We're to blame
I fail to understand the conclusion that you drew after your report on the injury to the skull of the Neanderthal found in 1979 (27 April, p 21). You conclude: “This is only the second piece of evidence for deliberate aggression by Neanderthals.” Surely it is a piece of evidence for deliberate aggression against Neanderthals, probably by none other than Homo sapiens.
Letter
Your article reminded me of a crate of cutlasses destined for Africa that was recovered from a shipwreck off Newhaven on the Sussex coast some years ago. I took temporary possession of them and placed them in the Brighton Museum’s basement store but, in my ignorance, did not then put them into a vat of fresh water.
The wood of the crate had largely decomposed, leaving a conglomerate of cutlasses. After a few weeks, steam was reported in the basement and on investigation it was found that the cutlasses had swollen and were extremely hot. Their prompt removal and placement in a tank of water halted the process. Later they were removed elsewhere for conservation.
I note that Child and Rosseinsky are thinking of using wax or plastic to seal the cannon balls. I trust that the balls will be stabilised before this treatment and all traces of salt removed. My attempts in my youth to coat and protect metallic Second World War munitions relics from the east coast of Britain ultimately failed, as salt water was still present deep inside them.
Jab for shingles
Your article on chickenpox and shingles was a surprise (4 May, p 7).
Perhaps my dermatologist is unusually well trained and up to date, but I had a chickenpox revaccination several years ago (I’m male, now aged 74) specifically to minimise the chance of developing shingles. I find it a little hard to believe that British dermatologists aren’t well aware of that treatment.
Exploding balls
Nicola Jones reports on the tendency of cannon balls, fished up after many years in the sea, to heat up on exposure to air (11 May, p 10).
Were she to refer to the Ariadne column (New 杏吧原创, 21 March 1974, p 792) she would see that the phenomenon had disconcerted others before Robert Child, whose experience she relates. Indeed, you were kind enough to publish my putative explanation shortly afterwards (Letters, 4 April 1974, p 40).
Some years later I met a diver in a bar in the US who spoke of recovering cannon balls from the deep. I asked whether he had ever witnessed the “hot shot” phenomenon. Proudly he bared his chest and displayed some of the most impressive scars I have ever seen. One cannon ball he had recovered was actually an early shell鈥攁 hollow iron ball containing gunpowder. The projectile had steamed, dried off and exploded.
Recently the Irish Army was called out to deal with a large and ancient shell that had been dredged up. It was identified as a 10-inch Pallister studded shell of some considerable historic interest. In the light of the errant behaviour of cannon balls, the shell was gently perforated and its powder washed out before controlled drying and preservation.
Lethal for pollution
There are some other very important uses for non-lethal weapons, apart from those in your article (11 May, p 4). An example would be their use as bio-remediation agents in reducing or eliminating unwanted waste from metal, paint and petrochemical products such as lubricants, sealants and fuels, certain types of scrap plastic, and many other used, unwanted, and now discarded materials.
Too many of these waste materials are accumulating in disposal sites, and are leaching toxic fluids into our groundwater supplies and poisonous vapours into the air.
Letter
I was pleased to see that researchers are leaving no stone unturned in their search for non-lethal weapons. Two of the weapons reports and proposals listed in the article caught my eye in particular: “Vehicle Exhaust System Plugs and Emissive Reagents” and “Lubricant and Grease Additives for Immobilizing Machinery.”
I gather this means that if the US invades Iraq, once the soldiers find Saddam Hussein’s car they’ll pour sawdust in the crankcase and stuff a potato up the exhaust pipe. Then I would guess they’d ring his doorbell and run away giggling.
Mouse model works
Claude Reiss is entitled to his opinion on animals in medical research (11 May, p 56). He is not, however, entitled to attempt to justify these opinions with incorrect assertions.
He states: “Animal research merely gives false hope to people who need real cures鈥�”. He would get a different response from the thousands of healthy children today who 50 years ago would have been crippled by polio, or from the thousands of women whose breast cancer has been treated successfully with taxol or tamoxifen. These medical advances, to name but two, came about only because of research involving animals.
Reiss specifically cites the cystic fibrosis (CF) mouse model as “of no benefit to CF patients”. Any informed individual would know that new treatments take 10 to 20 years to develop. Since the CF mouse model only became available 10 years ago, any new treatment based on it now would be truly remarkable. Nevertheless, such treatments will certainly come and will have been facilitated by the mouse model.
