“I am a sovereign individual, entire of myself; thus free to do whatever I want ,whenever ; any attempt to constrain me is an intolerable assault on liberty.” Noble sentiments; but also the creed of every polluter, and their supporters in media and government, who wish to dump the consequences of their lucrative operations into someone else’s life. And death.
Historically the worse pollution happens with the sudden appearance of new, rapidly changing industries. For the simple reason that old established legislation was quite inadequate to meet the threats. The new cities of the industrial revolution were famous for smoke, disease and contaminated water. It took decades and centuries of bitterly contested legislation to bring even minimal standards of health and safety. But no one would deny that it was worth it. An even better example was food purity legislation. Early mass produced foods were full of questionable ingredients including strychnine and lead (which helped with flavour and appearance) or just bulkers like water and chalk. It took the efforts of reformers like Arthur Hill Hassall (1817-1894) *and many others, in many countries, to effect reforms.
The massive explosion in information technology has allowed anyone and everyone to dump whatever they want into the common pool of human knowledge. All cry the same “I am free to say want-my opinion is as good as yours!” The damage effected has been clear for all to see.
The need for legislation to control the quality of what is put into the public domain is now overwhelming. Oddly enough, examples of good practice exist, which might give us a clue as to how standards might evolve. Let’s take the Scientific Journal Nature as an example. Anyone is free to send anything to it. They may expound on an almost infinite number of topics from Archaeology to Zoology. However, the Editor sets certain limits before he will publish. These include standards on proof, evidence, verifiability and logic. Intolerable affronts to many, no doubt. But they have made Nature a byword for trustworthiness-and therefor a product of high value. Try a subscription if you don’t believe us. And these standards can be found across many journals.
Parliamentary legislation need not stand in the way of free speech or liberty. But a common space needs common rules of behaviour. The internet is no different.
Well, New Years Eve has always been a traditional time for fun and japes and conga lines-and lots and lots of champagne. Sadly, old Mr Covid-19 is going to crimp that this year, and by more than a little! But, do not despair, god reader. We at LSS have a couple of delicious champagne cocktail recipes for you to try as the big countdown to the glorious hour begins.
French ’75
Supposedly named after a powerful piece of Gallic field artillery, this is a fun sharpener with quite a slug of our favourite spirit-gin. The lemon and caster will give it the feel of a sparkling version of that old LSS favourite Between the Sheets. So, adapted from from Hamlyn‘s The Ultimate Cocktail Book:
Half fill a tall glass with cracked ice. Add 1 measure of good dry gin, the juice of half a fresh lemon, one teaspoon of caster sugar, and chilled champagne. These days Bollinger or Veuve Clicquot are perfectly acceptable, unless you live in somewhere like Monaco. You can decorate this one well with orange, lemon or lime slices to give that real party feel.
The Bellini
Most readers of LSS will be more than familiar with Renaissance Art, and the works of Giovani Bellini in particular. We know this from our focus groups. So it may come as no surprise that this one was named after the eponymous author of such works as St Jerome in the Desert, Christ Blessing and St Francis in Ecstasy. We are a bit unsure about that last one; surely a small tipple before evensong would have been sufficient? Anyway, once St Francis had come back down he, and you, could well have enjoyed the following. Again it is from our immortal Hamlyn, which is to us what Das Kapital is to the followers of Karl Marx.
Take a large, robust wineglass. Add two measures of fresh peach juice. Add four measures of chilled champagne and a dash of grenadine. Hamlyn recommends peach slices to decorate. We say: use your imagination, it’s New Year’s Eve!
You can read the full histories and more about these cocktails below via Wikipedia. But don’t forget, Knowledge and objective learning are now in deep, deep danger. Wikipedia is one of the best guardians of truth that we have. And so we earnestly beg you to think how much you can donate to this marvellous resource. They too must survive another year: details below in the links.
Regular readers of LSS have sometimes criticised us for taking a sunny, over-optimistic view on the possibilities of human progress. We have been accused of thinking like a nineteen sixties schoolboy, dazzled by new technologies like antibiotics, spaceflight and James Bond gadgets. Naively asserting that progress in one field will automatically lead to progress elsewhere. Blind to the fact that the mass of humankind are doltish ignoramuses, driven by greed and loathing. (And sex, as we shall see below). Today we offer two stories which offer evidence both against us and for us.
