Crops for Africa
Following your article on the debate over the use of genetically modified
crops in Africa
(15 January, p 14),
let me state some facts about economic development.
Improved technology produces development鈥攖hat is, a better standard of
living. Countries that have kept up with the West have done so by adopting new
technology quickly and wholeheartedly鈥攖he Soviet Union through
electrification and heavy industry, Japan through electronics, Singapore through
its mass transport systems.
The views of Tewolde, general manager of the Environmental Protection
Authority of Ethiopia, echo those of the rich and powerful in the West. They are
spread by Western nongovernmental organisations. They reflect these
organisations’ loss of nerve and lack of belief in progress. They will keep
Africa as a cheap source of labour and raw materials.
That the discredited Organization of African Unity supports Tewolde is no
surprise.
Rather than delaying new biotechnology, Africa can and must use it to jump
beyond the problems of the available agrochemicals.
Letter
Your correspondent Joe Hartney advocates redistribution of food from
stockpiles as a solution to famine
(15 January, p 50).
But giving food to poor people in developing countries was shown to be an
inferior development policy decades ago.
A better solution is increased agricultural productivity in the places where
it is needed, for the people who most need it. It is rarely acknowledged that
public sector institutions, in the developed and developing worlds, are
responding to this need by funding research on genetically modified crops suited
to poor farmers. They are doing so because the demand for food is set to rise by
an alarming 50 per cent within 20 years.
Relying on redistribution, given its well-known limitations, while ignoring
the genetic enhancement of crops by gene splicing, is playing with the lives of
millions of the world’s poorest inhabitants.
Enter the superkid
It was refreshing to read your article on genetic engineering in sport
(15 January, p 24).
However, while the article was clearly pitched at the adult
athlete making a choice to enhance his or her genetic capabilities, it would
seem that the more likely use of genetic alteration would come from parents
choosing better health (and thus, better athletic capabilities) for their
children.
If this happens, the implications for sports’ governing bodies become
exponentially complicated. Do parents have the right to enhance their child in
any way they see fit? What kind of enhancement would be valuable and worth
choosing? How would governing bodies of sport react to those who are genetically
enhanced from birth, given that we could not call the athletes cheats since they
will not have done anything wrong themselves? What rights do athletes have to
keep their genetic information private when competing with other athletes?
The article did beg the question of whether gene therapy (either to boost red
blood cells or to enhance muscle repair and adaptation) would actually
constitute an illegal form of doping. Upon what basis would one deem genetic
engineering an unacceptable means of enhancing performance? Governing bodies be
warned鈥攜ou will have to react to this, and its implications will make
drug-taking seem like child’s play.
Penguins of Oz
Penguins do not only breed on islands off South Africa, South America and New
Zealand
(25 December 1999, p 32).
Several species also breed on islands off Australia.
The breeding population of royal penguins on Macquarie Island, south of
Tasmania, is 850 000 pairs鈥攐ne of the greatest concentrations of seabirds
in the world. One species of penguin breeds on the Australian mainland itself.
Little penguins breed at many locations throughout their range from Fremantle in
Western Australia to the north coast of New South Wales.
The famous parade on Phillip Island, near Melbourne, is the basis of the
tourism industry there. A small and endangered population even exists at Manly
Point in Sydney Harbour.
Agrivandals
Your correspondent Janet Godfrey’s question “How are farmers damaging their
land and spoiling the landscape?” really demands an answer
(15 January, p 50).
In 1939 Arthur Tansley published The British Islands and their
Vegetation. Amongst its classic gems were his descriptions of limestone and
chalk grassland, and Britain’s uniquely diverse heathlands and moorlands. During
the past 60 years, almost all this magnificent vegetation has been lost in the
lowlands and much degraded in the hills, a victim of subsidised arable
agriculture, fertilisers and pesticides, or grassland “improvement” and
inappropriate grazing.
