Lost marbles
I am sure that you are deliberately trying to provoke discussion with this article but I am afraid I must rise to the bait.
Maggie McDonald’s “rapid rebuttal kit” is so full of holes it can only serve to provoke further those who wish to see the Elgin Marbles returned to Greece (22 June, p 45).
She suggests that different parts of Greece may have competing claims on the marbles. Even if this were true, it seems patently clear that the Greek population as a whole would like to see the marbles restored to their home in Athens.
The Marbles should be returned to Athens. It’s where they belong. As an added bonus, returning them might save us all from having to read any more ridiculous nonsense like McDonald’s article.
Letter
The Parthenon frieze and many other artifacts of cultural heritage currently in the British Museum were obtained as the result of war, occupation, subjugation and corruption.
This particular frieze, were it to return to Athens, would be the most central and most significant artefact in a vibrant culture that has survived linguistically, musically and artistically, despite two millennia of serial occupation. It is something of a surprise that the importance of such heritage to a recently emerged nation such as Greece could be interpreted as “no good reason”.
Light on the carpet
My experience of using bathroom scales appears to be at odds with your article (29 June, p 23).
On a hard floor, my scales indicate my weight today is 186 pounds and my wife’s is 112 pounds. On carpet, my indicated weight is 183 pounds and my wife’s is 111 pounds. I have obtained comparable results numerous times over the past 40 years.
Credit for care
Andy Coghlan’s article on cooperative training for animals in research was welcome publicity on the strides made in recent years in the proper care of laboratory animals (6 July, p 22).
What concerns me is that, yet again, reputable investigators forewent the credit they deserve for innovation and dedication to the animals they care for. Fear of being targeted by animal rights extremists dictated that the article quoted British sources anonymously. US researchers felt free to identify themselves and publish details of their research.
Animal technicians in Britain have known for many years that cooperative training benefits animals, technicians and research. In many research facilities, for example, animals are housed in groups so that they can follow normal behaviour patterns.
Over 2000 animal technicians who are members of the Institute of Animal Technology are committed to improving the care and welfare of laboratory animals. Yet we constantly struggle to find secure ways to share progress with our colleagues. Our annual congress cannot be extensively publicised and has to have police guards on every door. We hesitate to publish papers, to protect our colleagues and families. I even have to use a pseudonym to publish this letter.
Lumps of light
Liquid light does not “glow” (6 July, p 16), in the same way that a ray of light is invisible from the side 鈥� barring scattering by dust. Otherwise, it would be gone in a blink.
Induced labour
It has just struck me that it should be very obvious that sex induces labour (13 July, p 26), although there may be a delay of some 36 to 40 weeks鈥�
For the record
鈥� In the story on IVF league tables (13 July, p 4), the quote from Hossam Abdalla should have read “We have moved from the age of miracle babies鈥�” not “multiple babies”.
Musical notes
Paying services like PressPlay and MusicNet try to stem music piracy on the Net by offering complicated systems for a fee (6 July, p 42). But the fee is a large bulk subscription. Since I enjoy a wide range of music, I’m not likely to be satisfied with one provider, so I would have to pay many subscriptions.
Instead, there should be micro-payment systems, so that I can pay a very small amount for only the track I listen to, and to the company I choose. The technology to do this has existed for at least 10 years. All you need are agreements between banks and preferably a single currency such as the euro.
The big labels fear that with such a set-up the consumer would pay the artist directly. And quite rightly. I’m now spending about 鈧�2 per track when I buy a CD. I would certainly allow my computer’s electronic wallet to pay 5 eurocents per track directly to the artist each time I play a track, because I would need to do so 40 times to exceed the current cost of the physical object. Of course, there are things I have played more often than that, but also a large number I never played more than once. Even if I listened to music 10 hours a day non-stop, I would spend only about 鈧�7. You can spend that much on a cup of coffee.
Letter
The draconian (and most probably futile) measures proposed by the recording industry to control the “theft of their intellectual property” sound to me more like a desperate attempt to disguise their lack of marketing acumen than a response to any real threat from piracy.
It seems that for young people, downloading pirated music from the Net has a lot in common with sex: they all talk about doing it, and are desperate to let everybody know what a great time they are having doing it, but you can’t help wondering how many of them really are doing it. Personally, I don’t know anybody whose principal source of recorded music is pirated material from the Net, or even pirated copies of ordinary CDs for that matter.
What never seems to rate a mention in all this hysteria is that MP3 is still not a particularly high-quality recording medium. Downloaded songs that sound OK through the little speakers attached to the average computer can sound pretty dire when played through a proper stereo system.
Allergic to pharming
In your story on “pharming”, you quote James White of the US Department of Agriculture as saying “the only drugs so far being grown in crops are proteins that would simply be digested if accidentally eaten by humans or animals” (6 July, p 4).
