Ignoring AIDS
Timothy Stamps’s comments about HIV and Zimbabwe’s trend towards zero
population growth are curious at best
(20 October, p 50).
Catholicism has never stopped the incursion of AIDS.
AIDS is chiefly a disease of heterosexuals, and for much of the 10-year
period Stamps cites, the African countries concerned did not admit they had a
problem with AIDS. Stamps’s “WHO, Inc” is a convenient scapegoat. The
overwhelming source of problems is the decades-long “Who? Not me” stance.
Since the horse has already bolted, medicines are sadly the only choice for
an infected and ill-served nation.
Terrorist states
I disagree with Gary King’s claim in your article about a “conflict index”
that “the only sponsors of international terrorism are failed states”
(27 October, p 10).
What about Israel’s terrorism of the Palestinians, Iran’s sponsorship of
Hamas, and US sponsorship of the Contras in Nicaragua and the mujahedin in
Afghanistan?
Noah's dinosaurs
Finding dinosaurs on a Noah’s Ark jigsaw certainly does raise “interesting
biological and theological questions”
(Feedback, 27 October),
but these are not exactly new.
The most likely explanation is that the jigsaw is a creationist product. The
dinosaurs depicted are probably sauropods, as these are the closest match to the
description of Behemoth in the Old Testament story of Job. Creationist thinking
holds that some dinosaurs survived the Flood, but failed to adapt to changing
conditions afterwards and became extinct鈥攐r, perhaps, dwindled to relict
populations that might yet turn up in equatorial Africa.
Ironing out anthrax
To follow up the article on your website about irradiating mail to kill anthrax
(www.newscientist. com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99991468), last week a widely
circulated e-mail claimed that you can kill the spores in mail by ironing your
letters. Regardless of whether or not this might in fact disperse the spores
into the air, is it really either possible or practical to kill the spores by
heat? The paper probably won’t catch fire, but given that it is also a good
insulator, the spores would almost certainly survive. And there are many items
sent by post which would be ruined at much lower temperatures than those needed
to kill anthrax.
Our advice is that neither ironing nor putting letters in a microwave are
safe or effective ways of killing anthrax spores鈥擡d
Letter
My granddaughter informs me that it is in fact easy to differentiate between
cows and sheep, by listening to the noise they make. The cows generally emit a
“moo” sound while the sheep produce a “baa”.
Letter
The news that there may be no connection between BSE and vCJD is hugely
welcome, and if confirmed would be an enormous relief to those of us who spent
time in Britain during the late 1980s and early 1990s.
But I’m particularly interested in Venters’s opinion that sheep scrapie never
jumped the species barrier into us humans. Why, then, did my
mother鈥攂rought up in the 1920s in an agricultural community鈥攚arn me
in the 1950s never to drink the sparklingly clean Pennine water from the streams
around our home lest I get “sheep staggers”?
Letter
The results of the proposed experiments to inject brain samples from infected
animals into mice as a diagnostic method for BSE, scrapie or vCJD would be of
little relevance unless suitable controls were carried out, namely the injection
of equivalent material from unaffected animals.
And if there are many strains of scrapie, then pooled and mixed samples of
affected brains cannot be used if you want meaningful results.
All that aside, experiments involving the injection of brain extracts into
the brains or spinal cords of experimental animals leave us still in doubt as to
the relationship between BSE and vCJD, since injection into the central nervous
system is not the usual way to ingest hamburgers.
If there is a relationship between eating meat from BSE-affected cattle and
developing vCJD, then the number of cases of vCJD should be rising
exponentially, but it is not. So it is unfortunate that mainstream BSE and vCJD
researchers do not take George Venters’s claims more seriously
(20 October, p12)鈥攂耻迟
then they may have their research grants to consider.
Of cows and sheep
The farcical events surrounding the collapse of a major study on BSE will do
little to improve public confidence in science’s ability to answer people’s concerns
(27 October, p 14).
It is ridiculous that such a fundamental error of
sample identification can have occurred in the 21st century, particularly to
those of us in the crop protection and pharmaceuticals industries who have
worked for more than 20 years under the code of Good Laboratory Practice, which
was introduced precisely to prevent this sort of debacle.
If academic science is to retain any of its tattered credibility, perhaps it
should consider introducing some sort of similar quality-assurance system? GLP
may be condemned by some as bureaucratic, but if faced with the choice of a
little extra attention to detail or the loss of four years’ work and most of my
credibility, I know which I’d choose.
