The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7159 p170
4 August 2001

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Mesopotamian menace
Plumbing the depths
Energy galore

Mesopotamian menace

There is a detailed account in Science for 6 July of the extensive destruction that has decimated the cultural treasures of Mesopotamia during the past decade in Iraq, and of measures that are now being taken to reduce any future spoliation of the country.

The region surrounding the rivers Tigris and Euphrates has a long and complex history which has seen the rise of technological innovations, artistic styles, religious and social experiments, not to mention innumerable savage invasions and political upheavals. The nature of the geography has meant that natural defences such as those that permitted relative stability in ancient Egypt have been lacking in Iraq, with frightful consequences for its cultural heritage.

In the early 19th century, European adventurers were fascinated by the great mysterious mounds distributed all over the deserts of Mesopotamia, and the many archaeologists whose curiosity had been aroused made discoveries that attracted the studies of learned bodies all over the world. Woolley’s excavations at Ur provided enough material for many museums, and in the 1920s Gertrude Bell founded the Iraqi Museum in Baghdad and inspired the creation of a school of archaeology there. Nevertheless, excavation in Iraq was always challenging, with notorious difficulty being experienced in obtaining permits and visas, complicated by fiercely hot summers alternating with drizzly winters. When the invasion of Kuwait occurred in 1990, the ravages of war and the flight of foreign archaeologists from the area added to the confusion.

One problem was to secure a degree of safety for museum exhibits in Iraq. Particularly valuable objects such as the bronze head of an Akkadian king from Nimrud were deposited in bank vaults. Pieces too heavy to move were wrapped in sponge and covered with sandbags. While the allied bombing of Iraq did little damage to cultural objects, the extensive riots afterwards resulted in the destruction or looting of museums in Basra and Amara. It is calculated that 11 of Iraq’s 13 regional museums were looted by mobs. Despite brutal measures taken by Saddam Hussein against the revolts, enormous damage was done to archaeological treasures, and thousands of objects disappeared. Impoverished rural populations were severely tempted to loot abandoned sites, and antiquities markets today are coming across much saleable material that has been dishonestly and forcefully acquired by unscrupulous dealers. Looting continues, and one of its more distressing manifestations is that statues are being sawn into fragments to enable them to be smuggled, despite draconian punishments for those detected. Meanwhile, Iraqi archaeologists are doing their best to limit the damage, despite the severe difficulty they experience in getting help from foreign colleagues, who are largely excluded from the country while the political and trade embargoes on Iraq remain in force.

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Plumbing the depths

A more cynical attitude towards human health and welfare can hardly be imagined than the attitude of a tobacco company, as reported in the BMJ for 21 July, in promoting its sales in the Czech Republic. In an analysis of the benefits that tobacco smoking confers on governments and populations, the economic benefits rank above any evidence of harm, apparently. Smoking saves the community vast sums of money through enabling the premature deaths of smokers, thereby bringing savings on health care, pensions and housing for the elderly, the tobacco merchants claim.

It is difficult to envisage a more callous and contemptuous approach to the thorny interaction between health and tobacco. There is, of course, a logical case for arguing that governments make a great deal of income by taxing tobacco and alcohol in particular, and therefore cannot look favourably on attempts to reduce the drug habit associated with them. Yet there is also a moral aspect. When it becomes a matter of choice between people and profits, politicians of all persuasions seem to prefer the cash every time. A sad commentary on our scale of relative values, indeed!

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Energy galore

The other evening I was watching a group of noctule bats hunting above the trees surrounding my garden. The incredible thing about them was the vast amount of energy they must have expended in swooping upon what can have been only a handful of flying insects just to keep themselves alive. And on another occasion I experienced considerable irritation at the perpetual buzzing of a large black housefly following an apparently random flight pattern with some mysterious objective that I could not fathom.

The energy these creatures must have expended cannot have been provided by the metabolic gains during their flight. And if energy out exceeds energy in, no plant or animal can expect to live long. In bats, it is calculated that ultrasonic cries used for navigation and hunting use far more energy than lower pitched animal calls. And a fly, it is said, consumes up to 35 per cent of its body weight per hour while it is buzzing.

Whereas such creatures have to draw on their own muscle power to sustain their movements, humans have managed to cheat. Rarely do humans walk or run merely to move or feed. Most of the activity derived from the exercise of their own muscles is expended in relaxation, sport and other pursuits that are not concerned with essential maintenance of existence.

A modern individual, when needing to travel 100m in order to post a letter, will more often than not crawl into a car and drive to the pillar-box. And, like the irritating blowfly, he will spend a high proportion of his time in buzzing, again in his precious vehicle, from place to place seeking distraction from the contemplative life. Without constant novelty, Homo destructor is an energy-consuming animal taking no thought for tomorrow or for fellow-humans, let alone lesser species of living things.

According to James Lovelock (‘The ages of Gaia’, 1988) thermodynamics, a main branch of physical science, “is the one that may go furthest in the quest to define life, yet so far has made the least progress”. Its first law states that energy in the universe is conserved. Its second law states that when heat is turned to work some is wasted. All natural processes involve entropy, which is increasing all the time, leading to extinction.

We have to face the truth that in pursuing activities, particularly inessential and trivial activities, which bring only short-term profit at the expense of the diminishing natural resources of our planet, we are living beyond our means and compromising the lives of our grandchildren.

Meanwhile, our political and economic masters emulate in their arrogant unconcern the noisy bluebottle rather than the graceful hunting noctule.

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