Why taxes are good for you #4: health and safety, guvnor

Ever since our earliest youth, Budget Day in the UK has always been accompanied by a chorus of cantankerous moaning “They’re putting a penny on me beer! He’s puttin’ tuppence onner packet o’ fags!” Spurred on as ever by a less than objective nor benevolent right-wing media, this was taken as firm evidence of a creeping Communist plot, designed to strike at the very foundations of British Manhood. But they paid; then many died of cancer or other hideous diseases. For the evidence they chose to ignore was overwhelming: such taxes were good for their health. A 50% rise on tobacco tax leads to substantial declines in smoking, with all the falls in things like lung disease, cardiovascular disease and the many other ills associated with the widespread consumption of the drug nicotine. Regular readers will not be surprised to learn the same is true of alcohol taxes. The literature is vast, but we hope that the studies which we have included will give you a starting point.[1] [2] And add : will future societies discover the same truth with regard to sweet foods and drinks?

What is true for the particular turns out to true for the general. You don’t have to read this blog for long before coming across the names of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett and their seminal work The Spirit Level.[3] Taxes, they admit create more equal societies. And more equal societies experience a truly amazing number of health benefits when compared to less equal ones. Obesity, childhood health, life expectancy, reductions in crime-all have been the subject of careful longitudinal and randomised studies which confirm the thesis of their book. Which advances in turn lead to more money available for better health care services, leading to less obesity, better child development……no, we’ll leave it there. You know what a virtuous cycle looks like. .Again, our references barely scrape the surface of what’s available[4] [5]. But we’ll trust you’ll do a little digging yourselves rather than take our word for all of this

Which leaves it hard to write a concluding paragraph when those conclusions are so obvious both to intelligent readers and patriots. For what can be more patriotic than to promote the health and well being of the society in which we are grounded? But. as we saw in the last blog, patriotism comes at a cash price, and you need an economy to pay for it, And in the next blog in this series we will learn that without a government and the taxes it collects, you will not have an economy at all. Don’t miss it.

[1] The Case for Health Taxes Masood Ahmed, Minouche Shafik World Health Organisation

[2] Estimating the effect of transitioning to a strength-based alcohol tax system on alcohol consumption and health outcomes: a modelling study of tax reform in England – The Lancet Public Health The Lancet

[3] Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett The Spirit Level Penguin 2009 updated 2024

[4]A UK wealth tax for better health | The BMJ

[5]Does income inequality cause health and social problems? Oseph Rowntree foundation

Antibiotics in the Atacama

Just to show our old Antibiotics act is alive….we couldn’t resist posting this encouraging video story from the Guardian. [1] Written by a pool of journalists, it’s about an intrepid woman called Christine Dorador who is tirelessly tramping the Atacama region of Chile in search of new antibiotics for us all.

We have riffed here before about the search for natural sources of new antibiotics in things like Komodo dragons and back gardens (don’t try combine the two!) Frankly, we never suspected to see a story like this. Hats off please, all LSS readers!

[1https://www.theguardian.com/society/video/2025/dec/02/life-invisible-the-fight-against-superbugs-starts-in-the-driest-place-on-earth

#antibiotic resistance #health #medicine #chile #atacama #microbes

World Government: Great Idea or daft fantasy?

We’ve passed a little time this year discussing the idea of a World Government. In our series which began back in January[1] we looked at the basic idea. Many of the world’s problems, we opined, were transnational: mass migration, climate change and pandemics are only a few. Nation states were no longer big enough to solve these on their own, we said. Or rather, their existence precluded the solutions, in any reasonable time frame, which would permit human survival. We also noted the terrible danger of a World State[2] : that it could quickly engender an tyranny even more terrible than those of Robespierre or Stalin: and this time with no where to escape to at all.