Superresistant gonorrhea: The case against LSS
Some years ago, some clever scientists developed a nice little antibiotic called azithromycin. It can be used in all sorts of cases, including respiratory illnesses, but was especially useful against the well known STI gonorrhea. During the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, clinicians threw everything they could at patients with Covid-19, including azithromycin; it seemed to have some use with associated respiratory conditions. The trouble with mass prescription of antibiotics is that mass resistance soon develops. Meanwhile millions of people continued having sex (what happened to the lockdown restrictions?-ed) and now cases of super-resistant gonorrhea are shooting up. The whole sorry saga is admirably told by Natalie Rahhal in the Mail.
The original discovery of the importance and structure of nucleic acids has unleashed a torrent of discovery and change in fields as diverse as genetic engineering and Forensic Science. Today Nuno Dominguez of El Pais details exciting new techniques developed by a team at the University of Pennsylvania in RNA vaccines. They have developed a tiny nanocapsule which will deliver their virus directly to the target tissue. Small modifications in RNA could allow a whole class of vaccines to counter 30 diseases including AIDS and flu -and may even let you synthesise your own monoclonal antibodies. It’s amazing stuff, but English speakers will need their translator.
So how long before the work of the second group is abused and wasted like azithromycin was? Why do we, as a species, shoot ourselves in the foot, as it were, time and time again? Are we truly doltish and ignorant, as asseverated above? Perhaps there is another answer, captured by Franklin D Roosevelt, that greatest of American Presidents, who on his inauguration in 1933 stated:
the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, the nameless unreasoning terror which paralyses needed efforts to convert retreat into advance…”
There’s no question that the sudden appearance of new strains of the SARS-Cov-2 virus has caused everyone a whole set of new problems. Particularly in places where it was already pretty much out of control. If this mutation problem becomes endemic, then we will have the virus with us for decades to come. New research suggests that this could well now happen.
As every schoolchild knows, a certain number of random genetic mutations are thrown up in every new generation. So a very large and growing population will throw up a relatively large number of mutations. But a smaller, stable population ,which can reproduce itself for many generations, will eventually throw up the same number in time. If SARS-Cov-2 could find a place to hide and maintain a steady population, it could be generating dangerous new strains in 2030 and 2040.
And what better place than the human gut? It is warm and wet with lots of vulnerable soft tissue. It has regular flows in out to facilitate spreading and colonisation of new victims. Now a new Chinese study, covered by the Times of India, points to worrying signs that the virus has found a home in human guts. So far the sample size is small. But that is not a ground to dismiss, but rather an urgent wake up call for a much bigger one. It may be that vaccines could counter it: but the trouble with that one is that gut cells are slightly isolated from other tissues in the body, and a vaccine may struggle to reach them. For us at LSS, this is a disturbing new trend, and it needs to be addressed.
We thank Mr Gary Herbert of Buckinghamshire for this story
Long ago in 1992, we had the privilege of sitting with one of the country’s leading News Journalists and one of the country’s leading Economics Journalists. The Berlin Wall had not long fallen. In the UK, the Tories were about to win their fourth successive general election. The Triumph of Capitalism seemed complete. The News Journalist opined that there were only two ways to run an economy-Capitalist and Socialist. Self evidently, the Capitalist way had triumphed. Capitalism provided freedom, and private property. It was more fun. Above all, it was innovative, dynamic and would leave sclerotic Socialism far behind. The Economics Journalist demurred. There were, he felt, different ways to run Capitalism, and different countries might have different experiences of the heady brew.
In Rentier Capitalism, Brett Christopher thinks that the predictions of the Economics Journalist have come true, at least in the UK. * He sees an economy riven by massive inequalities on a scale unknown since before the Second World War. There is a massive disparity between the owners of assets and those who have nothing but debts, starkly highlighted by the dysfunctional housing market. With wealth, and hence information, concentrated in few hands, decision outcomes, both economic and political, are poor. Christopher devotes a whole chapter to the hot topic of contracts for all kinds of public service provision from test and trace to railways as evidence of this.