On the road to disaster
Joe Costello writes: “The urgent challenge to science is to enter into a
dialogue that affirms its social relevance, and acknowledges that adherence to
‘irrational beliefs’ may ultimately lead to bold new horizons.”
(27 October, p 59).
I disagree. Science is a methodology for inquiry, not a proselytising
religion. If “the public” is increasingly turning away from the “objectivity and
impersonal perspectives” of science, the problem is society, not the scientific
method, which is unequivocally the best way of learning about the Universe the
human race has ever invented.
If the social relevance of science is to be enhanced, it must be done at a
social and political level, not a scientific one.
Bold new horizons? Rubbish. It is time and past time that the general
populace acknowledges that adherence to “irrational beliefs” may ultimately lead
to disaster and death.
Canaletto's cities
You report that Canaletto’s drawings of Venice have helped establish how far
water levels in the city have risen since his time
(20 October, p 10).
Polish architects also found out how useful Canaletto’s accuracy could be when
attempting to rebuild a beautiful part of old Warsaw after it was completely
destroyed during the Second World War. My father was part of that team as a
university student.
Canaletto was a court painter to the last of the Polish monarchs, and his
paintings captured the city from almost every angle. Architects used them to
copy not only the external look of all buildings and their location, but even
details like stucco, sculptured pillars, and other small decorations on the
walls.
Canaletto also worked on cityscapes in both Dresden and Vienna.
Fertile ground
Reading your article about arable farming in the desert
(27 October, p 44)
felt like d茅j脿 vu.
With all due respect to the farmers, this does look amazingly like good old
British standard mixed farming鈥攎odified to suit the environment, of
course. What a pity that all those development “experts” back in the sixties
didn’t export this model rather than the “new and improved” agribusiness
nonsense they peddled.
It worked for us and it can work for Africa. And maybe when we come to our
senses some African farmers can come over here and remind us how to farm
intelligently.
Casimir pull over
Detecting the Casimir force at submicron scales in the 1990s was hugely
important in establishing a continuum between atomic and macroscopic scales. It
was also important in demonstrating that the “vacuum” is full of zero-point
fields.
But it is unlikely that the force could account for the aggregation of dust
grains in space
(20 October, p 61).
Hendrik Casimir predicted the force in 1948,
not the 1920s, but it was later found that it doesn’t always obey an inverse
fourth law of distance. Casimir himself derived the inverse fourth law of
attraction for ideal parallel plates, but for a sphere close to a plane plate,
theory and experiment show that the Casimir force obeys a repulsive inverse cube
law. And the force between two halves of a spherical shell is also predicted to
be repulsive, so Casimir probably doesn’t explain gravity at the microscopic
scale.
Correction
In the article “Red-hot legacy”
(27 October, p 11)
the graphic showed the Yenisei River flowing through Russia into the
“Atlantic Ocean”. It should, or course, have read “Arctic Ocean”.
Also, in Eugene Blank’s letter
(27 October)
about diagnosing prostate cancer, Ian
Tannock’s article on the topic was referenced as being in The Lancet,
May 2000. In fact, it appeared as a “personal view” in the preview issue of
The Lancet Oncology.
Rock around the clock
The earthquake in the British Midlands on 29 October highlights yet another
problem with moving the clocks backwards and forwards every six months.
This procedure must put an enormous strain on the rotation of the Earth every
time it is performed, and the tremor forces us to ask whether it is worth the
risk for an extra hour’s light in the mornings?
Letter
A recent experience with the airline British European proved rather more
awkward than Quail’s, when I was allocated seat 17A on a recent flight from
Leeds to Belfast. Unfortunately the seating stopped altogether at row 14,
proving once again that to err is human, but to really foul things up requires a
computer.
'Twixt 12 and 14
I’m surprised that the missing row 13 on a Go airliner prompted Michael Quail
to write in
(Feedback, 20 October).
It’s common airline practice鈥� not so much corporate triskaidekaphobia
as an awareness that many passengers try to avoid the number.
When Terminal 4 was built at London’s Heathrow airport, not only did the
architects omit Gate 13, but you will find that Gate 12 and Gate 14 are at
opposite ends of the building, so it’s not obvious that 13 is missing.
Otherwise, the designers argued, determined worriers might decide that Gate 14
was unlucky instead.
Lost and found
The article about “lost twins” has quite an emotional impact
(20 October, p 38)鈥攂耻迟
what about the approximately 109 (sperm multiplied by ova)
potential twins that fail to make it to fertilisation each time someone is
conceived?
Or do they all have reality in one of Martin Rees’s multiverses?