Licensed to modify
As you say in your Editorial, the government in the UK is unlikely to offer genetically modified crops a crude red or green light (14 June, p 3). It is the shade of amber that matters 鈥� the degree of caution and control placed on the commercialisation of these products.
You hint at three principles of control: that GM polluters should pay if they damage the environment, that consumers should be able to choose between GM and non-GM products, and that organic farming should be protected from contamination.
A fourth principle could be a precautionary approach. To justify the risk of potentially large or irreversible impacts there needs to be clear and substantial societal benefit. One way to ensure this might be to allow GM crops to be marketed under a licence that would be renewable every five years following independent analysis of the costs and benefits to society, and regulatory compliance. If the benefits are not clear, then licences would not be renewed.
Under this system, the producer would bear the risk of over-claiming for GM. If, as many suspect, the claimed benefits are overstated and not worth the costs and risks, then a robust regulatory framework based on these principles will leave GM permitted but commercially stalled.
Wealthy and healthy
The jury is out on whether changes in lifestyle will significantly prolong life expectancy (7 June, p 28). J. R. Johnstone cites three major randomised controlled trials over three decades which failed to show “that healthy lifestyle would increase life expectancy”, while Pekka Puska of the World Health Organization maintains that lifestyle interventions “can have a significant positive impact on chronic disease rates”.
These claims sit uncomfortably with much Australian, British and American research that has consistently shown disparities in health status between the “healthy wealthy” and the disadvantaged. Despite recent trends showing increased longevity in the western world, the gap in life expectancy between the rich and the poor has increased. In other words, if changes in lifestyle influence health outcomes, these changes are selectively benefiting the socially advantaged.
In 1993, in an editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine, Marcia Angell, cautioned that “so closely does socio-economic status correlate with health that it confounds the interpretation of much clinical research”. It is possible that this was the case in the trials that Johnstone refers to, which may have been unsuccessful in controlling for discrepancies in socio-economic status between the socially advantaged and disadvantaged.
The research showing that increased life expectancy is selectively benefiting those of higher socio-economic status casts serious doubt on whether individual behavioural changes would address the large discrepancy in morbidity and mortality between the rich and the poor.
Leave George be
George lives on Cousin island, a beautiful nature reserve in the Seychelles archipelago. He spends his time sleeping, drinking, having sex and breaking the reserve infrastructure. A football hooligan? No, he is just a rowdy giant tortoise. Once thought to be a member of a small group of survivors from the lost continent of Gondwanaland, George was feted as one of the last of the Seychelles species of giant tortoises.
However, in recent years, serious researchers have doubted the existence of living specimens of Seychelles giant tortoises. The current theory is that all giant tortoises now living in Seychelles are from the Aldabra atoll. While Justin Gerlach from Cambridge University’s Museum of Zoology has insisted he has discovered living individuals from three different species of Seychelles giant tortoises (31 May, p 19), most scientists working in this field have greeted the claim with scepticism. As quoted in your article, a team led by Eric Palkovacs from Yale University has published a paper stating there was no genetic variation in 55 living individuals examined, including those believed to be separate Seychelles species.
What is not mentioned in your article is another paper in the same issue of Molecular Ecology, by Jeremy Austin, Nicholas Arnold and Roger Bour. Their result indicates there is no significant variation in either living or preserved specimens from the Seychelles and they all represent a single species undoubtedly originating from Aldabra.
We now have the last word on the subject. There are so many things to do in conservation biology and so little time. Let us move on to more urgent problems and leave George and his brethren in peace to enjoy their tropical paradise.
Wives and kiddies
Tom Lockyer’s letter is a classic example of how ingrained is the belief that only men are scientists (31 May, p 26). He concludes that “particle physicists鈥eem content to maintain the status quo, just to feed their wives and kiddies”. And we wonder why women are not entering the sciences!
Forging the Universe
So, John Barrow has resurrected that hoary old Cartesian chestnut, that the universe is some kind of simulation (7 June, p 44). There are fundamental problems with his thesis. For a start, applying the predicate “simulated” only makes sense when we know what the genuine thing is like. It makes sense to ask whether a banknote is a forgery because we can tell it apart from the ones that aren’t. But it makes no sense to ask “What if all banknotes are forged?”