We spent some time discussing the idea both in these pages and with friends and acquaintances. We received some surprising responses. Even some quite hardened nationalists and Europe-bashers thought we had a good idea, but that it was utterly unfeasible in any meaningful time frame. We think that they are probably right. For another trope of these pages has been the depressing tendency of humankind to divide itself in to mutually loathing groups, over issues both large and small. We have looked at the work of thinkers Like Amy Chua , Eric Kaufman and David Ronfeldt{3.4] We looked at studies like the Robbers Cave Experiment [5] which seem to provide the essential psychological underpinning to these writers’ ideas. All of the foregoing made us feel that our sceptics had the point, and that our Big Idea was, if not wrong, then at least hopelessly impracticable.

It is the to the credit of Great Big Ideas that even when wrong, they can point the way to fertile new investigations, if they are catchy enough. No one thinks Henri Pirenne said the last word on Medieval Economics, not Freud on psychiatry. But it was the achievement of these scholars to make their ideas so strong that they challenged further studies, if only because some were so eager to prove them wrong. It is in this spirit that we shall turn to looking at some questions we have raised. Is the Nation State, which has served us so well so far, really constrained ? Can people from different groups and identities not only sink them into a common cause but actually achieve something thereby? These will be some of the the in the months ahead. And while you are waiting, don’t forget: problems like antibiotic resistance, climate change and mass migration will be getting worse.

[1]LSS 1 8 25, 14 1 25 et al

[2] LSS 22 1 25

3 LSS 16 8 20

4 LSS 10 3 21

[5]LSS 1 4 25

#world government #nation state #economics #politics #tribalism #amy chua

Friday Night Danger: The Long Island Iced Tea

And so, gentle readers, after five years of writing about cocktails we come to the one we have always tried to avoid. The Long Island Iced Tea. Why? Because it is so seditiously powerful, the one after which you will be incapable of anything else. Tasting your food . Engaging in serious conversation about Natural Philosophy or the Liberal Arts. Or even asking the waiter the way to the John. And believe us, once you have scanned the recipe(see below, see link) you will see why.

According to that excellent website The Cocktail Society, the Long Island Iced Tea evolved in te United States as a way to conceal the drinking of illicit hootch during Prohibition. “Make it look like Iced Tea,” was the rationale, “the Feds will never spot it for a ringer”. The Society gives a recipe, so we won’t cut across their know-how. But merely to list the ingredients from our own favourite recipe will demonstrate the potential head splitting power of this famous drink. They include 5 alcoholic ingredients; gin, vodka, white rum, tequila and Cointreau. Toppers up include ice, lemon juice and sugar syrup and above all cola, which gives it that iced tea look. And as sharper eyed readers will have already noted, there is no tea in it. Because that’s the whole point

As the Society observes , some smaller cocktails such as martinis may come with a higher alcohol content. But its the sheer volume of the LIIT which enables it to deliver such an enormous punch. And so we say: enjoy, but with caution. Do not attempt to i operate heavy machinery, drive nor attempt to make love any time after, as the results will be inevitably tragic. We had one at lunch yesterday and we are still recovering. Be glad we got this far.

[1]https://cocktail-society.com/recipes/long-island-iced-tea/

The Cambrian: Giant Explosion or small blast, few casualties?

Was the Cambrian period (538-486 million years ago) the most significant in the history of Life? [1] Was there really a kind of biological explosion where simple single celled creatures suddenly transformed them selves into complex multicellular beasts with nervous systems, eyes, guts and feeding strategies? It’s always been a bone of contention with some shouting emphatically “yes” and others being a little more sceptical. “Sampling bias”, they say: correctly adducing that there were plenty of multicellular creatures in the Pre-Cambrian, it’s just very difficult to find their remains.

Now the proponents of the Big Change Theory have found their case strenghtened. Recent research. described here by Kate Ravilious for the Guardian, suggests a natural mechanism which drove the changes and caused a sudden leap in the diversity of life. According to Kate

changes in solar energy caused climatic changes that altered the amount of weathering of land surfaces – especially at high latitudes – with periods of fast weathering releasing bursts of nutrients into the oceans, which drove photosynthesis and pushed up oxygen levels, fuelling the high speed evolutionary changes. [3]

And the interaction of these changes in solar output with variations in the earth’s orbit would explain the timing and nature of these sudden leaps for life.

