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Editorial: Public health needs lawyers' help
New Science Publications
Editorial–
Editor Jeremy Webb Personal Asst & Office Manager Anita Staff Associate Editors Liz Else, Stephanie Pain News Editor Matt Walker Editors Linda Geddes, Rowan Hooper, Helen Knight, Celeste Biever, Richard Fisher Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1206 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Reporters LONDON Andy Coghlan, Hazel Muir, Paul Marks, Zeeya Merali [email protected] BOSTON US Bureau Chief Ivan Semeniuk David L. Chandler [email protected] Celeste Biever [email protected] Gregory T. Huang [email protected] SAN FRANCISCO Bureau Chief Peter Aldhous [email protected] Michael Reilly [email protected] Jim Giles [email protected] TORONTO Alison Motluk [email protected] BRUSSELS Debora MacKenzie [email protected] MELBOURNE Australasian Editor Rachel Nowak [email protected] Features Editors Ben Crystall, Kate Douglas, Clare Wilson, David Cohen, Graham Lawton, Valerie Jamieson, Michael Le Page, Caroline Williams Features Assistant Celia Guthrie Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1201 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 [email protected] Opinion Editor Jo Marchant Editors John Hoyland, Amanda Gefter, Alison George, Eleanor Harris Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1240 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 [email protected] Researcher Lucy Middleton Editorial Assistant Nigel McPaul Production Editor Mick O’Hare Asst Production Editor Melanie Green Chief Sub John Liebmann Subeditors Vivienne Greig, Julia Brown, Sean O’Neill Art Editor Alison Lawn Design Craig Mackie, Ryan Wills Graphics Nigel Hawtin, Dave Johnston Pictures Adam Goff, Kirstin Jennings Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Careers Editor Helen Thomson [email protected] Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1248 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Consultants Alun Anderson, Stephen Battersby, Michael Bond, Michael Brooks, Marcus Chown, Rob Edwards, Richard Fifield, Barry Fox, Mick Hamer, Jeff Hecht, Bob Holmes, Justin Mullins, Fred Pearce, Helen Phillips, Ian Stewart, Gail Vines, Gabrielle Walker, Emma Young, Anil Ananthaswamy Press Office and Syndication UK Claire Bowles Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1210 Fax 7611 1250 US Office Tel +1 617 386 2190 NEWSCIENTIST.COM Online Publisher John MacFarlane Deputy Online Editor Shaoni Bhattacharya Editors Maggie McKee, Will Knight Reporters Tom Simonite, Roxanne Khamsi, David Shiga, Catherine Brahic, Sandrine Ceurstemont, Michael Marshall [email protected] Online Subeditor Dan Palmer Web team Neela Das, Cathy Tollet, Ruth Turner, Ken Wolf, Edin Hodzic, Vivienne Griffith, Rohan Creasey
www.newscientist.com
Come clean on coal What are we to make of promises to develop zero-carbon power plants? IF WE are going to carry on burning coal – our cheapest, most available, most abundant and most polluting fossil fuel – we urgently need to capture carbon emissions from coalfired plants and bury them out of harm’s way. So it is deeply worrying that the US, which has more coal than any other nation, last week cancelled its most ambitious plan to bring this technology to market. Just before Christmas, Mattoon in Illinois was selected as the site for the first large-scale demonstration project for carbon capture and storage (CCS). Now US energy secretary Samuel Bodman has pulled the plug (see page 6), a decision that looks likely to set back the development of CCS technology by three to five years. This is startling and dangerous. It suggests that the Bush administration’s repeated promises to fast-track clean-coal technology were so much hot air. Equally worryingly, the decision seems to be part of a pattern. It is only nine months since BP pulled out of a plan to build a CCS power plant in Scotland whose carbon would have been buried under the North Sea in an old oilfield. It cited a lack of British government enthusiasm for underwriting the project as a reason to withdraw. The European Union has so far put very little flesh on its plan to have 12 demonstration plants for CCS up
