Name game
From William Anders, Apollo 8 astronaut
I am pleased that the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has pledged to pay heed to public opinion when naming celestial bodies (24 August, p 7). I only wish it had done so sooner.
I was a member of the first crewed flight around the moon. In training, I chose names for a few of the unnamed craters along our orbital track. These included America, Kennedy and Houston, as well as the names of crew (Borman, Lovell and Anders) and NASA colleagues and leaders.
These were recorded on our lunar orbital map and used during the mission. I had picked a small but well-formed crater just over the lunar horizon to be "Anders", since it could not be seen from Earth and thus had not been named by early moon gazers. However, a spacecraft directly above the crater could see Earth and thus communicate with mission control.
I thought these names would have some priority, but when the IAU honoured our crew with crater names, it picked three craters that were not only well out of sight of our orbital track, but also in darkness at the time of our mission.
I wrote to the IAU to try to correct this and even included the flight map. I got brushed off by its bureaucracy – and never got my map back.
East Sound, Washington, US
More humane war
From James S. Ketchum
I would like to make some corrections to your article on drug trials carried out by the US Department of Defense on volunteer army personnel (3 August, p 6). I was involved in the trials at Edgewood Arsenal until 1971, not "during much of... the 70s" as you say. Our standards were as high, or higher, than those in many psychoactive drug tests by pharmaceutical companies today.
About 7000 volunteers made it through initial screening for Edgewood, out of more than 20,000 applicants from army posts. Approximately 2500 received chemical agents. The "tens of thousands" of tests you mention would include other establishments.
A few hundred volunteers received low to medium doses of LSD at Edgewood, compared to the amounts used recreationally by millions of young civilians during the same period. Because of the unpredictable emotions and behaviour that occurred during the tests, it was concluded that enemy personnel who had been exposed to the drug might still be able to use guns. LSD was therefore never "weaponised", as you stated.
Finally, Frank Rochelle's recollection of using a razor blade to remove insects from under his skin cannot be accurate: volunteers were prevented from having access to sharp objects. Our nurses and technicians constantly observed subjects, in safely padded rooms, to ensure they came to no harm.
Santa Rosa, California, US
Vaccine benefits
From Tim Stevenson
In his look at the wider benefits of vaccines, Michael Brooks describes type 1 and type 2 helper T-cells as competitive, with levels of one going down as the other goes up (17 August, p 38). He then describes a hypothesis that vaccines reduce allergies by boosting type 1 helper T-cells, reducing the number of type 2, which are geared to fight parasitic worms in the gut and are associated with allergies.
This leaves me with a puzzle. Why are tapeworms, which presumably jazz up type 2 helper T-cells, also considered to be effective against some allergies?
Prestwood, Buckinghamshire, UK
The editor writes:
• Parasitic worms secrete chemicals that damp down our type 2 immune response in order to promote their own survival. This has the benefit for their human hosts of reducing allergic reactions.
Virtual zombies
From Alan Worsley
The creation of a new form of intelligence that humans can't understand (10 August, p 32)
The prospect of witnessing them discussing consciousness and giving every appearance of knowing what they are talking about is intriguing.
Hull, East Yorkshire, UK
Safety in numbers
From Clive Tiney
The best defence against being tagged with nanocrystals sprayed by drones controlled by border guards, police or the army (24 August, p 19) would surely be to hide in a crowd. If that fails and you become the only person tagged, thwart the system by coating lots of other people and vehicles with the spray, assuming you could get hold of it.
York, UK
International park
From Sarah Bettany
Beth O'Leary discusses calls to create a national park to cover the Apollo landing sites on the moon (24 August, p 27). You can play with words, but a US national park is always going to be seen as just that – a park that belongs to the US, and most of the world will take issue with it. The area is also a Site of Special Scientific Interest and an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. These are British terms, but I'm sure similar, international terms could be thought of. Perhaps a UNESCO Out-of-this-World Heritage Site?
Penzance, Cornwall, UK
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