Saturday, December 14, 2013 A3
LEADING THE NEWS Clogged mainland skies get some relief
ACCIDENT
HEALTH
Stem cell research edges closer to eye disease cure
Changes to free up busy Kunming-Beijing air corridor herald reforms nationwide
‘Father of cloning’ says macular degeneration treatment is already being tested in humans ................................................
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Jeanette Wang jeanette.wang@scmp.com
Li Jing jing.li@scmp.com Changes to the busy BeijingKunming air route have increased the maximum number of planes that can travel between the two cities by 40 per cent, a move that may be repeated throughout the country to reduce flight delays. The Civil Aviation Administration of China (CAAC) said the modified route, which separates north and southbound flight paths laterally instead of vertically, would cut air traffic congestion for 54 cities along the corridor, including Chongqing , Chengdu and Xian . The air route is one of the busiest on the mainland, handling 1,100 flights daily. The CAAC’s Air Traffic Management Bureau is considering optimising nine more busy air routes, including those linking Beijing and Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou and Shanghai and Harbin , bureau official Zhu Xiaoying told China National Radio. Zhu did not provide a timetable, saying optimising air routes was a complicated process that involved many considerations. The public has complained for years about frequent and lengthy delays at airports, some
21% Bad weather accounted for this percentage of flight delays and military restrictions 7pc
of which are among the world’s worst for on-time departures and arrivals. In the first half of this year, only 18 per cent of flights departed Beijing on time. In Shanghai the rate was 28 per cent. There have been many reports in recent years of angry passengers attacking airport and airline staff after prolonged delays, which puts additional strain on management and security. The government has ordered airlines and airports to address the issue. Aside from separating flights travelling in opposite directions, the CAAC has adjusted a few existing airways and added some new segments. The changes should help settle conflicts stemming from limited capacity and rising air traffic, said Zhang Lu , an engineer with the Northwest Air Traffic Bureau. “It’s like expanding a country road – where cars drive on both sides – into a highway, so that drivers do not need to worry about the traffic on the other side,” Zhang said. The move would cut in half the risk of accidents along the Beijing-Kunming route and make work easier for air traffic control staff, the CAAC said. Cutting flight delays should also cut airlines’ operating costs.
People lie on the pavement after being hit by the truck wheel which crashed down from a flyover in Tai Kok Tsui. Photo: SCMP Pictures
TRUCK WHEEL CRASHES ONTO CROWDED STREET Hawker, 71, fights for life, six others hurt, after 100kg wheel comes off, falls 30 metres from flyover and strikes Tai Kok Tsui pavement ................................................ Clifford Lo and Ada Lee An elderly hawker was fighting for his life last night after he and six other people were struck by a 100kg wheel when it snapped off a moving dump truck on a flyover in Tai Kok Tsui yesterday. The wheel bounced off a wall and slammed into a crowd on the pavement after falling about 30 metres. Chan Ting-fai, 71, fell into a coma after being hit on the head and was in a critical condition in the intensive care unit of Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Yau Ma Tei last night. Police said the other six – three men and three women aged from 33 to 64 – suffered minor injuries to their arms and legs. They were treated at Kwong Wah Hospital in Yau Ma Tei. Senior Inspector Chan Singkeung, of Kowloon West traffic unit, said: “An initial investigation showed the left front wheel broke off from the truck because the main screw was not properly tightened.” Police arrested the 50-year-
Accident scene West Kowloon Corridor
30m
ad ui Ro s T k o Tai K Hawker
Herbal tea shop
Stall SCMP
There was a loud bang when the wheel landed … it hit several pedestrians A WITNESS TO THE INCIDENT
old driver of the 24-tonne vehicle on suspicion of dangerous driving causing grievous bodily harm. He was released on bail. The accident happened at about 2.15pm while Chan was selling gemstones on the pavement outside a herbal tea shop in Tai Kok Tsui Road. The New Territories-bound dump truck, which was not carrying a load, was being driven on the elevated West Kowloon Corridor when its left front wheel broke off. The wheel, which weighed more than 100kg and was about one metre in diameter, flew off the flyover and first hit a basket of potatoes outside a vegetable stall on the Tai Kok Tsui Road pavement. Police said it then bounced and rammed into the herbal tea shop’s sign before it crashed into the crowd. One witness said he saw the wheel fall. “There was a loud bang when it landed on the pavement,” the salesman said. “It hit several pedestrians and one of them was lying motion-
less.” He said there were chaotic scenes as people ran for cover. Yau Kwai-ying, an employee of the herbal tea shop, heard a “loud sound like an explosion” when the wheel landed. She said the wheel “flew horizontally at a high speed” and then she saw the elderly man lying on the pavement. Her colleague was taken to hospital after being sent into shock by the incident. “She was shivering. It happened in such a sudden [way] that I didn’t know how to react,” Yau said. Debris from a broken plastic chair, potatoes and a shoe were strewn over the pavement, together with a tray of gemstones. Officers located the dump truck, which came to a stop on the West Kowloon Corridor. Police searched the carriageway, but failed to find the main screw. Police said the truck left a long trail of skid marks on the carriageway. It was towed to a government plant in Ho Man Tin. The Kowloon West traffic team is investigating the case. In 2005, a 68-year-old man was crushed to death when a wheel broke free from a dump truck, fell from a flyover and hit him in Shau Kei Wan.
