Hanging on for Lizzy to get her man | Brief letters
Homo sapiens is the world's most productive trader, whatever that means, in an ecosystem teeming with life, writes Christine McNulty (Letters, 17 April). Then why is it that the number of wild animals in the world has declined by over 50% since 1970, and that the rate of extinction of species is now somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 times the natural background rate? It seems to me that H sapiens is doing its best to destroy the "ecosystem that is teeming with life", and that this is the consequence largely of free-market capitalism.
Roger Plenty
Stroud, Gloucestershire
" John Grace (Digested week, 15 April) thinks his dying wish to live long enough to see the last in the series of Line of Duty may be somewhat trivial, but is it? When I was a hospice nurse in the 1990s, whole families would gather eagerly around the bed to watch the BBC's Pride and Prejudice. Several patients told me that they really hoped to survive another week, not in order to meet a new grandchild or watch a daughter get married, but so they wouldn't miss out on Elizabeth Bennett getting her man.
Dr Irene Tuffrey-Wijne
Associate professor in intellectual disability and palliative care, Kingston University and St George's, University of London