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Ebola's silver lining
OPINION
Reality TV Viewers in the US are bombarded with nonsense masquerading as fact. We need to change the channel, says David Silverman DID aliens build the pyramids? Can psychics contact the dead? Are ghosts real? For anyone with a grasp of critical thinking, the reply might be a chuckle, followed by: “Wait. You’re not serious?” Unfortunately, a lot of people are serious. In the US these questions have all been explored by TV channels including History, The Travel Channel and TLC (previously The Learning Channel). Despite their often ridiculous programmes, these channels and others seem happy to present themselves as sources of non-fiction content, and seem to have no problem with the public regarding them as such. Is it any wonder that more than seven in 10 people in the US believe in miracles? Or that fewer than half accept evolution? While one could argue that such shows are popular simply for their entertainment value,
statistics suggest that this may be giving viewers too much credit: a poll commissioned by National Geographic in 2012 showed that 77 per cent of people in the US believe there are signs that aliens have visited Earth. Telling apart sensationalised content from sensational content isn’t always easy. Quebec, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Flemish Belgium and Greece all have various bans on television advertising aimed at children, as studies suggest they cannot differentiate between adverts and programming. A similar lack of critical thinking is arguably leading people of all ages to fail to distinguish science fiction from science fact. We clearly have a lot of work to do. That’s where AtheistTV comes in. The organisation I head, American Atheists, launched the channel in July. It is the world’s
Ebola’s silver lining The time is right to end the smuggling and eating of wildlife, says Tennyson Williams THE Ebola outbreak in West Africa is leaving death, fear and disruption in its wake. In Guinea, Liberia and my country of origin, Sierra Leone, the social fabric is unravelling as mistrust, paranoia and uncertainty damage relationships and drive behaviours reminiscent of those during the Black Death. 26 | NewScientist | 6 September 2014
We all hope this epidemic can be contained soon. But will we learn to change the behaviours that directly brought it about? According to the World Health Organization, the Ebola virus enters human populations when people handle or eat infected wildlife, especially fruit bats, chimpanzees, monkeys, forest
antelopes and porcupines. Eating support of the local populace. bushmeat remains common Another way to reduce the throughout Africa, either for chance of future outbreaks is for subsistence or as a luxury. the world to act together to stop The Ebola outbreak is an the illegal trade in live wildlife opportunity to clamp down out of Africa. This trade results on a practice which both causes in considerable potential contact disease outbreaks and empties between infected animals and forests of wildlife. At a minimum, people, including traffickers, governments should zealously collectors, drivers, airport cargo enforce bans on the hunting and handlers, airline passengers and consumption of bats and apes, the wider public in destination two groups most commonly countries. It would only take associated with Ebola. one sick chimpanzee trafficked Such bans exist but are rarely “Governments should enforced. The fear and unrest zealously enforce bans on generated by the outbreak hunting and consuming could spur governments to take bats and apes” these bans seriously – with the
For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion
David Silverman is the president of American Atheists. AtheistTV is free online at atheists.tv and available to stream via Roku set-top boxes
through a major airline hub to spawn a new Ebola outbreak. If the world is serious about preventing outbreaks of dreadful diseases, then it must act. Airlines, as the international transporters of live wildlife, can rapidly and unilaterally make a huge difference. I challenge them to do the right thing and stop transporting live wildlife. The trade is also horrifically cruel. Wild animals should be left in the wild, for all our sakes. n Tennyson Williams is regional director for Africa for the animal welfare organisation World Animal Protection. He is based in Nairobi, Kenya
One minute interview
Psychiatrists on standby Our minds and bodies should not have separate healthcare services, says psychiatrist Simon Wessely associated with a busy hospital: depression in people with cancer, for instance, dementia in old people or problems in the accident and emergency department (A&E). Do many people who go to A&E have mental health issues? As many as 30 to 40 per cent. And among those who are not seen within the NHS target of 4 hours, most have mental health problems. One of the reasons we have A&E crises is that we’ve had insufficient mental health services in general hospitals. Liaison psychiatry may help.
