Udder nonsense
Cows milked twice daily don’t lie down as much as cows milked three times a
day, according to Sara 脰 sterman and Ingrid Redbo
(20 January, p 19).
The reason, they suggest, is that the former find it more difficult to lie down and get
up.
If 脰sterman and Redbo had chewed over their scientific cud a little more they
would have discovered that when a cow is milked she is given her ration of dairy
cake which sweetens and/or flavours the contents of her first stomach.
If a cow is milked three times a day she gets three portions of dairy cake,
which encourages more chewing of the cud and thus more lying down.
Fortress America pulls up the drawbridge
The cold war has been over for a long time, but someone clearly forgot to
tell President George W. Bush
(20 January, p 15).
Bush’s plans to “fortify” the US against the rest of the world show up most
clearly in the development of the National Missile Defense system. However, Bush
seems to have learned nothing from the flaws and limitations that burdened the
Patriot missiles used in the Gulf War, which struggled to bring down only a
small percentage of their targets.
Despite the criticism of his foreign policy, the 43rd President continues to
go down a dangerous path. Even if the NMD system fails to live up to its
expectations, as seems likely, one thing is certain to remain intact, and that’s
Bush’s Iron Curtain separating the US from the rest of the world.
MMR vaccine
The British government faces a potentially tragic dilemma over the
three-in-one MMR vaccine
(3 February, p 3).
Allowing GPs to administer the
vaccine as three separate doses poses the risk that some parents will fail to
bring their children to the surgery for the second and third jabs. On the other
hand, if the government maintains its hard line and insists that it must be the
three-in-one vaccine or nothing, many parents will opt for nothing. Either way,
it’s children who will be left at risk.
GPs should be allowed to administer the vaccine as three separate jabs. To
discourage parents taking this option on trivial grounds, they should be charged
a significant administration fee of, say, between 拢20 and 拢50. This
will provide the funding to cover the costs of a patient reminder service to
encourage prompt returns for not only the second but also the third jabs.
Letter
In the piece investigating the origin of autism
(3 February, p 10), you
report that neuroimmunologist Vijendra Singh claims to have found high levels of
“autoantibodies” against myelin basic protein in autistic children. He blames
the measles component of MMR.
The measles virus is a Paramyxoviridae virus which buds from the cell
membrane during its replication/maturation process. As it does so, it acquires
molecules of the cell membrane as part of its envelope or viral coat. Given that
the measles virus will often infect cells of the central nervous system, it may
acquire myelin basic protein on its coat. When antigen-presenting cells such as
macrophages take in the measles virus, the protein could be presented as antigen
to the immune system. This could result in autoantibodies, as Singh claims.
Letter
Congratulations on your excellent articles on the MMR vaccine. As a GP, I
would find them useful to show some patients to explain how scientists view the
debate.
I probably save more lives in the one hour a week that I spend vaccinating
children than I do during the whole of the rest of the week. Not bad value
really.
Clarification:
The final article in the MMR Special
(3 February, p 11)
states that MMR causes only four adverse reactions per 100,000 doses, and then appears
to contradict this by quoting a much higher (1 in 3000) risk of a seizure. The
first figure is based on the large Australian and Finnish studies mentioned
earlier in the MMR Special (p 9), which found that the risk of a seizure was
less than 1.5 in 100,000. The article failed to say that the figure of 1 in 3000
came from a different study, done in 1995 (The Lancet, vol 345, p 567). Thanks
to the readers who pointed out this inconsistency鈥擡d.
Flight 007
Peter Martin, writing on the ill-fated Korean Airlines flight 007 shot down
by Soviet fighter planes in 1983
(20 January, p 49),
says the pilots of KAL 007
were extremely tired when they crossed the Kamchatka Peninsula. However,
according to R. W. Johnson in his book Shootdown: Flight 007 and
the American connection, the crew had been changed at Anchorage, and
Captain Chun, Son Dong-Hui and Kim Eui-Dong also had a double-relief team on
board and could easily have been relieved at any point in the flight if they had
been unduly tired.
One wonders what Chun’s state was when before take-off he apparently
incorrectly abandoned 1700 lbs of cargo, but loaded 10,000 lbs of fuel more than
declared. The computerised flight plan for KAL007 in the ICAO final report
carries Chun’s notes, which are very similar to the actual times and distances
of crossing the boundaries of Soviet air space.