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ronment, worrying food and drug quality, and an unsatisfying social security situation”, it said. Premier Li Keqiang said last month economic growth of 7.2 per cent was needed to keep a lid on unemployment. On Monday, the official China Securities Journal said the central government was likely to retain this year’s 7.5 per cent target in 2014. Researchers remain split on whether Beijing may trim the target. Minsheng Securities chief economist Guan Qingyou
said in a webcast that the emphasis on stable economic growth and social stability indicated a “relatively great likelihood” that the GDP target would be kept at 7.5 per cent. But Chi Fulin , executive president at the China Institute for Reform and Development, said Beijing may lower the target to 7 per cent. “If the services sector can get a boost through reforms, China would still be able to generate about 10 million new jobs annu-
ally, even with a lower economic growth rate,” Chi said. The world’s second-largest economy is widely forecast to meet or exceed the GDP growth target this year after growing by 7.8 per cent last year. Leaders vowed to maintain a proactive fiscal policy and prudent monetary policy next year, improve structural tax cuts, keep “reasonable growth” in credit supply and social financing, and push forward with interest rate liberalisation and yuan reform.
DIPLOMACY
Tokyo’s US$20b bid to win Asean friends ................................................ Agencies in Tokyo and Kristine Kwok Japan is expected to pledge US$20 billion in aid to Southeast Asian countries at an 11-nation summit this weekend as it looks to shore up ties in a region increasingly dominated by China. In a summit between Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will announce the loans and grants, to be disbursed over five years, reports said yesterday. Abe will also announce an expansion of the Japan-Asean Integration Fund aimed at economic integration of Southeast Asian countries. Japan has expanded currency swap agreements with Indonesia and the Philippines. The summit comes at a time when Japan is re-engaging with the region after several years in which it has been outmuscled by
China’s growing economic might. Japan is also hoping to rally support in its dispute with China over a chain of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea. Philippine President Benigno Aquino, who met Abe ahead of the summit, said the two countries reiterated “commitment to uphold the rule of law, promote the peaceful settlement of disputes, and to assure freedom of flight in international airspace”. Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said Southeast Asian nations were hoping Japan and China would mend their frayed ties to help minimise the risk of tensions flaring into conflict in the region. “It must be said that good relations between China and Japan are critical to the future of our region,” Yudhoyono said. US Vice-President Joe Biden has called Abe to reassure Tokyo and call for steps to reduce tensions over China’s newly de-
[This] looks the most hopeful prospect of stem cell replacement therapy PROFESSOR JOHN GURDON
Gurdon explained it’s now possible to make in the laboratory layers of RPE cells in a sheet, which are then inserted into the eye underneath the retina to support the photoreceptors. Implantation, he said, is an outpatient procedure with an estimated cost of about £4,000 (HK$50,800) – no more complicated than and as affordable as surgery for cataracts, another common age-related eye disease. “[This] looks to me to be by far the most hopeful prospect of stem cell replacement therapy,” he said. “This would be most likely the first case where these reprogrammed cells are likely to be actually useful to patients.”
