What We Cannot See Threatens More

So many people talk about terrorism with an idea of people in mind. We seem to concentrate on nuclear threats and how it will bring the demise of our human race. Since I am not able to foresee the future, I cannot eliminate this possible threat in the future...but in my view...I do not believe this to be the most imminent threat to our race. That is not what scares me.... With each piece of knowledge that I acquire, I am scared of the terrorists that I cannot see. The silent killers. The millions of microbes that have the potential to do more harm, in more places, at the same time, than any nuclear bomb. We live in a time when travel and international business is the way of the world. We move around so often and so quickly, businessmen often forget where they have been on a given trip. I applaud progress and fair business, but I also am afraid of what else travels along on these trips with any given person from place to place. People come into contact with organisms in new environments in which they have never been exposed and then in turn infect 10's if not 100's of people in a single afternoon. Imagine the number of people you are near at the O'Hare airport in Chicago or Grand Central Station in NYC. Try to quantify the trail of contact of each person you are near...and ultimately where they go. The numbers are astounding and you feel as if you can't possibly tackle something this big. So, why do I call these microbes terrorists? That is simple. These microbes or whatever the latest attack is, is invisible to the naked eye, it evolves faster than we can sequence it, symptoms may seem like the common cold and does not have the ability to rationalize. We cannot sit in a room with these invaders, sign a treaty no one has any intention of keeping and walk away feeling like we have control. We are at the mercy of these invaders. You may be wondering why this is a problem now more than ever in the past. Research and reports have been published explaining why we are at a greater risk now of new pathogens emerging. First and foremost, we are dealing with microbes that have "tremendous evolutionary potential". We are also faced with so many other things such as "changing climate, altered ecosystems, increased human contact with animals, new medical technologies that have created novel pathways for the spread of infections, and 'the rapid and virtually unrestricted transport of humans, animals, foods and other goods, which can lead to the broad dissemination of pathogens and their vectors throughout the world'". We are sharing and trading microbes into new environments not previous occupied. This is and will be an action that carries harsh consequences. "Any of these factors alone can trigger problems, but their convergence creates especially high-risk environments where infectious diseases may readily emerge, or re-emerge...It is conceivable, in fact, that in certain places microbial 'perfect storms' could occur, and unlike meteorological 'perfect storms,' the events would not be on the order of once in a century, but frequent." We have in recent years experienced such occurrences that could have been much worse than they were, (i.e., SARS, avian bird flu, west nile). As we learn more with each passing day and from past epidemics, we must work together not as a country or countries, but as a race, to face such obstacles. In the example of SARS, the result could have been devastating. One country, China, hid the outbreak for many weeks if not closer to months. Politics and tourism blinded what was truly important...its' people. Once the knowledge of a new epidemic hit the WHO, global cooperation began the process to stop the impending devastation. It is only due to laboratories around the world, working tirelessly for a common cause, that we are not writing about entire countries being wiped out. By May 17, 2003, the WHO reported 7,761 cases of SARS around the world with a death toll of 623. This was spread across 28 countries on 5 continents. Of those, 66 cases were in the US (no deaths), 5209 cases in mainland China with 282 deaths and 1710 cases in Hong Kong with 243 deaths. Although the number of cases seem high, the low number of deaths is due to a few dedicated and active people that rallied early to stop this from spreading even more. They were successful in their efforts of containing the cases early. However, an expert in human diseases caused by parasitic worms and a tireless foe of infectious diseases, a doctor once part of the doctors without borders and one of the doctors that preached, "stay close to the victims", did just that. Carlo Urbani stayed close to the first victims of SARS. He monitored them himself and rid the area of unnecessary people that could be at risk. Urbani also was the first to act and begin to gather the people necessary to alert the world. Unfortunately, it was only a matter of time before he too fell victim to this outbreak. Urbani died with his wife and 3 sons following behind his casket. The SARS virus was so infectious that even another week's delay in recognizing the problem would have spread the germ to hundreds if not thousands more people before control measures were put into place, one nation at a time. This is what Urbani did for all of us. His quick action had limited the number of cases and his doctors said he had probably inhaled so much virus as he tried to treat so many people that he was doomed from the start. I write this as an introduction to the continuing story of what really threatens us. We do not have any idea of what or where the next big terrorist will come from, or even the ability of science knowledge to combat it. I do not fear other nations and the weapons they hold as much as I fear microbes that can appear and evolve faster that we can identify common links. Researchers wait with dread of that never previously seen microbe that has the ability to jump across the animal-human line. This threat, in addition to combining with common viruses that we cannot control now, is what scares me!

