Letters–

Save the bonobo

From Ian Redmond,

UN Great Ape Survival Project

I enjoyed Matt Kaplan’s idea that

we should tackle global warming

by getting in touch with our inner

bonobo (2 December, p 40),

but the statement that “at most

there are a few hundred thousand

bonobos left in the wild” is just

wishful thinking. Estimates of

bonobo numbers range from

10,000 to 100,000. Most

fieldworkers are convinced that

the true number will turn out to

be nearer the lower figure, but

whatever the actual number of

individuals, everyone agrees that

the trend in almost every great

ape population is downwards.

Given that primates are

keystone species in tropical

forests, critical to the structure of

the community, and that we now

appreciate the important role

these forests play in climate

stability, surely the time has come

to recognise that bonobos and

other primates are not just cute

ornaments or objects of academic

study. We should value the

ecological services they provide

and radically increase the funding

available to ensure their survival

for the benefit of all.

Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK

Where’s the evidence?

From Steve Welch

I can’t believe there were so many

letters attacking the scientists

who spoke up so eloquently for

rationality at the “Beyond belief”

conference (9 December, p 24).

The letter writers seem to think

they are being even-handed, but

you can just imagine the

conversation with them… “I don’t

believe in an old man with a white

beard sitting in the sky seeing

everything, but there must be

something else, something more

to life.” But we evolved, humans

were not created in situ. “I accept

that we evolved, but still there

must be something more, some

sort of essence in the universe.”

Why, what evidence do you have?

“None, but there must be

something, I just feel it.”

I find it tiresome that people

claim moral superiority just

because they have a “feeling”.

Folkestone, Kent, UK

From Shane Caldwell

Thank you for the article. I am

one scientist who is worried by

the trend toward scientific

fundamentalism, and I am

heartened to see New Scientist

take a more objective look at it

than we usually get from the

cheerleading section of the

scientific community. Bravo.

Chicago, Illinois, US

Bioweapons for all?

From Taras Wolansky

John Steinbruner argues that the

US should not engage in defensive

biowarfare research because this

might “encourage other countries

to do the same” (25 November,

p 20). It is curious that American

leftists (like Steinbruner) and

conservatives (like George W.

Bush) share the same delusion:

that everything that happens in

the world is about the US. China

developed nuclear weapons

because the USSR had them;

and then India because China

had them; and then Pakistan

because India had them. Not even

unilateral nuclear disarmament

by the US would have stopped

this process.

In the bilateral world of the

cold war, the hope that the Soviets

would give up bioweapons if the

US did was at least plausible, even

if we now know the Soviets did

just the opposite. In today’s

multilateral world, however,

countries (and possibly terrorist

groups) will certainly continue to

develop biological weapons,

regardless of what the US does.

Kerhonkson, New York, US

The lice seekers

From Ian Simmons

Patricia Finney suggests that lice

genetics could tell us a lot about

when humans started wearing

clothes (2 December, p 21). This

also occurred to Mark Stoneking

of the Max Planck Institute for

Evolutionary Anthropology in

Leipzig, Germany, in 1999, and he

went on to collect head and body

lice from people in 12 countries

from across the world, analyse

their DNA, and calculate how their

family tree branched. From this

he found that the body louse first

evolved from the head louse

around 72,000 years ago. As the

body louse has to have the shelter

of clothes to survive on humans,

and so could not have preceded

them, he reasoned that it must

have been about then that we took

to wearing clothes.

David Reed of the Florida

Museum of Natural History in

Gainesville has looked at the body

louse genome in greater detail,

and found its mitochondrial

DNA falls into two clusters.

One of these matches human

mitochondrial DNA in its date and

geographical distribution,

suggesting that they evolved

alongside their human host. The

second cluster doesn’t, suggesting

it probably evolved on a different

host, and Reed believes this might

have been Homo erectus, with

Homo sapiens acquiring this line

through contact in Asia around

50,000 years ago.

Further research has compared

the genome of human lice with

that of chimp lice, and found that

they split from each other around

5 million years ago, supporting

other estimates of the date when

chimp ancestors split from those

of humans.

Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

Gender trap

From Fiona Hamilton

Lucy Middleton, reviewing a

book entitled The Science of

Orgasm, asked “whether

transsexual men with surgically

created vaginas” can have

orgasms (18 November, p 80). I

must point out that a transsexual

man is born with a vagina and

seeks from a very early age to

rectify the position. Likewise a

transsexual woman such as

myself is born without a vagina,

but from an early age also seeks to

rectify this divergence of anatomy

from brain perception of self.

After my two years are up I will be

able to have my birth certificate

changed to reflect my true birth

gender, thanks to the UK’s Gender

Recognition Act 2004.

London, UK

Forget free will

From Jim Haigh

Hurrah for Patricia Churchland

(18 November, p 42). Facing up to

the fact that we lack free will

seems to be so difficult that the

subject is usually regarded as

either taboo, or way beyond our

current neurological knowledge.

But it seems to me that in essence

free will is a simple matter

and it was encouraging to see

Churchland criticising

philosophers for claiming that “in

some unexplained fashion, the

will – a thing that allegedly stands

aloof from brain-based causality –

makes an unconstrained choice”.

26 | NewScientist | 23/30 December 2006 www.newscientist.com

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