The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 277 No 7426 p588
11 November 2006

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Taking your cue from the social skills of the bee more
Cluster bombs continue to kill the innocent after military operations have ceased more
The role of physical cleansing in washing away the taint of sin more
Human perversity dogs progress more

Taking your cue from the social skills of the bee

Any producer of honey will tell you that bees are the most fascinating of creatures.

As the hymn writer Isaac Watts put it: “How doth the little busy bee improve each shining hour!” Tennyson commented on “the murmuring of innumerable bees”. But it was Virgil who raised the main issue when he remarked of bees: “Thus you bees make honey not for yourselves.”

The great characteristic of the insect is that it is a social animal, and does not lead a selfish life. Charles Whitfield, an entomologist in the University of Illinois, has said that everything that bees do is social. This consideration has led researchers to study how the bee might help humans to regulate their own society.

There are parallels. For instance, some individuals in a swarm take care of others who are not their offspring. Some selectively seek out food sources, while others wait and follow.

Worker bees have a surprisingly capacious memory. They learn the odour of the colony to which they belong and recollect the flowerbeds and other sites of importance to them. They use landmarks and communicate through complex wriggling movements — the “waggle dance”.

As workers pass through an adult life span, usually of about 40 days, they automatically adapt to changing situations, their pheromone glands growing or contracting according to the tasks they undertake.

The custom of feeding larvae the protein-rich royal jelly produces a new crop of queens. If we can discover how this jelly controls the genetic process we might be able to understand how some humans grow fat and so enable us to overcome the pressing problem of human obesity. Instead of looking to politicians to deal with such challenges we might do better to look at our bees and learn some of the secrets of a successful life from them.

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Cluster bombs continue to kill the innocent after military operations have ceased

An editorial in The Lancet of 28 October draws attention to a frequently overlooked consequence of local warfare operations that have become part of the current world picture. This is the widespread distribution of cluster bombs, left over from military campaigns, often in rural surroundings, where they maim or kill children and other innocent victims.

According to a recent report, Lebanon has joined Vietnam, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq in being made acutely unsafe for mortals to tread, because of the litter of residual fragments derived from cluster bombs.

It is estimated that on average three or four civilians in Lebanon have died daily from their effects since the ceasefire in August, including 35 per cent of children who unwarily pick up the brightly coloured, sometimes ball-like, fragments. Moreover, harvesting and transport continue to be interrupted.

In Southern Lebanon the United Nations mine action co-ordination centre has disposed of more than 45,000 submunitions but estimates that there are more than a million in an area of 650,000 inhabitants.

It has been argued that newer designs have reduced the failure of self-destructing mechanisms, so lessening the risk to the local population. This has been used as an excuse for employing such weapons. However, the failure rate remains unjustifiably high.

The various authorities have failed to meet the challenge and there is a clear call to ban the use of cluster bombs in all circumstances.

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The role of physical cleansing in washing away the taint of sin

In the 8 September issue of Science two management and behaviour experts, from Canada and the US, discussed the age-old custom of trying to wash away the taint of sin, of which we may become aware in looking back at some of our actions in real life. The recent emphasis on washing the hands carefully to avoid contamination in hospitals and other institutions has raised awareness of this particular aspect of living in a civilised society, but the problem has been with us for centuries and is not likely to go away in a hurry.

Bathing the body or washing the hands is at the core of many religious rituals. Baptism, or other forms of ritual bathing, features in Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sikh and Hindu practices, and the idea is almost universal that physical cleansing can at the same time purify the soul that has been soiled by unethical acts.

In ordinary parlance, physical and moral purity go hand in hand. There is a close emotional association between them. Disgust represents an emotion experienced in both the physical and moral domains. It is therefore reasonable to assume that physical cleansing might also mitigate social or moral infringements, as Lady Macbeth believed when she talked of a little water clearing her of a treacherous murder.

An experiment was carried out to find whether physical cleansing is efficacious in helping people to cope with moral threats. Participants were asked to recall an ethical or unethical deed from their past experience and complete a word sequence. Those recalling an unethical deed produced more words relating to cleansing processes than those who recalled ethical behaviours.

Another test involved expressing a preference for a named commercially available cleaning product after having copied by hand a short story describing in the first person a selfless or selfish act performed on someone else. A psychological association between physical and ethical cleanliness emerged.

Every threat to moral purity apparently prompts a need for physical cleansing to relieve the emotional tension so induced. Careful physical hygiene seems to be a factor in ensuring ethical uprightness.

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And I quote…

Human perversity dogs progress
“It is of little use trying to suppress terrorism if the production of deadly devices continues to be deemed a legitimate employment of man’s creative powers.”
— E. F. Schumacher: Small is beautiful (1973).

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