Global banking
Your article on the opening of the UK Biobank and how it may help pinpoint the causes of disease was excellent (7 April, p 8). Every nation should ask its citizens to donate their DNA, physiological measurements and information like cellphone use to such a project. Ethical concerns must be addressed: governments need to protect people from genetic discrimination. But cost should be a secondary consideration to the benefits of such projects.
Having an extensive biobank for every country would allow genomics, proteomics and personalised medicine to fulfil their potential.
The goal is to develop drugs based on an individual’s genome, environmental factors, genetic predispositions and response to treatments. This can only be achieved with a large amount of data from huge numbers of people around the world.
Greater co-operation between existing and new biobanks, possibly under the umbrella of a world biobank project, would achieve this.
Convenience food
The information in the article on the possible use of fire 1 million years ago (7 April, p 12) does not necessarily indicate that hominins took fire itself into the cave. It seems to me that the evidence indicates only that burnt remains were carried 30 metres into the Wonderwerk cave in South Africa – whether by hominins or scavenging carnivores is unclear.
Given that the burnt bones are from a tortoise, it might be that such slow-moving animals were caught in a bush fire, perhaps started by lightning, and the remains found and carried into the cave to be eaten.
Rich view
The behavioural differences between rich and poor that Michael Bond notes are not some corrupting desensitisation that overcomes the rich at the expense of the poor (21 April, p 52). It is simply a question of perception: a millionaire perceives £10,000 as being worth no more than someone with £10,000 to their name perceives £100.
So when a very rich person thinks it is a good idea to take money from badly paid health workers and give it away as tax breaks to the ultra-rich, they cannot imagine how someone losing £5 a week should be so upset as to threaten to strike. For the very rich, £5 is of no real value.
From Matt Carmichael
Michael Bond says the altruism of the rich and poor needs to be tested outside the lab. I imagine every beggar and street performer could supply ample evidence.
I used to busk in the centres of Durham and Leeds in the UK, and soon worked out that I earned far more if I was near poorer shopping areas. I also noticed that older people were much more likely to put something in the hat.
Leeds, West Yorkshire, UK
Purpose of pain
Darwinian paediatrician Paul Turke (14 April, p 23) considers the pain of a sprained ankle an adaptive response that we should be wary of suppressing. No doubt in our deep evolutionary past this was necessary to stop us placing further stress on the joint unless absolutely essential, for example to escape a predator.
In our comfortable modern lives, however, a much lower level of pain is likely to suffice.
Blast from the past
When I lived in Harrow, north London, the Buncefield blast woke me with the sharp bang typical of a high-explosive detonation, and I commented: “That was a bomb.”
I was surprised to learn that the site in Hertfordshire was a fuel store, since the blast did not sound like an unconfined vapour explosion, which one would expect to be more of a “whumph”.
Your article on the physics of the explosion (31 March, p 44) explains a mystery that has puzzled me since that day.
Pink slime
The “pink slime” pictured in your report on recovered meat (24 March, p 4) looks remarkably like what we in South Australia call “fritz”, produced in a sausage shape about 6 centimetres in diameter.
Butchers used to (and may still) offer children a slice, almost always accepted with pleasure. I once asked our butcher what it was made of and he merely smiled and said: “Don’t ask.”
I'm no orc
In your article “Catch me if you can” (7 April, p 21) you discuss research to identify people based on facial recognition of their avatars, stating that studies have shown that virtual avatars often resemble their owners. As a regular participant in virtual worlds, this strikes me as odd.
Men regularly play as female avatars that bear little or no resemblance to themselves. In addition, many virtual worlds have different races of creature that you can play as. How can you compare the face of a weathered green orc with that of a pale-skinned teenager?
A much simpler way to track virtual criminals would be through the use of a unique in-game username and user account.
The editor writes:
• The point the researchers were making is that many avatars are created using a photo of a real person as a starting point, and that tracking usernames is not possible on peer-to-peer networks.
Logical extension
I agree with Byron Rigby’s letter calling for the scientific method to be taught in schools (31 March, p 30), but would go further. We should teach the principles of deductive and inductive logic underpinning all rational thought.
Our children might then mature into adults who can think for themselves and assess any argument, from the sound chains of reasoning underpinning good science, through the more dubious claims of our economists and politicians, to the wishful thinking of climate sceptics, creationists and the tabloid press.
Generation jump
I read with interest your report on the recent surge in autism rates (7 April, p 5). This and other presentations dismiss any connection between autism and the mercury-containing compound thiomersal, used in older forms of vaccines, on the grounds that an increasing number of autistic youngsters have never been exposed to it.
But, in view of increasing evidence of epigenetic effects of various compounds on subsequent generations, is it possible that exposure of parents or grandparents to thiomersal might cause changes in gene expression in later generations?
Bored to death
The study in which mice given heart transplants survived for longer when forced to listen to Verdi’s La Traviata or a selection of Mozart than when listening to Enya or a monotone could just be down to variety (31 March, p 16).
Most of Enya’s songs are somewhat repetitive and even different songs have a very similar style, so maybe the mice died of boredom. I would hate to discount the potential benefits of classical music, but it should be compared with a much wider variety of music before we get too excited.
Fat busting
A new generation of anti-obesity pills (14 April, p 32) re-ignites the debate over medication versus willpower. Willpower alone will work for some people, but with about 50 per cent of people overweight or obese in the US and Australia, we need to look at other measures. From a public-health perspective, we need interventions that are effective at population level, that help to improve disability-adjusted life years – a measure of the impact of disability and premature death – and that are cost-effective.
Methods that frequently come out worst on these measures are individual lifestyle programmes, such as weight-loss clubs. The best seem to be fiscal measures, such as a “fat tax”, or restrictions on advertising junk food. Somewhere in the middle come diet pills and gastric bands, which seem to work for the morbidly obese or other high-risk individuals.
Smart defence
There is always something in 91av to make me smile, and as I read Helen Knight’s article on how smartphones influence our decisions (14 April, p 36), I chuckled. The description of them as the butlers of the early 21st century made me hoot.
The piece makes it clear that so-called smartphones are in their infancy, at the almost-clever stage. Just imagine what they could be like when they reach adolescence. By that time, most criminal lawyers will have clients whose prime defence will be: “My smartphone made me do it.”
And, not long after that, the really clever smartphones will find themselves in the dock. Their defence? “My algorithms made me do it.”
Going offline
I have a Mac computer. It has a “turn wireless off” option, in common I assume, with other computers. If you believe humans have self control, then surely using this makes more sense for the 300,000 people who downloaded Fred Stutzman’s internet blocking app (31 March, p 27).
As for hacking a computer back to a typewriter, all you need to do is keep a plain text application then dump all other applications apart from the core operating system and printer software.
Mind the gap
You reported on research into possible relationships between journeys on London’s public transport and measures of social deprivation using data from underground and overground train trips in London recorded through the Oyster ticket system (14 April, p 16).
This omits bus journeys, for which Oyster cannot record origin or destination. These make up about a third of all journeys, many for getting to and from train stations. Also, since buses are favoured by poorer people, because of their lower fares, a section of society is missed out.