Sir, - I am afraid that accusing me of arrogance, narrow-mindedness etc (D&S letters June 29 &July 6) does not address the real problem.

The editor of a world-famous medical journal said a few years ago: "there are only two kinds of science - good science and bad science" in the case of many forms of alternative medicine there is little or no science at all. What is more, many practitioners of alternative medicine do not seem to have even a basic understanding of concepts of proof, of the assessment of evidence or of the historical record which shows us graphically how appalling medical treatment was before it became scientific.

So far as homoeopathy is concerned, you can either believe that the moon is made of dust and rocks or that it is made of green cheese: you cannot simultaneously believe both, which is precisely what homoeopathy, with its absurd theory of potentisation by multiple dilutions, asks us to do.

I can do no better than quote to your readers the words of John Diamond, a brave and talented journalist who died recently after a long battle against cancer. In his book Snake Oil and Other Pre-occupations he says: "alternative practitioners make perfect sense on a sort of flowers-are-harbingers-of-good level". He makes it clear, as the Times reviewer of his book put it, that "the battle to be fought is nothing less than the fight for scientific reason against deluded sentimentality. When national newspapers devote whole pages to alternativists puffing blatant quackery without even printing a warning at the top of the page; when our society still stumbles about in a wilfully benighted scientific illiteracy, the battle is one which needs to be fought".

ROGER A FISKEN

Consultant physician

Friarage hospital,.

Northallerton.

Thirsk.

The aftermath

Sir, - On Thursday of last week, we were confirmed as having foot-and-mouth disease. We have lost 2,120 animals and are devastated.

Despite the terrible shock and loss of all our livestock we would like to thank all those involved in culling the animals. The team were most considerate to the welfare of the livestock and carried out the operation very efficiently.

Many of them were farmers who had lost their own stock earlier in the year, and so understood what we were going through. The Army organised the logistics very well and within 30 hours of the confirmation of the disease there was not an animal left on our farm.

Our most thanks must go to Albert Edmondson who has worked here with the animals for nearly 50 years and will feel the terrible loss and emptiness of the farm.

We are going to restock as soon as we can and have already found a source of some replacement cattle.

JOHN & GRANIA FURNESS

Manor Farm,

Kirby Knowle,

Thirsk.

Town's poor deal

Sir, - Now he has been reminded, the Leyburn district councillor T E Forth (D&S letters, July 6) has made reference to the collapsed Georgian wall in the grounds of Thornborough Hall saying that the rebuilding work is due to start before September.

I am sure that those who have had to look upon the mounds of rubble, covered in weeds each and every day for the last five years sincerely hope he is correct, but as the authority representatives advise the work required to restore the wall has not yet been quantified and the contract is yet to be awarded, I suspect he is a little premature in making firm promises.

There is another serious element which should be brought to the authorities' attention. It is the fact that the banks of rubble from the fallen wall are both an attraction and a danger to small children who are now using the area as a slide and adventure playground.

I am sure it was not missed by his electorate that Coun Forth made no reference to the deplorable condition of the Thornborough Hall woodland. This is a fine example of a valuable environmental assets going to waste through sheer neglect when, with little cost, it could be transformed into a park to enhance the standing of the town and help our beleagued tourism businesses

The RDC excuse is as always "we have no money for this work" but it is a fact that £450,000 was spent on the restoration of the old Richmond railway station and £137,000 on the renovation of the Friary gardens while in the same financial year Leyburn got a couple of bags of daffodil bulbs planted in Thornborough Hall woods which cannot be seen for weeds.

G R ORAM

Woodland Drive,

Leyburn