A step to save a planet
It is unfortunate that the article describing “ten steps to saving a planet” (10 September, p 36) missed the single most effective change a typical household can make: switching the mains electricity supply to “green power”. At a modest extra cost, electricity is supplied by a provider that guarantees it buys at least enough renewable energy to cover all the green power it sells.
It’s a quick, easy and spectacularly effective way to reduce your greenhouse gas emissions. I calculate that by switching to green power my household saves around 12 tonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions each year.
Here in Australia, I believe most electricity companies offer it; certainly the three providers I have dealt with in recent times have a green power option. Perhaps one of the most effective steps would be to demand your electricity provider does so, too.
Squirrel stew
Besides creating elaborate new recipes to cope with an abundance of introduced species, consider the classic dishes of those regions to which the troublesome creatures are native (10 September, p 41).
Brunswick stew has kept the grey squirrel population down in the southern US for generations, and is more suited to the home kitchen than a squirrel and foie gras terrine. Britons plagued by this species should pick a recipe from the web. Bon appetit!
What's in a cup of coffee?
Sometime during the mid-1970s, an American organisation called the National Institute of Creativity published a short-lived series of booklets, one of the titles of which was What’s in a Cup of Coffee? (24 September, p 38).
This was a very extensive chemical analysis of a cup of freshly brewed black coffee, and ran to some 20-plus pages. I have never come across anything quite as thorough since. I know that NIC ceased to exist in 1977, but was told that the coffee book was its most popular title. It might be of interest to someone to locate a copy and, if possible, republish it.
From Jo McLachlan
In the article on coffee, the box entitled “Caffeine cheats?” says “there are no records of any competitor being stripped of a prize due to caffeine”. This is true, but it is a fact that the former Australian pentathlete Alex Watson was expelled from the Seoul Olympics in 1988 after he tested positive to excess levels of caffeine in his blood. At that time caffeine was still a banned substance.
Mosman, New South Wales, Australia
From Annette Tranchant
I was disappointed to find that in your article the palpitations coffee can cause were referred to dimissively as “largely harmless”.
I suffered for years with palpitations and hypertension and, while “largely harmless” can be variously interpreted, they made everyday life very restricted. Simple activities like bending down, lifting and moderate walking could bring on an attack which might last five hours and leave me exhausted. At their worst they occurred every few days.
It was while I was in a cardiac clinic pounding on a treadmill covered in electrodes that a doctor suggested that I try complete abstinence from caffeine. The two days of intense headache were well worth the result. I have not had palpitations for years. Family members still occasionally remark on the fact that I can now accompany them on country walks and even climb steep hills.
Why don’t more studies on the effects of caffeine focus on actual medical case studies? I suspect it is because doctors in general do not seem to be aware of the effects caffiene can have. I try not to be evangelical, but I believe that there are a great many people who could enjoy considerably better health if they cut out the caffeine.
Tiverton, Devon, UK
For the record
鈥� Robert Cailliau of CERN has been responsible for many wonderful things, but he did not invent the internet, as an editorial error on our part had him saying in his letter on 15 October (p 22). What he and his colleagues did invent was the World Wide Web.
鈥� Our report on the Pakistan earthquake (15 October, p 8) said that the quake’s epicentre was 10 kilometres below the surface. This is actually the location of the focus of the quake; the epicentre is the point on the surface directly above.
鈥� The illustration in the feature about new diving machines (17 September, p 26) gave the maximum vertical speed of the Alvin replacement as 44 metres per second. As many readers pointed out, this should have been 44 metres per minute.
鈥� As if the proper terminology for humans and their ancestors were not confusing enough, we recently invented the word “homonin” when the word we should have used was hominin (15 October, p 19).
鈥� In our story on a gene for deep sleep (15 October, p 14), a name was misspelled. It should have been Malcolm von Schantz of the Surrey Sleep Research Centre, not Schwantz as printed.
Swallows and penguins
In the story describing how swallows can be fooled into staying faithful if their mate is given a plumage “makeover”, New 杏吧原创 seems to be making the same mistake as the evangelical Christians who see penguins as role models for human behaviour (8 October, p 21, and 1 October, p 17).
Rebecca Safran says: “Our research shows that it really pays to keep up appearances”. Perhaps I’m reading too much into the comment, but I think it could be argued that she is implying that humans should “keep up appearances” to keep their partners faithful because it works for swallows.
Does it work for penguins? Then I’ll be convinced.
Animals aren't people
Gary Francione’s logic of providing animals with one right 鈥� not to be treated as the property of humans 鈥� may seem like a compromising strategy designed to avoid the absurdity of giving animals human rights while still offering them a dignity worthy of moral personhood (8 October, p 24). Yet despite his quasi-scientific rhetoric, it is a deeply flawed argument.
