Thursday July 11, 2002
First published 1831 No. 51,430 $1.20 (incl GST)
Shoplifting
Software used to catch Milat
is now in stores INSIGHT PAGE 9
Home grown
Netball plea
Gardens thrive
in the city
Women on court
need not be ladies
DOMAIN
MARGO KINGSTON • SPORT PAGE 40
Out of Chad, aged 7million, the face of the oldest human ancestor
Deborah Smith
Science writer
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This is the face of the oldest
known human ancestor.
About seven million years old,
the thick-browed fossil found in
Africa and dubbed Toumai is
more than twice the age of previously found ape-man skulls.
Scientists believe the find will
revolutionise understanding of
human origins, pushing back
the timing of the split from the
great apes.
‘‘Toumai is arguably the most
important fossil discovery in living memory,’’ said Henry Gee,
an editor at Nature, which
publishes the find today.
Dr Gee said it rivalled the 1925
discovery of the first ape-man, the
3-million-year-old Australopithecus africanus, by the Australian anatomist Dr Raymond
Dart, which showed human evolution began in Africa. Harvard
University’s Dr Daniel Lieberman
said: ‘‘This will have the impact of
a small nuclear bomb.’’
EVOLUTIONARY JIGSAW
Until 10 millon years
ago, only apes
existed
Latest find:
Toumai (Sahelanthropus
tchadensis) – oldest
member of the
human family
Years 10m
8m
9m
An Australian National University anthropologist, Colin Groves,
said it was ‘‘fantastically important
– It fills in a gap where we had only
insignificant scraps before’’.
7m
Many ape-man fossils, including the
Flat-faced Kenyan found last year,
date from five million years ago to
the evolution of our species (Homo)
two million years ago.
6m
5m
4m
Toumai was unearthed in Chad
by an international team led by
Dr Michel Brunet, of the University of Poitiers. Toumai means
‘‘hope of life’’, and is a common
3m
2m
1m
name for Chad children born just
before the dry season.
It is the first skull find from a
critical time in human evolution –
between 10 million years ago,
when there were only apes, and 5
million years ago, when good evidence appeared of early human
ancestors, or hominids.
Toumai’s skull displays a mix of
primitive and modern features.
His braincase resembles that of an
ape, but his short face and teeth
are similar to those of humans.
His prominent brow is of a shape
found only in our Homo line.
The six specimens found –
which date to between 6 million
and 7 million years, and include
the cranium, jaw and teeth – were
assigned to a new species,
Sahelanthropus tchadensis.
Bernard Wood, of George
Washington
University,
Washington, wrote in Nature that
Toumai looks like a chimpanzee
from the back and a 2 million-yearold human ancestor from the front.
It was not a ‘‘missing link’’, but
suggested a big diversity of ape-men
even 6-7 million years ago. ‘‘Here
we have compelling evidence that
our own origins are as complex and
as difficult to trace as those of any
other group of organisms.’’
PM pressures
Europe on
farm reform
Michelle Grattan
in Brussels and agencies
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The Prime Minister, John
Howard, told European Union
leaders last night that Australia
needed proof that their plan to
radically overhaul agricultural
protectionism would work.
Australian farmers will continue to be hurt by EU agricultural subsidies worth 40 billion
euros ($70 billion) a year, which
will remain unchanged despite
the reforms.
The European Commission released its reform blueprint –
which would end the link between subsidies and levels of
farm production – just before Mr
Howard met the EU President,
Romano Prodi, and EU commissioners in Brussels last night.
At a joint news conference
after the meeting, Mr Howard
cautiously welcomed the reforms, saying if all were delivered, Australian farmers could
benefit. But he said EU agricultural policy remained ‘‘the
greatest point of contention’’ between Australia and Europe.
‘‘We are unhappy with the present arrangements and unless and
until they change, we will remain
unhappy,’’ Mr Howard said. It was
‘‘a deeply held grievance’’ of Australian farmers, who were very
unfairly treated by the EU and US.
