22 | New Scientist | 18 July 2020
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Dietary change may help
us avert future pandemics
20 June, p 30
From Bruce Friedrich, The Good
Food Institute, Washington DC, US
Among the many steps we could
take to lower the risk of the next
pandemic, perhaps the most
effective would be to stop farming
animals for meat. By removing
that viral vector, we would make
humanity’s future much safer.
This isn’t another call for
universal veganism. Rather,
we need to work to modernise
meat production and remove
animals from the supply chain.
By making “meat” from plants or
cultivating it from cells, we will
create a food system that is safe,
secure and sustainable.
Yet just as we can’t depend
on a private lab to come up with
a vaccine for the coronavirus, we
can’t count on a private company
to shift global meat production on
its own. As has been the case with
just about every transformative
advancement, public funding of
fundamental research will be key.
We have seen this in
communications, aviation,
microprocessors, clean energy,
the internet and many other fields.
Shifting the agricultural research
dollars of governments towards
developing and deploying plant-
based “meat” and cultivated meat
will have countless pay offs, but
the benefit of fewer devastating
pandemics alone makes it a vital
and compelling public investment.Are we really the
sum of our parts?
27 June, p 28
From Josh Schwieso ,
Spaxton, Somerset, UK
Laura Spinney’s interesting article
on the role of the wider body in
consciousness is a reminder of thedegree to which Cartesian ideas of
the mind as separate from the body
still haunt cognitive psychology.
Seeing, hearing, smelling,
feeling, sensing and being
conscious are all attributes of
the whole person embodied in
an actually existing world, not
of an isolated brain. Medieval
thinkers, especially those in the
tradition of Thomas Aquinas,
took this as their starting point.
Then the Renaissance, with
Descartes, muddied the water and
sent the psychological sciences
off on a centuries-long wild goose
chase from which they have only
recently begun to return.From Brian Horton, West
Launceston, Tasmania, Australia
You show that consciousness
depends on feedback from the
body’s organs, and that this is
an essential part of our sense of
who we are. The article finishes
by suggesting that a robot with
no way of integrating signals
from its body will never be truly
conscious – but robots already
have feedback from their bodies.
Any robot that can move its
arms or legs must have sensors
that tell it where its arms and legs
actually are. If they relied only on
sending signals to move their legs
without feedback, they would fall
over as soon as they encountered
any immoveable object.
Robots must monitor their
battery life in the same way that
a phone does and automatically
alter some functions to conserve
energy when the battery level is
low. Any robots with arms capable
of picking up an egg must rely on
feedback about the pressure of
their fingers.
If the brain integrating
signals from the body is an
essential part of being conscious,
then a lot of robots are probably
capable of this already.From Eric Kvaalen,
Les Essarts-le-Roi, France
You emphasise the connection
between body and consciousness.
But what about consciousness
when the body is clinically dead,
as in near-death events? This was
discussed in an interview that
New Scientist ran a while ago
(9 March 2013).
For instance, there was a case
in Spokane, Washington, in which
a clinically dead man, later revived,
could see and hear what was going
on in the operating room (see
Journal of Near-Death Studies,
vol 31(3), p 179).From Keith Bremner,
Brisbane, Australia
Your article certainly explains
why I have long conversations
with my stomach about what
to order from the menu.Neanderthals may have
inspired folk tales
6 June, p 12
From Sophie Grillet,
Ann Arbor, Michigan, US
I’m happy to see that
Neanderthals seem to be
in vogue at New Scientist this
year. I would like to add a little
speculation. All around Europe
(and, for all I know, the world),
there are folk tales of “the little
people”: leprechauns, fairies,
trolls, the green man, mountain
dwarves and the like, beings that
are near-human, but not quite.
Is it possible that such stories
relate to Neanderthals suffering
from catastrophic habitat loss and
population decline? Could they
have been around long enough
while people were also in northern
Europe that perhaps they were at
the root of tales like these? ❚For the record
❚ Congratulations to the
many readers who pointed
out that the “Planning” puzzle
reproduced in our extract from
The Brain: A user’s guide
(20 June, p 47) can in fact
be done in five moves.Want to get in touch?
Send letters to [email protected];
see terms at newscientist.com/letters
Letters sent to New Scientist, 25 Bedford Street,
London WC2E 9ES will be delayedEditor’s pick
Maybe a second wave
won’t be as bad as feared
20 June, p 10
From Christine Duffill,
Southampton, UK
You ask how many people have
caught the coronavirus. This is
relevant to possible levels of
immunity to infection. A suggestion
is emerging that only those who
have had severe covid-19 develop
lasting antibodies, while detectable
antibodies are fleeting in mild or
asymptomatic cases.
Together with evidence that
the virus came to Europe on many
separate occasions and the fact it
was found in Italian waste water
as far back as December 2019,
this picture of antibody duration
may mean that antibody studies
tell us little about the true extent
of infection in the first wave. This
could mean that swathes of the
population fought off the virus
and are likely to do so again,
should there be a second wave.
This may mean that in places with
poorly controlled outbreaks, such
as the UK or the US, a significant
proportion of those at risk of serious
disease became ill and produced
antibodies first time round. We may
not actually need the approximately
70 per cent level of infection said
to be required for herd immunity to
avoid a second peak as devastating
as the first. Only time will tell, of
course, but I remain hopeful.Keep watching for
covid-19’s full effects
27 June, p 34
From Santosh Bhaskaran,
Mumbai, India
If there are other potential
long-term effects of covid-19, they
may only come to light when much
more time has elapsed. We should
watch for any impact on fertility,
the number of miscarriages and
stillbirths and any health conditions
in the next generation. We may
therefore need to follow up with
those who have had covid-19 and
their families for decades.