And our take? Something happened around Cambrian times, gentle readers-there really is a step change, as shown by the appearance of shells, backbones and all the other markers of our modern phyla. And the idea of a coinciding, plausible mechanism is persuasive indeed. However as veterans of the paleontological wars we have a few questions. Did the Cambrian explosion a generate an increase in total biomass, or just complexity of forms? If this pattern of solar cycles and variable orbit repeats every two or three million years, why have we not seen at least one comparable event since (500 million years is a long time) Were there no volcanoes, tectonic plates or asteroids to muddy the waters in the Cambrian, the way they did in the Permian or Cretaceous, for examples? We love the Cambrian explosion and the way it has driven curiosity and much good research. But like every Big General Idea-in science , history, psychology, whatever- we see them more as pointing the way to more research, not a final answer.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambrian

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/nov/26/changes-in-solar-energy-fuelled-high-speed-evolutionary-changes-study-suggests

[3]https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2025GL118689

#evolution #paleontology #cambrian #precambrian #solar cycle #earth orbit #fossils

Stem Cell Therapy: Lamarckism by Force Majeure

First of all hats off to Oliver Chu, the brave boy from California who has just undergone a successful trial of stem cell therapy for a terrible condition called Hunters Syndrome. [1] as Ian Sample of the Guardian explains. It’s caused by a simple mutation in a gene called IDS-1 which controls the production of a vital enzyme Iduronate-2-sulfatase; without which the body cannot break down key sugars, leading to organ damage of all sorts and cognitive decline. The trick has been to extract the stem cells from Oliver’s blood: replace the faulty gene with a true copy using a viral vector; and pop them back in to Oliver, whenceforth they will thrive happily, self reproducing from their own line, and producing bountiful quantities of the enzyme for life.

And this for us is the key part. Let’s repeat : the new stem cells with the engineered gene will start their own self replicating line. In Oliver. Now Oliver himself started from a single stem cell-a single fertilised ovum, as do all living things. With DNA that was used to build every single following cell as it grew . An Ur stem cell if you like. But now. young Oliver has two. All the cells from his original cell, Plus the new line, from the engineered stem cell. whose line is now flooding his system with the good enzyme..

The central tenet of biology up to now is that we all of us-tigers, pterodactyls, humans, whatever-have a single unmodifiable line of DNA in our cells. Random variations may be passed to the next generation and tested by Natural Selection. But the actual DNA deep in the cells cannot be changed or modified. That’s the Darwinian positioned its held up pretty well for centuries. The alternative, proposed by Lamarck is that organisms are modified by the environment and this information can be learned inthe genes and passed on. So far there has been no evidence to support this view whatsoever . But what if the environment contains clever humans who can choose to modify DNA, and thereby create what are in effect hybrid organisms with two separate DNA lines-like young Oliver? Is this Darwinian? It’s not how it happens in nature, and its been done by force majeur. But it sounds a lot like Lamarckism from where we sit.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/science/2025/nov/24/groundbreaking-uk-gene-therapy-manchester-hunter-syndrome

#stem cells #hunters syndrome #darwin #lamarck #evolution #medicine #health

Why Taxes are good for you #3: look what happened to China

One of the great disadvantages of low taxes is that you end up getting conquered. As China learned at terrible cost. In the eighteenth century Qing China had been one of the greatest states in the world:, rich and populous, with booming trade, advanced techniques in agriculture, and envied craftsmanship Taxes were low, less than 5% of GDP it is estimated. So was military spending. And there was the problem. For nations in the west, like Britain for example, ran at much higher tax burdens, perhaps 15-20% GDP. With the result that they could pay for vast armies and fleets which captured all the world’s sea lanes and trade routes. It’s true that the most advanced western thinkers were classic Liberals like Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, who loudly proclaimed the virtues of low taxes and a minimal state. It was just that no one serious paid any attention to them. The result that these fleets and armies were eventually flung against China. The resulting Opium Wars were not only one of the most terrible crimes in History, they disgraced and destabilised China until 1949.[1] [2]

