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Reaping what we sow
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Reaping what we sow Staple foods are in nutritional decline as a result of loading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, warns Irakli Loladze WE ARE undoubtedly pumping ever more carbon dioxide into the air. But did you know that this also silently adds unwanted carbs to bread, cereals and salad and cuts vital protein and mineral content? This nutritional blow is now worrying the world’s most powerful nation. For the first time it forms a key finding in an official report on the health impacts of climate change in the US, drawn up by the Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and unveiled by the White House this week. Why would more CO2 mean poorer food? Photosynthetic organisms, such as plants, are the carbohydrate factories of the world. They convert CO2 and water into gigatonnes of starch and sugars every year. And every year since the industrial age began, we have steadily fed them more CO2. Plants respond by building more carbohydrates but less
protein into tissues. This means a higher ratio of carbs to protein in plants, including key crops such as wheat, rice and potato. This is a double whammy: protein deficiency afflicts the developing world, while excess carbohydrate consumption is a worry in the obesity-riven developed world. This is not the only nutritional impact. To capture CO, plants open pores in their leaves. These stomata let in CO2 but allow water out: plants compensate by sucking moisture from the soil. Transpiration, as this process is called, is a major hydrological force. It moves minerals essential for life closer to the roots, nourishing plants and ultimately us. But plants respond to high CO2 by partially closing stomata and losing less water. This reduces the flow of nutrients to roots and into plants. Less minerals but more carbs creates a higher carbs-to-
Profiling genocide Painstaking DNA work helped bring Radovan Karadzic to book, says Thomas Parsons RADOVAN KARADZIC, the former Bosnian Serb leader, is beginning a 40-year jail sentence for crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes during the 1992 -1995 Bosnian war. It marks the end of a trial that began in 2010 at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Prominent among Karadzic’s 18 | NewScientist | 9 April 2016
the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). Profiling techniques were advancing to the extent that they could be used to account for tens of thousands of victims. The ICMP invited families of the missing to give blood samples, which were recorded and compared with DNA from human remains buried in clandestine graves. This restarted an identification process that had reached its limit using traditional means and saw
offences was his role in the Srebrenica genocide, in which 8000 Muslim men and boys were executed in four days in July 1995. Identifying them was a crucial part of ensuring justice was done. Forensic work connected with this “More than 70 per cent of the 40,000 people missing and the wider war became the largest DNA identification project at the end of the conflict the world had seen, carried out by have been accounted for”
an exponential rise in the number identified. It produced scientific data that could withstand the rigours of the courtroom. Today, more than 70 per cent of the 40,000 people missing at the end of the conflict have been accounted for, including 7000 of the 8000 at Srebrenica. DNA provided the prosecution with incontrovertible evidence that thousands of men and boys were murdered there. Moreover, the pattern of DNA linkages within and between primary and secondary graves provided evidence of systematic activities associated with the crimes and later attempts to conceal bodies.
For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion
Irakli Loladze is an associate professor at Bryan College of Health Sciences in Lincoln, Nebraska. He co-authored a chapter of the USGCRP assessment
It also allowed thousands of families to recover the remains of loved ones and many of them got to secure their right to justice. While identifying victims this way rarely by itself decides guilt or innocence, it does establish an objective factual framework that stands as a powerful antidote to tendentious narratives. Those prosecuting war crimes now have at their disposal rigorous scientific methods that can establish a factual bedrock upon which to pursue justice. n Thomas Parsons is ICMP’s director of forensic sciences and provided evidence in Karadzic’s trial
INSIGHT Transgender health
Andrea Morales/NYT/Redux /eyevine
minerals ratio in crops and food. In an elevated CO2 world, every serving of bread, pasta, fruits and vegetables delivers more starch and sugar but less calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc, protein and other vital nutrients. Over a lifetime, this change can contribute to weight gain. Hidden hunger – the result of diets rich in calories but poor in vital nutrients – was mainly a developing world problem. But in 2002, New Scientist predicted that “elevated CO2 levels threaten to bring the... problem to Europe and North America”. Scepticism made it difficult to secure funding for testing this prediction and slowed progress by a decade. However, the conclusion is now unequivocal: rising CO2 depletes protein and minerals in most food that underpins human nutrition across the world. Sceptics like to claim that rising CO2 is a boon because it boosts crop yields. But as US Department of Agriculture scientist Lewis Ziska put it “elevated CO2 could be junk food” for some plant species. There really is no such thing as a free lunch with climate change. n
–A plea for understanding –
Doctors must get up to speed on trans issues Jessica Hamzelou
patients’ health first. So what’s standing in their way? Barrett says in his experience some doctors will say they don’t know enough about how to prescribe the relevant treatments (BMJ, doi.org/ bdvq). This isn’t just an excuse. For example, in the US in 2013, just 33 per cent of emergency medicine graduate programmes incorporated topics on LGBT health in their curricula. Those that did gave an average of 45 minutes to the subject. Trans people often point out that they have to
