Sons of Eve
In the article “Eve came first”
(4 November, p 16),
the author says that “all the descendants of other women with different
mitochondria died out”, when in fact it is just the mitochondria of the other
women that died out. Many of these women will have living descendants through
male offspring. In fact, many may be the ancestors of all the people now living.
Letter
I read the article on the impossibility of deleting computer files with
interest and a little alarm. Judge James Rosenbaum’s proposal to change the law
so that data you delete disappears for good, as far as any court is concerned,
is admirable. It would ensure that minor and irrelevant discussions of your
boss’s capabilities, for instance, are not held against you. However, there are
times when such discussions are dangerous and damaging to the employer
concerned. For example, quoting to a potential client that your boss knows
little or nothing about a particular subject (whether or not this is true) will
not ensure that funds are forthcoming to continue research or potential
orders.
Another damaging example would be the sending of research results to rival
organisations, enabling them to publish or patent first.
Surely, Rosenbaum cannot be suggesting that we can wipe the slate clean in
these situations by pressing the delete key? If so, it heralds a new era of
secrecy and industrial espionage.
Letter
There is a much easier way to recover a deleted e-mail message than the
scanning tunnelling microscopy that you mention: just restore it from back-up.
Any network administrator worth their salt will be doing daily back-ups so, if
you keep your subversive message for more than 24 hours, it should be on at
least one back-up tape. And the longer you keep it, the more tapes it will be
on.
Your words could come back to haunt you for as long as the archive tapes
last.
No more superbugs
We are all put at risk if the medical world continues to ignore the impact of
creating more superbugs without preserving the antibiotics that cure them. You
are correct to claim that something must be done soon about how our healthcare
systems treat antibiotics
(14 October, p 16).
I was amazed at just how much freedom doctors and hospitals have over a matter
that should be governed by a national board or committee.
It is foolish to give doctors and hospitals鈥攚hose first obligation is
to the patient鈥攆ree rein over an area with such far-reaching implications.
The medical profession appears to be concerned with immediate rather than future
concerns in its widespread prophylactic use of antibiotics.
The unknowing creation of superbug-friendly environments is something we
cannot afford. To knowingly assist their progress is a highly dangerous gamble.
Knickers in a twist
Feedback mentions a reader’s puzzlement at the label on a pair of silk
knickers, that says “we recommend washing the silk on the left side”
(11 November).
It’s probably been translated literally from the German links which
means “inside out” as well as “left”. I’ve always assumed that it has the same
origin as the equating of “right” with “correct” in many European languages, so
that “left” means “incorrect” and hence “the wrong way round”.
Take the risk
So Brian Robinson
(28 October, p 54)
thinks high-energy physics research should stop because of an infinitesimal
and purely theoretical risk to his life if strangelet particles are created
in an experiment. On the other hand, he is, presumably, perfectly willing
to allow all sorts of research in fields that have the potential to create
actual, real and non-negligible risk. Has he never flown in an aircraft, used
electricity or taken a therapeutic drug?
Some forms of research inevitably pose a real, albeit small, risk to
Robinson’s life. Should they all stop? We should acknowledge and accept the
risks associated with some scientific work , but also acknowledge that the
benefits far outweigh those risks. Even if the benefit is just “pure
knowledge”.
If the creation of strangelets results in the total annihilation of the
Universe, I will be the first to apologise.
Artificial reefs
Dumping old fridges and washing machines offshore to create safe havens for
fish, as suggested by Feedback
(4 November),
is just a start. If you are really going to stop trawlers taking all the fish and
spoiling things for sea anglers, you need something bigger. Far more effective
is to use old cars that have been cleaned up, drained of oil, fuel, and so on, and
then roughened up with a sledgehammer. Modern trawlers are quite capable of
towing away a fridge or washing machine, but they’ll steer clear of underwater
parking lots.
One of the few havens for fish in the waters around Skye, where I used to
work on a trawler, is the wreck of a U-boat in Loch Dunvegan. The closer to the
wreck you fish, the better the catch, but get too close and you lose your net.
Dirty diamonds
Something seems not quite right with your piece on a microwave emissions
converter
(7 October, p 11).
It might eliminate pollutants such as unburnt hydrocarbons and soot particles鈥攁nd
so much the better if it turned them to diamond鈥攂ut I fail to see how a practicable
system could reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
To do this, the car as a whole鈥攅ngine plus converter鈥攚ould have
to oxidise the hydrocarbon fuel to carbon and water vapour, and the carbon
produced would weigh around three-quarters as much as the fuel used. This
corresponds to a lump of diamond around the size of a breeze block for every
tankful of petrol.
How big a reaction vessel would be needed to hold such quantities without
clogging? Having to carry around the weight of the vessel and the accumulating
diamond would surely compromise the car’s fuel efficiency. And wouldn’t the
car’s fuel efficiency be lower to start with, since the reaction to carbon gives
less energy than the reaction to carbon dioxide?
Rachel Nowak writes: The industrial diamonds would not be made in the car.
The carbon powder would be removed by a filter and then taken to a factory to
make the diamonds. However, Corbett is correct to point out that the weight of
carbon鈥攁lbeit powder, not diamond鈥攃ould be a problem. The designers
get around this by connecting the microwave emissions converter to the engine so
that it only operates when the car is idling. This would cut down the worst sort
of emissions in cities, and also ensure the car doesn’t end up accumulating too
much carbon. In fact, the filter would only have to be changed roughly every
10,000 kilometres.
