Science for Non-Majors

Where to Connect with TK Kenyon -- Google+ and Goodreads and Twitter, oh my!

2011-09-27T08:28:00.001-07:00

Google+ is the hottest new site, right? https://plus.google.com/114092439743576593278/posts

If you’re into science, connect with me here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/tkkenyon

Great blog for creative writing tips. http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/

My Amazon profile. http://www.amazon.com/T.-K.-Kenyon/e/B001JP4HK4

Here I am at BlogCritics. http://blogcritics.org/writers/tk-kenyon/

I even MySpace, occasionally. http://www.myspace.com/tkkenyon

Tweet with me! I tweet links to free e-fiction on the web and happy thoughts! https://twitter.com/#!/TKKenyon

A great place to see what I’m up to, writing-wise. http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/malachitepublishing

Shelfari is another great book site: http://www.shelfari.com/tkkenyon

All my reviews on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/A2QSSNUGVG5II8?ie=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&%2Aentries%2A=0

This is a great science fiction anthology, and I gave it 5 stars because it deserved it. http://www.sfsignal.com/archives/2011/08/guest-review-tk-kenyon-on-the-best-science-fiction-and-fantasy-of-the-year-volume-five-edited-by-jonathan-strahan/

Connect with me on Goodreads: A great site for readers: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/202809.T_K_Kenyon

All my blogs: Gluten-Free, creative writing, other stuff. http://www.blogger.com/profile/13756031460622964015

Fuel for Diesel Ebooks: http://search.diesel-ebooks.com/author/Kenyon,%20TK/results/1.html

Like to blow things up? Here’s a guy who did it for a living. Now that’s job satisfaction! http://www.chemheritage.org/discover/magazine/articles/26-4-science-and-celebrity.aspx

Do you #kindleboards #KB? I do! http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php?topic=71383.0

Having trouble with your overprotective parents? Try being Indian, in the theater, and lesbian. http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/66664 http://www.amazon.com/Nag-Hindi-Cobra-ebook/dp/B0055WXKDW

Think you can beat Las Vegas? Frank thought so. http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/68208 http://www.amazon.com/Law-Large-Numbers-ebook/dp/B0057AFHJC

In 1942, Nazi subs hunted ships off the US East Coast. Read more: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/79924 http://www.amazon.com/Hooligan-Navy-Short-Story-ebook/dp/B005GL8V1S

FDA Impersonators Scam

2009-12-30T09:21:00.000-08:00

FDA Impersonators just get my dander up. Be aware, and don't fall for this stupid scam.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning the public about criminals posing as FDA special agents and other law enforcement personnel as part of an international extortion scam.

The criminals call the victims -- who in most cases previously purchased drugs over the Internet or via "telepharmacies" -- and identify themselves as FDA special agents or other law enforcement officials. The criminals inform the victims that purchasing drugs over the Internet or the telephone is illegal, and that law enforcement action will be pursued unless a fine or fee ranging from $100 to $250,000 is paid. Victims often also have fraudulent transactions placed against their credit cards.

The criminals always request the money be sent by wire transfer to a designated location, usually in the Dominican Republic. If victims refuse to send money, they are often threatened with a search of their property, arrest, deportation, physical harm, and or incarceration.

"Impersonating an FDA official is a violation of federal law," said Michael Chappell, the FDA's acting associate commissioner for regulatory affairs. "The public should note that no FDA official will ever contact a consumer by phone demanding money or any other form of payment.”

FDA special agents and other law enforcement officials are not authorized to impose or collect criminal fines. Only a court can take such action, with fines payable to the U.S. Treasury.

Anyone receiving a telephone call from a person purporting to be an FDA or other law enforcement official who is seeking money to settle a law enforcement action for the illegal purchase of drugs over the Internet should refuse the demand and call the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations Metro Washington Field Office at (800) 521-5783 to report the crime.

White House, White House, How Does Your Garden Grow?

2009-03-19T17:22:00.000-07:00

I have been pleased to be part of the "Eat the View" Campaign, a petition asking the Obamas to plant a garden at the White House to showcase the many benefits of gardening: economic, nutritious, physical, emotional, and environmental.

Michelle Obama is going to break ground at the White House on the South Lawn for the first formal vegetable garden in decades.

Bravissimo, Michelle!

Peanut-O-Phobia

2009-02-09T07:28:00.000-08:00

Peanuts contaminated with Salmonella typhimurium have made us all a little peanut-phobic. Yesterday, my favorite lo-carb bars were recalled.

Sadness and woe.

Hundreds, if not thousands of peanut-containing products have been recalled. This handy little widget below will help you determine if your favorite nutrition bar might now be deadly biohazard waste.

This widget will also be on the left-hand tool bar for the foreseeable future.

Typhimurium Outbreak 2009. Flash Player 9 is required.">

The good news is that most peanut butter, like Skippy or Jif, is safe. If you're craving peanut consumables, try these easy Peanut Butter Cookies.

Good luck out there.

TK Kenyon

Autism / Vaccination Link: Research May Have Been Fake

2009-02-08T18:58:00.000-08:00

TK Kenyon, your intrepid scientist for non-majors, is not surprised to tell you that The Times of London has reported that the doctor who originally reporting in 1998 that he found a link between the MMR vaccine and sudden onset of autism may have faked his data.

If so, this is a huge case of medical fraud.

The Times of London reports:

[The original Lancet paper] claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab. The team also claimed to have discovered a new inflammatory bowel disease underlying the children’s conditions.
However, our investigation, confirmed by evidence presented to the General Medical Council (GMC), reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal.

This is damning evidence. I mean, seriously. This is far worse than the fact that some other reports have not found the same conclusion. Autism is clearly a spectrum of conditions with similar behavioral and physiological symptoms. Not finding exactly the same results could be accounted for.

However, in this case, ToL reviewed the kids' charts and found that the original doctor, Andrew Wakefield, misstated what was in these kids' records. Wakefield either lied or was terribly mistaken.

Instead of 8/12 children having an onset of autism after the MMR vaccine, only 1 did. That's just a terrible error.

While Wakefield said that he identified a bowel pathology associated with autism, pathologists could not find evidence of this in the original kids' original slides. That's gross negligence.

This is just another nail in the vaccine-autism coffin.

Bleed a Cold, Purge a Fever

2008-11-14T16:02:00.000-08:00

The medical community is sluggish to embrace new, even well-supported, therapies that are at odds with established medical dogma.

In addition to the outright hostility that the discoverers of H. pylori experienced, other examples of medical foot-dragging abound.

In fact, speaking of slugs, leeches come to mind.

Dr. V. Dracula, M.D.

One historical case of this provincial reluctance involves the practice of bleeding sick people to cure disease. Various methods of exsanguinations were utilized to withdraw blood from the body, from leeches to deep cuts to shallow lacerations with vacuum to draw the blood from the body.

Bloodletting was practiced in ancient times. The practice is a sordid mimicry of menstruation, as Hippocrates noted that women seemed overcome with bad humours, perhaps referring to hormonal mood swings but more likely a reference to headache, cramps, and bloating. The bleeding of menstruation relieved the symptoms.

Thus, the theory of therapeutic bleeding extended by analogy the idea that excess blood causes disease, and removing excess blood must cure disease.

Bloodletting, medical purges (induced vomiting,) rigorous enemas, and fasting with restriction of fluids were primary medical interventions for millennia.

Patients were often bled to the point where they fainted from blood loss, as that was thought to be the natural endpoint of the therapy. Before an amputation, doctors generally removed a quantity of blood equal to the volume of the limb to be amputated, lest the person be burdened with an excess of blood afterward. Then they cut off the limb.

“Absurde”

In 1835, Pierre Charles Alexandre Louis wrote a scathing polemic on bloodletting to treat disease (Récherches sur les Effets de la Saignée), which conclusively proved that far from benefiting patients, this fashionable, standard procedure harmed and sometimes killed them.

Louis studied 78 patients with pneumonia and noted that bloodletting in the first two days doubled the risk of death.

Louis was astonished by his own results and found his conclusion frightening and absurd on its face: “R´esultat effrayant, absurde en apparence.”

Doctors, however, refused to believe Louis’s methodically researched results, and therapeutic bloodletting persisted nearly a century into the early 1900’s.

Modern Day Bleeding

Surely, you think, such ineffective medical interventions are far behind us. Surely, all medicine is now evidence-based. If a doctor gives me a drug, it will work.