The central theme of Mr
Howard’s European trip has been
that protectionism must be liber-
COST OF PROTECTION
■ Europe’s Common
Agricultural Policy
subsidies cost 40 billion
euros ($A70bn) – about
half the EU’s budget.
■ EU agriculture subsidy
is 35% of total value of its
agricultural production
compared with 21% in the
US and 4% in Australia.
■ EU wants an end to
subsidies linked to
production; cuts to
guaranteed grain prices; a
cap on yearly subsidies to
individual farms of
¤300,000 (528,000).
alised and that agriculture must
be dealt with in the so-called
Doha round of world trade talks.
The EU reforms do not change
the total of its Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) subsidies to
farmers. However, Mr Howard
said it was important that for the
first time the EU was ‘‘decoupling’’ its subsidies from the level
of production – which Australia
had been arguing for.
Such subsidies directly encourage overproduction, which floods
world markets, forcing down
prices and harming agricultural
exporters such as Australia.
Under the proposed changes,
European farmers would get a
single payment from Brussels
based on money received in the
past, regardless of whether they
continue production on the same
scale. The plan’s architect, EU
Farm Commissioner Franz
Fischler, argues this will give the
European bloc the moral high
ground in the trade negotiations.
However, at the same time, US
farm subsidy policy is becoming
even more protectionist. Its new
farm bill increases productionlinked subsidies, spending more
than $US190 billion ($334 billion)
over the next decade to help almost
two million American farmers.
The EU’s CAP reforms will also
see a major shift in funds towards
rural development. Direct aid to
farmers would be trimmed by 3
per cent a year for the next seven
years, so assistance to larger farms
would be capped at A300,000
($528,000) each a year.
Guaranteed cereals prices
would be cut by 5 per cent.
The plan has support from
Britain but is likely to face a fight
from France – a major beneficiary
of high subsidies.
The British Foreign Secretary,
Jack Straw, said this week the CAP
was ‘‘erecting a protectionist barrier against the rest of the world’’.
Mr Howard said the EU package
would help Australia ‘‘if it results in
a reduction in surpluses and . . .
fewer subsidised exports from the
EU into third markets’’. Mr Prodi
said ‘‘we are moving strongly away
from trade and productiondistorting measures’’.
Time for caution . . . Carol McIntosh, who had ‘‘always felt that so long as I had regular check-ups, then the quality of life I get from using HRT was the most important thing’’. Photo: Dallas Kilponen
After nine years of hormone therapy, Carol thinks again
Michael Bradley
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For nine years Carol McIntosh
has used hormone replacement
therapy to help control the
physical effects of menopause.
Now the 63-year-old is one of
many women reconsidering their
use of the combined hormones
oestrogen and progestin after
research demonstrated it
increases the risk of breast
cancer, heart disease and stroke.
As a receptionist for the Family
Planning Association for 29
years, Mrs McIntosh always felt
well informed about women’s
health issues. But the results of
the American research, released
this week, have surprised her.
Australia’s Therapeutic Goods
Administration announced an
expert review into the safety of
HRT yesterday. But some women’s
health experts warned that
restricting the availability of HRT
was a dangerous overreaction.
They said the benefits of the
treatment – including a
substantial decrease in fractures
attributed to osteoporosis –
outweighed the cancer risk,
which was very small.
The reaction from HRT users,
however, was overwhelming
yesterday. The Cancer Council’s
phone system broke down when
its hotline was inundated with
more than 400 calls.
The US study found the use of
the combined hormone
treatment increased the risk of
breast cancer by 26 per cent.
‘‘I’ve seen a lot of research come
out about this topic before,’’ said
Mrs McIntosh. ‘‘Yet I always felt that
so long as I had regular check-ups,
then the quality of life I get from
using HRT was the most important
thing . . . I’ve always felt that if I had
regular mammograms, then if
anything that happened, it would
be picked up early.’’
