Editor's pick: The hazards of sex and of childbirth
You report on UK doctors potentially warning of the risks of vaginal childbirth – as though it were a medical procedure (9 July, p 8).
Try this thought experiment. Should we ask men to sign a consent form before they have sex? Surely men should confirm that they know the hazards of sex, including sexually transmitted infections, trauma to the penis and HIV transmission, to name just a few. If their partner gets pregnant, sex will involve them in lifelong financial and emotional commitments.
It is just as absurd to suggest “consenting” to childbirth, which is also a physical and psychological event, not a medical “procedure”.
The doctors' proposal is based on a 2015 UK Supreme Court case, which involved a woman with a chronic disease affecting pregnancy. Why assume it is appropriate to extrapolate to every pregnancy? And is evidence about risk sound enough to inform choice about childbirth? The UK's National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) as of low or very low quality.
Childbirth is not a consumer good, chosen after careful consideration of the risks and benefits. It is inherently unpredictable, variable and uncertain.
Hurrah for that objective collapse!
Hurrah for the work of Daniel Sudarsky and colleagues in advancing the case for objective collapse theory (OCT) in understanding quantum physics (16 July, p 30). Both the standard (Copenhagen) and the many-worlds interpretations of quantum mechanics are clearly bonkers in their respective requirements. The first demands sentient observers: there are too few of us, and in the beginning there were none. The second generates unreasonably large quantities of “reality”.
There is surely a Nobel prize in a box somewhere, waiting to be opened and awarded to the leading developers of OCT.
Hurrah for that objective collapse!
Schrödinger's cat is a visceral metaphor that helps some to engage with quantum physics and stimulates debate. But it's not a fair representation of the Copenhagen interpretation.
I believe it represents a “straw man” argument, reflecting the intuitive dislike that Erwin Schrödinger and Albert Einstein had of certain elements of quantum mechanics. The box is full of “observation” that causes any superposition to decohere: the cat is observing the system throughout. If it is alive, the decay can't have taken place. How anthropocentric – or mystical – is it to assume that only human observation has a quantum-weirdness-killing quality?
Hurrah for that objective collapse!
In the 1960s the theoretical physicist taught me that the Schr枚dinger cat conundrum was a non-problem. The cat, or in fact any macroscopic object, consists of a huge number of particles: say there are n. Each can be in many positions or states 鈥� say m.
The total number of states is nm which is beyond astronomical. But what are the probabilities that the cat is dead, alive or in a superposition of dead and alive?
The superposition probability is, van Kampen said, an average of a huge number of small negative and positive contributions. In his words, the result is a number that is closer to zero than any other number in physics.
The probabilities that the cat is dead or alive each add up to 0.5. So we get equal probabilities that the cat is alive or dead, and a probability very, very close to zero that it is in a superposition of dead and alive.
First class post
Makes sense. I have MS, and rarely catch anything. So before MS, I thought I was invincible.
Magdalene Sivertsen for autoimmune diseases being side effects of a strong immune system (6 August, p 15).
The economics of impact statements
Canadian firm Nautilus Minerals commissions an environmental study on the proposed deep-sea Solwara 1 mine, and it comes out with a good report for the company (30 July, p 38). Surprise!
I trained to do environmental impact assessments at university but realised when graduating that, as they are almost invariably commissioned by developers, you won't make a living if your reports are too critical.
Until reports are commissioned by the state, independently of corporate interests, there seems to be little point in them.
Cry me a river with or without DNA
Having been a principal ecologist on a large study of the potential impacts of proposed hydropower projects in the Lower Mekong Basin, I can assure you that knowledge of what species exist where has no significant effect on which schemes will be implemented. So the notion that collecting a DNA database for rivers “may help limit the damage” to aquatic species caused by dams is naive (9 July, p 20).