Nope. I’ll explore that more in my next post.

TK Kenyon
Author of RABID: A Novel, a novel of autoexperimentation, unwitting guinea pigs, and green-glowing rabies virus, and CALLOUS: A Novel, a story about free will, neuroscience, fate, the nature of memory, and the End of Days.

Give Us This Day, Our Daily Multivitamin, Or Not

2008-10-12T14:15:00.000-07:00

TK Kenyon, your intrepid scientist for non-majors, is not surprised to tell you if there’s one decently healthy thing that a lot of people do, it’s taking a basic multivitamin. Good grief, taking a little pill with decent amounts of the essential micronutrients and minerals keeps you from getting scurvy, right?

Right. Most people don’t eat sufficient fruits and vegetables. Most people don’t get enough vitamin C over the course of a week to keep them from getting low-grade scurvy, unless you’re one of the smart few who toss back an orange juice shot in the morning.

(Just for the record, I’m not getting up on my high elliptical strider and being healthier-than-thou. I imbibe espresso shooters in the morning. We’re all on the same dusty rowing machine, here.)

However, you should consider your special circumstances before you even decide whether or not to swallow that vitamin pill.

There are also some very interesting studies relating the regular use of vitamin pills with an increased risk of cancer. Contrary to the expectations of the researchers, one study linked Vitamin A supplementation with an increased risk of lung cancers in male smokers.

In addition, taking a multivitamin increased the possibility of deaths from prostate cancer in men. Why would that be?

The multivitamin-cancer correlation suggests an interesting hypothesis.

In the past, our ancestors, probably even our relatively recent ancestors in the 1900’s, likely experienced transient malnutrition. In the winters, especially, they had less access to fresh, nutritious produce and almost certainly experienced cyclical vitamin deficiencies.
Thus in the winter, a budding cancer cell with its blazing metabolic furnaces would probably starve to death for the lack of vitamin C and vitamin K, which would manifest itself as only a very mild case of scurvy or a few nosebleeds in an adult and would be rectified when tender spring greens appeared.

Now, with our year-round produce and megavitamin pills, we do not experience these cyclical, transient vitamin deficiencies. We are super-nourished, and thus our cancer cells grow robustly in this rich stew of essential nutrients.

Before you give up your daily multi, however, there are some very important things to consider.

People with the highest levels of vitamin D (available in supplemented milk, pill form, and sunshine,) had lower levels of cancer and osteoporosis.

If you’re a woman of childbearing age, taking a daily multivitamin during any trimester of pregnancy or in the month before pregnancy decreases the risk of neuroblastoma in the infant by 30% to 40%. Neuroblastoma is the most common cancer seen in infants and accounts for about 10% of all pediatric cancers. Not to mention that whole folic acid—neural tube defect thing. Taking a big preggers prenatal multi during pregnancy is very, very likely the best course of action.

Also, non-smokers who do not have heart disease who use multivitamins that include A, C, or E reduced risk of dying from heart disease by 15 to 18%, and heart disease kills far more people than cancer does.

So, for a general rule of a healthy thumb, if you’re a smoker, avoid vitamin A, even if you have to take a handful of single-vitamin pills instead of a general multi.

If you have prostate cancer, stop taking your multi.

If you don’t smoke and you don’t have prostate cancer, a multivitamin is probably the best course of action.

If you want hedge your chances, however, here’s an idea: there’s some very good research that supports the hypothesis that eating 300-500 fewer calories per day extends lifetime and, more importantly, extends robust lifetime. That’s right. Eat less.

Some good research came up lately that showed that mice that ate normally every other day and semi-fasted (eating 15% of normal calories) on the off days had essentially the same life extension and reductions in heart disease, cancer, and inflammation. If you try alternate-day semi-fasting, don’t take a vitamin on those days. Taking a megavitamin on feasting days will nourish your body well.

Fasting is associated with life extension and with reducing the debilitating side effects of chemotherapy.

TK Kenyon
Author of RABID: A Novel, a novel of autoexperimentation, unwitting guinea pigs, and green-glowing rabies virus, and CALLOUS: A Novel, a story about free will, neuroscience, fate, the nature of memory, and the End of Days.

Great Fat Prize!

2008-10-10T14:06:00.001-07:00

Osamu Shimomura of Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL), Woods Hole, MA, USA; Martin Chalfie of Columbia University, New York, NY, USA, and Roger Y. Tsien of the University of California, San Diego, CA, USA have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for the discovery and development of Green Florescent Protein from jellyfish, GFP.

Osamu Shimomura first isolated GFP from the jellyfish Aequorea victoria, which drifts with the currents off the west coast of North America. He discovered that this protein glowed bright green under ultraviolet light.

Martin Chalfie demonstrated the value of GFP as a luminous genetic tag for various biological phenomena. In one of his first experiments, he coloured six individual cells in the transparent roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans with the aid of GFP. While the discovery of the protein was indeed important, Chalfie made the enormous mental leap that took GFP from being a nifty protein to being one of the most important biological tools in use today.

Roger Y. Tsien contributed to our general understanding of how GFP fluoresces. He also extended the color palette beyond green (by mutating the gene very subtly so the emitted wavelength of light is slightly different, which means it’s a different color,) allowing researchers to give various proteins and cells different colors. This enables scientists to follow several different biological processes at the same time.

One of the really great things about GFP is that it fluoresces in living cells, thus allowing scientists to study cells while they are still alive. Most other microscopic tools are predicated on the cell being dead, fixed with formaldehyde, and the cell membrane made permeable with a detergent. This denatures all the proteins in the cell and changes the morphology of many of the cell structures.

It must be noted by this bitter little polymath that the snooty, parochial Swedes don’t yet consider American scientists to be “too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue,” as they erroneously believe American writers are, according to the Swedish Academy’s permanent secretary, Horace Engdahl.

TK Kenyon
Author of RABID: A Novel, a novel about Catholicism, evil, and GFP-tagged rabiesviruses, and CALLOUS: A Novel, a story about free will, neuroscience, the nature of memory, and the End of Days.

Autoexperimentation for Prizes and Profit

2008-10-09T14:58:00.000-07:00

As a scientist, sometimes, you have to take matters into your own hands.

Or into your own arm, and occasionally, your own heart.

Autoexperimentation is the very risky practice of wildcat science. If you can’t find an animal model for a virus, inoculate yourself. If you can’t find a volunteer, step up.

Several autoexperimenting scientists have won the Nobel Prize.

Nobel Hearts

Werner Forssmann won the Nobel in 1956 for performing the first cardiac catheterization. In 1929, he hog-tied his assistant to an operating table to prevent him from intervening, inserted a urethral catheter into a vein in his own arm, threaded it 65 cm into the right atrium of his own heart, then walked down a flight of stairs to the radiology department of the hospital in which he was employed to have a confirmatory X-ray taken, showing the catheter indeed lodged in his own heart.

It’s What’s Eating You

Barry J. Marshall and J Robin Warren also won the Nobel Prize in 2005 for their work on Helicobacter pylori, the bacteria that causes ulcers.

Before Marshall and Warren’s work, ulcers were thought to be caused by stomach acid and stress. As I was told by more than one doctor: “it’s not what you’re eating, it’s what’s eating you.”

As it turns out, what was eating me was Helicobacter pylori.

(By some coincidence, the doctors were wrong on both counts: it was also what I was eating. See the blog: celiac-maniac.blogspot.com.)

Marshall and Warren had great trouble publishing their seminal, well-researched, statistically relevant paper in any journal. Even the tabloid rag of the science world, The Lancet, was leery and delayed publication of their work because it contradicted medical dogma on many levels.

Marshall, frustrated with his lack of success in developing an animal model for H. pylori infection and the procrastination of publishing his results, swallowed a concentrated culture of the bacteria. After five days, he got sick, very sick, with gastritis and vomited acid-free gastric juice.

His wife demanded he get antibiotic treatment or else he would be “evicted from the household to sleep under a bridge.”

His tactic worked, and the paper with Marshall’s human trial data on himself was published and later widely confirmed.

Carrion

Some autoexperimentation, however, has been fatal.

In 1885, a medical student named Daniel Carrion, determined to prove that “Peruvian warts” disease was caused by bacteria rather than bad water as commonly thought, inoculated himself with the blood a sick person. He died of the deadly disease a few weeks later.