It was a lesson the British themselves had to relearn after the rise of Hitler forced them into frantic re-armament after 1937. After nearly two decades of orthodox economics like the Gold Standard and low taxes, suddenly the latter began to rise. Fast. All those Spitfires and cruisers and radar had to come from somewhere. So in 1938 the standard rate of income tax was raised to 27.5% (5s 6d in the pound) to help fund rearmament. A 41% surtax applied to very high incomes (over £50,000 annually), targeting the wealthiest. Other hated impositions like death duties and PAYE *were imposed. And -despite what it says in the Daily Mail-it worked. Not only was just enough done to survive the perilous summer of 1940, by 1944 Britain was the most fully mobilised of all the wartime economies. Pride indeed.

Yet there is a little irony at work here . It is our lived experience that those who most loudly proclaim the greatest patriotism are also those who would avoid paying taxes wherever and when ever possible. It is their right to say such things. But ours also to at least doubt the sincerity of a patriotism which will not pay to uphold that which it professes to adore.

_{*Pay as You Earn}

[1] Thomas Piketty Capital and Ideology

[2] David Ricardo Principles of Political Economy and Taxation

#taxation #economics #liberalism #free markets #imperialism #opium wars #china #britain

PERT: Next step in gene editing offers real hope for hereditary diseases

Almost a quarter of hereditary diseases can be put down to mutations which break an established pattern of DNA, so it can no longer be read. No wonder they are called nonsense mutations. Often these mutations are expressed as STOP codons: just a short three letter sequence that stops protein synthesis dead, like a bad piece of coding in a computer programme. Now a new technique called PERT (Prime Editing RNA Therapy)allows the cellular process to override glitch in the DNA and resume synthesis. The new technique equips cells with engineered tRNAs that override these stop signals, letting the ribosome continue translation and produce the full protein. Here once again is Nature Briefing with one of their excellent short explanations Versatile gene-editing tool fixes nonsense, plus hyperlinks if you wish to delve deeper.

A multipurpose gene-editing tool can correct several genetic conditions in mice by restoring proteins that have been cut short by disease-causing mutations. The method, called PERT, uses engineered RNA molecules that allow protein synthesis to continue even when a DNA mutation tells it to stop prematurely. These ‘nonsense mutations’ comprise nearly one-quarter of known disease-causing DNA variants. As such, if PERT proves effective in humans, it could overcome the need to design bespoke treatments for individual diseases.Nature | 5 min read
Reference: Nature paper

There’s a lot to like here. Firstly the prime editing is straight out of the same stable as the CRISPR and Base Pair Editing techniques which we have heralded here for years (LSS passim) Secondly, unlike most gene therapies, which must be tailored to each mutation, PERT could treat many different diseases with a single editing agent. This is a huge shift in scalability. And if the suppressor tRNA is permanently installed in the patients genome, it is possible that only one treatment may be needed. Once again we are reporting at the early stages (that’s our brief) so all parties are careful to emphasise we are nowhere near clinical applications yet. However, just as we learned during the COVID 19 pandemic , the ability to intervene at the RNA level, precisely between gene and protein, appears to be one of the most fertile areas in medical knowledge for years to come.

#hereditary disease #RNA #DNA #molecular biology #health #medicine

Why taxes are good for you #2: The story of Dave

When we set out to write today’s blog ,the list of things that taxes pay for was so very long that we could have filled a paragraph. Armed forces, justice, law and order, roads, clean air, schools…and on and on……. But then we thought-“it’s just a worthy catechism, most of which is so evidently true they know it already!” Or, we could have wasted another paragraph hammering home the differences between high tax countries where the middle class live better than the rich in low tax ones. If only because there’s so much law and order about , you don’t have to worry if your neighbour is going to shank you. But we kind of did that in the opening to this series, so that was a non runner too.

