Update on Brexit

Now that we have a government preparing for a no deal Brexit it is perhaps appropriate to make some predictions of how this will affect United Kingdom.

It would seem almost certain that Scotland would decide to become independent of England and to remain in the European Union - with or without the approval of the Westminster Parliament. This would leave a hard border between England and Scotland for which absolutely no provision is being considered.

It is almost as likely that the Northern Irish would also leave the United Kingdom. They would have the option of joining the Irish Republic to form a united Ireland or to form a new union with the Scots. I would hesitate to predict which they would choose.

The Welsh would probably also wish to stay within the EU and decide either for independence on their own or perhaps also form a union of the Scots

This would leave England isolated and almost certainly severely economically and politically damaged. I would guess that within a few years they would apply to re-join the European Union - but that would not recreate the United Kingdom.

Is this what was voted for in the 2016 referendum?  I think not.

22 Jul 2019

The assisted dying debate

Some days ago I listened to the House of Commons debate on assisted dying. Powerful arguments in favour were put forward, many for patients with motor neurone disease who were not necessarily predicted to be within six months of death.

The arguments against depended almost solely on the contention that because assisted dying might be abused to pressurise dependent old people into suicide that therefore all assisted dying should be prohibited. 

This is not a compelling or even an acceptable argument.  There is almost no human activity that cannot be misused and the answer cannot be to prohibit all such activities.  For example, driving a car can be abused by speeding or driving when intoxicated or causing accidents by lack of attention, but nobody in the past has suggested that driving a car should be forbidden because of these abuses.  Social media on the internet appear to be famously subject to misuse of a whole variety of kinds some of which endanger the mental health of people who make use of them and yet there has been no major campaign to forbid the use of the internet.  To take the argument to its extreme, you might say that one should prohibit all sexual intercourse because of its abuse by rape.  In that case, presumably the human race would either die out or would have to be repopulated along the lines laid out in Brave New World by artificial techniques.  It is really hard to believe that even the most “pro-life” members of the House of Commons would really support such actions.

It is only where there is compelling evidence that it is really impossible to put in place regulation that prevents major and significantly common abuse that the prohibition argument can be allowed any validity at all.  This is certainly not the case with regard to assisted dying.  Where assisted dying is allowed – Holland, Belgium and Oregon being good examples –  no evidence is forthcoming that there has been any serious problem with such abuse.  In these circumstances this argument against assisted suicide should be abandoned.

The Brexit Referendum

This letter was sent to the Times but was neither published nor acknowledged

Conduit Tail, 38 Conduit Head Road, Cambridge, CB3 0EY

Professor Sir Peter Lachmann FRS FMedSci

15 September 2017

The Editor
The Times


Dear Sir

In writing in this morning's Times about "MPs ignoring the voters clear instruction to leave the EU" Philip Collins  greatly over interprets the result of the referendum.
At the same time as the Cameron Government put through the European Referendum bill that treated this major constitutional change as if it were a constituency election for an MP, they also passed the Trade Union Act of 2016 that stipulates that for a strike in important public services there needs to 40% of support of all those eligible to vote. This should surely have also been taken as the minimal requirement for a clear instruction on an issue as important as leaving the EU.
It was not achieved. Giving the results in percentages of the electorate of 46.5 million, the leavers received 37.44% ; the remainers 34.71%;  and 27.85% did not vote or had their ballots rejected. This left the leavers 2.56% of the electorate - some 1.19 million voters - short of what would have been necessary to call a strike in health, education, transport, border security or fire sectors.
With a mandate as marginal as this, there is every reason to support the efforts of those who would require any final Brexit deal to be approved by Parliament or by a further referendum that requires the votes of, at least, 40% of the electorate.

Yours Sincerely

Peter Lachmann

The Olympics and selective schooling

 

With justification, the whole country is enthusiastic about Team GB’s success in the Olympics and the Paralympics.  This success has been achieved through a policy of selecting the most talented young athletes and allowing them full-time training in the company of their peers and with the best available coaches.  No-one seems to worry that this process may be unfair to the somewhat less talented athletes who are not recruited into this process and who may be made to feel rejected as a result. 

This contrasts starkly with the arguments rejecting selective schooling, one important aim of which should be selecting the most academically gifted children and educating them as a group with the best possible teachers as a way of creating an intellectual elite capable of a comparable performance in the “Intellectual Olympics” if there were such a thing. 

There is really only one conclusion that can be drawn from this contrast - that the country does not esteem intellectual success at the highest level in anything like the way it regards success in the Olympics or indeed in football.  This is a pity since the cultural and even economic success of the country really depends on producing a cadre of those who by endowment, education and training, are able to produce success comparable to that of Team GB at the Olympic Games.

This argument should not be taken to imply an uncritical attitude to all forms of academic selection.  In particular, it is clearly unwise to do this selection at one single point in time, at the age of 11.  There should always be the opportunity for those who develop later to join the elite training programs; and those who fail to do well at the highest levels may be more comfortable in returning to a less challenging training environment.