His death accelerated research into the dread disease, and he is still a heroic figure in Peru, albeit a tragic one. The disease, bartonellosis, is also known as Carrion’s Disease.

Using Kids as Guinea Pigs

Some people experiment upon their own children.

When their son was diagnosed with ALD, adrenoleukodystrophy, a fatal disorder, Augusto and Michaela Odone studied biochemistry because all ALD treatments available at the time were ineffective. They formulated a treatment, a combination of the triglyceride forms of oleic and erucic fatty acids, for their son Lorenzo and tried it while doctors begged them not to, culminating in the famous line from the movie: “And nobody can tell me what dressing I put on my kid’s salad, OK?”

While clinical studies’ results with Lorenzo’s oil are contradictory, some parents have found that it delays onset of symptoms. Lorenzo Odone lived twenty years longer than is average for ALD patients.

Some people are currently experimenting on their autistic children as, like the Odone’s experience, standard treatments for autism appear less than effective. A massive array of drugs, chelation therapies, nutritional interventions, and special diets (usually elimination) have been compiled here, the cumulative result of thousands of individuals’ experiences.

Note that these results are not the results of double-blind clinical studies. However, many therapies in this list have been found by these anecdotal compilations to be ineffective (like Klonapin, an anti-seizure drug,) or downright harmful (like amphetamines,) so beneficial results cannot be entirely chalked up to placebo effect.

“Not My Kid.”

However, not every doctor or scientist with a bright idea rolls up his own sleeve or his child’s to dedicate his body to science. Edward Jenner, renowned as the “father of smallpox vaccination,” a vaccination that has saved millions of lives and exterminated the terrible virus itself in the wild, dedicated his life, money, and reputation to promoting the use of the cowpox vaccine for smallpox.

However, in 1796, when Jenner had his flash of genius, he did not roll up his own sleeve, scratch his own skin, and smear on some pus from a suppurating cow udder, nor did he risk a family member. He enrolled the child of a peasant family, James Phipps, in his clinical trial of n=1 to test his possibly lethal technique.

Someone had to go first, but it wasn’t someone from Jenner’s family.

TK Kenyon
Author of RABID: A Novel, a novel of autoexperimentation, unwitting guinea pigs, and green-glowing rabies virus, and CALLOUS: A Novel, a story about free will, neuroscience, fate, the nature of memory, and the End of Days.

Fasting Reduces Chemotherapy Side Effects

2008-10-05T16:53:00.000-07:00

Listen to me. These starved little mice could save your life.

Recently, an article appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), a prestigious scholarly journal, about fasting and chemotherapy. The author, Dr. Valter Longo, studied mice that were denied food for two days (but had ready access to water) or had eaten normally. The two groups were then given a high dose of chemotherapy (three times the maximum allowable dose in humans.)

The fasted mice survived and experienced few side effects from the toxic levels of the chemotherapy drug.

Almost half of the mice that ate normally died from the high dose of the chemotherapy drug itself.

Though the fasting mice lost about 20% of their body weight while fasting before the chemotherapy treatment, they steadily gained the weight back in about four days after the treatment.

That’s right, the fasting mice gained weight right after chemotherapy.

The feasting mice, on the other hand, lost about 20% of their body weight following the chemotherapy treatment, from the usual effects of chemotherapy that any cancer patient can expound upon.

More Fasting, More Chemo

To further confirm their results, the scientists tried an even more stringent protocol on another strain of mice. Lab mice are notoriously inbred, and different genetic strains can produce contradictory results. Good results can be confirmed in several mouse types.

These mice were starved for 60 hours (2 1/2 days,) which is the amount of time that the researchers found to be optimal in other tests. Fasting for longer than 60 hours weakens the mice more than it helps them resist the chemotherapy and makes them die more. Then, the scientists dosed these mice with an even higher dose of the chemotherapy drug, almost four times the human maximum allowable dose.

This very high dose of the chemotherapy drug killed all the feasting mice within five days but none of the fasting mice (60 hours of fasting) in the next twenty days. The fasting mice lost 40% of their body weight before the chemotherapy treatment but gained it back within a week after the treatment with, in the words of the authors, “no visible signs of toxicity.”

Let me put it thusly: The exceedingly high dose of chemotherapy killed all the normally eating mice, but if the mice were fasting, it didn’t even make them sick.

Naked Data

Longo also repeated these results in Nude mice, a hairless strain of mice without thymus glands and thus little immune function. They are used extensively in cancer research as they have no immune system to fight the introduced cancer, and thus all the effect of cancer reduction can be attributed to the tested chemotherapy drug.

His results were essentially the same: starved Nude mice survived. Non-starved Nude mice died from the high-dose chemotherapy drug.

Starving Mice with Cancer

Longo then injected mice with virulent cancer cells, a neuroblastoma cell line, using a protocol that mimics the conditions of aggressive, metastatic pediatric cancers, which are some of the most deathly cancers.

Not only did the fasted mice survive the subsequent chemotherapy with fewer side effects, but it appeared that the cancer cells were more susceptible to the chemotherapy than normal cells. The fasted mice survived the metastatic cancer protocol almost three times as long as normally eating mice and around five times as long as untreated mice.

This suggests that the fasted state did not protect cancer cells nearly as much as normal cells were shielded from the effects of chemotherapy, thus suggesting that longer or higher-dose chemotherapy protocols might be devised with fewer side effects but better results.

Longo hypothesized about the reasons for the effect of fasting. He surmised that, as any dieter knows, fasting slows cellular metabolism in normal cells. Thus, after fasting, the normal cells in their state of semi-suspended animation took up less of the toxic chemotherapy drug and thus were less affected by it.

Cancer cells, however, are relentlessly driven by oncogenic growth factors to be fruitful and multiply, no matter what the metabolic cost. Thus, fasting did not lower the metabolic rate of cancer cells. The cancer cells, with their metabolic afterburners still lit, sucked in the chemotherapy drug and were killed by it.

It’s a great mouse study.

Clinical Trials: Starving Cancer Patients

Longo is currently enrolling lung and bladder cancer patients for a clinical trial to fast before receiving their standard chemotherapy.

The lung and bladder cancer patients in the control group (people given standard treatment only and allowed to eat normally, to compare the effectiveness of fasting vs. not-fasting,) will be told what cancer patients are currently told: eat to keep your strength up. You need all your strength to survive chemotherapy.

The fasting group will be asked, first, to fast for 24 hours before treatment. If that is determined to be safe, they will be asked to fast for 48, then 72, hours before treatment.

Now, given what I’ve just told you, if you had cancer and were scheduled for chemo next week, what would you do?

Congress Debates Silencing NIH

2008-09-13T06:53:00.000-07:00

For the last couple years, the number of scientific papers accessible to the public for free has been steadily rising because NIH has required (or at least actively solicited) grantees to allow free access to grant-supported papers one year after their initial publication.

This access is crucial for journalists and for citizen scientists who want to read the primary literature and judge results on their merit rather than relying on brief abstracts. Most researchers have little access outside of their narrow field. For instance, a virologist might have subscriptions to major virology journals but might have a hard time gaining access to a paper in a cell or molecular biology journal, even though that paper might be quite similar to what s/he is working on.

The free access of information, especially information based on research funded by taxpayer money, is essential to research and to society. I hope Congress does not stymie the NIH's gallant attempt to spread knowledge.

