Editor's pick: Belly gratification at the press of a button
Elie Dolgin gave a fascinating insight into genetic influences that might lie at the root of some people eating beyond satiety, through their heightened response to the appeal of food (3 June, p 30). It is very difficult to isolate specific genes for appetite, as Dolgin emphasises. I wonder what environmental influences might have come into play to make obesity more widespread in recent years, despite an abundance of food in developed countries for more than 50 years. Has the convenience factor in today's lifestyle had such an impact on the modern brain that it is becoming incapable of tolerating frustration?
We can access missed TV programmes, watch most films, buy virtually any product and have it delivered to the door, serve a large meal, have our questions answered and contact anyone in the world and receive a reply – all at the click of a button. Has the fact that daily needs are met instantaneously rendered us incapable of tolerating the slightest hunger pang and a short wait until the next mealtime?
Should the young bank blood for the future?
I enjoyed your report on the benefits of transfusions of younger blood plasma (10 June, p 8). Given the interest in freezing human eggs and sperm for later use, it made me wonder whether I should advise my grandchildren to put some of their blood in the freezer for their own possible use in the future. It's far too late for an old man like me, but maybe I could get a quick snort when they're not looking.
First class post
I suppose that's one way to get elected officials to care about drinking water
Emily Before It Was Cool in a parliamentary candidate's fears over hormones in water making us all gay (Feedback, 17 June)
Gene editing the immune system: a new dawn
It was fascinating to learn that gene editing may one day equip the immune system to defeat cancer and some currently intractable infections (3 June, p 6). What are the chances, I wonder, of it correcting malfunctions of the immune system itself? I have in mind of course allergies, multiple sclerosis and certain devastating inflammatory conditions that are suspected of being autoimmune in origin. Such an outcome would be truly dramatic and herald a new dawn for humanity and a new era in medical science.
A plea from the US for the world to impose tariffs
Chris deSilva expressed concern over the reaction of US president Donald Trump to a carbon pricing border tariff adjustment imposed by the rest of the world (Letters, 13 May). I'd like to invite the rest of the world to please hit us with that tariff. Most Americans are now concerned about climate change, but far too few are aware that a carbon fee and dividend plan would stimulate the economy while reducing carbon emissions and protecting consumers. A carbon tariff would prompt a much-needed national conversation within the US about the wisdom of pricing carbon.
When will they ever learn on building safety?
The , in response to the Great Fire of 1666, banned flammable materials (mainly wood at the time) on outer walls. This was developed in the Building Act of 1774, which included regulations on wall materials and thicknesses, window reveals, roof parapets, walls and other measures to limit the spread of fire. How is it that 300 years later we can see fire jumping from flat to flat on the recently refurbished Grenfell Tower in London?
Bread of heaven: feed me till I want no more
Spending hard-earned cash on non-industrialised foods is not a health fad, as Anthony Warner depicts it (17 June, p 24). For me at least, it is political activism in support of farmers and producers concerned about sustainable food production rather than profits for investment portfolios.
Bread of heaven: feed me till I want no more
I, too, am irritated by fad diets like JERF and Eat Clean. But I would like more clarity on the trial in which 20 people ate wholegrain sourdough or industrial white bread. How long did it last? Did they eat their usual foods the rest of the day? What were the markers in which there was apparently “no significant difference”?
Warner tells us healthfulness is defined by chemical composition of food: I don't think even faddists will disagree. I would be surprised, though, if the composition of industrial white is not very different from that of wholemeal sourdough. I don't stigmatise anyone for their weight or food choices. The ever-increasing size and clout of the major food providers is to blame for the poverty of our diet.
The editor writes:
• Trial participants were asked to avoid other sources of wheat carbohydrates for one week and to stick to the white or sourdough, in quantities to some extent prescribed by the researchers. After a two-week break, the participants switched to the other type of bread for a week. The main metabolic markers examined were those linked to glycaemic control and risk levels of developing type 2 diabetes.
The long shadow cast by dark advertising
Your list of six technology pledges that should be in every political manifesto misses at least one pachyderm in the parlour (27 May, p 20). The winner of the 2016 US presidential election targeted population segments down to individuals, profiled using data from social media. It is highly likely these methods were also used by the Leave campaign in the UK's 2016 EU referendum. They let candidates tell one voter one thing and another the opposite.
Obviously they are lying to at least one voter, but neither will detect this. It will encourage voters to ignore political communications, though it may still subliminally affect voting. We need technical, legal and cultural barriers to prevent such abuse of data. Any election or referendum in which these techniques were used should result in a new ballot – or award victory to a side that did not use them. Perhaps we can use an AI to detect use of these methods.
The editor writes:
• Indeed: and in a following issue Matt Reynolds called for transparency over this “dark advertising” (10 June, p 25).
Hope in the search for consciousness
Bob Holmes, asking what is the point of consciousness, traces a line from selective attention to hedonistic attention or emotions to modelling of the self, or parts of the self (13 May, p 28). Surely the modelling analogy can be taken further? Even bacteria can model up/down, light/dark and chemical gradients. Higher animals can recognise (map) individuals of their own or other species.
Highly nimble predators need a detailed geographical map of their hunting domain and prey. Social animals map not only the physical characteristics but also the personality of companions: dominant/submissive, likes me/hates me and so on.
It is a short step from there to mapping the “self”: I am dominant, second in hierarchy, quick to anger, friend of X… Thus we become not only conscious, but conscious of self.
Most encouragingly, the article places consciousness firmly on the evolutionary spectrum, and quite far back at that. This implies there is also a probability that any life on other planets is intelligent life. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence has always postulated intelligent life, with no rationale other than that we can expect to hear from extraterrestrials only if they are intelligent. Now we have a positive reason to hope.
Eating people is almost entirely wrong
A reader relates a close friend reporting inadvertently participating in a cannibal feast in Papua New Guinea 30 years ago (Letters, 10 June). This tale is almost certainly apocryphal.
I was a patrol officer there between 1969 and 1974. I lived and worked in very remote parts of the country, some only notionally under the control of the colonial administration of which I was a part. During that time there was, to my knowledge, only one proven incident of cannibalism.
All cannibalism there was ritualistic in nature and certainly not for subsistence. It was comparatively rare even in the pre-colonial era. It is extremely improbable that, in the 1980s, selected cuts of a human – called longpella pik (long pig) in Neo-Melanesian Pidgin – would have been cooked and consumed in the manner described. The cooking process described is certainly used, but I have never heard of it being used to cook human flesh.
My surmise is that the friend was the victim of a practical joke by some mischievous Papua New Guineans, who will gleefully perpetrate these on a guileless dim dim (white person).
In this case they seem to have been spectacularly successful and to have helped reinforce a pervasive myth about the true extent and nature of cannibalism in their traditional societies.
Credit is due to Marc Isambard Brunel
Jon Noad comments on the ability of a mollusc called the piddock to bore tunnels through rock (The Last Word, 27 May). But credit for the tunnel under the Thames between Rotherhithe and Wapping is due to Marc Isambard Brunel – a great engineer who is often overshadowed by his son Isambard Kingdom. Marc a method for “Forming drifts and tunnels underground” in 1818 and of the tunnel from 1825 to 1843.
For the record
• The researcher we quoted about a jacket to control drones is Carine Rognon (17 June, p 9).
• Pick a spelling, any spelling… the name of the stage magician who debunked medium Henry Slade was John Nevil Maskelyne (17 May, p 42).