Editor's pick: Confusion when you're pregnant and in pain
Jessica Hamzelou says that drugs aren't routinely tested on pregnant women, as experimenting on their fetuses would be unethical (10 February, p 25). The problem here is that pregnant women still need, and do take, medicines. They are then effectively in a trial with one participant and no ethical approval, data collection or monitoring. Without proper trials, women are left with insufficient information to make decisions. Simply wishing away the health condition that necessitates the drugs isn't a solution.
The untreated condition is often not neutral for the fetus: commonly, the risk-benefit ratio for both woman and fetus firmly favours taking the drug. An example is the use of anti-emetics for extreme nausea and vomiting maternal malnutrition or termination of the pregnancy.
By failing to test drugs in pregnancy, medicine fails pregnant women and condemns them to some long-gone age before modern pharmaceuticals. This cannot be regarded as the ethical or moral high ground.
Science and politics don't inhabit separate worlds
You are right that science doesn't exist in a political vacuum (3 February, p 5). Hence your justifiable forays into comment on political matters.
But why not follow the evidence to the ultimate question: has the capitalist system finally passed its sell-by date?
Commodity production for the private accumulation of wealth has revolutionised society, but it has also resulted in a world of staggering inequality where a billionaire can launch a car into space while billions don't have the basic means of living and billions more are chained to economic drudgery as modern-day wage-serfs. From climate change to oil wars, capitalism arguably represents a global tragedy of the commons that could threaten our collective survival. Is this really the best we can do as an intelligent species? Perhaps a better model exists, but if so we need to know what it is, how it could work and what we need to do to achieve it.
This debate must happen now and it needs to be impartial and evidence-based because politics doesn't exist in a scientific vacuum. The magazine that has the courage to combine the two and ask the biggest questions might make an epoch-defining difference.
First class post – 3 March 2018
Reverse causation? That's not going to run in court any day soon Johnson's Solicitors to the quantum idea of the future changing what happens now (17 February, p 28)
There's enough partisan politics elsewhere (1)
Curtis Abraham accepts reports that US president Donald Trump referred to “shithole countries” (27 January, p 22). The world is filled with partisan politics. I wanted to read objective science. Trump wanted to make up with Russia. The military-industrial complex and mainstream media vilify him, as they did all presidents who want to lessen tensions. Political factionalism has for me completely ruined the joy of reading 快猫短视频 as a science magazine.
There's enough partisan politics elsewhere (2)
Abraham's position on cultural reality is illogical. He quotes Wade Davis saying that various cultures are “simply different ways of being and of thinking”. He then condemns President Trump for his way of thinking and being. He cannot have it both ways. Being xenophobic and culturally chauvinistic is a model of reality.
What would a workable society look like? (1)
Andy Coghlan reports that no society manages to live well without overusing natural resources (10 February, p 10). He misses the key that could unlock this conundrum: a reduction in world population, especially in rich countries. This is particularly important at a time when the US administration has cut its funding for family planning in developing countries. Population growth will not slow down unless contraception is made available to all who wish to have it.
What would a workable society look like? (2)
I have one small criticism of the reported work on living standards and ecological impact. Countries were apparently treated as homogeneous entities, but alongside the extreme wealth of some in the US there is much abject poverty. This is also true for South Africa, Australia and, increasingly, the UK. In terms of the “how many Earths does it take to support this lifestyle” index, pockets of US poverty rank below “one Earth”. One relatively developed nation rated at a fraction below one Earth was Cuba – albeit before the end of the US trade embargo. Should it be our target for quality of life?
What would a workable society look like? (3)
Modern society does look unworkable: countries either overconsume or fail to meet well-being targets. But why can't people in developed nations be happy with less stuff? Those of us who lived in the UK in the 1960s weren't excessively poor. We had enough to eat, most housing was satisfactory and many people could afford cars, holidays and even some foreign travel.
Could we not have a two-day working week, with walks in the park rather than excess consumption? As Aldous Huxley put it: “A love of nature keeps no factories busy.”
What would a workable society look like? (4)
Coghlan reports that most countries either have good, but unsustainable, lifestyles or poor, but sustainable, ones. However, there is an exception: Bhutan, which uses “gross national happiness” instead of “gross national product” to decide what projects to fund and to measure how well it is doing. It is the only carbon-negative nation. It doesn't have extreme poverty or homelessness, and does have universal education and healthcare. Everyone we met there was happy and friendly.
The editor writes:
• Sadly, the research we reported , possibly because of a lack of data.
Signs of collapse and limits to growth (1)
Laura Spinney notes that, historically, collapsing societies lost complexity and “people lived shorter, unhealthier lives” (20 January, p 28). Your subtitle on Laudan Aron's piece about US health declared that “shorter lives and poorer health are becoming the new norm” there (p 24). Are we being invited to put two and two together?
Signs of collapse and limits to growth (2)
Spinney's discussion of the crumbling of Western civilisation didn't mention the studies since 1972. Updates include from Graham Turner of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute in 2014. One point it made was that the concept of “peak oil” seemed to have been refuted as fracking in the US had produced a surplus that sharply reduced prices. But rising prices now indicate that this bonanza is already at an end.
When the economics of information went awry
Chris Baraniuk discusses failures of oversight related to content aimed at young people (27 January, p 20). In an aside, he identifies the root of the problem of internet content: “its creators get paid through ad revenue sharing”. Why is it that the financing of the mass media of information and entertainment by means of advertising is taken for granted?
If consumers paid directly for these services, as we do for books, records and films, what kind of content would result? If they were financed by a dedicated tax administered by an independent local authority, as the Canadian public school system is, could we have a more socially desirable and responsible industry? After all, it is our money, handed over when we purchase goods and services, that the advertisers are using.
Something went wrong a century ago when commercial radio broadcasting adopted the revenue model invented by newspapers and magazines. We gave the advertisers control of the mass media of communication. Now the power of this sector of society exceeds that of the Catholic church when it was the established religion.
A simpler proposal on diabetes and migraines
Jessica Hamzelou draws attention to a Norwegian study that found that people being treated for diabetes turned out to be less likely to experience migraines (13 January, p 7). She reports researcher Ippazio Antonazzo proposing several possible explanations, including nerve damage caused by diabetes making it more difficult for a person to sense migraine pain, or some treatment normalising the activity of insulin, making migraines less likely.
I am a migraine sufferer. Many years ago, a scientific colleague and fellow sufferer advised me to take glucose as soon as the “aura” of an oncoming migraine is apparent. Over the years, I have followed her recommendation – with speedy results.
My daughter also successfully takes glucose when such symptoms arise. We consider that we get migraines .
It may be that many of the Norwegians with diabetes avoid migraine because they artificially maintain a constant and suitable blood glucose value. More research to examine this simpler explanation of the phenomenon might be interesting.
Meta-humblebrags, for better or worse
Alice Klein reports a study finding that humblebrags really are the worst (20 January, p 14). Those who would downplay their achievements should rather be guided by an ancient proverb: “Toot not your own bassoon, and the same shall not be tooted.”
In keeping with this advice, when I had a letter published in Rolling Stone, I promptly tooted it all over my Facebook page, just to make sure my nearest and dearest knew how clever I am.