Original article from Science Magazine: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/911/1

Some members of Congress would like to overturn a controversial new policy
that requires scientists with grants from the U.S. National Institutes of Health
(NIH) to post their papers in a free online database. Today, an important House
committee grilled NIH about the policy and floated a proposal that scientific
publishers say is needed to protect their products.
Three years ago, NIH began asking grantees to send the agency a copy of their accepted, peer-reviewed papers so that it can make them freely accessible in its PubMed Central archive within 12 months after they are published. But compliance was so poor that proponents of the idea persuaded the House and Senate panels that set NIH's budget to tell the agency to make the policy mandatory (ScienceNOW,
11 January).
NIH says compliance has risen to 56%, or about 3300 papers
submitted each month, since the rule took effect in April. (The agency could
potentially suspend the grant of an investigator who ignores the policy but is
so far relying on less punitive measures, such as reminders). Meanwhile, some
commercial and society publishers, such as the American Physiological Society
(APS), have complained that the policy infringes on their copyrights and will
put them out of business by cutting into their subscription base.
Now the
publishers have found allies on the powerful House Judiciary Committee, chaired
by Representative John Conyers (D–MI). At a 2-hour hearing of the Subcommittee
on Courts, the Internet, and Intellectual Property, Conyers and others
questioned the need for the policy when the public can already obtain the papers
through a subscription or at a library. Moreover, most journals make their
content free after 12 months.
NIH Director Elias Zerhouni defended the
policy. He argued that PubMed Central is enhancing the papers by linking to
molecular databases and other papers. "The real value is the connectivity,"
Zerhouni said. He also claimed that "there is no evidence that this has been
harmful" to publishers. In response, APS Executive Director Martin Frank, whose
society publishes 14 journals, disagrees, telling Science that some journal
editors believe the new policy is leading to "fewer eyeballs coming to their
sites."
A bill introduced today by Conyers and two other members would bar
any federal agency from requiring "the transfer or license" to the government of
a paper that has been produced in part with nongovernment funds--a reference to
the publisher's costs for peer review and production. The Fair Copyright in
Research Works Act (HR 6845) would mean that neither NIH nor any other federal
agency could require grantees to submit accepted papers to a free archive.
There is no companion bill in the Senate, and Congress is not expected to
act on the legislation before it adjourns later this month. Jonathan Band, a
Washington, D.C., attorney who represents the American Library Association,
which favors open access, says the bill's sweeping provisions are a fatal flaw.
"It goes far beyond the NIH policy. It limits a lot of what the federal
government can do," he says. But the keen interest the House Judiciary Committee
showed today in the topic suggests that the debate is not over.

TK Kenyon, http://www.tkkenyon.com/
Author of RABID and CALLOUS: Two novels about science, faith, and humanity, with some sex and murder.

Contest: Mock the Book Reviewers

2008-08-22T12:17:00.000-07:00

Over at my author blog, I'm holding a contest for the best mock review that mocks book reviews. Enter by leaving your own mock review in the comments.

http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/2008/08/book-review-review-contest.html

TK

Kunati Wins Huge Award

2008-05-31T07:38:00.001-07:00

The publisher that published my two novels, RABID and CALLOUS, has won one of the largest awards that an indie publisher can win.

Kunati Book Publishers was honored with INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER OF THE YEAR AWARD at BookExpo America in Los Angeles, California on May 30, 2008, by FOREWORD MAGAZINE, one of the five dominant trade magazines in the book publishing field. Joshua Corin, a Kunati author, accepted at BEA on Kunati's behalf.

The new honor was created to celebrate ForeWord's tenth anniversary and to recognize Kunati's innovation and fearlessness.

Kunati, a year-old publisher, produces book trailers for every new release, maintains a blog, and encourages its authors to blog and actively participate in marketing their books. The publisher currently has several movie deals in the works, and its roster of authors includes Pulitzer Prize winner John E. Mack.

Toyota Prius is Destroying the World

2008-05-28T09:58:00.000-07:00

TK Kenyon, your intrepid scientist for non-majors, is not surprised to tell you that if you're thinking about buying a Toyota Prius because you think it will help the environment or halt global warming, STOP!

Because a Prius guzzles the equivalent of 1000 gallons of gas in its manufacture (because its Ni batteries are very energy-consuming to make), you have to save 1000 gallons of gas to break even on the "carbon expense" of its manufacture.

A Prius supposedly gets about 45 mpg, but that number is greatly disputed and more like 38 mpg.

Most cars get 30 mpg, so you're saving 8 mpg. At 10,000 miles per year, you save 70 gallons of gas with a Prius than if you drive your old car. "Paying off" the carbon debt to manufacture the Prius would thus take 14 years, 3 1/2 months to break even.

If you accept Toyota's vastly fudged MPG figures, a Prius burns 222 gallons per year, versus your old car's 333 gallons per year, to go 10,000 miles. At that difference of 111 gallons per year, it will take 9 years to break even on the carbon debt.

So, to save the planet, keep your old guzzler. You've already paid off the carbon debt of its manufacture; plus, junking it will fill up a landfill and create solid waste pollution.

Reduce, reuse, and recycle. You can't shop your way to environmentalism.

Global warming vs. traditional environmentalism trade-off article: http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/16-06/ff_heresies_intro

TK Kenyon

http://www.tkkenyon.com/

AIDS Vaccine: Should We Stop Looking?

2008-04-29T15:58:00.001-07:00

Recently, The Independent asked the provoking question: Should we end the quest for an HIV vaccine?

A vaccine for HIV will certainly be based on a revolutionary idea.

The Problem

One of the major problems with HIV-vaccine research is that CD4+ cells like monocytes and macrophage express an IgG Fc receptor. Thus, any antibody that sticks to HIV is internalized via the FcR into the CD4+ WBC, and thus the WBC are infected by the tagalong HIV. Even antibodies that are "neutralizing" in a Petri dish increase infectivity.

Thus, I was not surprised when the recent Merck HIV vaccine study went terribly, horribly awry, actually increasing the likelihood of infection and leading to earlier death in vaccinated individuals.

No Solution?

Any antibody-stimulating vaccine will have this problem, assuming an IgG response. Passive immunization with F(ab') fragments might meet with a better result.

Should We Stop?

Seth Berkley, president of the International AIDS Vaccine Initiative, said in The Independent's survey: “Most people’s immune systems hold HIV in check for years before they develop AIDS. A small number of HIV-infected people seem never to develop the disease. There are also documented cases of individuals who have been repeatedly exposed to HIV, but have not become infected. If scientists can work out the type of immune responses that protect these individuals, it might provide vital clues about how to create a vaccine.”

The above data that Berkley notes is indeed reason for hope. However, a traditional vaccine will not evoke the anomalous immune responses that are so rarely observed.

TK Kenyon
Author of CALLOUS: A Novel, ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1601640226 ) a story about free will, neuroscience, fate, Schrodinger's Cat, and the End of Days.

Amazon Oops Again!

2008-04-28T20:22:00.000-07:00

Amazon has jumped the gun and is offering my new novel, CALLOUS, for sale ahead of its May publication date ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1601640226 ) . When RABID was released last year, Amazon sold out and even sucked dry its wholesaler, so they had to backorder the book from the distributer and it took a couple weeks to get the fresh meat.

If you want to read CALLOUS any time soon, muscle your way to the head of the line and snatch a copy from some milquetoast's virtual shopping cart now!

TK Kenyon
http://www.tkkenyon.com

NPR Interview of Kristen Byrnes, Global Warming Denier

2008-04-16T11:24:00.000-07:00

Morning Edition on NPR recently produced a puff piece about Kristen Bynes, blogger of Ponder the Maunder, a blog dedicated to refuting the idea that global warming is a man-made phenomenon.

While the issue of a 16 yo kid becoming a leading global warming contrarian is devastating for the contrary view's validity as a scientific theory, and it seems that she indeed attended a short course at UGoog in Climate Science to arrive at her pre-ordained conclusions (which is the complete antithesis of how science should be conducted,) and that NPR is succumbing to natural selection by lowest common denominator, it seems that there is more to this story.

Personally, I’m not sold on the whole idea of global warming, man-made or not. I used to be. I was upset by the enormous amounts of CO2 that we humans were venting into the atmosphere, just like we exhaust raw sewage into our oceans, etc., etc., etc. And, you know, it seemed warmer, discounting that horrendous Iowa winter of 1995 when temps hit -40F and the Iowa River froze over. You can eliminate outliers in your data, as long as you can account for them, or at least make a nice statistical argument for ignoring them. It seemed that the consensus of the scientific community is that man-made global warming is a threat, and I generally go along with scientific consensus unless there’s a valid reason to doubt, and it had better be a good one. I don’t like the contrarian position.

I do, however, like data. Hard data. Preferably raw, pre-crunched data.

Here’s what changed my mind on global warming: I read that horrible anti-GW novel by Michael Crichton, which so sticks in my mind that I can’t recall the title, and I thought that his novel was so badly written that surely its conclusions can be tossed aside with great force. Crichton is both a horrid novelist and merely an MD.

(Yes, I am arrogant to snark so widely. I hold a fiction MFA from Iowa, where I received many prizes, and have published two well-received novels. During my PhD work in microbiology, I taught medical students in a Midwestern medical school. They’re great at memorizing things but, let’s face it, medical school does not reward original thought nor critical thinking. Their exams are multiple-guess. So, I’m snarky and arrogant. Crichton has loads more money than I have and a huge house on Kauai. He can take the shot.)

