Correction:
The opening paragraph of the news article “Fraud means
Japan must rewrite its history”
(18 November, p 6)
states that the fraud “means that the country’s
earliest Stone Age tools were made by people who lived a mere 40,000 years ago
rather than 60,000 years ago”. The second figure should have read “600,000 years
ago”.
Hearing howl
The reports on the dangers or otherwise of radiation from mobile phones all
seem to show that the methods of assessment were neither clear nor understandable
(11 November, p 3).
I am hard of hearing and wear a hearing aid in each ear. This prevents me
from using a mobile phone in the normal way because the radiation is converted
to a loud electronic howl when it is amplified by the hearing aid, which drowns
out any speech. So I use a hands-free kit that holds the earpiece next to the
hearing aid’s microphone. In this way I don’t have the telephone close to my
head, but about an arm’s length away. I still have to turn the phone this way
and that to minimise picking up radiation by the hearing aid nearest to the
phone.
Perhaps the research would progress further by asking someone who wears hearing aids
to test the phones for electronic howl. The distance from the head, the radiation levels
produced by different models and the angles of maximum radiation would then be
simple to chart.
Holy cloning!
I dispute Stephen Lafferty’s claim that the concept of cloning Jesus
originated with satirist Chris Morris’s idea for a radio programme in 1992
(18 November, p 66).
The Australian novelist Peter Goldsworthy in Honk if you are Jesus,
published by Angus & Robertson the same year, spins a great yarn about a
rich American fundamentalist sponsoring research into cloning Jesus for his Gold
Coast Christian Theme Park, using DNA recovered from holy relics. It certainly
precedes Morris’s broadcasting the idea in 1994, even if Morris suggested the
idea earlier.
Letter
You suggest that hydrogen would be an environmentally safer alternative
energy source for cars. But would it?
The article outlines numerous methods, the most promising being the fuel
cell. But the problem with the fuel cell waste product is that it is still a
greenhouse gas鈥攚ater vapour. With the recent floods still on our minds,
has nobody thought that although this is a renewable alternative to fossil
fuels, it would still release a greenhouse gas into the environment? Using the
estimate that there will be one car for every seven people by 2020, the amount
of water being emitted by each fuel cell is not quite so insignificant.
One way round this would be to use the fuel cell system described, but
instead of releasing water as a waste product, it could be recycled and used to
power the car in a closed system.
Aluminium safety
With reference to your recent editorial on the Austrian ski train fire
(18 November, p 3),
you say that “its [the train’s] body was made of an aluminium
alloy that would have burnt when temperatures reached about 650 掳C”. This is
incorrect: aluminium alloys do not burn.
Ironically, in the same editorial, you make this very point in describing how
several links in the disastrous chain of the King’s Cross fire have been
removed: “Metal escalators have replaced the old wooden ones.” Indeed, and that
metal is aluminium.
If the temperature is high enough, the aluminium alloy will melt but that
applies to all metals and alloys. Each year Britain recycles 800,000 tonnes of
aluminium by putting aluminium extrusions, castings and rolled products into
furnaces to melt them down鈥攂ut they do not burn. The molten aluminium is
then cast and more aluminium products created.
More detail can be found on all aspects of aluminium technology on the
Aluminium Federation website, www.alfed.org.uk.
Back to BSE
If infected with BSE, cattle older than 30 months are liable to show symptoms
because the long incubation period has been completed. Infected cattle less than
30 months old are unlikely to show symptoms. In Britain, cattle over 30 months
old are slaughtered to ensure that the infection does not develop into the
disease. The fact that BSE still occurs indicates that such slaughter does not
eliminate the problem and that BSE must still be carried by the younger cattle.
In fact, one could suspect that the slaughter at this stage only hides the
problem and BSE could still be rampant.
Therefore it’s possible that consuming beef from the younger cattle simply
ensures that humans continue to risk infection.
Andy Coghlan writes: Mr Beard is right. It’s quite possible that we’re still
eating BSE-infected meat. The government is aware of this and the research
priority is to develop a test that will show which living cattle鈥攜oung or
old鈥攃arry the prions.
