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The fracking debate is shedding more heat than light
EDITORIAL
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 8559 Fax +61 2 9422 8552 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 Subscription Service For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Telephone +44 (0) 844 543 80 70 Email [email protected] Web newscientist.com/subscribe Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH One year subscription (51 issues) UK £150 cONTACTS Contact us newscientist.com/contact Who’s who newscientist.com/people General & media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] UK Newsstand Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588
© 2013 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
Whose body is it anyway? Patients are right to question government control of their stem cells THERE’S trouble brewing over of bone growing in her eyelid stem cells in Texas, and it raises a after stem cell injections. big question for the future of This incoherent situation arises medicine. How should we from trying to shoehorn stem regulate treatments that use cells cells into a regulatory system taken from a patient’s own body? designed for conventional drugs. If the cells are grown in culture, One solution would be to create a then the US Food and Drug new body to regulate all therapies Administration (FDA) views them that use a patient’s own cells. as “drugs”, which must undergo a Obvious as this sounds, it is lengthy approval process. That has enraged clients of a company “The government has no business telling people in Houston called Celltex, who argue that the government has no what they can’t do with their own body parts” business telling them what they can and can’t do with their own body parts (see page 42). unlikely to happen in a political However, there is minimal climate that has little enthusiasm oversight of clinics that don’t for costly new bureaucracy. culture cells, because simple A sensible alternative would transplants are a “practice of be to adapt the existing system medicine”, which the FDA doesn’t to bring it in line with modern control. That is a concern, given realities. Strict drug-style anecdotal reports of problems, regulation seems appropriate for such as a woman who had shards extensively manipulated cells.
But if a person’s cells are merely grown in culture for a short while, as happens at Celltex, a different approach might be better. The problem, then, is who would oversee clinics that fall outside FDA jurisdiction. Whoever ends up doing it must balance the best scientific evidence with the needs of patients. The International Society for Stem Cell Research has written guidelines for moving therapies into the clinic. What’s missing from these is genuine engagement with the people whose interests they are supposed to serve. That must change. If people desperate for therapies are simply told what is best for them, it should come as no surprise if they ignore the official advice and flock to snake-oil merchants flogging easy “cures”. n
More light, less heat DEBATES over fracking tend to generate more heat than light. Nowhere is that more true than in the UK, where the past week has seen a former government energy adviser suggest that the practice should be confined to the “desolate” north-east, even as vociferous protests erupted near a normally tranquil village in the prosperous Home Counties.
Safety concerns over fracking are overblown – but so are the boosterish claims made for its environmental and economic benefits (see pages 6 and 36). The British Geological Survey has so far assessed only the Bowland shale in the north of England, concluding that there is perhaps twice as much “gas in place” as previously thought. But it remains
to be seen if this gas is recoverable or good for burning. So drill and find out, say advocates. Not in my backyard, say protesters. Enough. Neither nimbyism nor bravado is appropriate given what we know about the risks and rewards of fracking. Better to bring that vigour to bear on a wider debate aimed at shedding light on the nature of a truly sustainable energy policy for the UK – and, for that matter, the world. n
Technical tweaks won’t stop abuse
off access to child pornography; in Twitter’s for failing to clamp down swiftly on misogynistic threats. In both cases, the reaction has been to demand technical fixes (see page 22). But Google is not where most child porn is found, while a Twitter “abuse button” is itself open to misuse. Tweaks to a website’s functionality are not
enough to curb such malfeasance. What’s needed are meaningful sanctions against perpetrators, which implies re-examination of the prized right to anonymity. Who would we trust to enforce such sanctions – companies or governments? These are profound challenges to online culture: there are no quick fixes to be had. n
FIRST Google, now Twitter. Internet giants are fending off public anger over their perceived reluctance to intervene when users misbehave – in Google’s case, by supposedly failing to cut
10 August 2013 | NewScientist | 5
