canned
music in elevators helps ward off colds, won them the 1997 Ig Nobel Prize for
medicine.
This vital health information should be trumpeted to the
public鈥攅specially to anyone who may still be hesitant about having regular
sex in elevators.
More groans
There is another clue to the April Fool’s story in Nature about a
flying dinosaur, Smaugia volans, in the name of the supposed
researcher, Randy Sepulchrave
(Feedback, 24 April).
In Mervyn Peake’s Titus Groan, the first of the great Gormenghast
trilogy, the 76th Earl of Groan was called Sepulchrave. Having become completely
insane after the burning of his beloved library, and believing that he is an
owl, he leaps from the battlements to “fly with his flock”, but falls to his
death. Obviously another flightless dinosaur.
Letter
I must take exception to your claim that the “University of Southern North
Dakota” does not exist. It is renowned鈥攊n the world of entertainment at
least鈥攏ot only for its work in palaeontology, but also for its
musicology.
In particular, “Professor” Peter Schickele’s discovery, publication and
performance of the many lost works of P. D. Q. Bach have made the USND at Hoople
famous worldwide, if not further.
Letter
Beard advises that “rather than rush to technology, deaf children need an
evidence-based communications choice”. The nationwide evaluation of paediatric
cochlear implantation currently being funded by the charity Defeating Deafness,
with the aid of a grant from the National Lottery Charities Board, will deliver
precisely that.
About a thousand children have so far received implants in Britain, and the
short-term outcomes for speech are generally positive, sometimes impressive.
Beard’s suggestion that “deaf children can be brought up to use sign language as
their first language and only later introduced to spoken language” seems
persuasive were it not for the fact that children implanted when older seem to
do significantly less well than those implanted early.
This impartial and independent study, the largest of its kind anywhere in the
world, involves health professionals, educationalists and families, and will
show us whether the short-term benefits translate into material mid-term
benefits in communication skills, education and quality of life for deaf
children. It will help to shape future services and, most importantly, it will
offer the families of deaf children the informed choice that Beard so rightly
points out is needed.
Genetic determinism
As a nonbiologist I have problems with some expressions of evolutionary
genetics. Your item on the mating behaviour of the flour beetle
(This Week, 10 April, p 12)
is a case in point: “sperm have evolved this trick to
counter the males’ ability to scoop them out of the females’ reproductive tract”
(my emphasis) and “Every male is trying to get the upper hand”.
Such anthropomorphism seems misleading. The evolutionary process is not the
result of a strategic plan to succeed in the next generation but the consequence
of changes in the past that have since produced numerical success.
I try to tell myself that it is a useful mental shorthand and I am worrying
unnecessarily that such anthropomorphism will compromise future understanding.
Perhaps someone who knows about these things can reassure me about this and the
survival implications of pedantry.
Allergy alert
My wife has known for some time that she cannot wear “cheap”
jewellery鈥攊t always brings her out in a rash. But what may be more
frightening about nickel allergies
(This Week, 30 January, p 22, and
Letters, 20 March, p 52)
is that many millions of people eat nickel every day, probably
without realising it.
Some months ago, my wife came out in a strange rash鈥攕mall, white bumps
on her palms and the soles of her feet. These bumps itched constantly and
erupted, oozing a clear liquid. Our GP suggested it was eczema and prescribed a
totally ineffective cream. It was only when she ran out of multi-vitamin tablets
that the condition cleared up. Sure enough, when we examined the ingredients
list, each tablet contained 5 micrograms of nickel.
This may seem like a severe reaction to a tiny amount of nickel鈥攊f that
is what caused it鈥攂ut perhaps prolonged exposure increases the level of
allergy. Perhaps, like mercury, nickel builds up in the body over time.
I know that we cannot say from this evidence that my wife’s condition was due
to the nickel content. Apart from anything else, there are 31 ingredients in
this particular brand of multi-vitamins (11 of them metals). But why put nickel
in vitamin tablets anyway?
Speak for yourself
A recent batch of correspondence
(Letters, 24 April)
includes two letters on different topics making the same error of
extrapolating the personal to the universal.
In the first letter (p 54), Peter Berrie claims that Word macros are a
“feature that no one needs” and that the solution to the dangers of virus
infection is to eliminate macros from wordprocessing packages, because “No
customers will miss them”.
Then Forrest Stevens derides mobile phones as merely “annoying status
symbols” (p 56).
If Berrie really thinks no one uses macros, he must be speaking from limited
experience. I could name at least half a dozen companies who would scream blue
murder if macros were taken away, because they are used daily by large numbers
of staff to automate and simplify complex tasks.
Similarly, while there are no doubt some people who purchase mobile phones
merely to have the latest gadget, many mobile phones are owned by people with
very good reasons for having them. Mobile phones have revolutionised the working
lives of self-employed tradesmen and out-of-office workers such as sales reps.
Workers on emergency standby are no longer chained to their houses by the
telephone and people (particularly women) who have to travel at night or in
remote areas are far safer. Then there are contractors, like myself, who
frequently change work location and need a stable daytime contact number. I can
confidently state that I would be several thousand pounds poorer over the past
four years if I had not had a mobile phone.
If people don’t like macros or mobile phones or anything else, that is their
right. They are perfectly free to disable the macros or not buy a mobile phone.
What they should not do is assume that the rest of us have no legitimate reason
for using them.
Letter
Berrie misses the target. Macros are extraordinarily powerful tools that can
automate repetitive tasks, whose form the programmers of the wordprocessing
package could never have anticipated.
