A down-to-earth way to boost the immune system?
I was fascinated to read Graham Lawton’s article on improving our immune system’s fitness (28 March, p 44). I have always had a peculiar immune reaction to pathogens, having never really been very ill with anything.
Recently, I have started to consider whether this was due to my habit of eating earthworms when I was 4 years old. I distinctly remember how crunchy they were, presumably due to the soil passing through their guts.
I wonder whether exposure to the microbial life in the soil, which probably included mycobacteria, affected my immune system. Needless to say, my mother wasn’t pleased with my behaviour.
When the crisis is over, beware the blame game
David Adam is right to point out the difference between “the science” of the coronavirus outbreak and the response of the UK government to it (28 March, p 23).
Politicians are stressing that their policies are built on the advice of experts, even when so much about the coronavirus is still uncertain or unknown, in order to give people more confidence in government measures. However, the danger is that this could set those experts up as scapegoats should these steps ultimately prove ineffective.
I hope that the UK and the rest of the world emerges from this epidemic with as few people dead and seriously debilitated as possible. But if it doesn’t, I foresee that some people will try to blame “experts” and “the science” for political failures, echoing reactions we have seen far too often in recent times.
Difficult or not, wildlife markets must stay shut
Alistair Litt has a point about the difficulty of banning wild animal markets of the sort initially linked to the outbreak of covid-19 in China (Letters, 4 April). However, we should still try to end them, as such markets are doing damage in many parts of the world.
The coronavirus is just the latest instance of diseases that jump from animals to us. The SARS outbreak in the early 2000s is another example of this, and also had serious consequences. The threat from potentially deadly zoonotic diseases is so dangerous that it must be addressed, whatever the difficulties.
It is time to redefine our priorities in other ways
Your coverage of the environmental effects of covid-19 lockdowns is timely and interesting (4 April, p 10). Just as we are careless about our planet and climate change, we have failed to show enough interest in our healthcare systems in this age of globalisation. Governments and social bodies should take the correct decisions for sustainable development in the same way as they are making the right choices for health systems amid the pandemic.
Tricky medical choices and the race for a vaccine (1)
Alice Klein reports on the tough medical choices regarding who will get put on ventilators in health systems overwhelmed by the coronavirus (4 April, p 12).
Yet coverage of this failed to mention one special category: 3the rich and famous. Would the UK’s monarch be denied a ventilator because of her age?
Tricky medical choices and the race for a vaccine (2)
Your articles on the possible prevention or treatment of infection in the covid-19 pandemic have been interesting, but none have mentioned whether it is worth investigating the protective effects of applying any of the numerous veterinary vaccines against other coronavirus diseases to people.
We now require very substantial quantities of vaccine as soon as possible in order for them to be effective at the population level. If any of these veterinary products can be effectively adapted, we might be able to greatly reduce the vaccine deployment time, compared with developing one from scratch.
A better way to define what constitutes life
Readers such as Bryn Glover discuss how we should define life (Letters, 4 April). Could we do so by considering what it does? Life exists in bounded systems and it locally “reverses” the Second Law of Thermodynamics by creating order, or lowering entropy.
Within set bounds, living things decrease entropy by consuming energy, which preserves the second law at a universal level as entropy outside the bounded system rises by more than it falls inside it.
To accomplish this, life has highly complex ways of detecting and absorbing sources of energy, of self-repair and of reproduction, making a clear divide between living and non-living systems.
As for the difference between a frozen, hibernating frog and the dead frog that Glover raises in his letter, the frozen one has a readable information code within it so it can resume internally reversing entropy, while the dead frog no longer has this.
So how about this as a definition: life is a bounded system containing a readable information code that can locally decrease entropy?
Running vs walking vs cycling to work
The article comparing the benefits of running vs walking raised a question for me 鈥� what about cycling? I ask because, for some people, this is a combination of exercise and commuting 鈥� that is to say, exercise with a purpose (14 March, p 34).
