No panacea
We can now list among life’s certainties not only death and taxes, but an endless flow of articles on the newest key to virtually free energy (29 July, p 35). Granted, such ideas as hydrogen-powered cars give meaning to life for entrepreneurs and engineers alike, and hope to the rest of us. Yet, from an ecological standpoint, one is driven to point out that overemphasis on energy panaceas reveals that we really don’t get it.
Cheaper, limitless energy will not create a viable civilisation in the 21st century. Far from it. From a historical perspective, one can argue that relatively cheap fossil fuels over the last century have got us into the present environmental crisis.
Even if humanity, at the eleventh hour, is able to solve the global warming problem, we are not lacking other means of destroying the ecological systems upon which civilisation depends. Habitat destruction, pollution and overfishing of the oceans come to mind.
There is every reason to believe that virtually free energy on tap will only accelerate the process. This will certainly occur unless we foresee the broad consequences of new technologies and act to internalise their cradle-to-grave costs.
The missing element in solving our environmental and resource dilemma this century is not some technological key; it is human restraint and giving nature room to breathe.
Medicine for the boss
How are human trials of potentially powerful drugs targeted at the immune system made safer by initially giving them to a single volunteer (29 July, p 5)? The trial and the drug remain just as hazardous for the single volunteer as they would be for six or seven. The only possible way to make it safer would be for regulations to require the single volunteer to be the CEO of the trial’s funding body.
The editor writes:
鈥� Due to lack of space we were unable to print the details of the UK Department of Health recommendations. Its interim report suggests that “the first dose should be given to one person only, leaving sufficient time for any adverse reaction to develop before further doses or administration to more people; in some circumstances and particularly if the drug is to affect the immune system, first studies may more appropriately involve patients being treated for the disease rather than healthy volunteers.”
Ace in the pack
The conclusion that Manfred von Richthofen and other German flying aces of the first world war achieved their success more by luck than skill is interesting, but the article prompts many questions (29 July, p 19).
There were many variables in air combat in the first world war, and anyone who has flown a biplane will understand that trying to shoot down one biplane from another would at times be like trying to shoot clay pigeon while standing up in a hammock. So how are the pilots with true “ace skills” to be identified?
It has long been said of von Richthofen that he preyed upon vulnerable targets 鈥� very sensible, and so did everyone else whenever they could. Pilots such as von Richthofen and Oswald Boelke followed a system of air fighting that was designed to minimise risk and maximise the chances of shooting down the enemy. They stuck to the essentials of obtaining a good starting position, following through with the attack, and eschewing pointless and disorienting aerobatics. The system, known as the Dicta Boelke, was the ace, rather than the pilots who used it.
But to say that the top aces achieved their victory scores mostly by luck ignores at the very least the vital element of good marksmanship. To discover which German pilots had true individual ace skills would require an analysis of those occasions in which a German pilot got into a real turning dogfight and how many rounds he expended to achieve a kill.
From David Payne
The concept of luck was much more applicable to the novice flyer than the experienced fighter ace. The inexperienced flyer was particularly vulnerable in the period when the enemy had aerial superiority, such as during “Bloody April” in 1917, when it was said the flying life of a novice Allied pilot was “barely a month”.
The experienced pilot had considerable advantages over the novice. He had the pick of the newest and the best-functioning aircraft, and had much more say on when and where he flew and with whom. The more ambitious ace often had the choice of whether to attack or not and, if the odds were unfavourable, he could more honourably withdraw, having already proved himself to his peers.
Some aces of renown were effectively protected by their colleagues at all cost; others flew alone, avoiding risky situations by relying on their hard-learned operational tactics to avoid surprise attack and confrontation. Experienced flyers also learned to spot the novice pilot, and many of the aces’ later victories were obtained by concentrating their attacks on these novices.
To be sure, the vagaries of flying of a basically fragile aircraft with powerful engines in the crowded skies above the highly hostile Western Front brought the end of many pilots, whatever their flying skills. But of the top 35 German aces (those that had 30 or more confirmed victories) 23 survived the war. It is interesting to note, however, that many of them came to grief in flying accidents after November 1918.
Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, UK
Forgotten currents
I have a problem with this sentence: “For many years there have been anecdotal reports of the effects of electrical currents on wound healing” (29 July, p 15). I guess the pioneering work of Robert Becker, Andrew Marino and Joe Spadaro and the many who worked with them does not carry much weight? How is a large body of peer-reviewed and published research on micro-currents and voltages in healing in bone and other tissues considered “anecdotal”? There were many researchers involved in this, working with frogs, rats, salamanders and humans.
From Noel Hodson
Lest we forget: in the 1920s Delawarr Laboratories in Oxford, UK, claimed that minute electromagnets could heal. They also claimed that the “photography” of Semyon Kirlian portrayed the changing magnetic fields in tissue, and proposed healing action at a distance. If that is true, we should worry about the future of the wired human race. How will, say, 2 billion moronic mobile phone conversations and thousands of hours of Big Brother TV signals affect our bioelectrical functioning?
