CONSERVATIVE MP John Randall and officials of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) put a lot of effort into drawing up a bill to protect the marine environment, only to see it scuppered by maverick peers in the House of Lords (快猫短视频, 11 December 2004, p 47).
But in a recent parliamentary debate, Elliot Morley, the minister for environment and agriculture, said that given the widespread support for new legislation, DEFRA would introduce its own marine bill to deliver clean, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans.
Paddy Tipping, Labour MP for Sherwood, said the best way forward would be to produce a draft bill soon so that all parties would have an opportunity to comment on it. Morely replied that he supported the process of a draft bill as it made for good legislation.
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The former Conservative environment secretary John Gummer pointed out that any marine bill would have to operate in the context of the threat posed to the sea by climate change. So, why, he asked, was the government threatening to sue the European Union for trying to put a cap on emissions from British industry?
Morley鈥檚 answer was limp. 鈥淎ccording to our legal advice, the EU is under a legal obligation to consider amendments, but it has refused to do so.鈥�
Get on with it, I say: the marine environment won鈥檛 wait.
I WAS the beneficiary of a hip operation some seven years ago, so I read with interest the suggestion in this magazine that a coating normally used to keep soft contact lenses lubricated could dramatically extend the life of replacement hip joints (13 November 2004, p 27). A team from the University of Tokyo coated the polyethylene surfaces of artificial joints with a biocompatible polymer called MPC. I decided to see if the Department of Health (DoH) knew of the idea.
Lord Warner, the minister with responsibility for research and development policies at the DoH, assured me that officials in the research and development directorate were aware of the Japanese work, and looked forward to the results of any clinical trials of the technology.
Warner added that the DoH Policy Research Programme (PRP) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), as well as other publicly funded bodies, have funded a range of projects to investigate new ways of improving the performance of hip prostheses. This includes a study into wear on artificial joints, looking at materials, lubrication and contact mechanics. Both of these programmes are scheduled to conclude in December 2007.
I and others dread another hip operation. Anything that can be done to help first replacements last longer should be a priority, both from the point of view of the patient and of the Exchequer.