For Christopher Rentier Capitalism is defined as “…income derived from ownership or control of scarce assets under conditions of low or no competition” By definition it will produce a sluggish, low innovation economy of proles and toffs, where the latter have no incentive to invest overmuch, and the former exist as a precariat living from paycheck to loan to rent day. Hence Britain’s appalling record on productivity. Christopher is in the tradition of reformist economists such as Thomas Piketty and Will Hutton, as well as various studies of Britain’s peculiar decline from about 1850 onwards.
Is the system self corrective? So far the British Ruling class has been adept at self preservation by throwing crumbs like right to buy and a wholesale blaming of foreigners for the country’s afflictions. Will it always work? The rise of a propertyless educated stratum, and angry and enabled to allege deep seam of injustice has always been the storm signal of violent revolution to come. The owners of the media, the essential guardians of the system, are becoming older and showing signs of losing their power. In which case, batten your hatches.
Brett Christopher Rentier Capitalism Verso 2020
for an intelligent discussion of this book, and possible responses, see Christine Berry in Open Democracy
Sad to recall, but songwriter Ian Dury (1942-2000) is no longer with us. If he were, he might have added today’s news stories to the lyrics of his song Reasons to be Cheerful.
Does sleep cure Covid-19? From James HamblinThe Atlantic
When Feixong Cheng started using AI to explore every possible angle on COVID-19 back in January, he little dreamed that his computer would throw up melatonin as a real candidate. This humble little hormone, involved both in sleep and the immune system may actually lower your odds of succumbing to an attack by the virus. And, get this, sleep may help you on the pathway to recovery. James tells it a lot better than we could:
So-is our current long hours culture making everybody ill?
Monoclonal antibodies could throw a defensive ring around patientsDenis Campbell The Guardian
It’s quite an exciting example of how fruitful the partnership between Academia and the private sector can be if it’s done right. Dr Catherine Houlihan of UCL and AstraZeneca (of vaccine fame) are looking at how monoclonal antibodies with the catchy name of AZD7442 could be quickly injected into COVID-19 patients and the people who live around them. The drug may even help those poor souls whose immune systems are compromised by another illness. Denis looks at all of this, but we’ve also included a Wikipedia link on monoclonals for those who like a bit of background
We’ve said and said and said it until you lot are fed up. But there are just too many resistant strains of bacteria and not enough antibiotics. That’s why we love this story from Jonathan Chadwick of the Mail about DAIA antibiotics. Yes to risk the oldest cliche in writing, this could be a real breakthrough.
We will let Jonathan tell the story*, backed by Nature*. It’s a good one, with some great pictures. But for us, the highlights were the way that the researchers used their brains. Like this
1 two birds with one stone– The new class is called Dual Acting Immuno Antibiotics for a good reason-they kill the bacteria, and boost your immune system.
2 Canny targetting-they decided to attack a metabolic pathway that is both essential to bacteria, and common to many of them.
3 Use new opportunities-they employed computers to look for a huge range of molecules which would target their chosen weak point (an enzyme) (aren’t we at LSS always pushing for that?-ed)
4 Do your homework- did these guys look at a lot of tough literature before they decided that they knew what they were talking about!
We think the last one is particularly important for those sorts you meet in the pub who get one idea from a journalist or a conspiracy theorist and then think that they know the answers to everything. But why end happy news on a sour note? A Happy Christmas to all our readers. There are reasons to be cheerful.
We don’t know everything at LSS, but we do know it’s Christmas, and many of you penned in by the COVID-19 panic will be anxiously looking for a few movies to while away your forced confinement. So what follows is our personal choice of ones we think are the best in their classes-but it is just that, our choice. If you can think of any better, let us know?
Western:The Searchers John Ford 1956 Still utterly relevant; even as it explores the the themes of ethnic hatred, rape and dark obsession, it achieves the ultimate aim of art: its characters and world are transformed by the experiences so that the end of the film seems utterly remote from the beginning. John Wayne’s savage war veteran finds some reconciliation with his demons at last. All against the background of a burning, hostile landscape.