Nor does the argument favour “between-school” selection over “within-school” selection. But it does imply that schooling is primarily about promoting educational excellence and only secondarily about other, also highly desirable, ends such as promoting social equality; and that it should aim to achieve both.

Sugar

 

 

It is now widely agreed that consumption of sugar in substantial quantities is a major cause of obesity and a major threat to public health.  This is not a finding which I accept fully.  However, it is a more complicated statement than is usually appreciated.  The great majority of the carbohydrate that we eat is starch which is the major constituent of potatoes and wheat. We absorb this as glucose, the monosaccharide sugar formed from starch when it is digested in the intestinal tract.  Why therefore is eating sugar – a disaccharide made up of glucose and fructose – so much more harmful as a cause of obesity than eating starch?  I can think of three reasons which are not mutually exclusive but which do give rise to the possibility of addressing the problem in different ways.

 

The first is that it is the fructose which does the damage.  At first sight this seems slightly unlikely since fructose is less well absorbed than glucose but it is a possible explanation and corn syrup, which contains high levels of fructose, is regarded as particularly prone to give rise to obesity.  One way of seeing whether fructose is particularly harmful would be to feed people with a polyfructose polysaccharide analogous to starch.  This is Inulin which is the main polysaccharide in Jerusalem artichokes.  Few people eat these as a major component of their diet and the well known complication of eating them is that much of the fructose is fermented by gut bacteria and this gives rise to the production of excessive amounts of flatus.  However, it would be interesting to know in experimental situations whether feeding Inulin causes obesity.  If fructose were to be found to be one of the reasons why sugar is harmful, this could be resolved by eliminating it from the sugar component of the diet by going over to glucose.  This could presumably be done by genetic modification of sugar cane and sugar beet or otherwise by removing the fructose by fractionation and using it to generate alcohol as a car fuel and using the glucose only as food.  There are already glucose only sugary drinks on the market, for example Lucozade, so this is not an impractical solution.

 

The second possibility is concerned with the rate of absorption and that it is the rapid rise of glucose levels in the circulation which stimulates insulin production and interferes with the insulin signalling pathways and that this produces obesity.  This is entirely plausible.  If that were the case, then forms of sugar that are rapidly absorbed should be more harmful than those which are more slowly absorbed.  This would be consistent with the idea that fizzy sugary drinks are particularly harmful since they are very rapidly absorbed and would support the contention that these should perhaps be banned.  On the other hand, sugar in chocolate or in cakes that are more slowly digested and absorbed would be relatively less harmful and there is some suggestive evidence that this may be the case. It should be possible to modify the preparation of cakes and chocolate in ways to make the sugars even more slowly absorbed, perhaps by associating the sugar with other molecules that are slowly absorbed. 

 

The third possibility is that the harmful effect of sugar results from its property as an appetite stimulant.  If that is a major factor, it may well be that the sugar substitutes such as aspartame which industry now puts into some fizzy drinks and other foods, may similarly stimulate appetite and may not be particularly effective in reducing this aspect of sugar’s activity. One might then have to persuade people to eschew things that taste sweet as well as, or rather than, things that contain sugar. 

 

Having answers on the relative importance of these three mechanisms might enable more logical and effective campaigns to be put in place to reduce the effects of sugar on obesity.  HH

Global Warming

 

If the Pope is about to utter on global warming – why shouldn’t I?

 

The recent actions, or intended actions, by the G7 are an encouraging sign that the government of the world is beginning to take the problem of global warming and rising CO₂ levels seriously.  The emphasis on developing nuclear energy and other renewable sources of energy such as solar and tidal power are certainly to be welcomed.  On their own, they are however likely to do little more than to slow down the process and to delay the time when the effects of global warming become serious.  The development of effective energy production by nuclear fusion – “creating a mini sun on the earth” -may be an exception to this prognosis. 

 

However, there are two measures that could deal with the situation much more effectively.

 

The first is necessary, whatever other solutions are adopted. This is to arrest the growth of the human population or indeed to secure some degree of decline.  The projections of global population growth have decreased over the last twenty years, The main factor that seems to have been involved is the improvement of living standards and particularly of women’s education in the developing world and, not least, the provision of bathrooms, which make contraception much easier.  However, there are still populations which for religious reasons remain committed to the duty to breed as a primary human concern ; and in some cases such populations aim to outbreed their neighbours for political ends.  This is a problem that needs to dealt with by governments rather than by science. 

