MENOPAUSE AND HEALTH I appreciate that Scientific American is working to bring attention to the issue of female reproductive health in its “Future of Medicine” report. But I am disappointed by the absence of any information about menopause, which means you do not address the full cycle of the female reproductive experience in this series of articles. Further, not mentioning menopause reinforces the cultural message to women that their value, even in the realm of scientific research, lies in their reproductive capabilities. If the reason for excluding it is a lack of research or meaningful data, that fact alone would be worth sharing. SASHA DAVIES via e-mail THE EDITORS REPLY: Davies is right that menopause is an important aspect of women’s reproductive health that deserves both more research and more media coverage. According to the AARP, nearly three quarters of women seeking help for menopause symptoms are left untreated. This is an area we will be paying attention to for future coverage. TREATING AGGRESSION In “The Roots of Human Aggression,” R. Douglas Fields explores the question of whether structural brain abnormalities may be involved in violent behavior. He cites a study by psychiatrist Bernhard Bogerts in Germany that found that more violent prisoners had such abnormalities than nonviolent subjects, yet 58 percent of the violent prisoners Bogerts studied had no organic pathology. And Fields himself allows that “genes and experience [my italics] guide the development of neural circuits differently in every individual.” Over the course of human history, antisocial actions were variously tolerated or punished, depending on a community’s ability to cope with the aggression. Today, as Fields notes, seven out of 10 violent acts among the mentally ill are reportedly associated with substance abuse, and incarceration has recently become the favored remedy. But association is not the same as causation. Evidence-based research offers some better alternatives, such as improvements in income supports, social infrastructure and peer-to-peer counseling. It appears that phrenology may be making a comeback in a society crippled by fear. KARL DICK Waterloo, Ontario Fields has a great article going until he opines, “The prefrontal cortex does not fully develop until the early 20s in humans, pointing to why juveniles should not be held criminally responsible as adults in the U.S.” I’m not sure what that even means! Why only in the U.S.? What solution is offered? Should adolescents operate self-guided missiles (aka automobiles)? How about consuming liquor or voting? And while Fields is certainly entitled to his opinions regarding our legal system, the editors of Scientific American should recognize the obvious jump from science writing to op-ed. I would be interested in his thoughts on how society should deal with not fully developed prefrontal cortices but not in the context of science reporting. GRANT MERRILL Evergreen, Colo. Fields cites the amygdala, brain stem, hypothalamus, limbic system, pituitary gland and prefrontal cortex as pathways involved in human aggression and provides some reasons as to why we resort to it. I would have enjoyed his fine article even more than I did had he mentioned ways we can limit this capability for violent behavior, which he describes as “engraved in our brain.” Researchers such as I-Ju Hsieh, Yung Y. Chen and Stéphane Paquin have pointed to cognitive reappraisal to regulate negative emotions, conditioning to affect the brain regions that generate emotions, and programs to reduce victimization experiences and emphasize social values. Culture also plays an important role in aggression, and we should be mining environmental areas for more information on controlling it. VASILIOS VASILOUNIS Brooklyn, N.Y. NUCLEAR ALTERNATIVE “Reactor Redo,” by Rod McCullum, describes new fuels for nuclear power plants that could improve efficiency and safety. Missing from the article is a mention of thorium, which has drawn attention lately because of various purported advantages (safety, nonproliferation, minimal waste, and so on). It also offers a way to escape the political onus of the uranium cycle (whether exaggerated or not, it is a bogeyman to many people). China, India and others are currently developing thorium reactors. If McCullum deliberately omitted thorium, I wish he would have said why. Otherwise, his article could be construed as special pleading for the current uranium-based industry. DAVID ECKLEIN Rumney, N.H. NETWORKING COSTS In “Turning Off the Emotion Pump” [Ventures], Wade Roush discussed the negative effects of Facebook and questions whether a better social-networking technology can be found. I think there is a simple solution: The problem with Facebook, as well as other Internet platforms, is not the technology itself; it is the company’s business model. All the negative effects that Roush articulates stem from the use of targeted ads, which Facebook depends on to make money because it does not charge users a fee for its services. So an obvious fix is to have users pay for Facebook. Then there would be no need for it to sell ads or harvest personal information about its users. The users would decide for themselves who they want to connect with and what information to receive, not Facebook. Without the ability or the need to target users, the “emotion pump” Roush describes would be turned off. As a result, social and political polarization would diminish, and voter manipulation would become impossible—or at least much more difficult. Facebook’s annual revenue is about $50 billion, which comes almost entirely from selling ads. With around two billion users, each one would have to pay only $25 a year to replace that revenue, which would be a tiny fraction of what we already pay for Internet access. And the actual cost should be lower because if Facebook stopped selling ads, all the expenses associated with the advertising side of its business would disappear. PAUL LUKE via e-mail CLARIFICATIONS “Alzheimer’s AI,” by Rod McCullom [Advances], describes two brain images as showing PET scans of a normal brain and one with Alzheimer’s, respectively. While the agency that provided the images furnished those descriptions, an expert found that they were not the most typical representations for normal and Alzheimer’s brains, although they could have come from such patients. Scientific American was unable to clarify the original source of the images. In “Reactor Redo,” by Rod McCullum, the opening photograph is described as showing fuel rods. It should have explained that the rods are contained within the visible hexagonal structures. ERRATUM “Night Visions,” by Amber Dance, incorrectly referred to a shooting star as one point of light at any given moment. A shooting star, or meteor, is a streak of light rather than a single point, created when a meteoroid enters Earth’s atmosphere.