So, I set out on my own course of study at UGoog. I expected to quickly dismiss Crichton’s objections with data and confirm the majority opinion. It seems like an overwhelming opinion. I figured it would take an hour.

Here’s what I found: the global warming data is terrible. The methods that collected the data that produced the scary graph that we’ve all seen (where temperature spikes up in the 1970’s) are beyond shaky. It’s really bad science.

I read the whole UN report, and the data that is cited in the prologue, which everyone reads, is a minor part of the whole report. Only surface temps, and only those in major urban areas, are going up. Atmospheric temperatures are not. This is to be expected by the “heat island” effect, where asphalt retains more heat than soil and re-radiates this heat at night.

Personally, I’m on the fence. The data behind GW, whether man-made or not, sucks.

Here’s the problem: whenever you say that the data sucks, people jump on you like you insulted Jesus. They label you a “denialist” and, rather than debate the data, accuse you of wanting to rape the planet.

The global warming debate has moved from the arena of science, where one is free to debate data, methods, and conclusions, and into the area of religion, where one must adhere to dogma or else risk retribution.

That’s a huge problem.

When I published a short blog post about this (http://science4non-majors.blogspot.com/2007/11/hoax-of-global-warming-john-coleman.html ), I got hate mail. Not refute mail. Not argue mail. Hate mail.

Even though my blog post encouraged recycling and conservation, people accused me of trying to destroy the planet.

The debate about global warming must return to being a debate, not a tirade, not a crusade, and not a sermon.

TK Kenyon
http://www.tkkenyon.com
http://science4non-majors.blogspot.com/

Author of RABID ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1601640021 ) and CALLOUS ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1601640226 ): Two novels about science and religion, with some sex and murder.

Science Debate 2008

2008-04-15T19:38:00.000-07:00

Science Debate 2008 is a coalition of scientists and science supporters who are asking the three presidential candidates to engage in a debate concerning the future of America as the world's scientific powerhouse.

Please join and donate to this important cause. The democratic candidates have had a debate about their religious views. Surely, we deserve to know, in detail, what the plans of the candidates are for the scientific community, funding, and regulation.

John F. Kennedy dared us to dream of the moon. Our next president should inspire us, too.

Antarctica: Giant Sea Stars and Carnivorous Sponges

2008-04-08T20:00:00.000-07:00

Giant sea stars and carnivorous sponges are among the hundreds of new animals discovered by a research mission in the Antarctic Ocean.

See more nifty pics at this National Geographic site.

AIDS Vaccine Failures: A Return To Basic Research

2008-04-03T19:32:00.000-07:00

After the Merck's disastrous HIV vaccine trial was halted because it made people more susceptible to HIV infection and increased the severity of the course of AIDS in vaccinated people, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) called a conference this week to discuss a new plan for HIV vaccine research.

After an AIDS activist group called for a halt on all vaccine research, the NIAID Director Anthony Fauci, rebutted, "Not only will we will not cut it; wherever possible, we will increase" funding for vaccine research.

AIDS vaccine research is funded by an $476 million extramural portfolio, which will shift away from product development and toward "discovery research." Right now, the share of vaccine research money that goes for "discovery," or basic research, is 47%. The NIAID will spend less on testing candidate vaccines in the lab and in clinical trials and more on the basic biology of the virus to generate ideas.

Drug Trials, Surrogate End Markers, and Death

2008-04-02T08:26:00.000-07:00

One thing that many people don't realize is that many clinical trials for drugs do not test the ultimate outcome for a drug. The clinical trial tests a "surrogate biomarker," which means that the drug changes an easily measured, immediate statistic rather than an endpoint.

Blood Pressure, Cholesterol, and Your Heart

For example, most heart-health drugs on the market test whether or not the drug lowers blood pressure or cholesterol, not whether the drug reduces heart attacks or strokes. High blood pressure and cholesterol levels are associated with increased heart attacks and strokes, but no one knows whether (1) increased blood pressure or cholesterol causes heart attacks and strokes or whether (2) bad cardiovascular health causes increased blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, heart attacks, and strokes.

In the latter case, lowering blood pressure or cholesterol would not change the problem condition: poor cardiovascular heath, and would thus not reduce heart attacks and strokes.

It is possible that treating blood pressure and cholesterol problems does not reduce cardiovascular events, but these studies have not been performed for a variety of reasons.

First, they're very long-term, expensive, and possibly immoral. You would need to gather 20-30 years worth of data to determine whether there is a difference in heart attack rates between those folks who took blood pressure drugs and those who didn't. In the meantime, are you going to deny those drugs to people outside the study? It is possible that they will help.

Second, no drug company wants to know that their billion-dollar drug doesn't really work. Not to mention that no drug company wants to design their clinical trials around 30-year endpoints. Witness what just happened to Schering-Plough's stock.

Nature Article

There's a very good article in Nature this week about this subject: http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080401/full/452510a.html

If one is testing a drug for cancer or a viral disease, obvious surrogate markers like tumor size reduction or viral blood titer made excellent endpoints. It is very likely that these markers will correlate with increased survival rates or prolonged life, but not always. Even some cancer studies have found that reducing tumor size did not increase life expectancy.

Diseases with less clear cut causes, like Alzheimer's, or multiple causes, like heart disease, are more problematic. These very diseases also would require very long time horizons to judge ultimate effectiveness.

Alzheimer's Disease and Surrogate Endpoints

Alzheimer's Disease is a particular problem because we don't know, really, what causes Alzheimer's. (Really, we don't.)

The APOE gene has various alleles that increase risk, but even the worse one increases one's odds to around 40%. That's still less than a coin toss.

Many people with Alzheimer's dementia have gunky plaques made of amyloid protein on their brains, but not all, and many people with significant dementia and other AD markers (like tau tangles) have few plaques, and some people with lots of amyloid plaques have no dementia. It is not known whether amyloid plaques cause neurons to die, or whether a toxic precursor protein causes neurons to die and amyloid plaques are a garbage dump for this protein.

If the first, then reducing plaque buildup should reduce dementia.

If the latter, reducing amyloid deposition in plaques will increase dementia.

Wyeth Pharmaceuticals is using an unproven cognitive test to study its latest drug for AD, which is at least better than studying amyloid disposition.

And again, are you going to deny drugs that might work to a person with Alzheimer's or a high risk of developing it?

Race-Specific Cancer Gene (Sort Of)

2008-03-31T07:58:00.000-07:00

Using population genetics methods, scientists have found an allele (a form of a gene, due to mutation) that increases the odds for colon cancer by 10% if a person is of European ancestry (specifically Scottish ancestry) but not Japanese ancestry.

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080328/full/news.2008.712.html

Interestingly, this allelic variation is not in the coding region of the gene but in the non-coding region, suggesting that it is a regulatory sequence that can increase or decrease the expression of a protein.

The increase is seen only for colon cancer and not for rectal cancer.

The scientists did not rule out diet or lifestyle factors as the reason for the difference in the effect of the gene.

For example, it is possible that Gene + haggis + scotch = colon cancer, while Gene + sushi + fugu does not.

Quotable Scientists: Henry Fairfield Osborn

2008-03-30T16:48:00.000-07:00

"Evolution is the most firmly established truth in the natural universe."
--Henry Fairfiel Osborn, American paleontologist, (1857-1935)

Ring My Bell: Solar Flares Produce Oscillations

2008-03-30T16:34:00.001-07:00

Solar flares cause recoil in the sun (like the recoil from shooting a gun,) that cause oscillations within the sun. Like a bell, the whole sun "rings" at various frequencies.

Whole paper at Nature

This finding could help us understand the physics of our sun and other stars.

Science and Religion: The Missing Link

2008-03-29T14:40:00.000-07:00

Science education is not designed to destroy religious faith. Science is a different subject than religion. Science is concerned with the natural world and universe, not the supernatural or theological. Most scientists will deny that science destroys faith in a Deity or Deities.

However, the study of science introduces people to ideas that are at odds with what religious organizations promulgate as true. This occurs most often when religion intrudes into the domain of science and not vice versa. When religion states that it has the answers to scientific questions, such as when the Bible states that the Earth is flat (All quotes, KJV: Daniel 4:10-11, Matthew 4:8) and immobile (Examples: I Chronicles 16:30, Psalm 93:1,) science disproves these hypotheses by definitively showing that the Earth is neither flat nor immobile.