M. Sayle, writing in the Far Eastern Economic Review (20 September
1983), says that in the last 21 minutes of the flight, Wakkanai radar station
recorded two changes of direction and two of height, the first a descent when
permission to ascend had been requested. These are not the actions of a dozing
flight crew allowing a mis-set magnetic compass to carry them astray. They look
rather like the actions of a highly experienced combat pilot, as Chun was,
trying to shake off the fighter plane which had intercepted him.
On the defensive
I am not sure who George Sassoon approached in the Ministry of Defence to
seek assurance that ammunition containing depleted uranium has not been used on
Salisbury Plain
(27 January, p 51).
We have had several similar inquiries and in
each case we have made it plain that DU ammunition has never been used on
Salisbury Plain. The normal procedure is to use practice rounds, which consist
of a steel shell with a soft metal or plastic core. I am happy to give this
assurance to Sassoon and to anyone else who reads this.
Biased advice
Steve Gerrish is right
(3 February, p 52)
to blame civil servants for bias in
scientific advice to government. The problem, however, lies not in their lack of
scientific education but in their power to manipulate the system in the service
of departmental agendas. Information is screened before ministers see it, and
committee appointments of “real” scientists are invariably skewed towards
protecting the interests of big business, the military and departmental
budgets.
A more fundamental problem is that civil servants would find it difficult to
get hold of objective scientists for these committees even if they wanted to.
Anybody whose opinion on a subject is worth having will bring some baggage with
it. Such bias has become much more acute in the past twenty years, as university
research has become constrained to commercial usefulness.
We need a system of scientific advice which accommodates this baggage. The
British system of justice accommodates irreconcilable points of view by
cross-examination, and Parliament tests proposed legislation by opposition
bombardment. Decision making on contentious scientific issues equally requires
an oppositional system of advice if justice and accountability (and “truth”) are
to be served.
A government-funded scientific advice unit should commission and fund citizen
scientists to undertake studies and review existing evidence. The system must
ensure that the final decision makers have seen reports or abstracts from all
sides of the issue. See more on this idea at www.llrc.org/rat423.htm.
Animal madness
I was disappointed to find a New 杏吧原创 Editorial swallowing so
much of the animal rights agenda
(27 January, p 3),
in presenting the issue
entirely in terms of drug testing and how to reduce numbers of animals used.
Although it is certainly necessary to test new drugs on animals, the main
long-term importance of animal experiments is to enable the acquisition of
knowledge about how animals (and thereby human beings) work. The foundation of
basic scientific knowledge about animal biology is the starting point for
considering how to treat disease. Without this, it is unlikely that any new
drugs will even be envisaged, let alone reach the stage of animal testing.
The majority of experiments for the advancement of knowledge are performed on
rats and mice. Many are very mild, such as simple injections, blood samples or
dietary alterations. In Britain, even such mild procedures are very tightly
controlled by the Home Office.
All research scientists use tissue culture cells whenever they can, as they
are much easier to work with than intact animals. However, there are many
aspects of biology that appear only in intact animals, not in a bottle of cells.
The control of blood pressure and cognitive function are examples.
Finally, it should be remembered that most types of tissue-culture cells are
obtained from animals, and the media in which they grow contain either animal
serum or purified proteins obtained from animals.
Junk food
You report the havoc caused to birds, fish and turtles that eat polymer
pellets that have been lost or dumped at sea
(20 January, p 18).
The danger arises because the particles have a great affinity for toxic pollutants such as
the PCBs and DDT-like materials that pollute our seas. You say that the
concentration of these noxious materials in the pellets is up to “a million
times greater than in the surrounding seawater”.
Surely, this story has a bright side. If quantities of these pollutant-loving
sponges were to be fashioned into chunks too big to be swallowed by marine
creatures they could be released into the ocean specifically to mop up such
pollutants. They could then be collected and recycled, while the poisons they
contain are disposed of safely. The benefits to marine life and the environment
would be huge.
Animal dreams
I was delighted to read your news item “Tom dreams of Jerry”
(3 February, p 19)
which provides some evidence of REM sleep in animals during which they may
have “complex dreams that reactivate experiences from earlier in the day”. I was
immediately reminded of a passage in the poem The Loves of the Plants
by Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802), Charles’s grandfather, which includes the
following:
So, six cold moons the dormouse charm’d to rest/ Indulgent sleep! beneath
thy eider breast/ In fields of fancy climbs the kernel’d groves/ Or shares the
golden harvests with his loves.
It would appear that Erasmus Darwin, who believed passionately in the
conscious life of all nature, including mankind’s “brother-emmets and
sister-worms” and, of course, of plants鈥攚as before his time in this as in
many other of his evolutionary ideas and speculations.