He cites differences between the CF mouse and human disease as negating the value of animal research. On the contrary, anyone reading the scientific literature would see that these differences have been extremely informative about the pathophysiology of CF and, hence, novel approaches to treatment.
Furthermore, studies on the CF mouse were a prerequisite, for scientific and ethical reasons, for subsequent human studies that led to proof of concept for gene therapy. Gene therapy is potentially the ultimate treatment for CF and there is now a significant programme that researchers believe may benefit patients within five years.
The facts speak for themselves and I for one have no difficulty in making the choice of improving children’s health through closely regulated research using animals.
Counterpoint
Francis Fukuyama’s heavy footsteps through the fields of religion, psychiatry, evolutionary psychology and philosophy seemed far removed from his own field of international political economy (20 April, p 42). This was followed immediately by Slavoj Zizek’s exquisitely reasoned premise that we should not try to abolish all suffering, which was a masterstroke of publishing counterpoint. By remaining in his own fields of expertise, Zizek was able to argue effectively the very point Fukuyama seemed to be able to present only as prejudice.
Letter
Zaki Badawi’s claim that religion in general and Islam in particular do not cause conflict is a bit like claiming that matches do not cause fires. Without the presence of combustible material, matches would not be dangerous. Such material is omnipresent. Therefore matches are both proximate causes and dangerous. Grounds for human conflict are also omnipresent and religions often play the role of social matches. We don’t have to look beyond Northern Ireland to understand that.
Doubling up
New 杏吧原创 is to be commended for its much-needed review of discrepancies in the politicised field of ecstasy research (20 April, p 26). In addition to the issues mentioned, there is also a worrying tendency for some ecstasy researchers to base multiple publications on a single set of participants. Because these researchers typically fail to acknowledge this practice, it creates the false impression that separate papers are mutually confirmatory.
For example, in addition to their paper in The Lancet (vol 358, p 1864), L. Reneman and colleagues simultaneously published another paper in the Archives of General Psychiatry (vol 58, p 901) also describing the estimated cortical serotonin transporter density in almost entirely the same volunteers. Neither paper acknowledged the existence of the other.
This is no small matter. In future, authors will undoubtedly cite both papers as if they were independent evidence that ecstasy exposure reduces serotonin transporter density.
The pressure on academic researchers to divide work into “least publishable units” in order to appear productive is lamentable, but understandable. But I find the failure of these pressured researchers to properly cite these papers and their relationship harder to understand.
Biased view?
I just wanted to thank you for the article on Palestine (11 May, p 40). Is it not strange how everyone who visits the Palestinians, and actually sees what they are enduring, realises how such a sense of helplessness has been created? It is easy enough to understand why one would not want to live in such circumstances, why one would become desperate, when one sees one’s own loved ones gunned down, humiliated, and oppressed.
I would suggest that those who support either side live for a few weeks in Israel with the constant threat of a bomb going off. They can then try to live in the refugee camps for a few weeks, and get an appreciation of what life is like on both sides. I am willing to bet that everyone would prefer to live the life of an Israeli rather than a Palestinian, such is the degradation they are forced to endure.
Still, I am sure you will get many complaints about being biased in your views. I for one commend you. Those who complain should be given a room in the refugee camps to experience the bias for themselves.
Religion is the spark that ignites conflict
Well, it was a brave try and you asked all the right questions. But the answers, at least from the representatives of the three major monotheistic religions, were predictable, evasive, unreflective and totally devoid of any self-criticism or humility (11 May, p 46).
Albert Friedlander, with disingenuous even-handedness, blames the conflict in the Middle East on Yasser Arafat and Ariel Sharon, ignoring the fact that the position to the right of both these secular leaders is occupied by explicitly religious parties. If the secular conflict over land as a resource had been the only problem, it would have been solved 30 years ago.
Michael Sabbah’s denial of any responsibility for the uses to which politicians put religion is as unconvincing as the strikingly similar defence put up by many scientists working on armaments. If religious leaders really think religion is being distorted by politicians then they have a duty to speak out loudly and clearly.
Belief in no gods and belief in many gods can both serve the survival needs of a united humanity, but belief in one god is a destructive relic of our tribal past.