Runner up: The Outlaw Josey Wales
Sci Fi:2001 A Space Odyssey Stanley Kubrick 1968 The once world- beating special effects now look a bit creaky, and the plot hard without a couple of viewings. Yet nothing comes close to this in conveying the vast unknowable mystery of time and space. That’s why early critics struggled- the universe is much bigger than a few glib phrases and plot lines. Therefore,oddly, it’s one of the most authentic films ever made.
Runner up: Forbidden Planet
War:Paths of Glory Stanley Kubrick 1957 In war either the other side kill you for courage, or your own does for cowardice. Nothing and no one quite conveys the harrowing cruelty of death inflicted on a group of innocent men for refusing to obey stupid and suicidal orders. Some people can only watch this once and never go back. Clue-if a movie can do that to you, what must a real war be like?
Runner up: Das Boot
Detective/Noir: Blade Runner Ridley Scott 1982 So good it could have swept the categories for sci fi or love and romance, this tale of policemen hunting rogue genetically engineered replicants in an ecologically destroyed Los Angeles may actually be further ahead of its time than its release date suggests. Van Gelis’ soundtrack is masterful in conveying Scott’s moods, and Harrison Ford’s laconic detective is in our view his best ever performance. In 2120 who or what are we going to call human?
Runner up: The Maltese Falcon
Musical: The Rocky Horror Picture Show Jim Sharman 1975 Alright, we know there’s some big budget blasters out there packed with talented singers writers and directors. In our view none quite touch this cheeky melange of punk, goth and good old rock and roll. Not even Sound of Music has a cult following and audience participation like this, as attendance at a scary midnight theatre performance will show.
Runner up: West Side Story
Comedy:The Producers Mel Brooks 1967 An outrageous, painfully funny account of how two crooked Broadway entrepreneurs attempt to scam their investors by producing a sure fire flop. For us, later Brooks efforts were a little too long on pastiche and short on real comedy, but this exploration of grotesque venality uses parody sparingly, and lets is characters do the work. That said, their musical Springtime for Hitler plumbs true depths of bad taste and crass offensiveness. How can you not admire lines like “Don’t be dumb-be a smartie. Come and join the Nazi Party!” bellowed in a raw Bronx accent?
Runner Up: Dr Strangelove
Christmas: The Lion in Winter Anthony Harvey 1968. No Santa, elves, snow, or heart warming ghosts rattling a collecting tin. This one, based on real events, depicts a strife torn Christmas for the dysfunctional Angevin family and their egomaniacal head Henry II at Chinon castle in 1183. Watch as future and present kings and queens snipe, snark, betray, lie, deceive, quarrel and attempt murder around the usual lavish food, drink and decorations all one Christmas long. Do the auteurs of this film know something?
Runner Up: It’s a Wonderful Life
Gangster: The Godfather Francis Ford Coppola 1972 In a strong field, nothing has ever quite matched the dark sinister power of Marlon Brando’s Don Vito Corleone, and the array of psychotics and sociopaths who surround him. Epic in that its sequels form a near perfect triptych, it raises deep questions and about the springs of American society and where real power ultimately lies.
Runner Up: Goodfellas
Classic: Ran Akira Kurosawa 1985 Transposes Shakespeare’s King Lear to Samurai Japan. There’s plenty of blood, action and betrayal. But the tale is essentially the same: doting deluded old fool of a King gives away all his power to his scary children, and imagines that everything will be the same afterwards. Not without contemporary relevance. Spoiler alert: no one lives happily ever after.
Runner Up: Great Expectations 1948 version
Love and RomanceCasablanca Michael Curtiz 1942 Yes, we know it’s pretty stock plot with certain characters like Bogart, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre all reprising themselves. And we know it’s all a bit far fetched and too goody at the end. In that case, why do so many people like it, why does it never fail to make all the lists of all time greats, and why is it referenced again and again? Because no one’s ever going to make a better one, that’s why.
Runner Up: Quest for Fire
Epic:Gone with the Wind Victor Fleming 1939. So majestic in its sweep characters and scenery that it became the benchmark for epic films forever. Even Goebbels tried to ape it a few years later, but all he got was a turkey. GWTW managed to sneak in some quite shrewd political analysis. To some cocky southerners ,eager to flounce out of the Union, Clark Gable counsels: “Are you sure? All we’ve got is cotton, slaves and arrogance!” More prosecco, anyone?