I appreciate that Scientific American is working to bring attention to the issue of female reproductive health in its “Future of Medicine” report. But I am disappointed by the absence of any information about menopause, which means you do not address the full cycle of the female reproductive experience in this series of articles. Further, not mentioning menopause reinforces the cultural message to women that their value, even in the realm of scientific research, lies in their reproductive capabilities.
If the reason for excluding it is a lack of research or meaningful data, that fact alone would be worth sharing.
SASHA DAVIES via e-mail
THE EDITORS REPLY: Davies is right that menopause is an important aspect of women’s reproductive health that deserves both more research and more media coverage. According to the AARP, nearly three quarters of women seeking help for menopause symptoms are left untreated. This is an area we will be paying attention to for future coverage.
TREATING AGGRESSION
In “The Roots of Human Aggression,” R. Douglas Fields explores the question of whether structural brain abnormalities may be involved in violent behavior. He cites a study by psychiatrist Bernhard Bogerts in Germany that found that more violent prisoners had such abnormalities than nonviolent subjects, yet 58 percent of the violent prisoners Bogerts studied had no organic pathology. And Fields himself allows that “genes and experience [my italics] guide the development of neural circuits differently in every individual.”
Over the course of human history, antisocial actions were variously tolerated or punished, depending on a community’s ability to cope with the aggression. Today, as Fields notes, seven out of 10 violent acts among the mentally ill are reportedly associated with substance abuse, and incarceration has recently become the favored remedy. But association is not the same as causation. Evidence-based research offers some better alternatives, such as improvements in income supports, social infrastructure and peer-to-peer counseling.
It appears that phrenology may be making a comeback in a society crippled by fear.
KARL DICK Waterloo, Ontario
Fields has a great article going until he opines, “The prefrontal cortex does not fully develop until the early 20s in humans, pointing to why juveniles should not be held criminally responsible as adults in the U.S.” I’m not sure what that even means! Why only in the U.S.? What solution is offered? Should adolescents operate self-guided missiles (aka automobiles)? How about consuming liquor or voting?
And while Fields is certainly entitled to his opinions regarding our legal system, the editors of Scientific American should recognize the obvious jump from science writing to op-ed. I would be interested in his thoughts on how society should deal with not fully developed prefrontal cortices but not in the context of science reporting.
GRANT MERRILL Evergreen, Colo.
Fields cites the amygdala, brain stem, hypothalamus, limbic system, pituitary gland and prefrontal cortex as pathways involved in human aggression and provides some reasons as to why we resort to it. I would have enjoyed his fine article even more than I did had he mentioned ways we can limit this capability for violent behavior, which he describes as “engraved in our brain.”
Researchers such as I-Ju Hsieh, Yung Y. Chen and Stéphane Paquin have pointed to cognitive reappraisal to regulate negative emotions, conditioning to affect the brain regions that generate emotions, and programs to reduce victimization experiences and emphasize social values. Culture also plays an important role in aggression, and we should be mining environmental areas for more information on controlling it.
VASILIOS VASILOUNIS Brooklyn, N.Y.
NUCLEAR ALTERNATIVE
“Reactor Redo,” by Rod McCullum, describes new fuels for nuclear power plants that could improve efficiency and safety. Missing from the article is a mention of thorium, which has drawn attention lately because of various purported advantages (safety, nonproliferation, minimal waste, and so on). It also offers a way to escape the political onus of the uranium cycle (whether exaggerated or not, it is a bogeyman to many people).
China, India and others are currently developing thorium reactors. If McCullum deliberately omitted thorium, I wish he would have said why. Otherwise, his article could be construed as special pleading for the current uranium-based industry.
DAVID ECKLEIN Rumney, N.H.
NETWORKING COSTS
In “Turning Off the Emotion Pump” [Ventures], Wade Roush discussed the negative effects of Facebook and questions whether a better social-networking technology can be found. I think there is a simple solution: The problem with Facebook, as well as other Internet platforms, is not the technology itself; it is the company’s business model. All the negative effects that Roush articulates stem from the use of targeted ads, which Facebook depends on to make money because it does not charge users a fee for its services.
So an obvious fix is to have users pay for Facebook. Then there would be no need for it to sell ads or harvest personal information about its users. The users would decide for themselves who they want to connect with and what information to receive, not Facebook. Without the ability or the need to target users, the “emotion pump” Roush describes would be turned off. As a result, social and political polarization would diminish, and voter manipulation would become impossible—or at least much more difficult.
Facebook’s annual revenue is about $50 billion, which comes almost entirely from selling ads. With around two billion users, each one would have to pay only $25 a year to replace that revenue, which would be a tiny fraction of what we already pay for Internet access. And the actual cost should be lower because if Facebook stopped selling ads, all the expenses associated with the advertising side of its business would disappear.
PAUL LUKE via e-mail
CLARIFICATIONS
“Alzheimer’s AI,” by Rod McCullom [Advances], describes two brain images as showing PET scans of a normal brain and one with Alzheimer’s, respectively. While the agency that provided the images furnished those descriptions, an expert found that they were not the most typical representations for normal and Alzheimer’s brains, although they could have come from such patients. Scientific American was unable to clarify the original source of the images.
In “Reactor Redo,” by Rod McCullum, the opening photograph is described as showing fuel rods. It should have explained that the rods are contained within the visible hexagonal structures.
ERRATUM
“Night Visions,” by Amber Dance, incorrectly referred to a shooting star as one point of light at any given moment. A shooting star, or meteor, is a streak of light rather than a single point, created when a meteoroid enters Earth’s atmosphere.
