For the record
鈥� The story on empathy (24 April, p 15) omitted the journal reference. The work was published in Neuron, vol 42, p 335).
Letter
The “right to know” for consumers your editorial espouses effectively translates into denying them the right to try and buy many alternatives to approved pharmaceuticals. Unlike new drugs, most herbs and dietary supplements cannot be covered by patent, making the huge cost of accreditation unrecoverable. Proving traditional usage is impossible for new remedies and for those gleaned from unwritten folk and tribal tradition.
We are in danger of looking for the mote in the eye of herbal medicine while ignoring the beam in that of drug-based medicine. At the latest count, some 105,000 Americans and 40,000 Britons die each year as the result of taking prescription drugs, correctly administered. Many more suffer damaging side effects and yet more become dependent for life.
In contrast to the pharmaceutical market, there is relatively little evidence of addiction or misuse of products within the $18 billion herbal and supplements market.
It is not just a desire to avoid the dangers of pharmaceuticals that is driving so many towards alternatives. In many cases, people simply find conventional drugs do not work, and that herbs and or nutritional supplements do. Allen Roses, a senior vice-president of GlaxoSmithKline, stated last November that 90 per cent of prescription drugs only work for between 30 and 50 per cent of patients.
Herbs and supplements may perform no better than prescription drugs, but the size of their market speaks for consumer confidence in their benefits. Control of these products would be in the interests of pharmaceutical companies, not consumers.
Entangled brains
It is always interesting to tie two or three of your articles together to see what kind of theories might emerge. Take remote staring (13 March, p 34) and quantum entanglement (27 March, p 32), for example.
If we are finding more and more examples of quantum entanglement around us every day, then it might not be a giant leap to conclude that occasionally brainwaves can become entangled. This could provide at least the bare bones of a theory explaining the results from remote staring experiments. It might also touch upon telepathy and the effect of an observer on his subjects during psi experiments.
Primed for asthma
Anyone who is really interested in the root cause of the soaring asthma rates (27 March, p 36) could try looking at Ulla Saarinen and Merja Kajosaari’s article on “Breastfeeding as prophylaxis against atopic disease” (The Lancet, vol 21, p 1065).
Asthma is more frequent in the poorest families, as is artificial feeding. Rural mothers are supported no better than city mothers in being helped to breastfeed easily 鈥� and their children’s asthma rates are no better either.
We now have two or three generations of immune-compromised adults passing on their acquired sensitivities to their children via antibody response in the uterus. Their children are then further deprived of the immune system promoters and modulators in their mother’s milk that would buffer them from over-reacting to non-human proteins in their gut, lungs and skin. The problems are caused by an over-reactive immune system, the symptoms are the effects.
If we enabled more women to breastfeed, we would see asthma rates decline, along with many other chronic and acute illnesses in both mother and child.
Would we knowingly substitute any other complete biological system of nourishment (blood for example) with one that contained no living cells, no tissue-specific growth enhancers, no immune system modulators, no inflammatory response inhibitors plus a massive dose of non-human protein? And then give it to our children for the first six months of life when their immune systems are at their most under-developed and sensitive and consider it a mystery when they become ill?
Southern stars
Neil de Grasse Tyson applauds the naming of some constellations after scientific instruments rather than mythological characters, apparently seeing this as a triumph for the underdog (10 April, p 46). But he is quoted as saying “the southern hemisphere did not have the benefit of centuries of creative mythological thought”.
On the contrary, the southern hemisphere’s many native peoples created a rich mythology associated with the night sky, along with their own names for the constellations. As always, the European explorers of the past felt that something only had a proper name if they gave it one 鈥� even the constellations. As a self-declared “champion of the underdog”, de Grasse Tyson seems to have missed the real underdogs in the naming game.
Letter
The Polynesians have been voyaging the Pacific 鈥� Te Moana Nui-A-Kupe 鈥� for centuries, using the stars as one of their main navigational aids, and naming the constellations, stars and planets. For example, the Maori name for Aldebaran is Taumata-Kuku; Canis Major, Pukawanui; Castor, Whakaahu; Orion, Tautoru or Tata-o-Tautoru; Jupiter, Kopu-nui; Mars, Matawhero; and so on.
Koala crisis
Linda Shields asks whether the koalas of Kangaroo Island could be saved if moved to other parts of Australia (3 April, p 29). In 1997 my wife and I flew to Kangaroo Island with a very well-informed guide, naturalist and pilot who told us of the various attempts to solve the ongoing problem of the burgeoning koala population. With no natural predators, and very little else to distract them, the koalas soon bred out of control, to the point at which the majority were technically starving and their principal food source was overgrazed. Of the great number of eucalyptus varieties on the island only a few are edible to the koala.
