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I 48 New Scientist 24 May 7984 Experimental animals E. Pascoe's attack on Dr Alma is disingenuous (Letters, 12 April. p 54). If his pamphlet was not intended to dissuade young researchers from becoming too concerned about the use of animals in experiments, why choose the very odd wording which he employs? \Vhy the persistent emphasis on whether the researcher finds a particular experiment upsetting to do? Why not. for example, a paragraph simply stating: "Vv'e can reasonably make the assumption that the experience of pain. discomfort or mental anguish is an evil for all sentient creatures. Hence it is obligatory, for the researcher to take all possible measures to reduce any distress likely to result from an experiment. Anaesthetics. analgesics and tranquillisers may be used. or it may be possible to substitute in vitro methods. You should discuss the proposed experiment with your colleagues, and with the Ho~e Office Inspector. and seek advice from a statistician so that numbers of animals can be reduced to the minimum needed to yield a valid result. You should famitiarise yourself with the relevant literature so that you can be confident what you propose to do really does represent a new contribution to ;cience, If your proposed work nvolves surge~', it is desirable to :[iscuss it with colleagues who possess veterinary, qualifications." As it stands, the pamphlet can only give young biologists the impression that. so far as the Physiological Society is concerned, concern about the feelings of experimental animals is merely an irrational prejudice, Rosemary Rodd Scientifid adviser Quaker Concern ./'or Animal ;f'elfare Cambridge As a laboratory technician working with animals Iapplaud Gill Langley's article on the exploitation of laboratoD' animals (Redundancy for the laboratory guinea pig", 3 May, p 12). All animals should be free from our modern concentration camps. To cause suffering to any creature is wrong, and I long for the day that I can talk about my job without feeling guilt. Ashby McGowan Glasgow Sounds bad I object to the Fisher advertisement in New Scientist (I0 May, pp 34-35), The advertisement refers to an imaginery Daphne Heaton- Smvthe as an inane woman who "thi'nks 'Wow" and 'Hurter' are dogs in the local hunt', Her husband "more sensibly" (of course) realises how good the product is. As a woman (who happens to be a scientist and head teacher of a girls" comprehensive school) I find this deeply offensive. Sister Mary B. 0 ?vSaIIey West Didsbury Manchester Pesticide hazards Using alternatives such as cell cultures instead of live animals (3 May, p 12) is one way of reducing animal experimentation: freedom of information is another. Under Britain's Pesticides Safety Precautions Scheme~ however, many manufacturers may wish to sell the same pesticide they must all repeat an identical battery of toxicity tests. Each manufacturer's results are kept secret from the others--and from the public. The object apparently is to stop, say, the 20th manufacturer of a given pesticide getting safety clearance without meeting the same costs as the first. That may appeal to accountants, but from every, other point of view it is wasteful and senseless. Animals are endlessly sacrificed repeating tests that have been done many times before; and people who work with, or are exposed to, pesticides are denied basic information about their hazards (the Ad~4sory Committee on Pesticides won't even say what kinds of tests have been done, let alone discuss the results). The government has announced that it proposed new pesticide legislation. It has the opportunity to introduce a more efficient and accountable system. Publish a manufacturers' results the first time they are done. When a second manufacturer wants to market the same chemical, it could be required to compensate the first for sharing the original data, instead of pointlessly duplicating it. Even better, the money could go to a central research ~'und and be used to investigate new problems. That would prevent much wasteful experimentation: it would increase the amount of original research done on such chemicals: and it would for the first time allow public access to basic information about pesticide hazards. Maurice Frankel The ] 984 Campaign for Freedom of InJbrmation London Dialogues of the deaf The example of the short paper On the role and activities of the Advisor' Board for the Research Council~ (ABRC) and inability of scientists to comprehend it (Forum, 24 April, p 24) does not seem to be unique to Britain. Wilson Dizard writes in his book The Coming Information Age about the US: "As an MIT study put it several years ago: communications technology is flooding policy makers with options they do not understand, among which they must choose, and which will have profound effects on society." What chances does the rest of the society stand to understand the impact o(IT on their lives, if two (or even three) relatively small "cultures" fail to communicate with each other, especially when, as Dizard writes, in the present age of converging technologies and greater social complexity, the balance between economic I THIN~, (VE I..-OGAT',~ TH~ B o~ ~roduct harmony become difficul to maintain"? This Dizard says, is why "we do need a better understanding of the issues raised in the Nora and Minc report to the French government form 1978, facing esser~tially the same situation--a massive technocractic drive, threatening to go out of control unless its potentially dehumanising effects are understood and reined in". Ivor Fodor Darmstadt West Germany Tobacco-related disease In Britain, only two external factors have thus far been identified as really major killers--tobacco smoke, and the (still incompletely characterised) dietary, determinants of blood lipids. Each of these is responsible for oftbe order of 100 000 deaths a year, out of our annual total of 600-odd thousand. At a recent Ciba symposium, where I was asked to lecture on the control of tobacco-related disease, I pointed out two main approaches were possible--reduction of the number of cigarettes consumed, and reduction of the hazard per cigarette--and that both were important. Admittedly, the evidence thus far available suggests that the types of tar-level reductions that have been introduced in Britain during the past quarter of a century appear to produce substantial avoidance of risk only for lung cancer: no GRIMBLEDON DOWN q Bill Tidy