The problem lies in our reliance on an increasingly restricted set of
programs. The Melissa virus relied on so many people having a particular mail
program and a particular wordprocessor that could be hijacked. The resulting
bedlam highlighted a fact long known about monocultures: if you rely on one
resource, you create opportunities for parasites.
The solution is in diversity. The Melissa macro virus could never have
wreaked such havoc if computer users had not limited themselves to such a small
set of resources.
Windows and DOS viruses number more than 40 000. Macintosh viruses number
fewer than 60 and Unix viruses fewer than 10. Diversify and the problem
lessens.
Letter
It is true that the old-fashioned software was less prone to viruses than the
new鈥攋ust as it is easier to maintain a bicycle than to maintain a jet
fighter. We can’t reverse the “customisation revolution” simply to appease our
virus paranoia.
Coral goes critical
Last week I was cited as knowing how the fish stocks in the Chagos
Archipelago are faring as a result of the recent coral bleaching event
(This Week, 24 April, p 13).
I have no idea how they are faring.
Contrary to the claims in the article, the reef fish elsewhere in the region
are certainly not beginning to recover. I think the impacts of widespread
devastation of corals are likely to take some time to work their way through the
system and the impacts on the fish communities, if anything, may just be
beginning.
The same article gives the impression that I am highly critical of management
efforts in the area, but I made quite the opposite point to your reporter. Over
the past two years the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has published a
conservation policy statement for the Chagos, it has extended British membership
of the Ramsar Convention to cover the area, and in November last year it
declared nature reserves covering some of the most important islands and lagoons
of the archipelago. The consideration of sites as marine protected areas is next
on the agenda. While there may be more to do, these actions hardly point to
inactivity.
A massive coral dieback of this sort will certainly have an impact on fish
stocks, and this needs to be considered in any fisheries management system. The
establishment of no-fishing zones is certainly one important tool in fisheries
management. Given its current good record in the overall management of the
region, I feel certain the FCO will be considering these matters with the
urgency they deserve.
Due to changes made in editing, the statement that Chagos fish stocks have
not yet begun to recover was incorrectly attributed to Spalding鈥擡d.
Open y毛
John Farquhar
(Letters, 6 March, p 51)
mentions a study on ducks that you
published 16 years earlier than the recent Indiana State University research on
ducks’ habit of sleeping with one eye open (This Week, 6 February, p 8).
Both studies reminded me of a very much earlier observation. Geoffrey
Chaucer, in the Prologue to his Canterbury Tales, wrote some 600 years
ago:
Whan that April with his showres soote鈥�
鈥nd the yonge sonne
Hath in the ram his halve cours yronne,
And smale fowles maken melodye,
That slepen all the night with open y毛.
In the bag
Perhaps Feedback wrote the item about a warning on a product called Kwik
Grip, about deliberately inhaling an aerosol (as opposed to “accidentally”
inhaling it), with tongue firmly in cheek
(24 April).
In case not, please note that for a problem to arise, aerosols or
solvent-based products such as glue have to be placed in a suitable container
(often a plastic bag) and the end placed over the nose and mouth so that the
contents are inhaled with little or no air. After some inhaling, the desired
result is apparently obtained. Unfortunately, the heart may be sensitised by the
solvent/propellant, even after a single use, and the abuser dies.
There is no danger from normal inhalation while using such products.
Manufacturers agreed to place warnings on their packaging, both as a deterrent
to potential abusers (often teenagers) and as minimal legal protection.
Now hear this
The article by Marion Beard on cochlear implants for deaf children
(Forum, 24 April, p 52)
demands a response to redress the balance in this long-standing debate.
Beard ignores the growing body of evidence that children who are born
profoundly deaf (9 out of 10 of them born to hearing parents) and receive an
implant at an early age can achieve the same as hearing-impaired children who
wear hearing aids. The majority have the option of mainstream education (with
appropriate support) and their speech and language skills are in many cases
indistinguishable from those of their hearing peers.
Most paediatric implant programmes have teachers who have worked with deaf
children and who use sign language. Parents are given the option of development
for their child based on signing, but because their world is a hearing world and
the deaf community seems alien to them, most reject this. What Beard describes
as the “social mutilation” of a cochlear implant, whatever that may be, seems a
far better alternative to the hearing parents of a deaf child than the
restrictions imposed by only communicating through sign language, lip-reading
and difficult-to-understand speech.
None of these comments detracts from the wonderfully fulfilling lives of
those who do grow up in the deaf community, but the undeniable and regrettable
fact is that paediatric cochlear implantation will gradually reduce their
numbers.
Letter
As parents of a two-year-old girl who was born deaf, we would like to express
our full support for the views expressed by Beard. Our daughter is suitable for
a cochlear implant from a medical and educational viewpoint, yet no one can tell
us how many times in an average lifetime will the device need to be replaced and
what the long-term neurological effects on the brain are?
Also, the psychological aspects are rarely taken into account, given our
society’s pursuit of “normalisation”. Are we creating a limbo land, where the
child is neither hearing nor deaf?
Is deafness so awful that we have to put our children through major surgery?
Are we trying to deny them their true identity?
Accepting deafness as reality does not have to be so bad. Communication is
the only real barrier to the deaf person fully functioning in our society. In
Scandinavian countries, Scandinavian Sign Language is recognised as a language
and is taught to all children. Would we still have the same attitudes in Britain
if British Sign Language were recognised as a language and provided for
accordingly?