Nobel laureate Professor John Gurdon, 80, answers questions at the University of Hong Kong yesterday. Photo: Thomas Yau
Leaders promise to maintain economic growth year in the statement reported by state media. They said the focus would be on striking a balance between “keeping continued healthy development and growth in gross domestic product”. The statement said: “We have to clearly realise that the economic operation still faces downward pressures, with serious overcapacity problems seen in some industries.” The economy still faced “prominent structural problems in jobs, [a] deteriorating … envi-
Sufferers of an incurable form of a common age-related eye disease that leads to blindness could soon be cured, thanks to groundbreaking stem cell research. Developmental biologist and Nobel laureate Professor John Gurdon says that stem cell replacement therapy for the dry form of macular degeneration has been shown to “work quite well” in animals and is now being tested in humans. Speaking in Hong Kong yesterday, the 80-year-old Gurdon said: “My understanding is that the permission to offer this as a therapeutic treatment is about six months away. The trials in humans take about three months to see if they’re successful, and then after that it should really be no problem in making [the treatment] available to patients.” The disease gradually destroys sharp, central vision needed for seeing objects clearly and for common tasks such as reading and driving. It progresses with the death of retinal pigment epithelium (RPE), a dark-coloured layer of cells which nourishes the visual cells in the retina. Douglas Sipp, from Japan’s RIKEN Centre for Developmental Biology, said a number of organisations – including his – are studying stem-cell-derived RPE to treat macular degeneration, “but none has really progressed beyond early stage safety testing”. Sipp clarified that it is possible that permission to initiate a clinical trial using this treatment may be six months away, but offering the therapy to the masses may take some time since phase-two and phase-three clinical trials would take years. “It is important to continue the research in a rigorous and responsible manner, while accepting the real possibility that this
approach may not work,” he said. Age-related macular degeneration is the leading cause of visual impairment and blindness in people aged 55 and over in the developed world. The disease has two forms: wet and dry. Wet macular degeneration represents an advanced stage of the disease, and is almost always preceded by the dry version. It progresses more quickly and can lead to blindness in three months. Scientists have been working on harvesting and implanting stem-cell-derived replacement RPE cells to treat or cure it. Widely regarded as the “father of cloning’’ for his stem cell research, Gurdon was the keynote speaker at the University of Hong Kong’s Frontiers in Biomedical Research symposium yesterday.
clared air defence identification zone, including new bilateral mechanisms for crisis communication with China. One week after Biden’s trip to
Asia, he spoke to Abe by phone on Thursday to reaffirm that the US does not recognise China’s air zone, the White House said. In his visit to Asia last week, Bi-
Benigno Aquino meets Shinzo Abe at the Japanese prime minister’s residence in Tokyo ahead of the summit. Photo: Reuters
den sidestepped Japan’s request to publicly call for the zone to be rescinded. Instead, he urged Beijing to restrain from provocation and asked Japan to talk to China. Earlier this week, US Air Force chief General Mark Welsh said China’s air zone, if managed properly, could be a platform for communication on how to operate similar zones in the region. “It gives us a great mandate to communicate better and understand there could potentially be mistakes and miscommunication in this kind of interchange if we establish air zones that overlay airspace where we know other nations are already operating,” he said. Chinese state media kept up their invective against Japan’s complaints over the air zone yesterday, with Xinhua saying Abe was going to “stage again its China-is-to-blame game” at the Asean summit. Agence France-Presse, Reuters
Nobel winner defends under-fire journals ................................................ Christy Choi christy.choi@scmp.com The “father of cloning” and last year’s Nobel laureate for medicine has defended top-tier academic journals, after a successor said three major publications – Nature, Science and Cell – damaged and distorted science by favouring flashy papers over important research. “I don’t think there are many cases where an important result is rejected just because it isn’t flashy,” said Professor John Gurdon yesterday, talking to reporters at a conference at the University of Hong Kong. “If a field is important, I think papers on that field will be published.” Gurdon added he understood why Nature and Science would publish papers of greatest public interest, and that it was key to drawing global audiences to science. The scientific community has in recent years been grappling with the influence publication in a branded journal with a “high impact factor” – the likelihood of being cited – has on procuring research funding, and the question of whether worthwhile but less “sexy” subjects are being neglected. In an op-ed in The Guardian, Randy Schekman, the 2013 laureate for medicine, likened being published in the three to Wall Street bonuses, saying the journals have created a set of incentives that reward reckless, counterproductive and occasionally dishonest behaviour. “It builds bubbles in fashionable fields where researchers can make the bold claims these jour-
nals want, while discouraging other important work, such as replication studies,” said Schekman, whose UC Berkeley Randy Schekman lab will no longer submit papers to the journals. Schekman said the journals aggressively curated their brands to sell subscriptions, and did not stimulate the best research. He compared the journals to fashion designers selling limited-edition handbags that artificially restrict the supply. Nature rejects around 99 per cent of the papers it receives.
If a field is important, I think papers on that field will be published PROFESSOR JOHN GURDON
Philip Campbell, editor-inchief of Nature, said: “We select research for publication in Nature on the basis of scientific significance. That in turn may lead to citation impact and media coverage, but Nature editors aren’t driven by those considerations, and couldn’t predict them even if they wished to do so.” The open-access journal eLife that Schekman edits is a free competitor to the three journals being boycotted, and funded by the Wellcome Trust, the same institution that funds research at the Gurdon Institute.