Instead we thought we’d tell the story of an entrepreneur, let’s call him Dave, who lived in a country where the taxes were so low the Government couldn’t afford to collect them anyway. Which allowed Dave use the money he had not paid to buy a gleaming new limousine, which he took out at once on the road to show the neighbours how Rich and Successful and Powerful and Important he had become. At first things went well, as Dave glided past the rather hungry looking locals. Just fast enough so they didn’t have time to stop him, and just slowly enough so the rugged broken surface of the road didn’t give him an impossibly bumpy ride and that all those lumps and potholes didn’t wreck the suspension on his new car. It worked, for a bit, until he hit a particularly sharp spine of steel which the rubbish men had not collected because they didn’t exist, which punctured one of the expensive tyres on Dave’s brand new car and brought his jaunt to a sudden halt.

And that was where his troubles really began. As he climbed out he observed some people watching him. With great interest. Would they help him? Had he ever helped them? They certainly looked eager, judging by the way they looked at his car and his gold Rolex watch. Perhaps if he paid them to help with some of the huge wadge of twenties he always carried:? But that might tempt them to take all of the notes, and offer no help at all. Judging by their clothes, and the buildings around there, they looked as if they might need money quite quickly. As they began to close the distance on poor stranded Dave, he sensed he would find out the answer to those questions quite soon.

That, in short, is a summary of what taxes buy you. We never knew how his story ended and if they left him with enough money to pay for the private ambulance he needed. Nor indeed if he needed one anyway after they had finished. But we would observe that what is true of individuals is true of nations. You can be as rich as you like, but if you have no physical security, it’s not worth much at all. In the next instalment we will learn what happened to China when they forgot that lesson, and to other nations who had to learn it the hard way.

Stiglitz, J The Price of Inequality WW Norton and Company 2012

Piketty T Capital and Ideology Harvard University Press 2020

#economics #tax #government #china #inequality #health #defence

Making an end to Cervical Cancer, making a start on an end to Alzheimers- two stories of real hope

At a time when ignorance and anger are gleefully presenting themselves as the new norms, it’s heartening to see that some people are still active on our side. And achieving real, substantial progress. That’s why we’re proud to bring you two stories which show what educated minds, still employing the twin discipline of fact and reason, have achieved lately.

Repurposing old medicines. Regular readers will will recall our enthusiasm for lateral thinking, using old things which were there all along to do unexpected new ones. So Sharon Wooller of the Mail has a triple whammy for us this week.[1] After screening 80 commonly used drugs or vaccines , ingenious scientists at the University of Exeter selected three that might have a bearing on the terrible scourge of Alzheimers disease. They are: Viagra, which stops those pesky tau plaques from building up. Riluzole which may actually bring them down. And the shingles vaccine Zostavax which may also affect the immune system. Now we know the brain barrier frontier is pretty much down (LSS passim) this has to be a powerful runner, gentle readers. But best of of all is why these scientists set out to do this. To quote Sharon. in a nutshell:

Making drugs from scratch can take ten to 15 years and cost billions of pounds, with no guarantee they will work.

If you cant afford new ones, why not try a few old ones? Quod erat demonstrandum

Cervical success People can co-operate, even across national lines, when there is “cause sufficient”. One of these was cervical cancer, which not only blighted and destroyed lives, but effectively deprived the world of much of the better half of its workforce. Two releases today from GAVI and the WHO evince the remarkable strides in the vaccination programmes which have done do much to eliminate this disease. Hats off not just to the scientists, but also to the intrepid field workers who have combed the wildest, remotest corners of the earth, employing the most recondite means, to save lives and afford a brighter future to millions [2] [3]

When we read stories like these we know we are not alone. Our side is still out there. And unless they crush all universities and research institutes everywhere, we shall be back one day. For keeps.

[1]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-15298699/Viagra-Alzheimers-drugs-hope.html

[2] https://www.gavi.org/news/media-room/cervical-cancer-vaccines-save-over-1-million-lives-lower-income-countries

[3]https://www.who.int/news/item/17-11-2025-world-marks-cervical-cancer-elimination-day-as-countries-accelerate-action

#vaccine #drug #medicine #alzheimers #cervical cancer #women #health