Editor's pick: Nostalgia isn't as good as it once was
I was interested to read that recent research reveals a beneficial effect when a person nostalgically recalls good times (24 September, p 36). This is entirely plausible when the person remembering is in a positive (or at least neutral) frame of mind. But intuition – and my experience as a psychiatrist – tells me that recalling better times when a person is depressed will commonly exacerbate their problems rather than improve them.
For example, during a divorce, I'm not sure that it is helpful for a person to focus on all the good times in the marriage. They are likely to experience an even greater sense of loss.
It has been said that, in times of crisis or depression, recalling better times can be “sorrow's crown of sorrow”, as the poet Alfred Tennyson . In such situations I find it more helpful to focus on possible positive futures rather than the (better) past.
How to square this with the research cited in the article? Perhaps being nostalgic has a positive influence on mood – but only if you aren't depressed.
Putting a price on your life and health
Difficult decisions are necessary in a health service with limited resources (22 October, p 5). But patients have a right to robust and transparent decision-making about which treatments are funded. NHS England is reviewing funding for second stem cell transplants for people with blood cancer and blood disorders – which lead to at least five extra years of life in a third of cases.
While a transplant carries an upfront cost, the alternative treatments are also costly and unlikely to save the patient.
The price of a treatment must be considered, but it is equally important to assess the cost of not providing it.
Putting a price on your life and health
One of your 22 October Leader articles refers to the valuation of life and the need to secure value for money from the public healthcare budget. The other highlights amazing advances in treating infertility, which many couples will desire. Prosthetic joints are no less remarkable a breakthrough, and yet I know of people refused hips and other treatments for reasons of limited public health finances.
As the gap between health technology capability and patient demand grows we need real public involvement in how healthcare provision is prioritised.
Putting a price on your life and health
As researchers in the field of estimating what is legitimate to spend on safety measures, we understand the need to value human life in financial terms. But we cannot fully accept your statement that the world should embrace the formulae of the UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). These are based on the Quality-Adjusted Life Year: but the value of this is linked to the Value of a Prevented Fatality used by the UK's Department for Transport.
We have shown that this value is devoid of any evidential basis (Process Safety and Environmental Protection, ). It was based on a 1997 survey of the stated preferences of 167 people. The authors have acknowledged that the research had limitations.
NICE's basic approach, valuing the increase in life expectancy brought about by a medical treatment, is nevertheless good.
Putting a price on your life and health
I enjoyed Shannon Fischer's article about the price of a life (22 October, p 28). But I'm not sure in what form you buy carbon and sodium. I get carbon for A$100 a tonne in the form of coal, and sodium for A$500 a tonne when bought as salt for my pool.
The editor writes:
• These prices – supplied by the UK's Royal Society of Chemistry – were for elements in their purest available form. Some refining might be required.
First class post
I'll be damned if I give out my blood to some old ass who don't even like me
Tara Parker that teenage human blood reinvigorates old mice (19 November, p 10).
This mouse model is 'where the light is'
Thank you for airing Joseph Garner's views on the futility of trying to cure mouse “models” of human diseases (29 October, p 42). Please keep beating that drum. It crystallised worries I have had for a long time about engineered simulacra of human ailments. Researching these is so much like the drunk looking for their keys under the street light because “this is where the light is”. This is research being done because it is easy, not because it is useful.
This mouse model is 'where the light is'
Your Leader article went a long way toward describing the challenges inherent in animal models of disease (29 October, p 5). Even well-designed studies comparing multiple doses and time points and exposing 50 or 60 animals to each dose can fail to predict effects seen in humans.
For another view, I recommend the book Zoobiquity by the cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and science writer Kathryn Bowers (reviewed 16 June 2012, p 52). It lays out much of the marvellous continuity between other mammals and ourselves. We all evolved from a single ancestor and share commonality in many functions and genes.
While differences bedevil us, there is much yet to be learned about the failures and successes of animal models. Mouse courting songs going wrong when the “language gene” FOXP2 is messed up (29 October, p 14) underscores this interspecies correspondence between genetics and function.
Air pollution is worse inside cars and in dust
Michael Le Page discusses combating air pollution from cars, but doesn't mention that air pollution inside cars is worse than that outside, where fumes are dispersed by the wind (29 October, p 16). A car interior may seem like a safe haven from air pollution, but chemicals emanating from the steering wheel, dashboard, armrests and seats mix with the pollution generated under the hood to form a brew of toxins for those sitting inside. In addition, fumes from the cars in front and remain trapped.
Surely the health risks are higher for children, who are still developing? Those who are driven to school face higher exposure than those who walk.
Air pollution is worse inside cars and in dust
Le Page raises health concerns over direct emissions from motor vehicles. I wonder too about road dust, reported to represent 25 per cent of the particulates in the atmosphere.
How much of it is worn road surface and how much of that is tar – consisting of nasty chemicals including carcinogenic polycyclic hydrocarbons?
More reasons for an uncanny valley
Laura Spinney describes the “uncanny valley” occupied by disturbingly not-quite-human images (29 October, p 28). I have long thought this effect was caused by sexual selection.
Subtle departures from the norm in an animal's appearance or movement can often be caused by genetic mutations or illness – which would render their bearers less than ideal mates.
I suspect only some experience the effect. Perhaps in the past those who discerned the uncanny valley helped the Neanderthals towards extinction for being human, but not human enough. Others may have helped bring Neanderthal genes into the Homo Sapiens genome.
More reasons for an uncanny valley
Spinney notes that “incongruous eyes were particularly responsible for conjuring up eeriness” in the uncanny valley effect. People do seem to have a finely tuned sense of where others are looking; not just the direction, but at what distance the other is focusing.
If an android is otherwise almost indistinguishable from a person but the eyes don't look like they are focusing when pointing at you, the impression could be that there's nothing inside: rather as a zombie would be.
Keeling is not over for a long time yet
The “Keeling curve” isn't going to turn down any time soon, despite Perry Bebbington's wish to see effects of slowing carbon dioxide emissions (Letters, 8 October). It shows variations in concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and will turn down only when CO2 removed from the atmosphere by carbon sinks exceeds emissions – a very distant prospect.
The rate of increase in CO2 concentration went up from 0.85 parts per million per year between 1960 and 1970 to 2.08 ppm/year between 2005 and 2015. This shows the sinks are working harder: the rate of increase is two-and-a-half times greater while emissions have increased fourfold.
Worryingly, it suggests that even if we reduced emissions to the levels of the 1960s we would still face an annual increase of 0.85 ppm/year, leading to CO2 concentrations of 470 ppm before 2100. Cutting emissions wouldn't stabilise, let alone reduce, the atmospheric CO2 concentrations.
Coming to UK TV: the Great British sun-dry-off
Looking for the origins of cooking, Graham Lawton noted the contradiction between the late evidence of human control of fire and the much earlier evidence that we were not eating raw meat (5 November, p 36). This overlooks methods of processing food that don't involve fire. Sun-dried meat, for example, is still widely eaten in hot climates.
I suspect that vegetables could also be processed quite a lot without using fire. Someone could organise a competition, to see what people could do without using anything our ancient ancestors would have lacked.
For the record
• Wind-power generation in Ireland varied between 0 and 2000 megawatts in the week commencing 4 October 2016 (12 November, p 28).
• We're frothing: it is yeast that controls Philippe Parreno's installation at London's Tate Modern gallery (22 October, p 44).