LOCATIONS UK Lacon House, 84 Theobald’s Road, London WC1X 8NS Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1200 Fax +44 (0) 20 7611 1250 Australia Tower 2, 475 Victoria Avenue, Chatswood, NSW 2067 Tel +61 2 9422 8559 Fax +61 2 9422 8552 USA 225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451 Tel +1 781 734 8770 Fax +1 720 356 9217 201 Mission Street, 26th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105 Tel +1 415 908 3348 Fax +1 415 704 3125 Subscription Service For our latest subscription offers, visit newscientist.com/subscribe Customer and subscription services are also available by: Telephone +44 (0) 844 543 80 70 Email [email protected] Web newscientist.com/subscribe Post New Scientist, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex RH16 3DH One year subscription (51 issues) UK £150 cONTACTS Contact us newscientist.com/contact Who’s who newscientist.com/people General & media enquiries Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] Editorial Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1202 [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] Picture desk Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1268 Display Advertising Tel +44 (0) 20 7611 1291 [email protected] Recruitment Advertising UK Tel +44 (0) 20 8652 4444 [email protected] UK Newsstand Tel +44 (0) 20 3148 3333 Newstrade distributed by Marketforce UK Ltd, The Blue Fin Building, 110 Southwark St, London SE1 OSU Syndication Tribune Media Services International Tel +44 (0) 20 7588 7588
© 2013 Reed Business Information Ltd, England New Scientist is published weekly by Reed Business Information Ltd. ISSN 0262 4079. Registered at the Post Office as a newspaper and printed in England by Polestar (Colchester)
Whose body is it anyway? Patients are right to question government control of their stem cells THERE’S trouble brewing over of bone growing in her eyelid stem cells in Texas, and it raises a after stem cell injections. big question for the future of This incoherent situation arises medicine. How should we from trying to shoehorn stem regulate treatments that use cells cells into a regulatory system taken from a patient’s own body? designed for conventional drugs. If the cells are grown in culture, One solution would be to create a then the US Food and Drug new body to regulate all therapies Administration (FDA) views them that use a patient’s own cells. as “drugs”, which must undergo a Obvious as this sounds, it is lengthy approval process. That has enraged clients of a company “The government has no business telling people in Houston called Celltex, who argue that the government has no what they can’t do with their own body parts” business telling them what they can and can’t do with their own body parts (see page 42). unlikely to happen in a political However, there is minimal climate that has little enthusiasm oversight of clinics that don’t for costly new bureaucracy. culture cells, because simple A sensible alternative would transplants are a “practice of be to adapt the existing system medicine”, which the FDA doesn’t to bring it in line with modern control. That is a concern, given realities. Strict drug-style anecdotal reports of problems, regulation seems appropriate for such as a woman who had shards extensively manipulated cells.
But if a person’s cells are merely grown in culture for a short while, as happens at Celltex, a different approach might be better. The problem, then, is who would oversee clinics that fall outside FDA jurisdiction. Whoever ends up doing it must balance the best scientific evidence with the needs of patients. The International Society for Stem Cell Research has written guidelines for moving therapies into the clinic. What’s missing from these is genuine engagement with the people whose interests they are supposed to serve. That must change. If people desperate for therapies are simply told what is best for them, it should come as no surprise if they ignore the official advice and flock to snake-oil merchants flogging easy “cures”. n
More light, less heat DEBATES over fracking tend to generate more heat than light. Nowhere is that more true than in the UK, where the past week has seen a former government energy adviser suggest that the practice should be confined to the “desolate” north-east, even as vociferous protests erupted near a normally tranquil village in the prosperous Home Counties.
Safety concerns over fracking are overblown – but so are the boosterish claims made for its environmental and economic benefits (see pages 6 and 36). The British Geological Survey has so far assessed only the Bowland shale in the north of England, concluding that there is perhaps twice as much “gas in place” as previously thought. But it remains
to be seen if this gas is recoverable or good for burning. So drill and find out, say advocates. Not in my backyard, say protesters. Enough. Neither nimbyism nor bravado is appropriate given what we know about the risks and rewards of fracking. Better to bring that vigour to bear on a wider debate aimed at shedding light on the nature of a truly sustainable energy policy for the UK – and, for that matter, the world. n
Technical tweaks won’t stop abuse
off access to child pornography; in Twitter’s for failing to clamp down swiftly on misogynistic threats. In both cases, the reaction has been to demand technical fixes (see page 22). But Google is not where most child porn is found, while a Twitter “abuse button” is itself open to misuse. Tweaks to a website’s functionality are not
enough to curb such malfeasance. What’s needed are meaningful sanctions against perpetrators, which implies re-examination of the prized right to anonymity. Who would we trust to enforce such sanctions – companies or governments? These are profound challenges to online culture: there are no quick fixes to be had. n
FIRST Google, now Twitter. Internet giants are fending off public anger over their perceived reluctance to intervene when users misbehave – in Google’s case, by supposedly failing to cut
10 August 2013 | NewScientist | 5