Profile Simon Wessely is a psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital in London and the new president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He has spent most of his career highlighting psychological influences on physical health
Why do you think psychiatry needs to be better integrated with general medicine? In the UK, psychiatrists tend to work out of separate mental health hospitals. If the goal were to split physical and mental health, the National Health Service could not be organised better. Yet most illnesses are not so easily divided. And the evidence that psychological treatments can have an impact on physical disorders is growing. Could you give an example? Take heart attacks. What could be more perfectly physical? But depression actually has a greater influence than smoking on your chances of surviving the following 12 months. Also, in cardiac clinics, many people come in with what looks like heart disease but turns out to be panic attacks. So what needs to change? We need liaison psychiatrists, which basically means you have an embassy of psychiatry in the middle of the acute general hospital. It deals with all the kinds of psychological and social problems
Is there any evidence this approach works? In diabetes, a trial has shown that when you bring psychological treatments into the hospital, not only do you get better mental healthcare, you get better control of diabetes. That was unexpected. Wouldn’t setting this up be costly? Actually, it saves money. A recent study of a rapidassessment psychiatric liaison service at City Hospital in Birmingham showed that, per year, it cost less than £1 million and saved £3.55 million through reduced bed use. Is more liaison psychiatry the answer, then? We have to think about fully integrating services. Where I work, there is the Maudsley psychiatric hospital on one side of the road and King’s College general hospital on the other. It’s like Cartesian dualism running down the road. We’re putting better psychiatric services in at King’s, but we also want to get more physical care to those on the other side of the road, because we know that people with severe mental illness are dying much earlier than they should. Are you optimistic this can happen? Things are already changing. The number of liaison psychiatrists is increasing and junior doctors are getting more training in psychiatry. But we still need to do more to bring psychiatry into the heart of medicine, where it belongs. Interview by Clare Wilson
6 September 2014 | NewScientist | 27
Clara Molden/Camera Press
first TV channel dedicated to atheist-friendly content: everything on it, unless clearly presented as fiction, is guaranteed never to blur the line between fantasy and reality. Content includes documentaries, speeches from atheist conventions and rallies, stand-up comedy, a talk show called The Atheist Viewpoint and much more. And this is only the beginning. AtheistTV will soon carry original programming. AtheistTV is aimed at all non-believers, whether they call themselves atheist, agnostic, secular humanist or just curious. With it, we plan to get a level of public recognition for atheism and atheists that the US has lacked. Viewer numbers have already rocketed past our highest expectations. There are so many things to learn in the real world that even a hundred lifetimes isn’t enough to explore them all. We don’t need to make things up. What makes the truth beautiful and wonderful is that it’s true. I think that’s magnificent, and more worthy of attention than any gods, ghosts, psychics or aliens could ever be. n
Reality TV Viewers in the US are bombarded with nonsense masquerading as fact. We need to change the channel, says David Silverman DID aliens build the pyramids? Can psychics contact the dead? Are ghosts real? For anyone with a grasp of critical thinking, the reply might be a chuckle, followed by: “Wait. You’re not serious?” Unfortunately, a lot of people are serious. In the US these questions have all been explored by TV channels including History, The Travel Channel and TLC (previously The Learning Channel). Despite their often ridiculous programmes, these channels and others seem happy to present themselves as sources of non-fiction content, and seem to have no problem with the public regarding them as such. Is it any wonder that more than seven in 10 people in the US believe in miracles? Or that fewer than half accept evolution? While one could argue that such shows are popular simply for their entertainment value,
statistics suggest that this may be giving viewers too much credit: a poll commissioned by National Geographic in 2012 showed that 77 per cent of people in the US believe there are signs that aliens have visited Earth. Telling apart sensationalised content from sensational content isn’t always easy. Quebec, Sweden, Denmark, Austria, Flemish Belgium and Greece all have various bans on television advertising aimed at children, as studies suggest they cannot differentiate between adverts and programming. A similar lack of critical thinking is arguably leading people of all ages to fail to distinguish science fiction from science fact. We clearly have a lot of work to do. That’s where AtheistTV comes in. The organisation I head, American Atheists, launched the channel in July. It is the world’s
Ebola’s silver lining The time is right to end the smuggling and eating of wildlife, says Tennyson Williams THE Ebola outbreak in West Africa is leaving death, fear and disruption in its wake. In Guinea, Liberia and my country of origin, Sierra Leone, the social fabric is unravelling as mistrust, paranoia and uncertainty damage relationships and drive behaviours reminiscent of those during the Black Death. 26 | NewScientist | 6 September 2014
We all hope this epidemic can be contained soon. But will we learn to change the behaviours that directly brought it about? According to the World Health Organization, the Ebola virus enters human populations when people handle or eat infected wildlife, especially fruit bats, chimpanzees, monkeys, forest