Well, sort of. He seems to overlook the growing incidence of allergies to proteins in foods, such as gluten in wheat. These allergies are believed to be triggered by incompletely digested proteins passing through the gut wall.
The USDA also seems naive in its confidence that separating pharmed crops from other crops in time and space will prevent genes spreading. Can’t they conceive that variations in microclimate, terrain, soil fertility and shade will cause the time of reaching fertility to vary in both the pollinating GM crop and the recipient non-GM crop, so that there is bound to be the occasional overlap?
In the parliamentary election currently being fought in New Zealand, the lifting of the current moratorium on GM crops is the most prominent issue. The pro-GM government’s position is “trust us, we have very good regulatory processes in place” 鈥� no doubt drawing on the expertise of the USDA.
Japan's risky diet
I take exception to the letter from Don Goodman of Japan’s Institute of Cetacean Research, in which he describes your article on mercury in whalemeat samples as “terribly wrong” and “scaremongering” (13 July, p 25).
Goodman states that all meat from Japan’s “scientific” catches is tested for pollutants and is safe to eat. He fails to mention that more than 1000 tonnes of food products derived from small cetaceans also enter the Japanese market each year untested.
DNA analysis of whale products from Japanese supermarkets has repeatedly revealed that meat from toothed cetaceans such as dolphins (in which the highest mercury levels have been found) caught in Japan’s coastal hunts is often marketed as whalemeat, which makes it more valuable. Of 17 “whale” products purchased by investigators from my organisation in March 2001, only five were baleen whales. And in certain regions of Japan, particularly in the south, the products on sale are almost exclusively from small cetaceans, and are often contain the contaminated internal organs. People in these areas are indeed running the risk of poisoning themselves or their unborn children.
What’s more, the article Goodman refers to only looked at research on mercury levels. Numerous studies have shown that whales also accumulate other toxic substances. Two years ago, for instance, Koichi Haraguchi of Daiichi University reported at the Dioxin 2000 meeting in California that he had found dioxin levels far higher than the accepted safe limit in several species.
Japan has failed to address these issues, and this is why campaign groups such as ours have commissioned independent scientists to carry out analyses. Not, as Goodman insultingly suggests, to raise money.
Patented seed
John Ripley asks if the courts would “enforce the payment of royalties once the principle of widespread accidental contamination had been established” and “what would happen if a patented gene for, say, resistance to a specific weedkiller escaped and became widespread within a crop?” (29 June, p 27).
May I refer you to the case of Monsanto Canada and Monsanto Company v. Percy Schmeiser and Schmeiser Enterprises from earlier this year. Schmeiser’s farming methods included collecting seed from his canola (oilseed rape) crop and using it for subsequent plantings. In other words, it was his normal practice to create his own seed stock, and the court heard that Schmeiser didn’t purchase any canola seed, GM or not, between 1993 and 1999.
Monsanto produce a genetically modified variety of canola seed marketed as Roundup Ready, which is resistant to glyphosate herbicides. Schmeiser’s fields became partially contaminated with this seed from 1996, and although Schmeiser appears to have been aware of this contamination from at least 1998, for the next three years he continued his normal practice of collecting seed. It isn’t clear exactly how the contamination occurred.
Acting on a tip-off, Monsanto tested samples of Schmeiser’s canola crop, found them contaminated with its patented technology, and sued for patent infringement and damages. The judge decided that the source of the contamination was not an issue. What was important was that Schmeiser knew, or ought to have known, that the seed stock contained patented material. He also stated that “infringement (of the patent) occurs鈥egardless of the intention of the infringer”.
Further, the judge declared it immaterial that Schmeiser did not take advantage of the GM canola’s herbicide resistance. The judge ruled in favour of Monsanto to the tune of approximately $400,000, of which $250,000 was for legal fees.
The full text of the judgement can be found online at:
Need for subsidies
John Hamblin’s call for the removal of agricultural subsidies misses important points (29 June, p 28).
In Western Australia, where Hamblin and I both live, one-third of the agricultural landscape will be ruined by high salinity, thanks to the dependence on annual crops and pastures that require irrigation. Perennial crop alternatives are available, but aren’t sufficiently profitable to attract farmers.
Should the annual crops, including wheat, pastures and legumes, be taxed, or the perennial species be subsidised, or both? The reality is that if we want to achieve sustainable, non-polluting agriculture, then we’ll need to make a large number of interventions in the free market.
These would have to be different in different parts of the world, according to each area’s particular problems. Some European countries are moving towards better agricultural regulation by limiting landowners’ choices and by changing the mix of carrots and sticks. But the level of intervention is woefully inadequate in most parts of the world, so our agricultural resource base continues to degrade, to decline and to be polluted.
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to be possible to find legislators and agricultural bureaucrats with sufficient fortitude to impose physical controls or market signals that will prevent the continuing decline of agricultural resources.