More important for Mrs
McIntosh was the finding that the
treatment also increased the risk
of heart disease. She has a genetic
history of cardiovascular disease.
Previous studies of HRTs which
combine oestrogen and progestin
WEATHER Details Page 18
Loss of innocence makes children safer Bush’s Wall Street stumble
Adele Horin
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to 59 reported similar rates.
Dr Dunne said ignorance had
made children vulnerable in the
past. ‘‘Thirty years ago, they
didn’t have the language for what
was happening. Today more children know what abuse is and that
can help them avoid it.’’
Other protective factors were
also at work in recent decades,
including the spread of protective programs in schools, the decline of children’s institutions,
the rise of the small family, and
more vigilant parenting.
‘‘Smaller families means there
are fewer children to monitor,’’
Dr Dunne said. ‘‘All this has
made for more resilient, less
Continued Page 4
Caroline Overington
and agencies
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Dick Cheney . . .
accused of fraud.
George Bush’s pilgrimage to
the spiritual home of capitalism – Wall Street – to boost
investor confidence appears to
have had the opposite effect,
with stocks diving to levels not
seen since the September 11
attacks.
It appears the President’s
attempt to take the high
ground by appealing to corporate
America
to
‘‘reconnect’’ with American
values failed to wash when
he himself has been subject
of financial mismanagement
allegations and the VicePresident, Dick Cheney, is
SATISFACTION
being accused of financial
fraud. The visit was designed to
spark a rally but instead it finished with the Dow Jones 178
points down, and the US dollar
nosediving at one point to virtual parity with the euro.
Critics said Mr Bush failed to
say anything substantial to
bolster markets and that his plan
to boost penalties for corporate
crime did not go far enough.
Mr Cheney’s management of
the Texas energy company
Halliburton, of which he was
chief executive for five years, is
under the spotlight with a publicinterest law firm filing a lawsuit
alleging he and Halliburton
engaged in accounting fraud.
Full reports, Pages 7, 21
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ralians aged 18 to 59 found that,
overall, one in six men and one
in three women before the age of
16 had experienced ‘‘non-trivial’’
sexual abuse such as unwanted
fondling, unwanted sexual
arousal, or being made to witness masturbation.
One in eight women and one
in 25 men had experienced unwanted penetration or attempted penetration.
But the dramatic fall in sexual
abuse experienced by the older
and younger generations of men
was the most startling finding.
As well, women aged 18 to
29 were much less likely to have
been abused t ha n older
women, but women aged 30
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Fewer children are being
sexually abused than in the past,
and the loss of childhood innocence – often decried – may be
the reason.
These are the surprising conclusions of Australia’s first
national survey on sex and
health, which found that older
people were much more likely
than younger adults to have been
abused as children.
The study, to be released
today at the World Sociological
Congress in Brisbane, found that
one in four men aged 50 to 59
reported having been sexually
abused before the age of 16. But
only one in 10 men aged 18 to 29
reported such abuse.
A fall – though smaller – was
also evident among women.
The study’s author, Dr Michael
Dunne, of the Centre for Public
Health Research at the Queensland University of Technology,
said the loss of childhood innocence appeared to have protected children from abuse in
more recent decades.
‘‘Our society has become
increasingly sexualised, and
eight to 10-year-olds are much
less innocent than 40 years ago,’’
he said. ‘‘Some people say this is
sad. But the positive side is that
children are less vulnerable.’’
The survey of 1784 Aust-
suggested they actually reduced
the risk of heart disease.
‘‘I’m not totally convinced at
this stage, but I’ve thought today
that I might try going off it,’’ Mrs
McIntosh said.
‘‘I’ve been tossing the idea
around since I got a my last script
from my doctor, but I think I’ll try
to get off it for a couple of months
and see if I still experience the
same problems as before.’’
Experts plea for caution – Page 6
Editorial – Page 10;
Let’s go easy on HRT – Page 11
FULL INDEX
Page 2
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