The car’s fuel efficiency wouldn’t be affected in the manner that Corbett
suggests because the device works on the exhaust, not the combustion part of the
engine (for more information see:
www.swin.edu. au/iris/smog/Microwave-Smog%20Buster_files/v3_ document.htm).
Jam-free scenario
David Bleicher
(4 November, p 63)
asserts that traffic jam warning devices would not reduce congestion and
save fuel. He is mistaken.
His scenario has a second traffic jam created by drivers warned of a first.
However, if the cause of the jam was a single obstruction rather than traffic
density, there is no reason to believe that traffic using an alternative route
would jam. Secondly, drivers approaching the jam on different roads could choose
different routes or even postpone or cancel their journeys, further reducing the
chance of a second jam. Thirdly, if a second jam did occur, the system would
start to warn drivers of that one too. So the volume of traffic in each jam
would be roughly half that of the original jam, and consequently both would
clear sooner. Finally, without the system, drivers will continue to add
themselves to the jam, extending it backwards into other roads, causing more
congestion.
While I fully support Bleicher’s wish for alternatives such as better city
planning, public transport and more efficient cars, he shouldn’t be blind to a
good idea.
Eternal e-mail
If “deleted” computer documents and e-mails can be recovered and used as
evidence in trials
(28 October, p 18),
surely recovery of files thought to be deleted could also help victims of computer
malfunction. I recently lost my A-level physics coursework when my computer
crashed while I was backing up an entire summer’s work.
I would have been eternally grateful to find out I could recover my
apparently deleted project. Was there something I could have done to prevent my
having to rewrite everything?
All kinds of addiction
Anyone who has had to work with people whose lives are impaired by gambling,
bulimia, even running, does not question the link between mind and body
(11 November, p 24).
The definition of physiological addiction includes withdrawal
symptoms, both those perceived by the addict and those that can be objectively
measured in the sympathetic or parasympathetic nervous system. It includes
behaviours that appear compulsive and hard to control despite a clear
understanding that the consequences of these behaviours may be damaging. Child
molestation and other criminal behaviours fit into this category, but will be
very different from the addiction to gardening you mention.
Gerhard Meyer and his colleagues at the University of Bremen are doing
important work. It’s time that the dynamics of some addictive behaviours were
examined in people, rather than in experimental protocols using rats. Humans can
speak and provide essential information about addiction that animals cannot.
Categorising these addictions in terms of reward systems that feed into the
brain chemistry should not be used to excuse criminal behaviour, however.
Science is itself perverted if used to excuse behaviours which can deprive
others of their life, health or sanity.
Letter
My alleged comments about gardening addiction have been taken totally out of
context and I would like to set the record straight鈥攑articularly as many
of the national media appeared to have had a laugh at my expense following your
press release on this story. My comments were made in reaction to the research
by Meyer on gambling addiction, and whether I thought gambling was a true
addiction because it didn’t involve a drug.
I replied that any behaviour, be it gambling, sex, eating, Internet use,
playing computer games or even, theoretically, gardening, that features all the
core components of addiction鈥攖hat is to say, mood-modifying effects,
withdrawal symptoms, build-up of tolerance, total preoccupation with the
activity, loss of control, neglect of everything else in their lives and
relapse鈥攃an be classed as an addiction. This was not reported in your
article, leaving me wide open to misinterpretation.
For the record, I have never said that gardening is addictive. What I have
said is that any behaviour that fulfils the criteria for addiction can be
operationally defined as addiction.
The dope on drugs
Britain’s pharmaceuticals industry is not seeking to advertise medicines on
television, as Charles Medawar postulates
(28 October, p 45).
His attack on our plans to do so are thus unfounded.
He quotes an Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry briefing
paper as saying that: “Pharmaceutical companies wish to provide accurate,
balanced, scientifically based and ethically sound information about their
medicines directly to the public to meet growing demand.” Yes we do and the key
word is “information”: it is a long way from advertising. The situation is that
patients want more information about their health and about the medicines they
are taking. That is, surely, to be welcomed. Patients who know more about their
condition and their medication are likely to work harder and more effectively to
deal with their ill health, thus increasing the well-being of the nation as well
as reducing the strain on the National Health Service and other sectors of the
economy.
At the same time, sources of information for the patient have proliferated
enormously, thanks mainly to the Internet. Yet the irony remains that, while
anyone more or less informed about a medical condition or a medicine can set up
a website giving information on it鈥攈owever, pharmaceuticals companies are
restricted from doing so. This is the anomaly that has developed, and which the
ABPI would like to see reformed.
Medawar refers to “patronising talk” of ordinary people being transformed
into expert patients. It is surely far more patronising to suggest that patients
should not have this information because they are not capable of dealing with
it, or to argue that doctors succumb to advertising in defiance of their
professional judgement.
The pharmaceuticals industry does not wish to impose a solution on anyone.
What we seek is a debate involving healthcare professionals, patients’
representatives, the industry and the government. Dialogue with these and other
groups is a responsible and ethical way to move towards providing patients with
the information they surely deserve.