Firstly, property rights over animals provide humanity with a means of ensuring their use in serving our needs 鈥� needs that Francione describes as “often trivial”, but food, clothing and enjoyment cannot be so lightly dismissed.
Secondly, wild animals that are not the acknowledged property of people are precisely those that are open to exploitation and potential extinction. For a professor of law not to understand the role and effect of property rights in this respect is rather disconcerting.
Like many animal rights theorists, Francione seeks to confuse our thinking by asserting the equality of animal and human slavery. That this is assuredly a denigration of humanity may be put aside in favour of the more damning criticism that he asks us to deny what animals are. They are not self-creating beings capable of realising what they are and what they ought to be, they are not rational (reasoning) creatures, and their relations to one another and to us are not personal but animal.
While we may admit “higher” animals into our own personal sphere of love and consideration, a gulf exists between us and the animal kingdom that only wishful thinking and fantasy can remove.
From Trevor Magnusson
If, as Francione suggests, animals are to be considered within the “scope of our moral community”, then carnivores of all species represent a serious problem. We find we must apply one set of guidelines when evaluating our own behaviour, and another for the behaviour of animals. In other words, we must make a fundamental moral distinction between humans and animals. But that distinction is at the very root of what animal rights advocates are opposing.
Hobart, Tasmania, Australia
From Brian Clegg
Presumably Francione believes that a fox has the right to eat a rabbit. So he appears to be arguing that we should have fewer rights than a wild animal. That doesn’t seem…right.
Upper Wanborough, Wiltshire, UK
From Chris Barnard, University of Nottingham and Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour
Francione states that animals should have the right not to be treated as property by humans. We can certainly make a moral case against the selfish exploitation of other animals, but we also have to acknowledge that our skewed “power relationship” with them inflicts damage in other ways, not just where we choose to exploit them for our own gain. Paradoxically, doing something about this depends on the kind of relationship that Francione finds offensive continuing to be exercised, at least for the foreseeable future.
It is inevitable that we will continue to impose on other species, and that some of our attempts to reduce our impact, including captive-breeding programmes, welfare research and the like, will impose on them still further. But since the alternative is to rely on subjective guesswork for solutions, a vigorous culture of animal research is both scientifically pressing and has the moral potency to counter opposition without self-serving appeals to improvement in our own quality of life.
To persist in the dubious language of “rights”, one can argue, like Francione, that other animals have a “right” not to be enslaved by us, but one can argue with equal foundation that they have a “right” to some amelioration of the collateral damage inflicted by our escalating global domination. As we are the only ones who can offer such amelioration, we had better make sure we get it right.
Nottingham, UK
From Michael Morris
Francione makes a lot of sense when arguing that animals deserve legal personhood. It is therefore disconcerting that he continues the tradition of many in the animal liberation movement of basing his argument on evolutionary considerations, and taking sideswipes at those with opinions of origins that differ from the mainstream, such as his comment about “religious superstition”.
Our obligation to treat animals as legal persons stems from the moral principle that sentient creatures should be treated equally regardless of species. The conclusion that animals are sentient has empirical grounds — from observations and experiments on animal behaviour, and it has no connection with any theory of origins, Darwinian or not.
The independence of animal liberationism and any theory of origin is not just of academic interest but has political implications for the animal rights movement as a whole. Alienating or sneering at potential allies with unconventional ideas makes no sense when we consider the immensely powerful industrial interests that oppose us.
Wellington, New Zealand
Fundamental fears
Those of us who are concerned at the rise of fundamentalism need to take a cold look at how science is actually used in modern industrial cultures, since this is a large part of the problem (8 October, p 39).
Most scientists are not selfless toilers after abstract truth, but work in industry and the military in pursuit of very worldly rewards. Science is being increasingly driven by the insatiable appetites of global economics. It is in fact that system’s most prized tool.
If we are really interested in winning hearts and minds over to the Enlightenment, we need to look critically at just what that project has so far brought the average person in the west: better health, certainly, but also the dubious good fortune of piles of consumerist junk and the prospect of an irreparably damaged global environment.
As you correctly point out, fundamentalism is at base a fear reaction. Unfortunately, the progress of the Enlightenment so far, in its unedifying partnership with rapacious economic ideologies, seems to indicate that many of those fears are justified.
From Charlotte Clarke
I was reading the first article on fundamentalism with some interest until I reached the suggestion that the terms evangelical and fundamentalist are synonymous. This is semantically inaccurate and, given the negative connotations of the term fundamentalist, most unfair.
Large sections of the Church of England and virtually all adherents of nonconformist Christian denominations in the UK would consider themselves to be evangelicals, but they do not display the negative attributes associated with fundamentalism. Evangelicals’ views on science do not necessarily differ greatly from those of the rest of the population. They may, however, object to a juxtaposition of photos (such as that on page 42) which suggests that Billy Graham is to be equated with Osama Bin Laden.
