Cheap shots at science’s expense

Joe Bennett’s amusing commentary on efforts to find the Loch Ness Monster using cutting edge DNA technology (July 18) makes lots of good points. But really it is high time we stopped taking cheap shots at genuine scientific investigations.

Lots of things the boffins get up to may well appear laughable, but nonetheless have logical objectives and valuable outcomes.

Indeed, the entire molecular biology revolution comes in part from the efforts of people who just wanted to better understand how bacteria got together to have sex. Now we have CSI and DNA profiling to keep us all safe – go figure.

In the search for Nessie herself, the investigators may well be grandstanding to some extent. But who can blame them when funding is so hard to get. Their work will test the use of next-generation DNA technology to carry out environmental monitoring with great efficiency. Much faster than trying to count all the bugs and beetles in the lake.

Will they find evidence of the monster? Here I agree with Bennett in saying ‘‘probably not’’, and ‘‘certainly not’’ if they are hunting pleisosaurs.

Besides we already know what Nessie is. There are enough eyewitness accounts and we have the key photograph in the article. This one clearly shows the dorsal fin of a killer whale as the animal heads away and to the left side of the picture. Such creatures can gain access to Loch Ness from the sea at the Inverness end of the Caledonian Canal.

So please keep up the good work, Joe, but do lay off the good guys.

Geoff Chambers, Alumnus Scholar in Molecular Biology and Evolution, School of Biological Sciences, Victoria University of Wellington {abridged]

Waste hard to avoid

That rubbish disposal charges are rising may be inevitable as it may be getting harder to find places to dump it, but please do not say it is being done to encourage people not to dump.

First, manufacturers seem to delight in producing increasingly complicated packaging, and the items they make seemingly last less and less time.

You cannot live in our modern society and participate in it without generating waste. If you buy something, chances are you qualify for a ‘‘free gift’’, which as often as not is something nobody wants, so more waste is deposited.

As for encouraging recycling, it appears now that is merely changing where whatever is dumped because we do not have the manufacturing facilities to use the waste.

Ian Miller, Belmont

Fluoride dilemma

The Supreme Court recently ruled that water fluoridation is compulsory medical treatment – but is legal.

The court also say ingesting fluoride added to water is qualitatively no different from ingesting a fluoride tablet provided by a health practitioner.

The Ministry of Health regulates the dose of fluoride tablets; for example, no safe dose for pregnant women or for children under three and limitations for other ages. Section 23(c) of the Health Act empowers and directs local authorities to do various things, including: ‘‘If satisfied that any nuisance, or any condition likely to be injurious to health

. . . exists in the district, to cause all proper steps to be taken to secure the abatement of the nuisance or the removal of the condition.’’

This poses a serious dilemma for councils: Which is the greater nuisance or condition injurious to health – dental caries in some people or damage to the unborn and infants?

So there is a strong case for councils to issue similar fluoride warnings and dosage information, but if they did it would spell the end of water fluoridation.

Mike Woods, Paraparaumu

Coffee enough

Why does Wreda think taking clients out to expensive restaurants and plying them with expensive food and wine is the way to use public money to its best effect ($95,000 to wine and dine, July 19)?

Sober daytime meetings with coffee or lunch provided, with a booklet of Wellington’s attractions for leisure activities, would seem more fitting and might even reap greater benefits.

Anne Lee, Crofton Downs

Give us a decent bus service

I have written, over the last few weeks, to Metlink, to Greater Wellington Regional Council, individual council members, and some MPs to protest over the cancellation of all off-peak bus services in my area. (The last bus, No 34, now leaves at 9.11am.)

None of them have even had the courtesy to send me a decent reply. I am not satisfied; I will not accept this. I would never have gone to live in an area where the last bus departed at 9.11am.

I suggest all ratepayers similarly affected by the loss of a bus service withhold a portion of their rates until a decent service is restored, on the grounds that a service to which their rates contribute no longer exists.

Elizabeth Newton, Karori

It is hard to understand why the Kingston terminus bus stop has been moved to a most inconvenient, isolated location across the road from where it previously was. The old stop was next to the Kingston shops and had a shelter for waiting passengers. The new stop has no shelter and commuters have to cross a busy street to get to it. As well as being more convenient, the old stop has had for many years the resident Kingston bus stop cat Snoopy. She will miss and be missed by lots of bus users.

Mike Dwyer, Kingston

Cartoon offensive

Tom Scott’s cartoon (July 19) was both offensive and deeply insensitive – need we remind you that two babies have died from congenital syphilis? We fail to see anything humorous about this situation.

Blame the mothers is such a tired old trope. From whom does Mr Scott think these women may have contracted this infection in the first place? Blaming the mothers fails to acknowledge that some women don’t have the agency or opportunity to get care for themselves either before or during a pregnancy. Blaming the mothers fails to acknowledge that our health system can be a daunting place for women to negotiate.

As an organisation, we stand by women. We are looking at our own processes, particularly those around pregnancy testing, to ensure we’re taking every opportunity to provide care where it’s needed. Every year, we take about 13,500 pregnancy tests – that’s 13,500 opportunities to make sure that problems, such as syphilis, are diagnosed and treated in a professional, confidential and non-judgmental manner.

Jackie Edmond, chief executive, Family Planning NZ

Assange a danger to us all

Paul Bruce (July 19) asks for Julian Assange to be given protection in New Zealand on account of his exposure of US criminality across the globe.

But Assange has also collaborated directly with Putin, Trump, Sean Hannity, Farage, Steve Bannon and Roger Stone to name but a few.

Mr Assange has done much to undermine the foundations of liberal democracy – not for those on the Left but for those the extreme Right.

His work for Putin, Trump and Farage etc. actually endangers us all – in the real world.

Assange doesn’t deserve our protection, freedom or sanctuary. He deserves prison. George Angus, Newtown [abridged]