Thus, science contradicts many edicts of religion when religion ventures out of its territory.
Science truly undermines religious faith, however, because it teaches people to think. Science teaches people to search for testable, real-world answers to problems and questions rather than rely on superstition, magical thinking, or laziness.

When asked, "Why is the sky blue?" a person of faith can only answer that God decrees it or formulate an inaccurate scientific answer. A person with some science background understands water vapor in the air refracts incoming sunlight toward the blue end of the visible light spectrum. Scientific endeavors, such as rockets and telescopes, have shown that there is no solid firmament above the Earth, as the Bible states.

When asked, "Why did I get sick?" a person of faith can only answer that God willed it, while a microbiologist could isolate the bacteria or virus that caused the infection and provide antibiotics or antivirals to eliminate the infection.

At a magic show, a person who relies on faith to explain the world can only marvel at the wonders. A person with a scientific background notes the smoke and mirrors and the rabbit under the podium, noting that the hat must have a removable panel.

When confronted with horrors in the world, a person of faith can only say that God willed it, perhaps to give Christians something to do. They might pray for God to provide food for the starving. A scientist, however, creates fertilizers, dams, or new strains of drought-resistant crops.

Science teaches people to think of logical, physical causes for events. This makes people less gullible.

By making people less gullible and intellectually lazy, yes indeed, science undermines religious faith.

TK Kenyon, http://www.tkkenyon.com/ Author of RABID and CALLOUS: Two novels about science and religion, with some sex and murder.

A Psychopharmamusical!

2008-03-28T12:01:00.000-07:00

And you thought Hair had a lot of drug references.

Genetic Link to Autoimmune Diseases Type 1 Diabetes and Sjogren's: Hox11 gene

2008-03-28T10:57:00.000-07:00

This fascinating paper from the Faustman lab at Harvard links a developmental gene, Hox11, to the later development of the autoimmune diseases Type 1 Diabetes and Sjogren's syndrome.

http://www.nature.com/icb/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/icb20086a.html

Also important, it links the hearing loss often seen in Type 1 diabetes directly to the Hox11 gene malfunction, not the later autoimmune attack.

This paper suggests that treatment of Hox11 deficiency in people with mutations could prevent Type 1 diabetes, Sjorgren's syndrome, and hearing loss.

Figure from the paper showing deterioration of the ear in Hox11 genetically modified mice:

Comparison of NOD and C57BL/6 cochlear structures. (a) A schematic area of interest in the cochlea. (b–g) Histological cross-sections of the mouse cochlea were processed and cochlear structures were compared between NOD and C57BL/6 animals at 5–8 weeks of age. Structural abnormalities were found in the spiral ganglion, spiral ligament and organ of Corti in the NOD mice. (b and c) The spiral ganglion cells of the NOD mouse were greatly deteriorated (arrow, b), relative to the C57BL/6 control (arrow, c), with only the Schwann cell nuclei remaining. (d and e) There was also atrophy of the spiral ligament, as seen by the loss of cells in the NOD specimen (arrow, d), which is in sharp contrast to the fully populated spiral ligament in the control (arrow, e). (f and g) The organ of Corti of the NOD specimen appeared to be deteriorated and to have many fewer cells (arrow, f), including hair cells, compared to the control (arrow, g). Defects similar to those observed in the NOD cochlea were present in the NOD-SCID cochlea as well.

Instant Nanotech Test for Mad Cow Prions

2008-03-27T12:52:00.000-07:00

Researchers at Cornell University have developed a nanatechnology platform to detect prions at low concentrations that, hopefully and soon, will be used to detect Mad Cow Disease prions in blood -- instantly.

That's right. Instantly.

Mad Cow disease prions are responsible for the transmission of bovine spongiform enchelalopathy to humans, causing new variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (nvCJD,) an incurable neurodegenerative disease, much like Alzheimer's plus Parkinson's, but kills people in just a couple years.

Right now, the "gold standard" of prion detection is to remove brain matter from an animal that is suspected to be infected (and is dead), inject that into another animal, wait for a long time, then kill the other animal and necropsy its brain. This can take years and (get this) only detects the prion infection 31% of the time.

That's a terrible assay.

The new nanotech assay technique developed by Harold Craighead and company use a "tuning fork" technique. A nano-sized tuning folk is coated with antibodies against the abnormal conformation of the prion protein.

For many other assays, the added weight of the antigen (in this case, the prion) would be enough to change the pitch of the nano-tuning fork when a vibration in the assay liquid sets the fork vibrating. However, because prions are so light, this doesn't work. The researchers used secondary antibodies and metal conjugates to increase the weight of the prions, thus the added weight changed the pitch of the vibrating fork by a detectable amount.

This assay would be invaluable to eliminate prion-infected cows from getting into our food chain, which caused the outbreak of new variant Creuzfeld-Jakob Disease in England a decade ago.

This assay could also test biomedical stocks, such as human growth hormone obtained from human cadavers (yep! that's where it comes from.) for nvCJD prions. Several doctors in France were just indicted for involuntary homicide for not being vigilant enough concerning cadaver HGH and thus infecting over 100 French children with nvCJD.

It's especially a concern when slaughterhouses are unscrupulous about slaughtering and processing "downer" cows, which are sick and possibly infected with mad cow prions.

2008-03-25T07:32:00.001-07:00

Best Scientific Images of the Year II

Wellcome has awarded their prizes for best scientific images of the year, and they are pretty.

This micrograph, taken with a laser scanning confocal microscope (see post below,) is a picture of colon cancer cells. The fluors used are not labelled, but I shall make some educated guesses.

Blue here is a nuclear stain, meaning that it stains DNA in the nucleus of the cell, such as DAPI or BOBO.

The green fluor is a cytoskeleton stain. The cytoskeleton component stained here appears to be filamentous actin, because I see some stress fibers through the cells. The stain is probably phalloidin (a toxin from death cap mushrooms) conjugated to a fluor.

The red color is more ambiguous. It seems to colocalize with the cytoskeleton in some cells (red + green = yellow) but is more diffused and cytoplasmic in others. Could be an actin binding-protein or another component of the cytoskeleton.

2008-03-25T07:26:00.000-07:00

Best Science Photos of the Year

Wellcome has named its best scientific images of the year, and several are from my own favorite microscope, a laser scanning confocal. Personally, I like Zeiss. Zeiss is nice.

This is a micrograph of an HIV virus. (This image is not from a laser scanning confocal microscope. Viruses are too small to be seen with a LSM. You need an electron microscope to see viruses, let alone viral structures.)

The core in the middle is the RNA chromosome and associated core proteins. The blue half-shell is the viral capsid. The yellow proteins are the ride-along gooey things called the tegument.

2008-03-24T13:11:00.001-07:00

White Whale (Shark): Not Quite Moby Dick, But Big and White and Fishy

This albino whale shark was spotted off the Galapagoes. Nifty video.

2008-03-24T10:13:00.000-07:00

Expelled! Again!: "Framing Science" People Pandering to Opiated Masses

Lunge:

First, PZ Myers, noted and eminent science blogger and professor, was not admitted to a pre-screening of the film Expelled!, an ID drive-by documentary on evolution, and blogged about how he was thrown out at the whim of the producers. (Previous post: here.)

Myers's guest, Richard Dawkins, was admitted without fuss (as the producers probably did not recognize him, and when asked to show identification, he produced his British passport under his legal name, "Clinton Richard Dawkins.")

It must be noted that both Myers and Dawkins appear in the film Expelled!, for which they were interviewed under false pretenses, and the piecemeal editing of their interviews was journalistically unethical.

Parry:

After some brouhaha, Matthew Nesbit, a professor of communications, blogged:
"As long as Dawkins and PZ continue to be the representative voices from the pro-science side in this debate, it is really bad for those of us who care about promoting public trust in science and science education. Dawkins and PZ need to lay low as Expelled hits theaters. Let others play the role of communicator, most importantly the National Center for Science Education, AAAS, the National Academies or scientists such as Francis Ayala or Ken Miller. When called up by reporters or asked to comment, Dawkins and PZ should refer journalists to these organizations and individuals."
At the risk here of being arch, isn't "communications" what people who flunk out of business major in?