Harrogate, North Yorkshire, UK
From Robert Cailliau, CERN
Sociologist Grace Davie may have said “the 21st century will be religious”, but this sad direction that humanity seems to take has been predicted before.
Many decades ago Andr茅 Malraux, who was the French minister of cultural affairs from 1958 to 1969, said “le grand probl猫me du 21猫me si猫cle sera celui des r茅ligions”. The paraphrased translation, “The 21st century will be religious, or it will not be”, is more commonly known and has been a source of controversy ever since.
Geneva, Switzerland
From Jeff Kueter, The George C. Marshall Institute
To imply that the Marshall Institute is part of a campaign to stop science, as Mike Holderness does in the special report on fundamentalism, reveals a clear lack of understanding of the institute and a penchant for conspiracy theories (8 October, p 47).
The Marshall Institute embraces science and the underlying belief that a clash of ideas in an open forum advances human society. Our work on climate change stands on its own merits as an objective and concise assessment of the state of science and its meaning for policy.
Washington DC, US
From Riadh Al-Rabeh
It is essential to remember that the education of certain principles starts in childhood. This can have an everlasting grip on some people. If we want to eradicate a phenomenon like fundamentalism, we must make sure that children are given the knowledge of all alternative ideas — it ought to be a fundamental right for all children not to be indoctrinated.
Cranfield, Bedfordshire, UK
From Grainne McEntee, Royal Veterinary College
I was raised a Roman Catholic in Ireland. When I came to the UK 10 years ago to study science, my swing to the “other side” away from my religious roots was quite extreme. Since then, I have been clawing my way back towards a more balanced world view.
In light of the current climate of fundamentalist activity, this can be difficult, and it is easy to take the moral high ground against such extremist views. As scientists, however, we are in the enviable position of being funded to develop open minds and objective perspectives of the world. Your words are a timely reminder to us to keep ourselves in check.
London, UK
Fat is a moral issue
Hunters may not often be held up as bastions of morality but many consider it appalling to kill more than you can eat. By analogous reasoning, obesity is not just a health issue, it is a moral issue.
Any scientist who wants to develop a method that enables people to eat and eat and eat (which in the case of meat eaters means kill and kill and kill) without getting fat and paying the health consequences is in my opinion highly unethical (1 October, p 38).
Feeding the world’s existing population isn’t easy, and many natural systems are paying a high price for being forced to operate beyond their natural capacity. To work on methods to shut down one of the few negative feedbacks 鈥� obesity 鈥� that discourage humans from overexploiting the planet is dismal.
Adelaide, Victoria, Australia
From Eliot Wright
I read with interest about the possible effects of gut flora assemblage on the absorption of digested food.
For about 35 years I have been eating around 300 millilitres of home-made yogurt for breakfast, either with cereal or with fruit. As a schoolboy and a young man, I ate huge amounts of food without putting on weight, and though I did a lot of running I used to assume that my genetic make-up was mainly responsible for the maintenance of a steady body weight. Even now at 62, I have a body mass index of 25.
Having read the article, I wondered whether my home-made yogurt had substantially shifted my gut flora. Perhaps it is partly responsible for my uniform body weight.
Birmingham, UK
From Ken Green
It is hardly surprising that the St Louis mice you report on failed to put on weight. It has been known for decades that without gut flora, mammals suffer malnutrition.
I have known a splendid dog to die of severe diarrhoea because a vet kept him on antibiotics for over six weeks, thus clearing his gut of bacteria. My advice 鈥� to give an enema prepared with the faeces of his running mate 鈥� was ignored with ridicule. I cured a sick goat, which had ceased to cud, with a similarly prepared drench.
Tintagel, Cornwall, UK
Lost embryos
President Bush’s adviser on medical ethics, Michael Gazzaniga, recently wrote an article that covered the morality issues surrounding human embryos (11 June, p 48).
He stated that, after natural sexual fertilisation, “up to 80 per cent of embryos spontaneously abort”. Since this is an issue I have been interested in for a long time, I wrote to enquire the source of the figure. I was somewhat surprised to discover that the study he referred to gave a range of 30 to 80 per cent.
Since then I have been unable to obtain any further information. I would dearly like to know if there are any articles describing the research methods used to obtain such figures, which seem to have increased over the years from 10 per cent to the 80 per cent given in the article. Such research would seem to be exceedingly difficult if not impossible. I think people’s personal experiences would suggest something nearer 1 per cent.
This is a serious matter because, whether the figure is high or low, it is used to sustain arguments concerning issues on a wide range of topics, including cloning and embryo experimentation, and presumably underpins advice to the US president. We should be able to have confidence that the advice given is based on the best information available.
The hole story
I was very pleased to read your article about strengthening objects by filling them with holes (8 October, p 32).
I had always assumed it was just my technique that caused the toilet paper to rip through the middle of a sheet rather than along the perforation. Now I know better.