References:

http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/sars/factsheet.htm

http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/348/20/1951

http://www.who.int/en/

M. Enserink, "A second suspect in global mystery outbreak". Science 299 (March 28, 2003)

M. Hamburg, J. Lederberg, B. Beatty, et al. "Microbial threats to health: Emergence, detection, and response" Institute of Medicine National Academy of Sciences. Namtional Academies Press, March 2003.

Ashley Treatment - Right or Wrong?

Ashley Treatment is making waves in medicine. A young girl with static encephalopathy (severe brain damage) has undergone an operation to stunt her growth and keep her at a manageable size. This has created a big hue and cry over the net all over the world with some parents even linking it to eugenics.
When I first heard about the case I got squeezy too. I have been a fringe dweller in the world of autistic and mentally retarded people. My parents are actively involved in this cause back home and I have seen how difficult it is to take care of a 6 feet 2 adult with a mental capacity of a 2 year old. As difficult the situation is, parents rarely have thought of taking such extreme steps. So I wondered, Is this right? There are no medical precedents to this case. This may very well open up a slippery slope as pointed out by University of Pennsylvania ethicist Art Caplan. But let us look closely at the "pillow baby Ashley" case before we raise our voices to say this is wrong -
Shortly after birth, baby Ashley had problems feeding and lagged in development. Doctors diagnosed static encephalopathy (and still do not know the cause). The brain damage has left her in an infant stage - she is for all purposes a 3 month old - unable to hold her head, sit, roll or walk or talk and yet she is four feet five inches tall. That being said the girl is alert and goes to school for disabled children. However since her parents have not found a suitable care taker, they tend to the child at home themselves. There is no cure for Ashley (now and in the near future). She is going to be in the same state yet continue to grow bigger.
So her parents decided to stunt her growth to keep her smaller. She had her uterus and breast tissue removed and she received large doses of hormones to halt her growth. This will keep her small, reduce risks of bed sores and prevent her going through puberty (reducing the pain of periods and breast cancer which runs in the family). Her parents are taking care of her. Keeping her from growing is not going to make a difference to her - she is 3 month old mentally!!
Medical advances have meant that we can "save" lives that previously would not have a chance. At the same time, we really do not have the capacity to take care of severely handicapped people. Nor do we have a better support system for families that take care of the individual on a daily basis - 24/7. Some ethicist that say what Ashley's parents are doing is making the situation easy on themselves - yes, they are .. but try taking care of a infant that weighs like an adult for a whole day! You might change your mind too. On the other hand, the question to be asked is - who decides that this is the right thing for the parents to do? Take this scenario - What if a slightly challenged girl's parents decide that to save her from abuse in the future, we are going to prevent her from undergoing puberty. This girl is always going to be a minor legally. So do her parents have legal rights? Or should society intervene?
But society is not making the place safer in which case the parents would never have to make such decision. Realistically speaking, man kind is not going to make this earth into an Utopian paradise . Does this mean that this decision or others like it would be ethical?

Book Review

Another good book by Carroll. Making of the fittest explains evolution using the evidence found in the DNA of every creature. Using DNA as evidence, Carroll weaves stories that tie creatures together and spin across millions of years and clearly explains how identical traits have evolved independently(and sometimes repeatedly) by natural selection.

The examples themselves are fascinating - evolution of anti-freeze protein in Artic and Antarctic fishes, color vision through duplication of Opsin genes in birds and primates, sickle cell anemia and resistance to malaria, eye development (an creationist favorite) to skin color in humans. In each case, Carroll explains the genetic changes that the DNA has undergone over the course of time to result in the developmental changes we see.

