Human hotpot?
So Stellan Welin, a bioethicist, thinks the ethical questions posed by eating meat from rare and unusual species can be “sidestepped” with meat grown from stem cells (3 September, p 8). There still seems something unpleasant about shifting our view of these animals towards a source of food rather than as companions on the same planet.
Talking of companions, I was surprised Welin did not mention any similar enthusiasm for eating manufactured human flesh. I am sure there would be a market.
From Richard Symonds
I have been waiting for the announcement of meat grown in vats for decades after reading Frederick Pohl and Cyril M. Kornbluth’s 1952 satirical sci-fi novel . It describes a world run by private companies, and includes an underclass who look after an artificial food source known as Chicken Little, a “huge mass of cultured chicken breast” used to feed the masses.
Broadstairs, Kent, UK
War and weather
You report Solomon Hsiang’s research on links between El Ni帽o years and conflict around the globe as the “first study to link global climate patterns to the onset of civil conflict” (27 August, p 9), with the rider that “Hsiang cannot yet explain what is causing the link”.
I would recommend the book El Ni帽o famines and the making of the Third World by Mike Davis. This identifies the links between late 19th-century El Ni帽os and the social, political and economic processes that led to the “impoverishment of much of Africa, Asia, and South America”.
Examples of major conflicts linked to the environmental and economic disruption caused by El Ni帽o are the in north China, the Canudos rebellion in north-east Brazil and the Zulu war of South Africa.
It is clear that civil disorder is not a result of hot weather 鈥� rather, environmental disruption can amplify the negative effects of dysfunctional and unresponsive political systems.
Keep a lid on it
While scientists may react positively to the endorsement of research without limits in your editorial “Let Prometheus be unbound” (20 August, p 3), the truth is that they, like all of us, face constraints from the systems that orient our societies.
In the US, for example, the main determinant of research seems to be the existence of funding in a given field.
A better message, related to the story on modifying chick genes (20 August, p 6), might be: “Scientific research is beginning to make inroads into territory that some find disturbing. This includes creating chickens with alligator snouts, and ‘mind reading’ people’s brainwaves. Along with uses many would consider dangerous, there are likely to be beneficial applications.”
In democratic societies, questions about what research is done 鈥� and its exploitation 鈥� need a full public dialogue in which scientists explain the potential for good and bad. Preaching Prometheus unbound does not help further that dialogue.
Warning: harmful
Taking the nocebo effect in “Heal thyself” (27 August, p 32) further; if believing a drug is harmful or has side effects can cause a person to suffer those side effects, then is it likely to be the case that the warnings and graphic pictures on cigarette packets will also have a nocebo effect?
While the pictures may deter some smokers, could they increase the incidence of the very diseases they set out to prevent?
Cool mining
I was surprised that in the article on cooling the London Underground transport system (6 August, p 38), there was no reference to overheating found in deep mines around the world.
I have visited the Selebi-Phikwe copper and nickel mine in north-east Botswana where ore is extracted from 1 kilometre down. Drilling a new face often releases water hotter than 70 掳C.
Cooling for the miners is produced by an ice-making plant at the surface: the ice is dropped down a shaft into a large pond built near the active faces. I can vouch that the working faces are much more comfortable than London’s Central line.
Einstein's roots
There is another answer to Debora MacKenzie’s question to Naledi Pandor: “Will the next Einstein come from Africa?” (16 July, p 25).
If we could look at the genealogy of Einstein’s Y-chromosome, we would find that the first one did.
Better together
I’m not sure to which Old Testament Bill Hyde’s letter refers (27 August, p 31), but it’s not the one with which I and millions of Christian, Jewish and Muslim believers are familiar.
The science-versus-religion conflict is a false dichotomy, maintained and reinforced by typecasting new atheists as genius liberators and theists as mindless simpletons.
Instead of deepening such divisions, scientists should work to bring religious groups onside and use their influence to direct funding and implement policy changes worldwide.
Life imitates art
How many readers of your review of Falling to Earth: An Apollo 15 astronaut’s journey to the moon (30 July, p 48) noticed the uncanny resemblance of Al Worden’s story to Robert Heinlein’s 1950 sci-fi novella The Man Who Sold the Moon, in which the main character plans to sell stamps postmarked on the lunar surface?
First words
One thing missing from your article on the evolution of language (16 July, p 30) is the story of Psammetichus I, king of Egypt (664-610 BC). He is best known for his attempt to resolve an argument about the antiquity of language, an account recorded by the Greek historian Herodotus.
Psammetichus ordered two young children be confined and never exposed to speech. Some time later the shepherd charged with watching over them reported that whenever he went into their room they kept repeating the word “beccos”. Inquiries were made, and it was found that beccos meant bread in Phoenician.
It was therefore concluded that Phoenician is the oldest language, and beccos the first word. Bread is certainly not a bad beginning in any language.
Repetitive diet
You report that the first attempts at farming would have resulted in a lack of diversity in diet and disadvantages compared with foraging (30 July, p 26).
I would suggest a second period of restriction in food diversity coinciding with the growth of communities. In early societies, once a certain population density was reached not all citizens had either the essential knowledge or the access to gardens to enable them to grow ancillary crops.
This probably continued until the 20th century, even in the UK. The addition of herbs and a wide range of vegetables to the diet was uncommon before the second world war. Today this can still be seen as one of the problems associated with desperate populations in shanty towns and emergency tented cities.
Cetacean contagion
You reported on efforts to communicate with dolphins by deciphering their clicks and whistles (7 May, p 23).
I wonder if the researchers have thought about the possible consequences. Humans are very susceptible to memes 鈥� cultural ideas or behaviour which can take hold and spread, such as the concept of private property. Could human memes affect other big-brained mammals?
What will we do when the dolphins demand negotiations take place over who pays whom for all the fish?
Bee or not to bee?
Your recent cover line “Inside Animal Minds: How other creatures see our world” (20 August) would have been better put as “Inside Animals’ Brains: Some speculation as to what it might or might not be like to be another creature”.
The writer of the article suggests a bee sees through the “pixellated window of mosaic vision”. We cannot make the leap from a creature’s sensory equipment to knowing what that creature experiences subjectively.
I have two eyes but see only one image because I have a unified sense of consciousness. I just picked up a cup of coffee which was far too hot. I didn’t feel five separate pains, one for each finger, but a single pain. Maybe it makes no sense to talk about the subjective experience of a different life form.
Perhaps there is nothing like being a bee; perhaps it has no consciousness and lives “in the dark”. Surely this also holds for the other creatures that were discussed: turtles, bats, dogs and snakes.
Heavy water
David Hambling describes the first human-made fusion, “above the Pacific atoll of Enewetak” (13 August, p 36).
The device detonated on Eniwetok (as it was then called) was firmly on the ground. It weighed 60 to 70 tonnes, according to various sources.
This was because it used liquid deuterium, and the cryogenics required added considerable weight and complexity. It was not weaponisable and could not be made airborne.
The Soviet hydrogen bomb of 1953 was a dry bomb with lithium, a design that could be weaponised and made airborne.
For the record
鈥� The graphic in the deep ocean exploration feature (3 September, p 38) should have stated the Virgin Oceanic submersible is built to withstand the pressure of 1100 atmospheres at the bottom of the Mariana trench.