and running by 2015. Only Australia and China seem to be going to town on the technology. In fact, most of it already exists – including new combustion systems, the capture technology itself and underground burial of liquefied gases. What is needed is to scale it up and put it together in large demonstration projects. But these are costly, in the realms of a billion dollars, and neither industry nor government wants to bite the bullet. The US administration baulked at paying its $1.3 billion share of the Mattoon project. The European Commission announced two weeks ago that there was “no possibility of significant funding from the EU budget” for CCS. Meanwhile, the power and coal industries are unwilling to bet large sums on a technology that only makes sense when either coal-fired power plants without CCS are banned, or the financial penalty for emitting carbon rises to match the cost of keeping it out of the air. There has been a lot of talk in the past two or three years that the world can carry on burning coal because CCS is just round the corner, ready to be bolted onto coal-fired power stations from China to California. Cynics say this was always a smokescreen put up by a beleaguered industry and its political backers. If the proponents of coal really do think that CCS is the future, now’s the time to show that the cynics are wrong. ●
An unexpected ally in the fight for safer drugs WHEN a drug safety scandal breaks, government regulators or pharmaceutical companies get the blame, for obvious reasons. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration has been pilloried for repeatedly failing to identify risks with drugs that it oversees. It was an independent academic who last year alerted the public to cardiovascular risks associated with the diabetes drug Avandia, for instance. By downplaying data on side effects, drug companies have also generated justified public anger. There is a third party who, while not responsible for lapses, could do more to help: lawyers in drug liability cases who have access to safety documents. The majority of such cases are settled before trial, so the papers are rarely made public. On the few occasions that documents do surface, they often turn out to
contain important information. Last month, for example, a judge released documents suggesting that a suicide risk associated with an antidepressant went unreported for more than 15 years (see page 12). In the long term, the problem of undisclosed clinical data should be addressed by forcing drug firms to publish all their trials in full. In the meantime, the lawyers in the antidepressant case deserve credit for persuading the judge to make the documents public. The first priority for lawyers will always be their clients; if an argument over the release of documents threatens a settlement, the papers are obviously going to stay sealed. But when it is possible to push for release without compromising a case, lawyers can aid public health by doing so. ● 9 February 2008 | NewScientist | 5
Editorial–
Editor Jeremy Webb Personal Asst & Office Manager Anita Staff Associate Editors Liz Else, Stephanie Pain News Editor Matt Walker Editors Linda Geddes, Rowan Hooper, Helen Knight, Celeste Biever, Richard Fisher Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1206 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Reporters LONDON Andy Coghlan, Hazel Muir, Paul Marks, Zeeya Merali [email protected] BOSTON US Bureau Chief Ivan Semeniuk David L. Chandler [email protected] Celeste Biever [email protected] Gregory T. Huang [email protected] SAN FRANCISCO Bureau Chief Peter Aldhous [email protected] Michael Reilly [email protected] Jim Giles [email protected] TORONTO Alison Motluk [email protected] BRUSSELS Debora MacKenzie [email protected] MELBOURNE Australasian Editor Rachel Nowak [email protected] Features Editors Ben Crystall, Kate Douglas, Clare Wilson, David Cohen, Graham Lawton, Valerie Jamieson, Michael Le Page, Caroline Williams Features Assistant Celia Guthrie Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1201 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 [email protected] Opinion Editor Jo Marchant Editors John Hoyland, Amanda Gefter, Alison George, Eleanor Harris Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1240 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 [email protected] Researcher Lucy Middleton Editorial Assistant Nigel McPaul Production Editor Mick O’Hare Asst Production Editor Melanie Green Chief Sub John Liebmann Subeditors Vivienne Greig, Julia Brown, Sean O’Neill Art Editor Alison Lawn Design Craig Mackie, Ryan Wills Graphics Nigel Hawtin, Dave Johnston Pictures Adam Goff, Kirstin Jennings Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Careers Editor Helen Thomson [email protected] Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1248 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1280 Consultants Alun Anderson, Stephen Battersby, Michael Bond, Michael Brooks, Marcus Chown, Rob Edwards, Richard Fifield, Barry Fox, Mick Hamer, Jeff Hecht, Bob Holmes, Justin Mullins, Fred Pearce, Helen Phillips, Ian Stewart, Gail Vines, Gabrielle Walker, Emma Young, Anil Ananthaswamy Press Office and Syndication UK Claire Bowles Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1210 Fax 7611 1250 US Office Tel +1 617 386 2190 NEWSCIENTIST.COM Online Publisher John MacFarlane Deputy Online Editor Shaoni Bhattacharya Editors Maggie McKee, Will Knight Reporters Tom Simonite, Roxanne Khamsi, David Shiga, Catherine Brahic, Sandrine Ceurstemont, Michael Marshall [email protected] Online Subeditor Dan Palmer Web team Neela Das, Cathy Tollet, Ruth Turner, Ken Wolf, Edin Hodzic, Vivienne Griffith, Rohan Creasey