All those error-correcting patches turn Barrow’s whole thesis into a classic Popperian “unfalsifiable hypothesis”. If all the discrepancies between observation and theory are themselves part of the super-program of Barrow’s “advanced civilisation”, then there is nothing left which could count as a falsification of his thesis. Barrow’s thesis is nonsense 鈥� from beginning to end.
Letter
For God’s sake stop printing stories about how the universe is a simulation. Do you want to get us all deleted?
Invasive safety
I found the article on “smart” airline seats very troubling (14 June, p 14). Paul Marks ends this frightening piece with the statement, “first-class passengers will enjoy the benefits first”.
I don’t see the benefit of airlines taking away every ounce of our privacy. I fly frequently, but the latest news I’m hearing is not making me feel safer 鈥� only more violated. I can have my credit background checked at the counter, I can be searched at the security checkpoint, I can have a camera over my seat monitoring my every move during the entire flight, and now I can have body sensors reading my behaviour.
If this nonsense goes much further, I won’t be flying at all 鈥� and it won’t have anything to do with terrorists. It will have to do with the airline industry embracing every conceivable technology that comes down the pipe, without any regard for common sense and personal dignity.
Nobel for Mathematics
A proper recognition of mathematics in the Nobel prizes could easily be achieved if the Norwegian parliament passed a law to modify the rules of the Nobel Foundation. This could add the Abel prize fund to the Nobel fund and award a Nobel prize for mathematics (7 June, p 12).
There are many precedents worldwide for a testator’s instructions being modified after death, without any implied criticism of the testator, leading to well-accepted improvements to the original terms of the will.
Letter
Your article on the lack of a Nobel prize in mathematics fails to mention the reason: namely that one mathematician in particular, it may have been David Hilbert, was exploring more than theoretical spaces with Mrs Nobel, and Alfred was furious.
Free trade enriches
George Monbiot needs to explain why developing countries that protect themselves through trade barriers end up with inefficient, resource-wasting, state-owned industries that enrich their corrupt elites while impoverishing the wider population (31 May, p 25).
Without external competition there is no incentive for domestic industries to bring quality levels up to international standards. Without the free movement of capital there is no chance of the foreign investment that would help lift people out of poverty. Today’s developing countries cannot generate internally the amount of capital required for the transformation of their industries, making the historical comparison with Britain, the US and others spurious.
Iressa deaths
I believe mortality due to adverse reactions to the anti-cancer drug Iressa in Japan is more than 2 per cent (24 May, p 12). Investigators in the clinical trials decided that most of the deaths were not related to Iressa. However, after marketing Iressa in Japan, many fatal reactions (more than 246 deaths up to 22 April 2003) have been reported. Please see my comments at bmj.com/cgi/eletters/326/7397/1004/d#32087 and npojip.org/english/ejindex.htm
Downside of gaming
I was intrigued by your article about the effects of computer games on people’s visual skills (31 May, p 11). While this shows that there could be positive side effects to gaming, the researchers seem not to have investigated any possible negative effects on the visual systems and the brain.
As a once regular gamer, I found that after as little as 20 minutes of playing video games my concentration in the “real world” would be greatly reduced. I also found myself to be more short-tempered and aggressive, even after playing non-violent games. After playing for long periods, I would sometimes be in a semi-comatose state when I finished.
Probably my most worrying symptom was a feeling of addiction towards video games. Applying the criteria from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (the DSM-IV criteria) to computer games, I conclude that these games did have a definite hold over me.
Perhaps researchers should stop looking for the positive side effects of gaming and concentrate instead on those which are potentially far more harmful.
Robo weedkiller
Your report on the development of a robot that will kill weeds (7 June, p 16) mentions that it requires 40 more indigenous broadleaved weed species to be modelled before the system becomes practical. I may be missing something, but wouldn’t it be easier to model the limited number of crop species? Having done this, you could program the robot to leave them alone, and set it to kill everything else (cackling madly as you did so).
Don't mention the herb
In the article on basil extracts in cheese rind (14 June, p 26), your picture caption states: “The cheese will only go off if the basil’s faulty”.
What if they don’t follow the instruction “Manuel”? I think gourmets should be warned 鈥� the worst cheese is in the captions.
For the record
鈥� Our article “The facts of life” (31 May, p 30) wrongly referred to the bacterium Salmonella typhi as the “typhus bug”. As reader Matthew Readwin points out, this bacterium is responsible for a different disease, typhoid fever. Typhus is caused by bacteria of the genus Rickettsia.