Letters

"Soviets Research Animals," by THOMAS J. NOVITSKY "‘No’ to Recantation," by MICHAEL STUART LOOP "Quackbusting Tales," by FREDERICK I. SCOTT JR. "Solar Booster," by A. CENGIZ BÜKER, M.C. "Islam Not Better?," by R. BHAWANI PRASAD In the spirit of glasnost, I would like to correct the statement attributed to me in the article “Perestroika Comes None Too Soon” (The Scientist, June 27, 1988, page 6), implying a universal lack of pyrogen testing (other than human) in the Soviet Union. This is definitely not the case. The story appearing in your article was related to me by a clinician from one Moscow hospital. Because research animals and test reagents were unavailable to this hospital, intravenous solution prepared in-house were tried first, after being diluted with known pyrogen-free solutions, in a limited number of elderly patients prior to being released by the pharmacy for general use. This scientifically valid approach shows a high degree of sophistication on the part of a hospital staff faced with limited resources. For all my additional contacts in the Soviet Union, I found no evidence for lack of pyrogen testing. Most manufacturers used the rabbit pyrogen test. Overall I was very impressed with the knowledge and commitment of the Soviet scientists I met. As more drug manufacturing is centralized under perestroika, isolated hospital pharmacies will have greater access to uniform batches of pyrogen-free solutions, eliminating the need for testing at the local level. Associates of Cape Cod is proud of its role in the improvement of drug quality. THOMAS J. NOVITSKY Vice President and Director Associates of Cape Cod Inc. Woods Hole, Mass. 02543 Dr. Alex Weisskopf’s proposal of a formal format for scientific recantation (The Scientist, June 27, page 16) is a bad idea which he compounds by suggesting that frequent publication therein would be the mark of “the really sincere scientist.” Veracity is a sign of scientific sincerity, not a long list of mea culpas. MICHAEL STUART LOOP Associate Professor of Physiological Optics University of Alabama. Birmingham Ala. 35294 I hope that in the next installment of his comic strip fairy tale (“Quackbusters,” May 16, page 1), Rex Dalton will reveal the secret code by which those smiling Quackbusters and their cronies will identify quacks. After all, properly done enemas can remove impacted waste material to prevent the reabsorption of toxins, and so facilitate recovery, while the selenium in garlic has been shown to have a beneficial effect on health. This gives them both a leg up on radiation treatment, which depends for its success on the curious definition of “cure” as survival for five years after diagnosis. It would help us all to know the criteria by which hyperthermia, hydrazine sulfate, the Coley therapy, the Lincoln therapy, and Hendricks natural immunity therapy, for example, moved as they have from quack remedies to accepted cancer therapies—some under such names as interferon and immunotherapy. We might then try them while we are alive rather than have our surviving relatives lament their loss of us while awaiting the long transition to acceptance. Thanks for a hilarious fairy tale. I am sure we will all die laughing. FREDERICK I. SCOTT JR. 6925 Dogwood Road Baltimore, Md. 21207 In ancient times the only usable substance for fuel was wood. Much of our wood has been used throughout the ages for heating, cooking, and even for illuminating. Today the world is short of forests and plants, and the preservation of trees and plantations is now a serious problem of humanity, because it was a big waste to use the forests as a source of energy. We need the living plants for other purposes. The same thing is happening even to a greater extent in the use of oil. Petroleum is a natural gift, and we will need it more and more every day as a raw material for making a huge amount of necessary things. Therefore, it is not logical to use up oil for energy when we can easily find an ocean of other purer, cheaper, and more profitable energy sources. The answer solar energy, of course. I would like to discuss with anyone interested some novel ideas for more practical uses of solar energy. A. CENGIZ BÜKER, M.C. M Easat Bozkurt C. 5/4 TR-06600 Ankara Turkey Dr. [Abdus] Salam contends (The Scientist, Feb. 8, 1988, page 20) that Islam has never ill-treated any scientist the way Galileo was by Christianity, and implies that Islam is more scientific than other religions. What Dr. Salam ignores is that Islam has not produced a man of Galileo’s caliber and thus has not had to deal with anybody who has inflicted a visceral blow to a widely accepted system of thought. It was exactly because Galileo was upsetting some deeply cherished but false beliefs that lesser men in Rome responded (or felt they had to respond) the way they did. Islam itself has not been immune to such an onslaught. The ninth-century mystic al-Hallaj is perhaps the closest to Galileo in this regard. He was not a scientist but he proposed some alternate hypotheses about religious experience that also struck deep into orthodox Islam’s territory. The treatment meted out to him was far worse than what Galileo received. AI-Hallaj was flogged in public, mutilated, hung on a gibbet, decapitated and burnt—all “with the approval of the eminent jurists of Baghdad,” according to Fazlur Rabman’s book, Islam (University of Chicago Press, 1979, page 137). R. BHAWANI PRASAD Department of Psychiatry VA Hospital (Westside) Chicago, Ill. 60612

Letters

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