antelopes and porcupines. Eating support of the local populace. bushmeat remains common Another way to reduce the throughout Africa, either for chance of future outbreaks is for subsistence or as a luxury. the world to act together to stop The Ebola outbreak is an the illegal trade in live wildlife opportunity to clamp down out of Africa. This trade results on a practice which both causes in considerable potential contact disease outbreaks and empties between infected animals and forests of wildlife. At a minimum, people, including traffickers, governments should zealously collectors, drivers, airport cargo enforce bans on the hunting and handlers, airline passengers and consumption of bats and apes, the wider public in destination two groups most commonly countries. It would only take associated with Ebola. one sick chimpanzee trafficked Such bans exist but are rarely “Governments should enforced. The fear and unrest zealously enforce bans on generated by the outbreak hunting and consuming could spur governments to take bats and apes” these bans seriously – with the
For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion
David Silverman is the president of American Atheists. AtheistTV is free online at atheists.tv and available to stream via Roku set-top boxes
through a major airline hub to spawn a new Ebola outbreak. If the world is serious about preventing outbreaks of dreadful diseases, then it must act. Airlines, as the international transporters of live wildlife, can rapidly and unilaterally make a huge difference. I challenge them to do the right thing and stop transporting live wildlife. The trade is also horrifically cruel. Wild animals should be left in the wild, for all our sakes. n Tennyson Williams is regional director for Africa for the animal welfare organisation World Animal Protection. He is based in Nairobi, Kenya
One minute interview
Psychiatrists on standby Our minds and bodies should not have separate healthcare services, says psychiatrist Simon Wessely associated with a busy hospital: depression in people with cancer, for instance, dementia in old people or problems in the accident and emergency department (A&E). Do many people who go to A&E have mental health issues? As many as 30 to 40 per cent. And among those who are not seen within the NHS target of 4 hours, most have mental health problems. One of the reasons we have A&E crises is that we’ve had insufficient mental health services in general hospitals. Liaison psychiatry may help.
Profile Simon Wessely is a psychiatrist at the Maudsley Hospital in London and the new president of the Royal College of Psychiatrists. He has spent most of his career highlighting psychological influences on physical health
Why do you think psychiatry needs to be better integrated with general medicine? In the UK, psychiatrists tend to work out of separate mental health hospitals. If the goal were to split physical and mental health, the National Health Service could not be organised better. Yet most illnesses are not so easily divided. And the evidence that psychological treatments can have an impact on physical disorders is growing. Could you give an example? Take heart attacks. What could be more perfectly physical? But depression actually has a greater influence than smoking on your chances of surviving the following 12 months. Also, in cardiac clinics, many people come in with what looks like heart disease but turns out to be panic attacks. So what needs to change? We need liaison psychiatrists, which basically means you have an embassy of psychiatry in the middle of the acute general hospital. It deals with all the kinds of psychological and social problems
Is there any evidence this approach works? In diabetes, a trial has shown that when you bring psychological treatments into the hospital, not only do you get better mental healthcare, you get better control of diabetes. That was unexpected. Wouldn’t setting this up be costly? Actually, it saves money. A recent study of a rapidassessment psychiatric liaison service at City Hospital in Birmingham showed that, per year, it cost less than £1 million and saved £3.55 million through reduced bed use. Is more liaison psychiatry the answer, then? We have to think about fully integrating services. Where I work, there is the Maudsley psychiatric hospital on one side of the road and King’s College general hospital on the other. It’s like Cartesian dualism running down the road. We’re putting better psychiatric services in at King’s, but we also want to get more physical care to those on the other side of the road, because we know that people with severe mental illness are dying much earlier than they should. Are you optimistic this can happen? Things are already changing. The number of liaison psychiatrists is increasing and junior doctors are getting more training in psychiatry. But we still need to do more to bring psychiatry into the heart of medicine, where it belongs. Interview by Clare Wilson
6 September 2014 | NewScientist | 27
Clara Molden/Camera Press
first TV channel dedicated to atheist-friendly content: everything on it, unless clearly presented as fiction, is guaranteed never to blur the line between fantasy and reality. Content includes documentaries, speeches from atheist conventions and rallies, stand-up comedy, a talk show called The Atheist Viewpoint and much more. And this is only the beginning. AtheistTV will soon carry original programming. AtheistTV is aimed at all non-believers, whether they call themselves atheist, agnostic, secular humanist or just curious. With it, we plan to get a level of public recognition for atheism and atheists that the US has lacked. Viewer numbers have already rocketed past our highest expectations. There are so many things to learn in the real world that even a hundred lifetimes isn’t enough to explore them all. We don’t need to make things up. What makes the truth beautiful and wonderful is that it’s true. I think that’s magnificent, and more worthy of attention than any gods, ghosts, psychics or aliens could ever be. n