Oxford, UK
For the record
鈥� Samsung is a Korean group of companies, not Japanese (29 July, p 35)
鈥� Many North American readers have reminded us that Nova Scotia, Canada, is a province, not a state (Feedback, 29 July)
Kinds of evolution
The broader debates about evolution always seem to be tainted by the unjustified assumption that different forms of evolution have to follow exactly the same rules. Joan Roughgarden seems to accept that if genetic evolution is “selfish” then society has to be structured to reward selfishness. Because she does not like that kind of society, therefore she is driven to prove that evolution is not selfish (29 July, p 46).
Just because genes are “selfish” it does not follow that they will produce instinctive selfishness in animals 鈥� cooperative and even altruistic behaviour may serve the “interests” of the genes. And even if humans were instinctively selfish, it would not follow that we have to evolve societies that reinforce that trait. Genes do not have foresight and may well have outsmarted themselves by producing an animal that can formulate its own goals and even take control of its own evolution.
It is surely obvious that different forms of evolution (being defined as “the generation of complexity through mutation and selection”) will follow different detailed rules. For example, unlike genes, the mutable elements of mind, or memes, exhibit a large element of Lamarckian evolution 鈥� inheritance of acquired characteristics. So there is no reason to assume that findings about genetic evolution will directly inform studies of social evolution.
The situated gene
Elaine Morgan is unfair to Richard Dawkins and to many readers (22 July, p 53). She says that the presentation in The Selfish Gene of “the gene’s eye view, which Dawkins originally propounded only as one possible way of looking at things, has come to be regarded as the only way of looking at things”. She speaks of this book’s “impact on millions of non-academic readers”. The remainder of her review implicitly assumes that The Selfish Gene is all that Dawkins wrote on the subject.
She makes no mention of Dawkins’ 1982 book, The Extended Phenotype, which he has said he considers to be his most original contribution. This argues powerfully for what Morgan claims is the “territory” of Denis Noble, author of The Music of Life: Biology beyond the genome, that is, it describes “the highly complex ways that genes interact with other genes, with the tens of thousands of different proteins they generate, with the cellular environment and with the wider environment of the organism”. Noble’s book was, however, published 24 years after The Extended Phenotype.
Who wrote this?
Woo Suk Hwang’s comment that part of the responsibility for the Korean stem cell fraud should be borne by his 30 or so co-authors, raises the issue of authorship in science (8 July, p 5). In some branches of science it is not unusual for 12 or so people to be listed as co-authors. It follows that if these co-authors made unequal contributions to the work, then one or more of them must have contributed very little, possibly less than 8 per cent. The anonymous referees may have done more.
Some professional associations recognise co-authorship as a problem and have developed guidelines for authors. One such set of criteria states that an author must have participated in all of the three processes associated with the work: they should be involved in the experimentation; in the writing of the article; and in approving the final version.
Such stringent rules are unsatisfactory where they preclude the naming of technicians who have carried out all of the experimentation, or active participants with poor English language skills. On the other hand the idea that participation in just one of these processes justifies co-authorship is also unsatisfactory, because it allows for some of the practices that appear to have characterised the Hwang publications and are in fact quite common elsewhere in science. These practices include established scientists agreeing to appear as authors of their prot茅g茅s’ papers because it is perceived that their presence will facilitate publication, and scientists being named on papers they know nothing about until after publication.
Despite the pressure to amass a vast list of publications, not all scientists welcome all opportunities for co-authorship; but it can be hard to turn down an offer. Teamwork in science is sometimes emphasised at the expense of independent thinking. To decline authorship is to withdraw from the team.
The existence of firm (not to mention known and accepted) guidelines would help people who wish to decline offers. An additional criterion that we should all consider before accepting co-authorship is this: are we sure beyond reasonable doubt that all of the work reported is genuine? This is not always easy with long-distance collaborations.
Menopausal illness
While I quite agree with J枚rg Blech’s contention that pharma and “organised medicine” at times promote scientifically suspect “disease” states, I must object to his classifying menopausal symptoms as a “created illness” (22 July, p 24).
As a practising physician, I treat many menopausal women with oestrogen-withdrawal symptoms that are greatly affecting their quality of life. Short-term hormone replacement therapy relieves these symptoms and, in most cases, can be reduced or discontinued after a time. Their improvement is a direct result of replacing diminished hormones. True, this is not a “disease”, but a symptom complex which for some women can be very distressing and is not to be confused with “disease-mongering”.
The statement that “the art of healing has not led to any real breakthroughs in decades” is totally false, and ignores new therapies for potentially fatal coronary artery disease, chronic myeloid leukaemia (treated with Gleevec), and other serious conditions.