Letters to the Editor
healthyskeptic
Published Letters: 671 Editor's Choice: 14
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must defy laws of physics!!
[Read the article: Anorexia: It's not just for teens]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I say "in most people" because there are a few very rare genetic disorders that result in energy metabolism that's so altered that it's nearly impossible to change one's behavior enough to not be obese. See the "obese" mutant rat, the leptin mutant, for an example. But we've looked; almost no obese humans turn out to be leptin mutants. Probably because, over evolutionary time, this mutation is very disadvantageous and gets selected to a low frequency in the population. The mouse can be bred in the lab, but under real selective conditions, it'd be reduced to background levels very quickly.)
-- Rachael F.
Good point, one that a lot of science challenged people miss. One can always find an anecdote of a rare genetic mutation, particularly in a lab environment, to claim a genetic cause. But those genetic causes in people are in fact incredibly rare, having been selected against.
Nor are they the determinant factor in real world scenarios. A person genetically prone to weight gain will still lose weight with diet and exercise.
Besides if genetic causes for everything were more common and the leading determinant for all health and disease as opposed to behavior... where does that lead? You can change behavior, but not your genes.
If someone's problems go right down to their genes, which they can pass on to children.... If anything that would be an argument for Nazi-era eugenics, genetic engineering and more selective breeding. Which I don't think is the love and acceptance outcome overweight people are hoping for, so they should be careful what notions they try to popularize.
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Broadsheet trolls, Flory and Price etc
[Read the article: Do you really want to be a goddess?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It seems that, contrary to what has been reported by Broadsheet, the kumaris are not denied education. In fact, the very same BBC article has a charming picture of a kumari putting on her school uni and playing games with her schoolmates.
Yes, more quality writing from the geniuses at Broadsheet.
The only rational explanation I can imagine for Broadsheet is they're generating hits (for advertising revenue) by repeatedly writing the most idiotic columns they can imagine, on a daily basis, knowing it will annoy readers into posting to correct their idiocy and right the harm they do to feminism and humanity in general.
Far fetched, but the closest thing to a reasonable argument for it.
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hate to break it to you
[Read the article: "The World Without Us"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]But just because humanity isn't as enlightened as we'd like us to be, that doesn't change the fact we're still the most intelligent and gentle species on the planet. Since life was on the single cell level there have been ruthless predators with no other purpose than to consume others.
Dinosaurs had their turn and they weren't exactly wonderfully moral creatures.
The fact we've used warfare as little as we have, and actually regret things like genocide, is a testament to our rare capacity for empathy and technology to choose other alternatives. Does anyone think the common domesticated dog or cat would have even the slightest bit of remorse about killing a rival group for territorial control or more access to resources? Not a bit.
Higher primates like chimps come the closest, having a great deal of empathy and morality for those within their small tribal unit numbering under 20. But even they have brutal warfare and kill one another for the control of scarce resources whenever necessary. And necessary is defined as whenever their population is successful enough to grow, making resources scarce, and prompting the need for brutal survival. Since they have little technology to improve resource efficiency, and lack the intelligence to develop bureaucracy for sharing beyond small groups and immediate relations, their own success directly leads to scarcity and then war. Still, higher primates share much with us, and are the second most "enlightened" species on the planet.
Beyond that, everything in nature is about killing the other, eating its food, and inhabiting its place, with no remorse and no possibility to do otherwise. That is what the would would be without humanity. Until the next intelligent species evolved, and went through it's own many millennium of social evolution through genocide and warfare to get to the point where it possessed technology to destroy the planet and faced the same cross roads as us.
I think it would be a lot easier on the planet if we get it right this time.