The logic of the 30-month slaughter is to kill the
cattle before the rogue prions鈥攊f they’re present鈥攈ave had a chance
to propagate. The latest research suggests that during the incubation period,
the prions accumulate over years in the spleen. Then they migrate into the
peripheral nerves, the spinal cord and, finally and fatally, the brain.
The idea of the 30-month rule would seem to be to despatch cattle before they pose
any threat.
Me, myself, I
Thank-you for the very interesting and enjoyable “Greatest myth of all”
(18 November, p 34).
While I was reading it, sitting on an uncomfortable chair, I
was thinking: “This is ridiculous, I’m not just a guest in my body, I’m the one
in charge here.” But then suddenly I found myself walking to my bed. I shrugged
and finished reading the article lying comfortably on the bed.
It really seems we just determine the “long-term strategy” and most of the
“tactics” are carried out automatically.
So does this mean that “self” is only a self-deception?
Letter
If the self is an illusion, who is being fooled?
Dammed if you do
Fred Pearce reports on yet another anti-dam publication
(18 November, p 6).
There are many problems with dams, but there are important benefits, too, and
dams will be needed to meet the growing demand for food and power. I do wish
these sorts of reports would help those people who work on dams by expounding
the environmental drawbacks and then explaining how they might be tackled.
I listened earnestly to the speakers at the recent launch of the World
Commission on Dams’ report in the hope of developing an understanding of how
they would address the continuing need for large quantities of food and power.
Maritta von Bleberstein Koch-Weser of the World Conservation Union (IUCN) and
Medha Patkar of the Struggle to Save the Narmada River campaign, a member of the
commission, failed to help me understand how to improve matters. Please, the
starving millions are waiting for us鈥攇ive us some scientific pointers on
how to do dams better, or alternatives to dams.
Letter
Your article on the hydrogen economy doesn’t contain a single mention of the
most obvious method of achieving the synthesis of hydrogen without adding to
“greenhouse” emissions鈥攏uclear energy. Far fewer people have ever been
killed by peaceful nuclear technology than die in a single day from asthma or
other respiratory problems.
This technology is already available. Yet it has had such a bad press that it
is apparently no longer considered in a “scientific” discussion of energy
provision. It hasn’t gone away鈥攚here would France, Japan or even Britain
be without it?
Are we to stand by and watch the world struggle to deal with global warming
without talking about nuclear power rationally? The NIMBYs may well end up with
only seawater or desert in their backyards.
Coming clean about your genes
John Hind
(11 November, p 60)
says that people who know from a genetic test
that they are predisposed to a disease may be at a competitive advantage in
obtaining insurance if they withhold that information from the insurer.
However, throughout the English-speaking world the law of insurance contracts
is based on the doctrine of “utmost good faith”. Unlike other forms of contract
(marriage, for example), each party to an insurance proposal is required to tell
the other everything that a reasonable person would consider relevant. If you
don’t admit to knowing about a genetic predisposition to a disease, or are
already ill, the insurer can cancel the contract.
You shouldn’t be compelled to take a genetic test, whether for insurance or
other purposes. But if you have such a test and the result is unfavourable, you
have to tell an insurer if you apply for life or disability insurance. You
aren’t obliged to tell the insurer if the insurance is merely being renewed
after you receive the results.
Blind faith
Your feature on switching from petrol to hydrogen
(25 November, p 34)
fails to discuss the environmental impact of unburned hydrogen, methane or
methanol.
We will have to change from our current fuels, but before settling on any of
those in the article, I would like to know more about their behaviour in the
environment.
For example, do hydrogen or methanol have any impact on global warming? Will
hydrogen, methane or methanol react with other pollutants to increase the impact
of pollution and do the three gases have any effect on the ozone layer? What
effect will they have in the atmosphere on people with respiratory problems?
I remember the stories about nuclear energy being the clean, limitless source
of energy for the future, and these stories were very similar to the
unquestioning optimism that I now read about hydrogen.