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Toxic colonialism
Letters– Gay bomb
Why to boldly go
From David Hambling Feedback asked what happened to the US air force’s Ig Nobelwinning “gay bomb” proposal after it was put forward in 1994 (13 October). The Pentagon has played down the story ever since New Scientist covered it on 15 January 2005. One
From Dan Steele “We have yet to set up home on another world,” you write (6 October, p 6). And we likely won’t, at least for 100 years or so. Ask yourself: “What will ever be produced on Mars and sold for a profit on Earth?” Nothing, or anyway not for a long, long time. But space is still where we’ll end up, because rather than expending “a large share of global financial and technical resources to ensure the genetic survival of a few human specimens” (6 October, p 26) it will allow us to make use of resources not available here on Earth. There will be unlimited free energy, 24 hours a day; no gravity, reducing the requirement for structural mass by 90 per cent; and unlimited materials, already broken up into chunks, provided by near Earth objects. Expanding into space will grow the Gross World Product by orders of magnitude and provide resources for a depleted Earth. Since humankind will create the environments to live in, there will be no indigenous populations to decimate. Not that there has been a huge outcry from the Martians so far… Port Ludlow, Washington, US
spokesman is quoted saying it was “rejected out of hand” and another claimed in 2005 that it was never considered “for further development”. These claims sit awkwardly with the known facts. In 2000 – six years after the idea was proposed – the document describing the “gay bomb” was included in a CD-ROM produced by the Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, which was distributed to military and government agencies to encourage new projects. In 2001, the proposal was one of a number which the JNLWD put forward for assessment by a scientific panel at the National Academy of Sciences. No information has been released suggesting that the proposal was taken any further. However, aphrodisiacs would fall under the US military’s broad new definition of a “calmative agent”, the term it has chosen for “an antipersonnel chemical that leaves the victim awake and mobile but without the will or ability to meet military objectives or carry out criminal activity”. It seems there is considerable classified research in this area. London, UK www.newscientist.com
Multiple selves From Jeremy London I’m no quantum physicist, but David Papineau’s interpretation of the multiverse model seems designed to mess with our minds (22 September, p 7). We subjectively experience only one world, so why worry about events in parallel worlds? If I narrowly avoid smashing my car into another one full of passengers, I should still feel lucky to have avoided the collision rather than, as Papineau suggests, worry about the people I may have crashed into and killed in another world. Similarly, the excitement at watching my football team win is not diminished by the knowledge that
another self was watching them lose in another world – a different “self” was disappointed by their loss – nor would it be any consolation if I saw them lose to know that they won in a different world, and I think the players would agree. My other “selves” may as well be different people entirely since I cannot tap into their experience any more than I could read someone else’s mind. Constant anxiety about “what if” has been driving us crazy for millennia. Knowledge that we may be living in a multiverse can’t make it any worse. Dianella, Western Australia
Toxic colonialism From John Paull The new-found enthusiasm for using DDT against malarial mosquitoes (6 October, p 58) overlooks some crucial details. While the decision was made in the comfortable offices of the World Health Organization in Geneva, there will be no spraying of Swiss bedroom walls. DDT has been banned in Switzerland for more than 35 years, and for good reasons. The bedroom walls that the WHO has in mind for DDT spraying are those of the poorest Africans. These are people with little money, literacy, information or power, and therefore unpromising candidates as a source of profit for pharmaceutical companies. It is an unfortunate irony that this toxicological colonialism comes on the centenary of Rachel Carson’s birth. The enthusiasm for this poison following the
second world war has left us with a personal DDT load. Over the past half century, none of the problems of DDT has been resolved. It remains a broadspectrum poison, persistent and bio-accumulative – and it is still cheap to manufacture and highly profitable. DDT treatment of a child’s bedroom wall is effective for six months, but the toxic legacy in soil, groundwater, food, homes – and the child – lasts a lifetime. DDT is a cheap-and-dirty option that would never fly in Europe or the US, but is being foisted upon the unsuspecting, far-away poor. Canberra, Australia
Decompression death From David Raynor Anna Gosline’s article about different ways to die mentioned explosive decompression (13 October, p 57) but did not talk about the more gentle death from the slow loss of air pressure, or a failure of oxygen supply. Trainee pilots are shown how oxygen deprivation can creep up on them unnoticed. One moment they appear fully aware – capable of mental arithmetic or coherent speech – and the next they are unconscious. Similar effects can be obtained by breathing pure nitrogen. As an undergraduate I watched such an experiment performed on a classmate. The reason it goes unnoticed by the victim is that the stimulus to breathe is caused by levels of CO2 in the bloodstream. Since the victim is exhaling normally, there is no CO2 build-up, so there is no gasping for breath. This could provide a humane and cheap way to perform executions. The old US gas chambers used poisons such as cyanide, which cause respiratory distress to the condemned prisoner. A simple design change could flood the sealed chamber with pure nitrogen gas. Furthermore, the chamber would be safe to enter after a 3 November 2007 | NewScientist | 25
