Editor's pick: The UK is also failing on drug deaths
You are right to highlight the Trump administration's failure to take effective action to reduce record levels of opioid-related deaths in the US (3 February, p 5). Unfortunately, the same criticism applies to the UK. Great Britain is experiencing its highest ever level of drug-related deaths, with 4611 registered in 2016.
In December that year, the government's sent ministers a report, . I was its lead author, but write only on my own behalf.
The report's recommendations included investing in opioid-substitution treatment; expanding access to naloxone to reverse overdoses; providing central funding for heroin-assisted treatment; and opening medically supervised drug-consumption clinics in areas with high concentrations of injecting drug use.
None of these recommendations has been implemented by any UK government. On both sides of the Atlantic, failure to follow the evidence is causing many avoidable deaths.
Genome research has opened many doors
I was saddened to read your review of a book on genomics with its Craig Venter quote: “we have learned nothing” from the genome (27 January, p 42). In the , he : “That's where we are with the genome.” In 2018, we face a new problem, and such articles such as this reinforce a sceptical and pessimistic view towards genomics research.
One problem is inaccurate representation by policy-makers and money-driven scientists who write sparkly, visionary (but scientifically flawed) promises and receive more grant money and media coverage as a result. Lydia Nicholas concludes her review by saying that our democratic institutions “aren't even framing sensible questions”. I believe it is important to save the reputation of what is an exciting and beautifully complex field.
Ask any genomic scientist and you will soon understand why the integration of their field into healthcare may be possible for rare diseases, but may take decades for common diseases such as diabetes.
The Human Genome Project didn't teach us “nothing”. It has caused a cascade of doors to open and presented more questions than answers. The non-coding genome plays a crucial role: it will be years before we understand its relation to common diseases.
Researchers should grasp the science before making unrealistic claims. Realistic scientists should be given policy-making positions before the world turns away from scientists for failing to deliver on promises they didn't even make.
First class post – 24 February 2018
Too crude. Better to gently nudge them away into a different, safe orbit using thrusters Anirudh Shobhanan on nuking Earth-threatening asteroids (17 February, p 6)
Human cloning is bound to happen in the end
Cancer researcher wonders why anyone would do human cloning (January, p 4). Really? We need dig no deeper than arrogance, narcissism and fear of the void. Why would anyone seek to have their personality “uploaded” to a computer system or their head frozen in liquid nitrogen?
Cloning, frozen heads and dreams of “uploading” minds are variations on a common human theme: desperate bids for some dubious form of immortality.
With the super-rich, mostly men, already queuing up to place their bets on one game or another in the race to cheat death, human cloning is all but inevitable.
The first such clone will almost certainly be of some member of the 1 per cent of the 1 per cent, abetted by renegade researchers. With enough money, even the most challenging of technical problems will yield, and the ethical and legal barriers will be circumvented.
Why efforts to clone us shouldn't be banned
Marcy Darnovsky argues that human cloning should stay off limits (3 February, p 24). Similar points were made about IVF in its early days, incidentally when the failure rate was also over 90 per cent.
That more than 70 countries ban therapeutic cloning attests only to ignorance, religious intolerance and overcautiousness, and not to rightness. And to seek to ban it on the basis that it would get misused by the affluent would mean we weren't doing so for any fundamental moral reason. We do need a discussion of cloning in humans, but it requires more breadth and depth.
Further mixed responses to a vegan diet (1)
Chelsea Whyte argues that the way to feed billions more is to eat more of the plants we grow (27 January, p 26). A long time ago, I looked into Soviet agriculture at the time of collectivisation. A Russian word appeared at that time that roughly translates as “greasybeard”: rather than allow their cattle to be taken into the collective farms, many peasants ate them. As I recall it, the number of cattle more than halved and large amounts of grain previously fed to them became available for people to eat and for export. The Soviet Union was thus better able to circumvent the European and US trade boycotts.
Further mixed responses to a vegan diet (2)
Our food production might indeed be much greater if plants took over farmland given over to animal husbandry. But wouldn't this lead to the disappearance of domesticated species?
Of course, we should seek out food approved by animal welfare organisations, but I can see no way in which farm animals would survive a vegan revolution.
Further mixed responses to a vegan diet (3)
Phil Nicholls is unclear about the advocacy of total commitment to veganism (Letters, 10 February). He seems to consider only the environmental motivation. So while he is right to suggest that 90 per cent veganism would be a good effort, many people adopt a 100 per cent vegan lifestyle because they don't want to collude with an industry that inflicts unnecessary suffering and early death on animals. To such people, it is clearly not acceptable to say “I only debeak chickens and castrate lambs one day in 10”.
Further mixed responses to a vegan diet (4)
Chelsea Whyte makes a convincing factual case for a vegan diet. Sadly, I found your editorial patronising (27 January, p 3). A vegan lifestyle, or something similar, has been the norm for most of humanity rather than a “trendy diet”. It is misleading to stress the small risk of dietary deficiency while ignoring the risks of cancer, vascular disease and so on associated with the dietary status quo. A vegan lifestyle looks to me more like a lifeline for humanity than a trendy diet for cautious consideration.
The editor writes:
• While researching the feature, we looked for places or times where veganism was or is the norm. We didn't find any.
Making more electricity from indoor light
Ben Haller calculates that a 25-square-centimetre solar panel in a room lit by a 100-watt incandescent bulb will gather about 0.0001 watts (Letters, 23/30 December 2017). He assumes that the bulb converts 2.2 per cent of the electrical power into light, but the figure is more like 5 per cent. He also implicitly assumes that the walls, ceiling and floor of the room absorb all the light falling on them.
Monuments could have been memory aids (1)
Laura Spinney reports Carl Lipo's theory that the construction of ancient monuments at Poverty Point, Stonehenge, Göbekli Tepe and other sites were “team-building” exercises (13 January, p 38). Another recent explanation of these structures also involves hunter-gatherer communities coming together cooperatively, under the leadership of their elders, the holders of enormous amounts of essential knowledge that enabled these non-literate societies to thrive.
In , Lynne Kelly addresses how such peoples learn extraordinary amounts of information using landscape features, song and dance. She argues that as agriculture slowly developed, indigenous cultures needed local structures that could be used as memory aids, and that features of monuments could be used in place of the landscape features that appear, for example, in Aboriginal Australians' practice of “songlines”.
Monuments could have been memory aids (2)
Spinney says that the prevailing idea in 2001 was that the colossal statues or moai on Rapa Nui (Easter Island) had been rolled into place using logs, and that Carl Lipo and Terry Hunt showed that moai could have been walked into their upright positions by small, cooperating bands of people using ropes, with no need for trees. But in the 1980s, explorer Thor Heyerdahl and his group recounted being shown by the Rapa Nui how the moai were raised from a prone position and walked from the quarry to their final resting place.
Radical new chemistry in SpaceX missions?
You write that an investigation into the 2016 explosion of a Falcon 9 rocket found that “liquid oxygen leaked… then ignited” (20 January, p 6). This is radically new chemistry! I'd like to know what actually caused the blast.
The editor writes:
• SpaceX that the Falcon 9 has aluminium vessels to store helium to maintain fuel and oxygen pressure, each with a carbon-fibre wrap into which oxygen leaked. Breaking fibres or friction “can ignite the oxygen” and “the loading temperature of the helium was cold enough to create solid oxygen”. So it was aluminium or carbon burning.
For the record – 24 February 2018
• None of the wild bandicoots in Tasmania are bilbies (6 January, p 38).
• The post of “queen of England” has been vacant for only 300 years (Letter, “There is no queen of England, so show respect”, 20 January).