Spot the mistake
I can sympathise with your report of a drop of spit on a laptop screen being
interpreted as a computer virus
(Feedback, 14 August).
Some years ago, I chaired a postgraduate’s thesis defence. The candidate put
up a transparency showing a dozen or so points on a graph. All except one showed
near-perfect linear agreement. The aberrant point was a considerable distance
above all the others. The candidate was asked to explain the aberration, and for
ten minutes the candidate and later some of the committee members discussed what
it might represent: an equipment artefact, variations in the lab environment and
so on.
Indeed, some of the suggestions were quite creative. Eventually, with the
unfortunate candidate becoming more and more desperate to explain away the
aberration, I suggested that we press on with the defence. With some relief the
candidate removed the transparency and, lo and behold, the aberrant point was
still there on the screen. Of course a good time was had by all, although it was
probably one of the longest ten minutes of the candidate’s life.
Bacteria bias
Once again, evidence is accumulating that cancers are caused by infective agents
(21 August, p 5).
Although Andy Coghlan mentions the possibility that
bacteria are involved, the kneejerk reaction of most cancer experts and
commentators is to suggest the involvement of a virus.
This, despite the fact that for more than a century, nonviral microorganisms
have been implicated in cancer. Although it is now recognised that the bacterium
Helicobacter pylori is involved in gastric cancer, there is ample
evidence that other nonviral microorganisms鈥攊ncluding mycobacteria and
even common bacteria such as staphylococci and yeasts such as
Candida albicans鈥攃an lead to cancer.
Although much of this evidence appears in the historical literature, recent
work continues to confirm that bacteria can cause cancer. While this research is
largely ignored, vast amounts of time and money are spent attempting to prove
the viral theory of human cancer.
Letter
The statement “Childhood leukaemia is probably an infectious disease” above
your article about childhood leukaemia, population mixing and infections was
incorrect and likely to cause distress to children with leukaemia and their
families.
Leo Kinlen’s theory, which our research supports, is that childhood leukaemia
might result from a rare response to a common but unidentified infection, and
that there is an increased risk of such infections when previously separate
populations mix. This is very different from saying that childhood leukaemia
itself is an infectious disease.
If people are led to believe that childhood leukaemia is an infectious
disease, they are likely to avoid contact with children suffering from
leukaemia, which could increase the isolation, suffering and distress of these
children and their families. I cannot emphasise strongly enough that there is no
evidence whatsoever that childhood leukaemia is infectious.
Take your pic
I can think of several ways for the recipient to store the contents of a
1on1mail e-mail that is meant to self-destruct to prevent it being used as
evidence against the sender
(28 August, p 6).
One idea is simply to take a screen snapshot of the e-mail, using the “Print
Screen” button on a PC or Command-Shift-3 on a Mac. If this has been disabled,
there are other screen snapshot utilities that may still work. As a last resort,
for e-mails “you just can’t afford to lose”, you could photograph the screen. So
where do I collect my $50 000, then?
Hunting for jobs
Your editorial was correct to say that banning fox hunting would increase
rural unemployment
(17 July, p 3).
Between fifteen and sixteen thousand jobs
depend on hunting. This is not a guess; the figures are from Countryside
Sports: Their Economic, Social and Conservation Significance, the 1997
report by Cobham Resource Consultants, a firm whose clients include the World
Bank, the European Union and Britain’s Countryside Agency.
The recent letter from the International Fund for Animal Welfare cited a
report by economist Neil Ward as concluding that “large numbers of jobs will
automatically be lost following a ban” (14 August, p 56). However, it failed to
reproduce Ward’s italicised emphasis on the word “automatically”. This
considerably changes the sense of Ward’s conclusions.
Mental health
Every school in Kansas and similarly minded states should be required by law
to display the St Louis Post-Dispatch disclaimer about horoscopes
(Feedback, 21 August)
on its notice board with just a minor modification: “Note: Genesis has
no basis in scientific fact and should be read for entertainment, not
guidance.”
Rice risk
Rice genetically modified in the way you report would not only alleviate iron
and vitamin A deficiency in the Far East
(14 August, p 12),
but also increase the uptake of other trace metals.
Your article describes how the phytate in normal rice binds to iron,
preventing its uptake and leading to anaemia, reproductive problems and mental
retardation. However, phytate and other proteins are also known to reduce the
uptake of other important trace metals like zinc and copper.
The best illustration of this derives from the pioneering studies done in the
1960s by Ananda Prasad and his colleagues in the Middle East. They linked high
incidences of growth retardation, skin diseases and abnormalities to the
consumption of plants rich in phytate and other substances that cause profound
zinc deficiency. Zinc interacts with iron in many body systems.
Staring at the Sun
I am an 86-year-old pensioner and now that the “once in a lifetime” (twice in
my case) eclipse has come and gone, I have been rereading your comments on
ultraviolet exposure and the dangers thereof
(Inside Science, 12 December 1998).
During the early part of the Second World War, before the coming of radar, my
husband was stationed at Dover Castle in an anti-aircraft division. The men were
required to gaze for hours out across the Channel for enemy aircraft, often
staring directly into the Sun. In the ensuing years, he has undergone several
eye operations, and two years ago he was registered blind.
Too late to do anything about it now, but if only we had known in 1939 what
we now know 60 years later, how different life could have been.
A developing problem
Computer viruses have been widely discussed in New 杏吧原创, most
recently in Feedback
(14 August).
However, there is one point that I have not
noticed in these articles, namely that computer viruses seriously hamper the
development of poor countries.
I returned some time ago from Tanzania, where I served as a scientific
adviser in a government office. I spent a fair proportion of my working hours
removing viruses from the computers. I had good tools to do it with, since my
antivirus software was constantly updated by the section of the Finnish home
office dealing with the project.
Since I left, I have received several infected files from Tanzania. The only
thing I could do was to alert the senders and ask them to clean their machines
as soon as possible. However, I am afraid that they cannot afford new updates to
their antivirus software.
The best solution I can see is for an international body such as the UN
Development Programme to coordinate the creation of antivirus software that
anybody could download free from the Internet. This should work in the same
manner as Linux鈥攖he development of the software should be open to anybody.
Easily licked
The way to offset increasing levels of greenhouse gases is to encourage
plants to grow. The Earth will probably do this, but slowly.
Stirring up the silt from river deltas would encourage growth of algae in the
sea. We could modify a dredger this year, and have the problem licked in five
years.