Why to boldly go
From David Hambling Feedback asked what happened to the US air force’s Ig Nobelwinning “gay bomb” proposal after it was put forward in 1994 (13 October). The Pentagon has played down the story ever since New Scientist covered it on 15 January 2005. One
From Dan Steele “We have yet to set up home on another world,” you write (6 October, p 6). And we likely won’t, at least for 100 years or so. Ask yourself: “What will ever be produced on Mars and sold for a profit on Earth?” Nothing, or anyway not for a long, long time. But space is still where we’ll end up, because rather than expending “a large share of global financial and technical resources to ensure the genetic survival of a few human specimens” (6 October, p 26) it will allow us to make use of resources not available here on Earth. There will be unlimited free energy, 24 hours a day; no gravity, reducing the requirement for structural mass by 90 per cent; and unlimited materials, already broken up into chunks, provided by near Earth objects. Expanding into space will grow the Gross World Product by orders of magnitude and provide resources for a depleted Earth. Since humankind will create the environments to live in, there will be no indigenous populations to decimate. Not that there has been a huge outcry from the Martians so far… Port Ludlow, Washington, US
spokesman is quoted saying it was “rejected out of hand” and another claimed in 2005 that it was never considered “for further development”. These claims sit awkwardly with the known facts. In 2000 – six years after the idea was proposed – the document describing the “gay bomb” was included in a CD-ROM produced by the Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, which was distributed to military and government agencies to encourage new projects. In 2001, the proposal was one of a number which the JNLWD put forward for assessment by a scientific panel at the National Academy of Sciences. No information has been released suggesting that the proposal was taken any further. However, aphrodisiacs would fall under the US military’s broad new definition of a “calmative agent”, the term it has chosen for “an antipersonnel chemical that leaves the victim awake and mobile but without the will or ability to meet military objectives or carry out criminal activity”. It seems there is considerable classified research in this area. London, UK www.newscientist.com
Multiple selves From Jeremy London I’m no quantum physicist, but David Papineau’s interpretation of the multiverse model seems designed to mess with our minds (22 September, p 7). We subjectively experience only one world, so why worry about events in parallel worlds? If I narrowly avoid smashing my car into another one full of passengers, I should still feel lucky to have avoided the collision rather than, as Papineau suggests, worry about the people I may have crashed into and killed in another world. Similarly, the excitement at watching my football team win is not diminished by the knowledge that
another self was watching them lose in another world – a different “self” was disappointed by their loss – nor would it be any consolation if I saw them lose to know that they won in a different world, and I think the players would agree. My other “selves” may as well be different people entirely since I cannot tap into their experience any more than I could read someone else’s mind. Constant anxiety about “what if” has been driving us crazy for millennia. Knowledge that we may be living in a multiverse can’t make it any worse. Dianella, Western Australia
Toxic colonialism From John Paull The new-found enthusiasm for using DDT against malarial mosquitoes (6 October, p 58) overlooks some crucial details. While the decision was made in the comfortable offices of the World Health Organization in Geneva, there will be no spraying of Swiss bedroom walls. DDT has been banned in Switzerland for more than 35 years, and for good reasons. The bedroom walls that the WHO has in mind for DDT spraying are those of the poorest Africans. These are people with little money, literacy, information or power, and therefore unpromising candidates as a source of profit for pharmaceutical companies. It is an unfortunate irony that this toxicological colonialism comes on the centenary of Rachel Carson’s birth. The enthusiasm for this poison following the
second world war has left us with a personal DDT load. Over the past half century, none of the problems of DDT has been resolved. It remains a broadspectrum poison, persistent and bio-accumulative – and it is still cheap to manufacture and highly profitable. DDT treatment of a child’s bedroom wall is effective for six months, but the toxic legacy in soil, groundwater, food, homes – and the child – lasts a lifetime. DDT is a cheap-and-dirty option that would never fly in Europe or the US, but is being foisted upon the unsuspecting, far-away poor. Canberra, Australia
Decompression death From David Raynor Anna Gosline’s article about different ways to die mentioned explosive decompression (13 October, p 57) but did not talk about the more gentle death from the slow loss of air pressure, or a failure of oxygen supply. Trainee pilots are shown how oxygen deprivation can creep up on them unnoticed. One moment they appear fully aware – capable of mental arithmetic or coherent speech – and the next they are unconscious. Similar effects can be obtained by breathing pure nitrogen. As an undergraduate I watched such an experiment performed on a classmate. The reason it goes unnoticed by the victim is that the stimulus to breathe is caused by levels of CO2 in the bloodstream. Since the victim is exhaling normally, there is no CO2 build-up, so there is no gasping for breath. This could provide a humane and cheap way to perform executions. The old US gas chambers used poisons such as cyanide, which cause respiratory distress to the condemned prisoner. A simple design change could flood the sealed chamber with pure nitrogen gas. Furthermore, the chamber would be safe to enter after a 3 November 2007 | NewScientist | 25