The other solution, however, which could deal effectively with global warming, though it would not prevent the exhaustion of other planetary resources that will come about unless the population is controlled,  is to genetically engineer major crop plants so as to increase their efficiency of photosynthesis.  This proposal was put forward by the late Lord Porter, a former President of the Royal Society and a very distinguished photochemist, in his 1995 Rajiv Gandhi lecture.  He pointed out that if the efficiency of photosynthesis could be improved from the present level of 1% to around 5% then this would allow all the food and energy needs of the planet to be met from the amount of agricultural land under cultivation at that time.  This is not an easy problem to solve.  The initial enzyme, Rubisco, is notoriously inefficient and early attempts to increase its efficiency were unsuccessful.  However, with the greatly increased knowledge of molecular biology and of the role of chaperones it does seem possible that this could be achieved if a major effort were put into it.  Although some laboratories are currently involved in this work, it really requires an effort on the scale of the Manhattan Project since this is an innovation which could literally save the planet.  There has been some scepticism of this approach on the grounds that evolution would have achieved an increased efficiency of photosynthesis if this were possible.  This argument is, however, fallacious.  When CO₂ levels are low, there is no evolutionary advantage in raising  the efficiency of photosynthesis.  This would simply lead to the plants running out of CO₂ and being unable to continue photosynthesis.  In other words, increased efficiency of photosynthesis is valuable only when CO₂ levels are high and if we succeed in bringing them right down again using genetically engineered crops then in due course the world’s agriculture will revert to the less efficient crops that we have at the moment.  It might be of interest, if it were possible, to investigate the photosynthesis by  plants in the carboniferous age when there were indeed very high CO₂ levels and the present fossil fuels were being deposited in the ground.  It is, however, so long ago that it may not be possible to recover the genetic information one wants.  Nevertheless, this should be a project that is given huge support and one of the reasons that it isn’t is undoubtedly the irrational, but widespread, opposition to plant molecular biology and to the modification of food plants by genetic techniques. 

 

This opposition is totally irrational and is held largely by people who do not realise that all plant breeding involves genetic modification and that as a technique it is totally morally neutral.  It is, of course, necessary to take precautions about what gene one introduces to make sure that the product is not toxic or allergenic, or that the mode of insertion into the genome does not produce undesirable side effects.  That is already the case with all novel foods however they are produced.  Indeed, a common method of producing genetic variation in food plants, - irradiating the seeds,- produces much more widespread genomic change and is potentially much more damaging and therefore does require very careful control.  However, no-one should doubt that the root and branch opposition to genetic modification of plants is hugely harmful and may one day be seen as one of the main causes why we have been so inefficient in dealing with global warming and its potentially devastating consequences. 

This is an issue on which scientists should speak out.

The European Referendum

 

Now the negotiations with Europe are underway and the press is full of discussions of the referendum and the advantages and disadvantages of the UK remaining within the union.  I find it very surprising that no-one seems to mention that possibly the most important purpose of forming the European Union was to prevent another major European war.  Although it is not possible to say for certain that the EU was solely responsible, it is nevertheless true that Western Europe  has for the last seventy years  been at peace.  Sadly this does not extend to the Balkans, where there have been major conflicts, or to the rest of the world where war seems to be almost continuous.  It does, nevertheless, seem a very powerful reason for maintaining the European Union and for retaining the United Kingdom as one of its important members.   

It does seem highly plausible that not only the free trade area but the free movement of people between the countries of the Union does lead to increased mutual understanding and that this, as well as the attempts that the European Union makes to achieve some degree or integration, have contributed  to maintaining  the peace.  For this reason alone I will vote to stay in the Union – whatever the outcome of the “re-negotiations”

 

 However I am surprised that the criticisms of the Europe Union are nearly always aimed at the European Commission rather than at the European Parliament

The European Parliament was set up by those who wished to see much closer European integration and who envisaged the creation of a European Government and the formation of a United States of Europe rather resembling the United States of America.  In that case, there would indeed be an unarguable case for having a European Parliament to fill the same purposes that are served by the Congress of the United States.  However, we have no European Government even remotely in view but we do have a European Parliament.  This body seems to me to have a certain amount of power but  virtually no responsibility.  .  Its lack of responsibility is really very obvious.  I have had some involvement with the EU, largely through my association for many years with the Federation of European Academies of Medicine, I have carried out an informal survey not only of my British colleagues but of those from other European countries to discover how many people know even the name of their MEP.  The answer is almost none.  Members of the European Parliament do not seem to be responsible to their constituencies and indeed the way that they are elected from party lists means that the candidates have very little contact with their constituencies anyway.  Nevertheless, this unrepresentative body with no obvious function costs the community  large sums of money. In my view too many MEPs  tend to espouse extreme positions on many unreasonable causes, be it opposition to GMOs, and to various reproductive technologies; and enthusiastic support for alternative medicine.  

 

It would surely be an excellent idea to suspend the European Parliament until such time (if ever) as there is a European Government.  In the meantime, the two palaces that it occupies in Strasbourg and Brussels could be used for other purposes and perhaps bring in money rather than spend it; and the amount that is now spent on the MEPs could be used for socially much more useful purposes.   

It is remarkable that even those who reject the European Union , such as members of UKIP, nevertheless hold seats in the European Parliament and are  happy to take its money.

 Perhaps this is what Mr Cameron should be discussing with Mr Juncker and with his fellow heads of state.