Tansley’s magnum opus might be compared with Nikolaus Pevsner’s great work,
the Buildings of England series. A proposal to demolish Winchester
Cathedral for a supermarket or a parish church for a car park would face furious
opposition and certain rejection. Yet a building can be moved or, in a sense,
recreated. The species diversity and complex web of food chains of an ecosystem
will be destroyed for centuries, possibly for ever.
We are ill educated about our living heritage, and fail to protect it from
corporate vandalism. Not only have farmers damaged their land and spoiled the
landscape, they have also driven many species perilously close to the brink of
extinction and often for little purpose other than collection of subsidy.
No one is suggesting we stop farming, but rather, simply that we release it
from the stranglehold of the chemicals industry with truthful economic analysis,
and use a bit of common sense.
Letter
Godfrey insists it is a myth that agriculture is damaging to the environment.
Australian farmers are equally resistant. Meanwhile, vast tracts of land there
are being laid waste.
Salinity (caused by over-irrigation and tree-clearing for grazing animals) is
so widespread that huge areas are no longer able to produce crops, and the water
supply of Adelaide is under serious threat. Watercourses throughout the country
are freely accessed by livestock, causing massive degradation and pollution of
the water by animal manure, and leading to public announcements in Sydney to
boil drinking water because of cryptosporidial contamination, at great expense
to that city’s inhabitants.
Biodiversity is being depleted at an alarming rate. Agriculture here is
literally costing the Earth.
Grannie's web
I wonder if Ron Coffee, the developer of the “healing web” spray
(8 January, p 6)
was inspired by the well-known old remedy for razor cuts: applying a
spider’s web.
Although not very hygienic, spiders’ webs used to be applied to cuts,
particularly from shaving, to stop the bleeding promptly and promote healing.
The remedy is mentioned in 19th-century English and North American children’s
literature.
I also remember an argument, when I was five years old, between my
grandmother and mother. My grannie apparently wanted to apply a spider’s web to
my bleeding knee after I’d had a fall. My horrified mother pushed my grannie
aside and instead used alcohol, which stung, and mercurochrome.
Draining the dross
I am not disturbed by the brain drain because the IT experts who leave
India鈥攁nd the products they produce鈥攈ave little relevance or use for
ordinary Indians, the weavers and the matmakers who make up rural India
(15 January, p 46).
We don’t want people whose job is little more than creating clones of
themselves. Let 100 million IT professionals go to America.
India needs time to understand what IT is doing to it. Thankfully, we are not
yet a completely IT-driven country, though we are trying in desperation to be
one. By the time our prodigal sons return to our soil, our villages,
hopefully by the grace of the gods, will be in a position to employ them.
Sexual healing
I was interested to read your article about Peter Staats’s investigation of
the relationship between emotions and pain, whereby subjects thinking of sexual
fantasies could endure pain longer
(Feedback, 8 January).
A few years ago, during a very long helicopter flight, I was desperately
thinking of something to take my mind off my travel sickness, and found I could
control it by indulging in such thoughts. It has worked every time since.
Martian eyes
Newswire reports that the Mars Society has adopted red, green and blue for
the Martian flag
(15 January, p 5).
These are only primary colours for humans on
Earth because of the sensitivity of the three colour sensors in our eyes.
Nonhuman intelligent life forms are not likely to have the same sensors. We
need to avoid anthropomorphic symbols for such universal communication.
The special significance we put on numbers that are perfect powers of 10 is
equally parochial.
Techno traffic
I was heartened to read Philip Ball’s article describing how intelligent
transport systems will reduce traffic congestion
(15 January, p 34). However,
ingenious as these may be, they will look lightweight compared with the radical
moves still to come, when fully automated vehicles will operate on automated
highways.Traffic flow will be increased by a factor of 3 or 4 and safety greatly
enhanced.
The technology exists, but there is a chicken-and-egg conundrum here.
Manufacturers won’t produce the automated vehicles until the authorities provide
the automated roads, and vice versa. But the necessary intelligence is being
added to cars incrementally, with features such as automatic cruise control and
advanced accident warning and avoidance systems. In the not too distant future,
enough cars will have enough intelligence to justify automated highways.