DOCTORS are failing their transgender patients. In the UK, an estimated 1 in 5 general practitioners are refusing trans people treatments such as hormone therapy, said James Barrett of the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists last week. “Some are remarkably frank, and say: ‘I’m not doing this as it is against my deeply held religious principles’.” The problem isn’t confined to the UK. Surveys carried out in the US describe harassment, physical assault “Transgender people and denial of equal treatment in often say that they have doctor’s offices or hospitals. to teach doctors about What’s more, we know that trans trans care” people have a far higher rate of suicide – a 2010 study in the US found that 41 per cent had attempted it; the teach their doctor about trans care. national average is 1.6 per cent. But This lack of education can lead we also know that social support, doctors to refer trans patients to access to hormones or surgery, and mental health clinics, instead of reducing transphobia lower the gender identity clinics. As a first port of likelihood of a suicide attempt. call, this is wrong – while many people Doctors are bound to have the same will need counselling, feeling that your range of prejudices, personal beliefs gender does not match the one and religious views as the rest of us, assigned to you at birth does not mean but they have chosen a profession you have a mental disorder. that requires them to put their Part of the problem is how it is
defined by the medical community. The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) still categorises “gender identity disorders” within the “mental and behavioural disorders” bracket. It also refers to “transsexualism”, which it defines as the desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex – when in fact many people choose not to identify as either male or female. “The definition has so many problems I don’t know where to start,” says Timo Nieder, who runs a gender identity clinic at the University Medical Center Hamburg in Germany. Nieder is part of a group pushing to change the category’s name to gender incongruence, and remove it entirely from the ICD’s section on mental health disorders, changes that are scheduled to happen next year. There are other signs that things are moving in the right direction. In March, the UK’s General Medical Council published advice urging doctors to support their trans patients. There are also whispers of plans for the National Health Service to provide fertility-sparing treatments, such as egg or sperm freezing, for all those who start hormone treatment – as they do for cancer patients. In the meantime, the front-line medical community needs to address the way it is failing to support a group of potentially vulnerable people, and recognise its duty of care. n 9 April 2016 | NewScientist | 19
Reaping what we sow Staple foods are in nutritional decline as a result of loading the atmosphere with carbon dioxide, warns Irakli Loladze WE ARE undoubtedly pumping ever more carbon dioxide into the air. But did you know that this also silently adds unwanted carbs to bread, cereals and salad and cuts vital protein and mineral content? This nutritional blow is now worrying the world’s most powerful nation. For the first time it forms a key finding in an official report on the health impacts of climate change in the US, drawn up by the Global Change Research Program (USGCRP) and unveiled by the White House this week. Why would more CO2 mean poorer food? Photosynthetic organisms, such as plants, are the carbohydrate factories of the world. They convert CO2 and water into gigatonnes of starch and sugars every year. And every year since the industrial age began, we have steadily fed them more CO2. Plants respond by building more carbohydrates but less
protein into tissues. This means a higher ratio of carbs to protein in plants, including key crops such as wheat, rice and potato. This is a double whammy: protein deficiency afflicts the developing world, while excess carbohydrate consumption is a worry in the obesity-riven developed world. This is not the only nutritional impact. To capture CO, plants open pores in their leaves. These stomata let in CO2 but allow water out: plants compensate by sucking moisture from the soil. Transpiration, as this process is called, is a major hydrological force. It moves minerals essential for life closer to the roots, nourishing plants and ultimately us. But plants respond to high CO2 by partially closing stomata and losing less water. This reduces the flow of nutrients to roots and into plants. Less minerals but more carbs creates a higher carbs-to-
Profiling genocide Painstaking DNA work helped bring Radovan Karadzic to book, says Thomas Parsons RADOVAN KARADZIC, the former Bosnian Serb leader, is beginning a 40-year jail sentence for crimes against humanity, genocide and war crimes during the 1992 -1995 Bosnian war. It marks the end of a trial that began in 2010 at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia. Prominent among Karadzic’s 18 | NewScientist | 9 April 2016
the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP). Profiling techniques were advancing to the extent that they could be used to account for tens of thousands of victims. The ICMP invited families of the missing to give blood samples, which were recorded and compared with DNA from human remains buried in clandestine graves. This restarted an identification process that had reached its limit using traditional means and saw
offences was his role in the Srebrenica genocide, in which 8000 Muslim men and boys were executed in four days in July 1995. Identifying them was a crucial part of ensuring justice was done. Forensic work connected with this “More than 70 per cent of the 40,000 people missing and the wider war became the largest DNA identification project at the end of the conflict the world had seen, carried out by have been accounted for”
an exponential rise in the number identified. It produced scientific data that could withstand the rigours of the courtroom. Today, more than 70 per cent of the 40,000 people missing at the end of the conflict have been accounted for, including 7000 of the 8000 at Srebrenica. DNA provided the prosecution with incontrovertible evidence that thousands of men and boys were murdered there. Moreover, the pattern of DNA linkages within and between primary and secondary graves provided evidence of systematic activities associated with the crimes and later attempts to conceal bodies.