More to the point, Nesbit is utterly wrong. He compares the evolution vs. ID debate to politics, comparing Myers and Dawkins to, "Samantha Power, Geraldine Ferraro and so many other political operatives who through misstatements and polarizing rhetoric have ended up being liabilities to the causes and campaigns that they support."

This comparison is a fallacy.

Science is not politics, which is convincing a majority of the people that your political theory is the correct one to vote for on the day of elections in the majority of the voting districts. Politics seeks to create consensus.

Science is the truth. Myers and Dawkins should not be compared to Power and Ferraro, but to Galileo, Darwin, and Copernicus. No matter what the ID guys believe, they're wrong. Convincing more people that creationism is valid will not make it less wrong. Religionists' balking at evolution is just another example of irrational, superstitious flailing.

Nesbit's whole philosophy, "Framing Science," in which mostly non-scientists try to reconcile science with religion, which are several systems of contradictory and unsubstantiated beliefs, is a waste of time.

Yes, we should try to break it gently to religionists that they've been utterly wrong all these years, but eventually, the obvious truth of science will prevail. It's only a matter of time, another scientific concept.

I admit, when I saw Nesbit's blog and its title, "Framing Science," I thought it was a provocative anti-science blog, like when the cops "frame" someone for a crime. Perhaps that wasn't the best moniker for their movement. You would think that a communications major might have thought of that.

Another non-scientist "framing" guy, Chris Mooney, blogged that the PZ Myers controversy is giving the film loads of free publicty, is thus counter-productive, and also suggested that Myers should refrain from more discussion.

Riposte:

Nesbit's post led PZ Myers to this sputtering reply, which is perhaps less eloquent than his usual posts but heartfelt, in which he said in part, "Fuck you very much, Matt. You know where you can stick your advice."

Again, scientists are not politicians, who strive to form consensus or convince voters, or religionists, who seek to silence the opposing viewpoint.

People should go see that film and laugh at it for the dreck it is. The public should understand that Dawkins and Myers were interviewed under false presenses (the film makers told them it was a documentary about science and education, not a religion drive-by of evolution,) and with shoddy journalistic ethics (including the old trick of setting the camera and the interviewer at 90 degrees to each other, and thus the subject looks back and forth between the camera and the interviewer, producing a "shify-eyed" effect that is associated with lying or unreliability.)

Scientists seek the truth, and when we find it, we tell other people the truth. If there are contrary opinions, we debate the evidence and logically decide whose model is more accurate.

That's the problem with non-scientists like Mooney and Nesbit. They're operating in the rhelm of opinion, not truth. They're seeking to sway people with propaganda, not evidence and logic. They're using the enemy's faulty weapons against the enemy, who designed them, have the blueprints, and know where the weak points are.

Evolution is model with huge amounts of scientific evidence backing it up.

Sure, all models are wrong, but some models are useful.

Evolution is a useful model. It explains the past and, contrary to what ID guys will tell you, it accurately predicts future results.

ID and creationism in general do not accurately predict future results, except perhaps that creationists lie to themselves and others and will continue to do so.

Mooney and Nesbit are in the wrong on this issue.

Myers and Dawkins should not shut up.

Scientists tell the truth. Politicians and religionists seek create consensus or to silence the opposition. Pandering to their illogical and ignorant views will only endow them with a false sense of superiority, to go along with their false view of the universe and their false beliefs.

To PZ Myers and Richard Dawkins: Once more into the breach!

TK Kenyon

2008-03-21T12:05:00.000-07:00

Your genes might be selfish, but your brain isn't.

Social psychologist Elizabeth Dunn of the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver, Canada, performed a series of studies on, admittedly, small groups to determine what contributes more to happiness: giving money away or spending it on yourself. She gave people money, told them to either donate it or splurge with it, and then quantified happiness levels.

http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2008/320/2

In the spirit of Christmas cheer (even though this is Easter weekend,) either donating the money to charity or buying a gift for others produced more happiness than keeping it or spending it on oneself.

This empirically tested and quantified altruism is a lovely addition to the study of ethics. The studies should be replicated with larger sample sizes, but they are worth reading.

TK Kenyon

2008-03-20T20:34:00.000-07:00

Creationist Movie Doesn't Have A Clue

At the new creationist movie called Expelled, eminent science blogger PZ Myers was waiting to get in for a screening.

A cop pulled him out of line and told him that he couldn't go in and that he had to leave the premises immediately, or he would be arrested.

But wait! There's more. There's so much more. I laughed so hard that I had an asthma attack. A bad one. And then I read it again.

Read THE REST OF THE STORY at Pharyngula.

Oh, man, I wish I had been there.

TK Kenyon

2008-03-19T12:26:00.001-07:00

If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.

--Arthur C. Clarke (1917-2008), The Exploration of Space, 1951

2008-03-19T09:37:00.000-07:00

ALL TK KENYON'S BLOGS

http://science4non-majors.blogspot.com/
http://fictionlessons.blogspot.com/
http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/
http://celiac-maniac.blogspot.com/
http://rabidfictionreviews.blogspot.com/
http://rabidatheists.blogspot.com/
http://www.tkkenyon.com

2008-03-18T17:03:00.000-07:00

Neuroethics: Not as rational as you think.

Marvelous new online, free, open-access journal that everyone should read: Neuroethics. The first issue includes an unflinching look at the field of neuroethics (as distinct from Bioethics,) and the way that the brain determines ethics and morality.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/120989/?p=ff72daa10e7b435fa42eb31b7bcd5e20&pi=0

In the first issue, editor Dr. Neil Levy has written an elegent overview of the field, including a neuroethicist's view of the notorious Trolley Problem, namely, if a trolley is hurtling toward five people on a track, and you hold a lever that will change the track so that the trolley is shuttled onto a track where it kills only one person, should you pull the lever. Most ethicists and ordinary folks say "yes," for the greater welfare is at stake.

However, if the problem is changed subtly so that your choice is between allowing the trolley to crush the five people or pushing a large, beefy man onto the track to obstruct and stop the trolley, most ethicists and ordinary people will say no, that this violates the man's rights, and you should allow the trolley to slaughter the five people.

Neuroethicists have identified where the real problem is: the difference between these two scenarios is not merely “action,” as the Kantian folks dissemble, but emotion. We do not want to be actively responsible for the death of a human being, and a particular human being (the large, beefy man) at that.

The real problem is: since it is emotion that informs our ethical choices, ethical choices are not rational.

The journal also has a lovely article on “The Popular New Genre of Neurosexism” by Dr. Cordelia Fine, comparing recent mommy-brain books to the painfully terrible science of the 1800’s, in which eminent scientists actually promulgated that women’s education should not be too rigorous because it would divert energy to their brains and away from their ovaries, rendering them sterile. (Testicles, apparently, had an independent energy source.)

This excellent new journal deserves bookmarking. Do it now to avoid the rush.

TK Kenyon

Author of RABID: A Novel and CALLOUS: A Novel, where neuroscience, morality, and murder intersect.
www.tkkenyon.com

http://science4non-majors.blogspot.com/

http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/

2008-03-17T20:39:00.000-07:00

It's News To Me: We're Scientifically Illiterate

Despite the fact that science affects us each and every day, cable news channels spend almost no time examining and reporting science. On average, five hours of cable news coverage contains 71 minutes of politics, 26 minutes of crime, 12 minutes of disasters and 10 minutes of celebrities.

Science, technology, health and the environment received just six minutes of coverage (with health and health care accounting for half of that.)

IMHO, there are three reasons why science gets little coverage.

(1) "If it bleeds, it leads." Bad news is news. Science is rarely bad news. Most of the time, science leads to good news, like cures for diseases or an expansion of our knowledge of the universe. Science rarely leads to murder or mayhem (except at the International Herpesvirus Workshop, because we're wild folks, but I digress.)

(2) A lot of people don't understand science. You can blame this on the pitiful state of science education, but part of the problem is the "Two Cultures" mentality fostered by CP Snow, et al, (http://www.bookslut.com/features/2007_10_011815.php), and the fact that science itself is compartmentalized, fractionated, and vernacular.

I have a PhD in microbiology (virology,) and I like physics and a lot of other science, but I can't read an issue of Nature or Science cover-to-cover because most of the papers in there are too far out of my field for me to understand. Sometimes, I can get the jist, but I couldn't talk about it with any alacrity. (http://science4non-majors.blogspot.com/) .