At that time, the outcry from the general population who wished to relocate the koalas drowned out the voice of those suggesting a cull. At significant expense a large number of animals were trapped, sedated, placed in individual carriers and then put onto a specially chartered ferry for the 3-hour trip back to the mainland. Then the captured koalas were tagged and distributed throughout the countryside at appropriate locations. The vociferous majority declared a job well done, and life carried on.
As I understand it, the majority of these animals died within the first six months in reaction to the stress, plus exposure to the effects of chlamydia (Kangaroo Island is chlamydia-free, unlike much of the mainland).
Some studies have been made into solving this problem, resolving into several groups: sterilisation, both male and female; relocation; cull; do nothing (in which the population will crash); introduce chlamydia (which affects fecundity, amongst other things).
It is worth noting that this situation is not just limited to Kangaroo Island, and that the solution will never be simple. The problem, like the debate, is likely to run and run.
Powered by hot air
Your article about a solar thermal energy plant in Spain is most interesting (10 April, p 26). But I think it would be more efficient to run this as a gas turbine instead of a steam turbine.
A compressor, driven by the turbine, would pump air up to the ceramic heat collector where it would be heated and then allowed to expand through the turbine. This would eliminate the various heat exchangers and generally simplify the design. The compressor and turbine would be housed in the tower.
Sniffing out failure
Reading that a patent has been awarded for a melting plug that releases a warning scent in overheated circuits (3 April, p 23) reminds me that it all happened in the days of steam.
In the late 1930s the London North Eastern Railway in the UK was running steam locomotives at very near the limit at which they could lubricate the bearings. So a hole was drilled in the big end and a glass bulb of amyl acetate placed in it. The bulb would burst at 160 掳F and warn of problems. How novel must a patent be?
Letter
This capability was already built into the silicon rectifiers used in the English Electric DEUCE computer (vintage 1950s). Although not an intentional design feature, in common with all of the components of the machine, these devices tended to fail frequently and spectacularly, and would emit a smell reminiscent of the after-effects of a strong curry. For this reason, they were generally known by the technicians as “rectum-fires”.
Fault, what fault?
Your article states “The Cutty Sark’s design is inherently flawed” (10 April, p 25). I beg to differ. In the days before antifouling paint, the only weapon against barnacles was copper sheet, a layer of which was attached to the boat beneath the waterline. However, copper sheet on an iron frame in salt water would electrolytically self-destruct. The Cutty Sark’s wooden planking acted to insulate the copper sheath from the iron frame.
She was a stunning piece of design and stayed in service for more than 50 years despite the stresses of a rig that put out around 3000 horsepower and allowed her to overtake steamships. As a colleague said today, “If that’s a design fault, we need more design faults”.
Chemists sing too
In response to Leldon Kelly’s letter (10 April, p 33), may I direct readers to the equally entertaining Musical Chemistry website: :
One bow, two sterns
I came across the following somewhat puzzling statement in your article on “rudderless ships”: “Pod drives were first used on icebreakers in the early 1990s. These work best if they can smash ice with both sterns as well as the bow” (27 March, p 24).
Now, having grown up by the sea, being used to boats, and living in a house with a good view of a harbour, I wonder how a ship with two sterns but only one bow would look? Something between a catamaran and a normal ship?
Supplement safety
The writer of your editorial advocating that nutritional supplements undergo the same testing regime as conventional medicines (10 April, p 3) seems not to have read Iain Chalmers’s article (6 March, p 19). This outlines how deeply flawed, compromised and inadequate are the current testing practices approved by the US Food and Drug Administration and other state regulatory agencies.
The problems include lack of proper peer review of drug trial methodologies and results, lack of legal public access to research results, and biased under-reporting of clinical trials. These problems apply to “natural” products as much as to synthetic drugs, as illustrated by the UK Department of Health’s failure to release negative results on evening primrose oil’s efficacy in treating eczema.
Whether the drug in question is synthetic and novel, or natural and traditional, is irrelevant under this flawed system, where protecting company profits takes precedence over public health and safety.
We need proper testing of all products for which medicinal and or nutritional claims are made. But before we can have any confidence in the results we need to first question the scientific and state regulatory regimes which are responsible for producing those results. At present they do not pass basic tests of accountability, transparency, scientific rigour, and impartiality.