In July 1968, authorities in Hong Kong (then a British Crown Territory) noted the first case of a new and rather nasty form of influenza. It was called H3N2 in the easy parlance of virologists. By the end of the month it had spread to Vietnam and Singapore. By September it was in the Phillipines,Australia, Europe and the USA, on its way to to global pandemic status.
By anyone’s standards, 1968 was a fate-charged year. The Vietnam war was peaking in its ghastly climax. It sparked a series of violent insurrections and soul -searchings across many western counties. Campaigners for may types of rights, including Black, Gay and Women’s all rightly see ’68 as their seminal year. A lurid light was cast by the terrible assassinations of those rather mild politicians Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. But if anyone dreamed that Communism offered anything better, China was in the grip of Mao Tse Tung’s Cultural Revolution. And the USSR crushed a fellow Communist regime in Czechoslovakia.
So Christmas that year was a pause in a Promethan year. To cap things off, the first humans left Earth orbit in Apollo 8 and, on Christmas Eve, sent back the heart-stopping iconic image for which that mission will be forever remembered. But as the nations settled down to prepare (and listen to Lily the Pink by TheScaffold) the virus just kept on spreading and spreading and spreading all around them. In the end, it is estimated to have killed between 1 and 4 million of us. and ruined weeks of life for many more. Most UK schools and families had more than one victim that Christmas. We think there may be a lesson in there, somewhere.
Firstly, as every schoolchild knows H3N2 flu virus is in a different family (orthomyxoviridae -ve RNA) to our new friend Sars-Cov-2 (Coronavirida +veRNA) Secondly, the disease was allowed to spread, and a vaccine became available in only four months. Thirdly, it was around for a long time, making a second surge in the following winter. Lastly, Lily the Pink has not aged well.
As long as humans live in densely packed clusters, overworked, stressed and eating badly, viruses will assail us again and again. The next one may not be so benign as H3N2 or even Sars-Cov-2. There may be something utterly nasty like Ebola. Science and its methods of evidence and careful thought are the only reasonable hope. So cheer when scientists offer you a vaccine. By the same token please, please don’t sulk like children when they tell you to stay indoors and not go out and get plastered.
We thank Mr David Crossland of Berkshire for this story
As we write, a terrible disease is sweeping across the world. In the UK alone there are 209 600 new cases per year. One in 14 of people over 65 are sufferers. Readers in any country in the world will soon find comparable statistics. ** To kick you off, our first two links for Alzheimers/Dementia stats are listed below.
To cure any disease you have to be really sure of the right cause. The arrival of the germ theory of disease, pioneered by people like Semmelweis, Pasteur and Koch was a quantum game changer for the treatment of infectious diseases. Sadly, the cause of Alzheimers is still up for discussion.
Writing in the Independent,Christian Holscher* gives us a neat summary- it is clearly associated with the aggregation of two proteins called amyloid and tau in our nervous systems. But are these the cause-or just an effect? Christian thinks the protein problems may be caused by changes in insulin levels, and that Parkinson’s terrible disease may be involved as well.
Meanwhile, over at New ScientistDebora Mackenzie goes for a fascinatingly different line. It’s all about cleaning your teeth! Several groups of researchers are now actively pursuing the theory that the bacterium Porphyromonas gingivalis, associated with gum disease, may be invading the brain tissues. It’s these inflammations which may lead to Alzheimers/ Dementia. As you would expect from good ol’ NS, it’s well written, chatty but never ever frivolous and so a real good read if you like science writing.
But what did we say about keeping an open mind and considering all the evidence? The NHS website lists a lot of factors including genetic, cardiovascular and a few more for good measure. The NHS has always been a comfort for many, let’s hope our friends on the right don’t send it the same way as the BBC!
The point of all this is that Alzheimers is an epidemic of terrifying proportion which makes COVID-19 look like an outbreak of food poisoning on a Benidorm Bank Holiday. It’ll be around long after Covid-19 is in the history books. And we still don’t know why.
We thank Mr Lindsay Charlton of Kent for this story
Learning, Science and Society 