www.newscientist.com
Come clean on coal What are we to make of promises to develop zero-carbon power plants? IF WE are going to carry on burning coal – our cheapest, most available, most abundant and most polluting fossil fuel – we urgently need to capture carbon emissions from coalfired plants and bury them out of harm’s way. So it is deeply worrying that the US, which has more coal than any other nation, last week cancelled its most ambitious plan to bring this technology to market. Just before Christmas, Mattoon in Illinois was selected as the site for the first large-scale demonstration project for carbon capture and storage (CCS). Now US energy secretary Samuel Bodman has pulled the plug (see page 6), a decision that looks likely to set back the development of CCS technology by three to five years. This is startling and dangerous. It suggests that the Bush administration’s repeated promises to fast-track clean-coal technology were so much hot air. Equally worryingly, the decision seems to be part of a pattern. It is only nine months since BP pulled out of a plan to build a CCS power plant in Scotland whose carbon would have been buried under the North Sea in an old oilfield. It cited a lack of British government enthusiasm for underwriting the project as a reason to withdraw. The European Union has so far put very little flesh on its plan to have 12 demonstration plants for CCS up
and running by 2015. Only Australia and China seem to be going to town on the technology. In fact, most of it already exists – including new combustion systems, the capture technology itself and underground burial of liquefied gases. What is needed is to scale it up and put it together in large demonstration projects. But these are costly, in the realms of a billion dollars, and neither industry nor government wants to bite the bullet. The US administration baulked at paying its $1.3 billion share of the Mattoon project. The European Commission announced two weeks ago that there was “no possibility of significant funding from the EU budget” for CCS. Meanwhile, the power and coal industries are unwilling to bet large sums on a technology that only makes sense when either coal-fired power plants without CCS are banned, or the financial penalty for emitting carbon rises to match the cost of keeping it out of the air. There has been a lot of talk in the past two or three years that the world can carry on burning coal because CCS is just round the corner, ready to be bolted onto coal-fired power stations from China to California. Cynics say this was always a smokescreen put up by a beleaguered industry and its political backers. If the proponents of coal really do think that CCS is the future, now’s the time to show that the cynics are wrong. ●
An unexpected ally in the fight for safer drugs WHEN a drug safety scandal breaks, government regulators or pharmaceutical companies get the blame, for obvious reasons. In the US, the Food and Drug Administration has been pilloried for repeatedly failing to identify risks with drugs that it oversees. It was an independent academic who last year alerted the public to cardiovascular risks associated with the diabetes drug Avandia, for instance. By downplaying data on side effects, drug companies have also generated justified public anger. There is a third party who, while not responsible for lapses, could do more to help: lawyers in drug liability cases who have access to safety documents. The majority of such cases are settled before trial, so the papers are rarely made public. On the few occasions that documents do surface, they often turn out to
contain important information. Last month, for example, a judge released documents suggesting that a suicide risk associated with an antidepressant went unreported for more than 15 years (see page 12). In the long term, the problem of undisclosed clinical data should be addressed by forcing drug firms to publish all their trials in full. In the meantime, the lawyers in the antidepressant case deserve credit for persuading the judge to make the documents public. The first priority for lawyers will always be their clients; if an argument over the release of documents threatens a settlement, the papers are obviously going to stay sealed. But when it is possible to push for release without compromising a case, lawyers can aid public health by doing so. ● 9 February 2008 | NewScientist | 5