The goal is power generation, not the preservation of fish stocks. Despite analysis of the probable impacts on the highly productive fisheries downstream of the proposed sites, and warnings of dramatic losses should some sites be selected for power generation – even by so-called low-impact “run of river” schemes – decisions to build dams and generating stations are almost entirely governed by geopolitical goals.
Inconvenient environmental and social impacts are simply downgraded or ignored. In this competitive international development sector, science is utterly subservient to politics. To suppose otherwise merely confers a spurious veneer of reliability to environmental analyses that justify the unfettered application of technology.
Other species that dine on jellyfish
Tamar Stelling reports Andrew Sweetman's search to discover what eats jellyfish, and eventual finding that fish do (16 July, p 26). They also form a substantial part of the diet of juvenile green sea turtles (Chelonia mydas). Adults switch to a vegetarian diet of seagrasses and algae.
Unfortunately, Sweetman's Norwegian fjords are far too cold to attract the turtles, however many jellyfish may be available.
Other species that dine on jellyfish
There are a few other animals that eat jellyfish: some jellyfish predate other jellyfish, and leatherback turtles feed almost exclusively on them.
Jellyfish predators feed mainly at depth, but the culling techniques described in the article all work at the surface. Protecting leatherbacks, particularly their breeding beaches, would seem the best way to control jellyfish.
Computer says what, why?
Thank you for Regina Peldszus's review of Samuel Arbesman's book warning that we have reached the stage where very few “experts” really understand the complexity of the software systems they have installed to control critical parts of our infrastructure (23 July, p 42). This reminds me of the lament of Nobel laureate Eugene Wigner: “It is nice to know that the computer understands the problem. But I would like to understand it too.”
Patently protect new uses of drugs
Your Leader article asserts that the patent system does not provide protection for the use of old drugs for new diseases (16 July, p 5). But, in the UK and Europe at least, drugs companies will be aware of the availability of “second medical use” claims in patents. They have been applying regularly to patent “substance X for use in treatment of Y”. The problem is enforcing the patent for use to treat a second disorder, when that for the first expires.
An example is the over the use of pregabalin for pain relief, after the patents covering uses including epilepsy and generalised anxiety disorder expired.
The drug was then marketed with a “skinny label” referring only to those medical indications which do not infringe the second-use patent.
This case may well to go to UK Supreme Court. This is a legal minefield, amid sweeping change. But the patent system is trying its utmost to find solutions.
Chichester, West Sussex, UK
The editor writes:
• Even with a second-use patent these drugs may still not turn a profit, as doctors in the UK and other jurisdictions are able to prescribe drugs “off-label”. It is unclear whether they can be prevented from prescribing a lower-priced alternative.
The varieties of human force field
Anil Ananthaswamy discusses an “invisible force field” surrounding humans (9 July, p 10). I believe there is a more important “field”: the effect of our presence on those around us.
The “peripersonal space” described exerts no force, whereas presence can affect everyone within eyesight, and hundreds simultaneously in a crowd. The force is transmitted mainly through posture, gesture and eye contact. A threatening stare, for example, challenges everyone within range. Denial is useless: one can forget one's own presence, but can never turn it off.
Testosterone overdose alert
Narcissistic behaviour may, Emma Young reports, be caused by overindulgent parenting (9 July, p 26). That, for me, was the most persuasive part of her article. However, there are other contributory and complementary traits that may play a role.
For example, the amount of testosterone we possess correlates with who gets to be the “alpha male”. We know that in a fight the amount of the hormone increases and one of the changes it brings is to reduce the ability to empathise. It’s more difficult to hit someone when you feel their pain. So testosterone by default makes us more selfish and self-serving.
For the record
• Zinc and brass are merely separated well enough on the galvanic series to generate voltages (25 June, p 47).
• Logged off: the wood found offshore at Cleethorpes is better described as being preserved by immersion (23 July, p 12).
• Tanja Masson-Zwaan is an assistant professor at the International Institute of Air and Space Law at Leiden University (9 July, p 32).