He has also explained how inaccurate is the creationist insistence that probability of mutations resulting in evolution is next to impossible. He uses very elementary mathematics to explain how advantageous mutations can spread through a population.

Carroll has also tackled head on the problem the US schools are facing now -the disingenuous ID believers who want to teach "creationist science" (which is an oxymoron). Using the Lysenko fiasco as an example, he has clearly illustrated what can happen if there is a deliberate ignorance of evidence.

Unlike Zimmer, reading Carroll does require some basic understanding of biology (high school level at least) but he is an adept writer and worth reading. It is a book aimed at curious people who would like to know more about Evolution and the evidence we have for it. I don't think Creationists or the IDiots are going to change their minds but I hope books like this one convince the fringe dwellers that Evolution is more than a "just" a theory. There are numerous examples of evidences - from geology to now molecular biology- to show how evolution has occurred. As Lewis Black said "We have Fossils. We win."

An Example Of Altruism?

Many people have wrote that there is no such thing as altruism. I must admit that I have also always thought the same thing..even though I continued to search for one such act. I have often been the lone arguer pointing out that no one has been able to uncover a single example of true altruism...in a natural setting or in the human race. I am now rescinding my previous statement. I have for a very long time..searched for an example that I could in some way attribute to altruism..and until now I have been unsuccessful. I suppose all examples are based upon your own definition of altruism. I learned many years ago that altruism is an act done by an individual at a cost..benefiting another individual not of relation to the one performing the act.

The said example concerns a chimpanzee and a human. A researcher was following a group of chimpanzees in the jungle. After some hours, he found that he had forgotten his lunch back at the research station. This researcher then proceeded to try to knock down fruit from a tree some distance from where the group of chimpanzees sat eating their mid-day meal. It has been noted that after some time of unsuccessful attempts to acquire fruit... a young male from the group collected some fruits from a tree and climbed down toward the researcher. The chimpanzee then proceeded to approach the researcher and leave the fruit for the researcher.

This instance has been noted as a true act of altruism by any definition since the chimpanzee was not of relation to the researcher (not in the last 1000 years at least) and this act was a cost to itself with no benefit. Therefore, I stand corrected on the notion of altruism...it seems to exist after all.

References
Compassion, Rescue and the Altruism Debate, The emotional lives of animals Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson and Susan McCarthy.

Why We Should Always Question..

There are many moments in time that we look back at now...which will always lead to us to slap our foreheads and say, "stupid, stupid, stupid". There is one such moment that continues to be brought up in the most general science classes..as if to say.."if you don't test and retest...we will ridicule you for years to come". This example is of course the lemming. Lemmings were believed to commit, "The Lemming Suicide Plunge" when the population became too numerous. It was really believed that millions of lemmings would be overcome by a hard-wired impulse to dash to their death by hurling themselves over a cliff to the rocks below or by plunging into the sea to die a horrible death by drowning. The reasoning behind this was thought to be a deep-rooted act of altruistic behavior resulting the greater good for the species. However, you can probably guess, this is not the case. Shown to the right is a famous Far Side cartoon dipicting natural selection in action. As the lemmings dash to their death..there is one cheater in the group that will survive and ultimately passing on the cheater genes to future generations.

How this story may have gotten started....

Many rodent species experience very strange cyclic population explosions. It is very interesting that lemmings have one of the most regular cyclic fluctuations in population densities. It has been shown that these little creatures have population explosions about every three or four years. The population numbers of lemmings explode to high numbers, and then drop almost to extinction. Even after approximately 75 years of intense research, scientists do not fully understand why the populations fluctuate so much. Throughout the years, many factors have been tested (i.e., changes in food availability, climate, density of predators, stress of overcrowding, infectious diseases, snow conditions, sunspots, etc) but none completely explain why populations of lemmings have these explosive cycles.

The myth of the lemming most likely started when these population explosions happen and the lemmings migrate away from areas with a dense population. As you can imagine, the migrations begin slowly and erratically. It has been shown that small numbers of lemmings will move at night, and larger groups in the daytime. This movement causes small groupings of lemmings to move instead of one continous mass, usually seperated by a short time frame of 10 minutes or so. It has been noted that they will often follow well worn paths and roads along their journey.