Are there any statistics out there that show that cycling moderately 鈥� say for half an hour each way, possibly at a lower pace on the way to work than on the way home 鈥� is all the exercise needed in order to maintain a healthy lifestyle?
I seem to recall reading that many MAMILs (middle-aged men in Lycra) and their richer carbon-bike-owning relatives PILOCs (pensioners in Lycra on carbon) have hearts resembling those of the average person eight to 10 years younger.
The pollution generated by pedalling to work daily is pretty much non-existent, the health services are called on less by cyclists because their general health levels are better on average than that of their peers, and bicycles don’t damage the road like heavier, motorised vehicles do. Taking all of these factors into account, why isn’t the bulk of the transport budget given over to promoting cycling at the expense of vehicle traffic?
Organic methods can have their own problems
Christel Cederberg and Hayo van der Werf discuss the need for a full comparison of organic and conventional farming (21 March, p 25). But what they didn’t mention was that some natural pesticides that are approved for organic farming can be toxic to non-target organisms.
I searched for a list of approved organic pesticides in the UK and found an EU list under Regulation EC #889/2008. Pyrethrin and spinosad caught my attention. Subsequent searches on the environmental effects of these reveals that they can be toxic to aquatic life or to bees.
The fact that organic pesticides are non-synthetic doesn’t necessarily mean they are environmentally benign.
There may be a fifth path to the perfect crunch
In his science of cooking column, Sam Wong wrote about four ways to make perfect pork crackling (4 April, p 51). I suggest a fifth.
I usually buy pork from the supermarket, where it is sold on a tray and wrapped in thin plastic. A few hours before I want to put the meat in the oven, I unwrap it and, while the skin is still moist, I score it deeply into strips of around 5 millimetres. Then I leave the meat unwrapped for a few hours for the skin to dry.
Immediately before roasting, I wipe the skin with a generous slosh of olive oil, grind plenty of sea salt over it and then roast the pork, uncovered, at 180掳C for 1 hour per kilogram, plus an additional half an hour or so. Works every time.
More reasons why we may be living in a simulation (1)
Hue White suggests one reason why a simulated world might be being run, if indeed we are living in such a reality, is that we are an experiment in building skills and forecasting future phenomena (Letters, 14 March). Here I offer another: could we be a means of seeing what will become of the environment if humans release as much carbon as possible into the environment over a very short period of time?
Just a thought. Incidentally, we would possibly be getting close to the end of such a simulation, if that were its actual purpose.
More reasons why we may be living in a simulation (2)
White asks why anyone would simulate our universe. I can think of a few plausible reasons.
As intelligent creatures, we struggle to understand ourselves and the world around us, and as part of this, we create art, literature, music and movies.
I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to believe our hypothetical computational hosts would face the same kind of struggle as us, and would find our answers to the questions they themselves are asking to be valuable.
Imagine having a computer program that could generate a world-class novel every day, or the Mona Lisa in a morning.
Further, if mathematics is truly universal, then the discoveries that we make would be applicable in their universe too, something else that could be of immense interest and value.
On a lighter note, some of us also find soap operas very engaging. If our hosts have the same appetites as we do, then our world would have millions of compelling plot lines.
Some questions, such as how it feels to live with different social and economic systems, are likely to be too complex to be answered in any way other than through a simulation. Also, we have kittens.
One way to see if trees will be climate saviours
James Runacres asks about the survival rates of newly planted trees, in the context of their use as a means of sequestering carbon dioxide and fighting climate change in the decades ahead (Letters, 28 March).
One way to estimate this would be to survey the “millennium yews” that every village in the UK was encouraged to plant to mark the start of the new millennium. The one in our churchyard isn’t doing well, and looks unlikely to reach the end of this century.
This would be a good research subject, once current travel restrictions imposed by the coronavirus lockdown have been lifted, though whether results could be extrapolated to cover other species is an open question.
Oh, woe the day we became human
I enjoyed reading your article on how we became human, but as I finished, it occurred to me that, in view of the effect we have had on just about every other species on this planet, it probably could have done with a final section headed: “Was It a Good Thing?” (4 April, p 34)