Unselfish genes
What a pity that David Sloan Wilson, who aims to improve lives using evolutionary principles (27 August, p 28), has not received the press coverage given to Richard Dawkins. For once, someone not only signals positive aspects to evolution, but tries to put them into practice.
A board replacing a shop window in Clapham Junction, London, broken during the recent riots in the UK, bears the message: “Darwin was right 鈥� the beast in us will always out.” Many thanks to trendy biologists for the current perversion of evolutionary doctrine. As Sloan Wilson says, in evolution cooperation is as important as aggression: Dawkins himself would not survive if the cells in his body did not cooperate, many of them giving up their “lives” in the process.
The doctrines of unrestrained free market capitalism and selfish-gene-ism have not created the violence seen in the UK, but they have provided a favourable habitat in which it can flourish.
In my reality鈥�
Contrary to Andy Bebington’s letter (13 August, p 30) it is what you do, not what you think, that demonstrates and proves your existence and that of the world around you.
What you do may require thought, but thought is a private activity 鈥� whereas your actions have a public impact. A public impact provides you with the opportunity to appreciate the consequences of your actions and the thinking that preceded them. It also includes the opportunity for others to react and demonstrate that there are others around like you, but not you.
Recursively finite
Since there is an infinite number of alternative universes (23 July, p 37), there must be one in which there isn’t an infinite number of alternative universes. Perhaps this is it.
Existential issues
Some of your readers have spotted several alarming points about your existential special issue (23 July), including Eric Adams (6 August, p 32), who noted that the question “How do I know I exist?” makes no sense.
The articles follow the convention which allows fantasy tales unconnected with physical reality to count as part of physical science, provided that they have no spiritual meaning.
This practice freely invokes objects of doubtful intelligibility and descriptions of logically questionable coherence simply to fill gaps in what are supposed to be factual scientific theories. Thus the notion of the multiverse, many forms of which present severe logical and conceptual problems, is confidently welcomed in the “Is there more than one me?” segment (p 37) as just “an emerging idea; science in the making”.
Guessing the science of the future is, of course, always unpredictable. But the preference for asking questions that make no sense or, at least, a sense that cries out for elucidation, over realistic ones is surely not the right approach. We, as philosophers, find it distinctly alarming that some scientists seem willing to accept this approach.
Patently absurd
You report that the US Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit overturned a lower court’s judgment that human BRCA genes, linked to breast cancer, cannot be patented because they occur in nature (6 August, p 4). The court reached this decision on the grounds that the genetic sequences patented omit junk DNA 鈥� non-coding base sequences 鈥� and therefore do not occur in nature.
Common sense would seem to imply that this is nonsense: I could not patent a wheel simply by omitting one of the spokes. But surely in practice the biotech industry is shooting itself in the foot. Can anyone now legally and freely copy any patented gene, simply by adding a random amount of junk DNA, since any junk DNA makes it different, according to this ruling?
From Tony Bell
As I understand the patenting process, for a patent to be granted for any invention it has to satisfy the criterion of being unobvious to a person “skilled in the art”.
In the case of the BRCA genes, surely anyone skilled in biotechnology would consider removing junk DNA an obvious improvement, as nothing resulting from the changes could be considered new or unexpected.
Nelson, New Zealand
Gene stockpiling
You report that antibiotic-resistant bacteria can, in some cases, outcompete the wild-type strain (6 August, p 14). The “common sense” view was that resistant bacteria should shed the determinants of resistance, for example by losing genes, after removal of antibiotic pressure. It has been questioned before.
Take bacterial integrons, which are genetic elements that can integrate small DNA modules called gene cassettes into the bacterium’s genome, including antibiotic-resistant sequences, or excise them. It has recently been discovered that integrons can reshuffle these modules when faced with antibiotic-induced stress (Science, ).
Much like the albums of baseball card collectors, integrons and their reshuffling allow bacteria to hide their vintage cards until they are needed. This suggests a powerful mechanism for storage of resistance determinants at no cost, which means there is no evolutionary pressure for loss of resistance.
Aged parents
The idea that we stop ageing at 90 is quite convincing (6 August, p 42). Michael R. Rose also suggests that we are progressively better adapted to a hunter-gatherer diet as we get older, since selection pressures decline after we cease reproduction and our older bodies have not adapted to agriculture in the last 10,000 years.
However, humans have a strong influence on the reproductive success of their offspring and grandchildren, an influence that continues to an advanced age. So we do not really “cease reproduction” from an evolutionary viewpoint until we reach 90.
From Marshall E. Deutsch
On my 90th birthday, I received in the mail your issue with this top line on the cover: “Life begins at 90: why aging eventually stops”.
Sudbury, Massachusetts, US
Occam's safety razor
In his letter on existential issues, Larry Constantine recommends the application of Occam’s razor to modern cosmology (13 August, p 30). While this is a useful tool in cutting away the unnecessary stubble of overloaded explanations, one shouldn’t flay away flesh just because it seems hairy in bad lighting.
A single universe is very highly specified and requires a lot of information to represent it. A universe-generating multiverse is much, much simpler, just as it is simpler to describe a set of numbers rather than a number selected randomly from the group. In fact, numbers only make sense in the context of number theory, and once you have one the rest are variations on a theme.
The true application of Occam’s razor is to the complexity of the framework, not the number of things you get for free from it.
Mollycoddled by AIs
In her letter, Helena Telk盲nranta mentions “rigid rules” being used to prevent AIs harming humans, such as Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics (20 August, p 30). These risk invoking the Law of Unintended Consequences, as Jack Williamson pointed out in his “Humanoids” novels. In these, the humanoids did protect humans from harm 鈥� including preventing such high-risk activities as smoking, drinking, eating fatty food and contact sports.
In other words, adherence taken literally could result in all humans being treated as small children. Not an outcome I would want, any more than the extinction option discussed in your existential issue (23 July, p 40).
No truck with cars
Fred Pearce, arguing that the west may be falling out of love with the car, says that US car sales have fallen from 11 million in 1985 to 5.5 million in 2009 (13 August, p 26).
But he neglects to mention pick-up trucks, which when included send the total to 11 to 12 million a year, as reported in . And these totals are projected to increase slowly with any improvement in the national economy.
The editor writes:
鈥� The article used figures from the , which show a steep decline in car sales 鈥� and an even steeper decline in light truck sales from a peak in 2004. Vehicle leases show a similar pattern.
Sinking feeling
Helen Knight’s account of alternative burials (13 August, p 44) missed one of the least damaging options, and the way I would like to go. As someone who has eaten fish, studied foraminifera and harnessed the glow of a marine mollusc, I would like to give something back to the oceans.
Burial at sea should be easy: a little work to stop a body floating and a pleasant sea trip for family and friends. Why it should give me pleasure to think that my bits will be rapidly reused I don’t know 鈥� but it does.
From Luce Gilmore
When discussing the process of liquefying corpses by alkaline hydrolysis, you failed to mention a major consequence: a lot of soap will be produced from the body fat. This is biodegradable if poured down the drain; I doubt whether it would be beneficial in fertiliser.
By the way, reusing graves was common practice in church graveyards. Any remaining bones went to the charnel house, and the stones were reused as paving in the church itself, or lined up along walls.
Cambridge, UK
Outfoxed again
It is such a shame that ethics regulations bar Arhat Abzhanov from hatching his croc-faced chickens (20 August, p 6).
Foxes everywhere are doubtless relieved by this.