As you can imagine, there will be unavoidable obstacles, such as streams and lakes inevitalby causing them to swim as a last resort. Suprisingly, they are able to swim across a 200 meter body of water on a calm night, but most will drown in a windy night.

So why the myth began....

It is due to a very unlikely source....Walt Disney. Walt Disney was making a movie tittled, "Wild Wilderness" which was released in 1958. It was filmed in Alberta, Canada, in a location that is far from the sea and not a native home to lemmings. The lemming were imported and forced to jump to thier deaths by placing them on a spinning turntable that was covered with snow, and then shooting it from many different angles. The cliff-death-plunge sequence was done by herding the lemmings over a small cliff into a river. It's easy to understand why the filmmakers did this - wild animals are notoriously uncooperative, and a migration-of-doom followed by a cliff-of-death sequence is far more dramatic to show than the lemmings' self-implemented population-density management plan.

The moral of the story....lemmings do not commit mass suicide and Walt Disney has clear prejudice against the lemming and for the mouse.

Net Picks

Something to read while taking a break -

Fifty Years With Double Stranded RNA
Alexander Rich, the scientist who discovered hybridization and the "other" double helix describes what it meant to biology.

Bioengineering and AIDS
University of Utah scientists designed a "molecular condom" women could use daily to prevent AIDS by vaginally inserting a liquid that would turn into a gel-like coating and then, when exposed to semen, return to liquid form and release an antiviral drug.

Genetic Map Offers New Tool For Malaria Research
In one of three genomic studies of malaria appearing in Nature Genetics, scientists chart genetic variation across the genome of the malaria parasite, unlocking novel DNA regions associated with drug resistance.

Laugh And The Whole World Laughs With You: Why The Brain Just Can't Help Itself
Researchers at UCL (University College London) and Imperial College London have shown that positive sounds trigger a response in the listener's brain in an area that is activated by smile, as though preparing our facial muscles to laugh.

This Holiday Season drink without fear.
A study performed by the Research Laboratories of the Catholic University of Campobasso (Italy) confirms the beneficial effects that moderate consumption of alcohol has on our health: drinking in moderation reduces all-cause mortality.

Another reason why the Octopus Rules - in built 3-D light reflectors!
Roger Hanlon at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole, Massachusetts and colleagues took a close look at the octopus's skin and identified a new group of proteins (leucophores) with remarkable properties.

New Insights Into The Origin Of Life On Earth
In an advance toward understanding the origin of life on Earth, scientists have shown that parts of the Krebs cycle can run in reverse, producing biomolecules that could jump-start life with only sunlight and a mineral present in the primordial oceans.

Science Daily Picks

Found : Apple Gene for Red
CSIRO scientist have found the gene that controls the color of apples. The red color of apple skin is result of anthocyanins (responsible for blue or red color in plants). It was known that color of apples is affected by light (less light results in poor color), so the scientist looked for genes that were activated by light and compared these to genes in a green apple and bingo!


Learning During Sleep?
Max Planck Institute for Medical Research in Heidelberg have taken a step towards understanding communication between memory areas. Their study shows a link between sleep and memory consolidation (transfer of memory from hippocampus to the cerebral cortex).

Cities Change The Songs Of Birds Leiden University researchers studied the songs of the great tit (Parus major), a successful urban dweller in the center of ten major European cities and compared the songs to that of the bird living in nearby forest sites. The results show that songs that are important for mate selection or territory defense are shorter, sung faster and at a higher pitch by the urban bird. The findings published on Dec.5 in Current Biology show divergence within a species because of the environment and could very well lead to speciation.

NASA Telescope Sees Black Hole Munch On A Star.
NASA’s Galaxy Evolution Explorer has caught a black hole eating a star, from the initial capture to the last bites.

Water Still Flows In Brief Spurts On Mars, NASA Images Suggest
NASA photographs have revealed bright new deposits seen in two gullies on Mars that suggest water carried sediment through them sometime during the past seven years.
So let the hunt for the ETs begin :)