New Scientist 24 May 1984 substantial effect (in either direction) on the.other main slno,Vdng-relatk~d diseases has been demonstrated. Therefore, although further reductions in tar levels should continue to be encouraged (as long as this can be done in prays that do not interfere with ff~rts to reduce overall cigarette consumption), we need to encourase research on how to design cigarettes that also produce lower risks of heart disease and chronic lung disease. Your report of my talk (19 April) inadvertently attributed to me certain views that I neither expressed nor could consistently hold• For example, while I emphasised the importance of continuing to encourage reductions in tar level, the first sentence of your report (under the headline "Unhealthy verdict on tow-tar brands") misleadingly attributes to me the view that low- tar brands could increase the chance of dying from heart and lung disease. Three paragraphs later, it attributes to me exactly the opposite "belief" for chronic obstructive lung disease! Elsewhere. although in fact Englishmen have lung cancer rates a hundred times larger at age 80 than at age 40. I am misquoted as describing 35-44 year-olds as being the group "most susceptible to lung cancer". Ricitard Pcto Radcli~, Infirmary O.~tbr3 " " Parlous view I dtd not say that "'particle a~sicists have no wish to know other branch of science", but nat we have no wish to knock any other branch ILetters. 10 May, p 49). That, I am sure you will agree, is a very different thing. Imperial Colleee ol" Science and London Leprosy The article on leprosy by Debora MacKenzie (3 May. p 30) reiterates the current World Health Organlsation (WHO) view that the prevalence, but not the incidence, of leprosy has declined since the introduction of dapsone. This view is held despite the huge reductions in numbers of patients reporting for treatment (the so- called "case-detection rate"). The argument case-aetecuon ~oes not mean a true reduction in new cases of the disease/that is to say, the incidence), but merely reflects a declining bac "klog of old patients over time. This explanation will certainly account for a reduction in the treatment is first offered, but as a decline continues over many years it becomes increasingly implausible that this merely reflects a backlog effect. For ~mple, in Burma the case- tcct~on rate fell from 5 per I000 1962 to 0.8 per 1000 in 1972, and the rate of decline was as great in the second half of that period as in the first (Int. J. Leprosy, vol 43, p 125). Further evidence for the effectiveness of dapsone in reducing the true incidence of new cases of leprosy comes from a comparison of Uganda and New Guinea. Sulphones were introduced to an area of New Guinea only in late 1967, and the case-detection rate remained at 6 per 1000 each year from 1964 to 1969 (Med J. Austral., vol 1, p 1258). In contrast, the case-detection rate in Uganda fell from 5.5 to 1.7 per 1000 in four years (in the control group of the BCG trial), but dapsone treatment was employed throughout that period (Nature, vol 254, p 168). Finally, the map in the article incorrectly attributes a prevalence rate of more than 20 per 1000 to the Northern Territory of Australia, despite the publication of the correct data in 1977 (Med. J. Austral., vol 2, p 652), showing a fall from 46 new cases in 1967 to just 6 in 1976. C. L. Crawford Chafing Cross Hospital Medical School, London QED In the issue of New Scientist for 10 May (p 3) you carry a note "UN admits failure to halt deserts". In the same issue (p 30) there is an article b\ John Gribbin entitled "The world's beaches are vanishing". Surely the solution is obvious! Rtlth Newmark Bishops Stortford Random leapfrogs There is another explanation for the occurrence of "leapfrog" patterns in the plumage of birds (Monitor. 10 May, p 22) If a species becomes broken up into three fairly isolated w~atever reason, in the ~lumage of the central group would inhibit breeding between it and either of the other groups. The two outer groups would be far apart and so also unlikely to mate. This situation could arise only if the ,.g, ou.p He along a line (which is there were no ancient flight corridors linking the outside pair of sub-species. If one of the outer populations develops different plumage, then two species would result (assuming occasional breeding between the two unchanged groups). This interpretation differs from J. V. Remsen's in predicting leapfrog patterns in factors which may affect mating behaviour such as vocal dial.ects, but not in other characteristics such as bone structure. In plants only those characteristics important to animal pollinators, or which otherwise affect pollination, could be expected to show this pa~ern. Whether the initial change were random or adaptive could only be decided in each case individually, if at all Paul Gailiunas Gosfor~h, Newcastle upon Tyne Competition Robert Brooks (Forum, 5 April, p 45) advises "never cite your enemies in the bibliography. The danger here is that the editor may select referees from your list of references..." In the Journal of the American Medical Association (vol 218, p 886). I indicated that it is necessar7 to quote your competitors. If you would have people locate your publications through Science Citation Index, whenever innocent strangers look up your enemies, they will be certain to learn about your publications. This is a new variation on the uncertainty principle. The closer you get to ignoring your competition the closer you come to oblivion. To achiev~ a total state of oblivion always use clever but ambiguous tries in your papers, use a pseudonym and publish in any one of the numberous obscure languages available. Eugene Garfield Institute for Scientific Information, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania I cannot let Trevor Kitson (Letters, 3 May, p 50) have the I~ last word. Both he and Robert. Brooks's (Forum, 5 April, p 45) make the error of believing that age brings quality. Simply dividing the number ofphblicafio'ns by age a person who, from age 25, " publishes regularly some two papers a year can expect his coefficent to rise from 2/26 to 50/50, a 25-fold improvement. Furthermore, it is accepted that the £wst author actually carried out most of the work, No. 2 kept things running when No. 1 was on holiday, No. 3 made the coffee, and so on right down to the last author who never bothered to read the paper or, if he did, didn't understand it. My revised coefficent of publicatonmanship (CA is therefore- x 1 ~ X age--25 y Where x is the number of publications, and y is the position ~n order of names. R. Lathe Edinburgh We welcome letters from our readers. Short communications stand the best chance of publication. We reserve the right to edit the longer ones. Write to: Letters to the Editor, New Scientist Commonwealth House, 1-19 New Oxford ST, London WCIA 1NG. Warren Spring Laboratory 1959-1984 WSL will be displaying work on Process Technology on June 28 and 29 1984 For an invitatiop these Open Days Telephone 0438-313388 Ext 256 or 219 O~ ~0 O~ 0