For more opinion articles, visit newscientist.com/opinion
Irakli Loladze is an associate professor at Bryan College of Health Sciences in Lincoln, Nebraska. He co-authored a chapter of the USGCRP assessment
It also allowed thousands of families to recover the remains of loved ones and many of them got to secure their right to justice. While identifying victims this way rarely by itself decides guilt or innocence, it does establish an objective factual framework that stands as a powerful antidote to tendentious narratives. Those prosecuting war crimes now have at their disposal rigorous scientific methods that can establish a factual bedrock upon which to pursue justice. n Thomas Parsons is ICMP’s director of forensic sciences and provided evidence in Karadzic’s trial
INSIGHT Transgender health
Andrea Morales/NYT/Redux /eyevine
minerals ratio in crops and food. In an elevated CO2 world, every serving of bread, pasta, fruits and vegetables delivers more starch and sugar but less calcium, magnesium, potassium, zinc, protein and other vital nutrients. Over a lifetime, this change can contribute to weight gain. Hidden hunger – the result of diets rich in calories but poor in vital nutrients – was mainly a developing world problem. But in 2002, New Scientist predicted that “elevated CO2 levels threaten to bring the... problem to Europe and North America”. Scepticism made it difficult to secure funding for testing this prediction and slowed progress by a decade. However, the conclusion is now unequivocal: rising CO2 depletes protein and minerals in most food that underpins human nutrition across the world. Sceptics like to claim that rising CO2 is a boon because it boosts crop yields. But as US Department of Agriculture scientist Lewis Ziska put it “elevated CO2 could be junk food” for some plant species. There really is no such thing as a free lunch with climate change. n
–A plea for understanding –
Doctors must get up to speed on trans issues Jessica Hamzelou
patients’ health first. So what’s standing in their way? Barrett says in his experience some doctors will say they don’t know enough about how to prescribe the relevant treatments (BMJ, doi.org/ bdvq). This isn’t just an excuse. For example, in the US in 2013, just 33 per cent of emergency medicine graduate programmes incorporated topics on LGBT health in their curricula. Those that did gave an average of 45 minutes to the subject. Trans people often point out that they have to
DOCTORS are failing their transgender patients. In the UK, an estimated 1 in 5 general practitioners are refusing trans people treatments such as hormone therapy, said James Barrett of the British Association of Gender Identity Specialists last week. “Some are remarkably frank, and say: ‘I’m not doing this as it is against my deeply held religious principles’.” The problem isn’t confined to the UK. Surveys carried out in the US describe harassment, physical assault “Transgender people and denial of equal treatment in often say that they have doctor’s offices or hospitals. to teach doctors about What’s more, we know that trans trans care” people have a far higher rate of suicide – a 2010 study in the US found that 41 per cent had attempted it; the teach their doctor about trans care. national average is 1.6 per cent. But This lack of education can lead we also know that social support, doctors to refer trans patients to access to hormones or surgery, and mental health clinics, instead of reducing transphobia lower the gender identity clinics. As a first port of likelihood of a suicide attempt. call, this is wrong – while many people Doctors are bound to have the same will need counselling, feeling that your range of prejudices, personal beliefs gender does not match the one and religious views as the rest of us, assigned to you at birth does not mean but they have chosen a profession you have a mental disorder. that requires them to put their Part of the problem is how it is
defined by the medical community. The World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) still categorises “gender identity disorders” within the “mental and behavioural disorders” bracket. It also refers to “transsexualism”, which it defines as the desire to live and be accepted as a member of the opposite sex – when in fact many people choose not to identify as either male or female. “The definition has so many problems I don’t know where to start,” says Timo Nieder, who runs a gender identity clinic at the University Medical Center Hamburg in Germany. Nieder is part of a group pushing to change the category’s name to gender incongruence, and remove it entirely from the ICD’s section on mental health disorders, changes that are scheduled to happen next year. There are other signs that things are moving in the right direction. In March, the UK’s General Medical Council published advice urging doctors to support their trans patients. There are also whispers of plans for the National Health Service to provide fertility-sparing treatments, such as egg or sperm freezing, for all those who start hormone treatment – as they do for cancer patients. In the meantime, the front-line medical community needs to address the way it is failing to support a group of potentially vulnerable people, and recognise its duty of care. n 9 April 2016 | NewScientist | 19