(3) Lack of celebrities. I'm not going to merely bemoan our celebrity-driven culture, but people with influence drive the memes.

Yeah, lots of people worry about the environment and global warming, but Al Gore, already a big-timer, got the best-selling book.

Admiral Richard Hawkins noted in 1662 that oranges and lemons cured scurvy, but he wasn't a celebrity. Captain Cook, who was a celebrity explorer, was credited with discovering that limes prevented scurvy in 1775, over a hundred years later, and only then was the practice of taking citrus on voyages adopted by the British navy.

Maybe if we recruited better looking scientists....

TK Kenyon
Author of RABID and CALLOUS, two novels with good-looking scientists.
www.tkkenyon.com
http://tkkenyon.blogspot.com/

2008-03-17T14:42:00.000-07:00

New Gluten-Free Blog -- Celiac Maniac!

For those of you who are gluten-free enough to care, I've started a new blog, because what the world needs is yet one more celiac blog. Celiac disease is an autoimmune condition associated with genetic factors, specific HLA alleles, and caused by an immune reaction to a peptide in the wheat (and wheat-like) protein gluten. The antibodies to gluten then cross-react with several proteins found in the digestive tract, causing damage to the jejunum section of the small intestine. Symptoms are many, varied, and non-specific.

http://celiac-maniac.blogspot.com/

It is, however, important to me to share the word of health.

TK Kenyon
Author of RABID: A Novel and CALLOUS: A Novel

2007-11-21T09:52:00.000-08:00

Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells: The End of the Ethical Debate

Today, two truly momentous papers were published in Science and Cell, respectively. These papers were so important that even Yahoo! News recognized their importance, and news services prefer stories about giant bugs.

These “induced pluripotent stem cells” (or iPS, as opposed to embryonic stem cells, or ES) produced by these two labs are important for a variety of reasons.

First, these cells completely end the whole debate about whether or not obtaining stem cells from the destruction of a human embryo is ethical. That’s it. It’s over. Don’t want to hear any more about it.

Assuming these cells are indeed truly pluripotent, and there is every indication they are, and if none of the caveats below are a problem, then this is it. In the papers above, researchers used several different types of human cells, ones from an adult woman’s face (a 36-year-old Caucasian woman, in Takahashi, et al,) and foreskin fibroblasts (Yu, et al,), which are cells harvested during the circumcision of newborn boys.

(You didn’t think we just threw those cells away, did you? They’re essentially fetal cells, a veritable cell culture gold mine. They’re used for many kinds of research, especially growing viruses in culture. Plus, if you grow enough of them and sew them into a wallet, and then rub the wallet, it turns into a suitcase. Sorry, old joke.)

Second, there was an additional ethical problem with ES cells, though it was considered secondary to the destruction of human life issue. To obtain human ova to perform nuclear transfer and thus produce ES cells, a woman had to undergo hormone therapy and surgery. Granted, the procedures are pretty much the same as in IVF, but ovulation-inducing fertility drugs have been linked with later ovarian cancer.

Another concern is that human ova would be come very valuable as a cure for everything from spinal cord injuries to Parkinson’s to Alzheimer’s to genetic diseases, etc. Should you pay women for this valuable resource and to chance getting ovarian cancer at a later time?

Again, these debates are now ended. These iPS cells don’t need eggs.

Third, using cells from an adult woman’s face to produce iPS cells is truly a breakthrough. This provides the proof-of-concept that an adult’s cells can be reprogrammed to pluripotency. If only fetal cells or newborn cells were possible to reprogram, this technique would be useful to correct birth defects or inborn genetic diseases but could not help diseases like Parkinson’s or cure spinal cord injuries.

Fourth, this lentivirus technique is easy. Really easy. Many, many labs use the lentivirus vectors and selection techniques described in these papers to produce stably transfected cell lines. I’ve done it. When this technique is refined and, hopefully, declared safe, labs all over the country could begin using this protocol for patients.

Nuclear transfer (the “Dolly” technique) that uses ES cells, on the other hand, is much more difficult.

There are, as always, some caveats. This technique will probably produce stem cells suitable for many kinds of research. It’s going to be a huge boon to labs.

It may not safely work for people. The four genes used are transcription factors, and their upregulation (which means when more is produced) is associated with cancer cells. Cells produced using this technique may cause cancer instead of cures. Takahashi, et al, used Oct3/4, Sox2, Klf4, and c-Myc. (As a virologist, seeing Myc in there gives me the proverbial willies, even if it is the c-Myc gene and not v-Myc.) Yu, et al, used Oct4, Sox2, Nanog, and Lin28, though Lin28 may not be necessary.

“Lentiviruses” are retroviruses. The retroviruses used to insert the four genes into the cells may damage the cells’ DNA when they integrate into the chromosomes and thus cause cancer.

Yet, the possibility of a cure may outweigh the possibility of future cancer. Women choose the increased risk of future cancer to have children by ovulation induction, and they do it often.

Think of it this way: if you had a profoundly dehabilitating disease, such as Parkinson’s, or early-onset Alzheimer’s, or a spinal cord injury, you might be given the choice between a cure (or a profound reduction in symptoms,) but the risk might be a 10% chance of cancer in the next decade.

Wouldn’t you want the choice?

TK Kenyon, author of RABID: A Novel and CALLOUS: A Novel (Apr 2008)

RABID is “[A] philosophical battle between science and religion ... with four very subtle and intriguing central characters. This is a novel quite unlike most standard commercial fare, a genre-bending story--part thriller, part literary slapdown with dialogue as the weapon of choice.” –Booklist Starred Review

Read “Why Dante Became A Priest: Communion Is A Kiss,” the prequel to RABID! You can even read it on your Amazon Kindle!

2007-11-18T09:42:00.000-08:00

Recently, the Merck pharmaceutical company reported that its experimental HIV vaccine raised the rate of HIV infection among people who got the trial vaccine.

Yes, you read that right. It was worse than nothing. This vaccine was composed of a few HIV proteins strapped onto an adenovirus, which causes colds. Among people with good immunity to this common cold virus, about 80% of the population, it increased the chances of contracting HIV.

The saddest part is that this is not surprising.

Virologists have long been skeptical about the possibility of an effective HIV vaccine. HIV infects the very immune cells that you stimulate to defend your body against it. Stimulating these cells increases the rate at which HIV can infect those cells and the rate of HIV replication in these cells. Thus, an HIV vaccine can make it more likely that you’ll get AIDS, and you might get it sooner and worse than if you weren’t immunized.

So far, no one has found the Holy Grail of HIV vaccines: a broad, neutralizing antibody. A broad antibody is one that attaches to many variants of the virus. Protecting against a single strain of HIV is darn-near worthless because HIV mutates so fast that pretty much everyone has their own, personal strain. Neutralizing antibodies cause the virus or virally infected cells to be killed. Beyond the inability to find antibodies that broadly react with the many, many strains of fast-mutating HIV, many antibodies, including most of those produced in other HIV-vaccine studies, are not neutralizing.

Even in studies with monkeys challenged with simian immunodeficiency virus, we haven’t found a vaccine that produces neutralizing antibodies and protects well against a broad range of viral strains, and the few studies that do have promising results are confounded because the researchers often can’t explain why.

So why are we racing to human trials?

First, money. If a safe and efficacious HIV vaccine is produced, people will line up, set their names down on waiting lists, and pay beaucoup bucks to be immunized against this certain-death virus. To the pharmaceutical company, the patents will be a gold mine. Sure, they’ll throw a few vials of vaccine to the African or Thai prostitutes in the name of public heath and as thanks for dying during the testing of the really dangerous vaccines, but that won’t eat into their oil-company-like profit margins.

The pharmaceutical companies are so eager to find a vaccine that works, anything that works, that they’re willing to burn a few thousand African and Asian prostitutes to do it. Those populations are unlikely to sue for a variety of reasons, several of them being that they’re overseas, poor, and if the vaccine doesn’t works or backfires, dead.

I remember one vaccine that was up for review before going to human trials a few years ago, and the vaccine itself was expected to infect 30% of the trial participants with HIV and kill them. That’s not a failure rate, meaning that the vaccine didn’t protect them against getting HIV from someone else. That’s a side effect of the vaccine: slow death. Is it ethical? They were planning to test in and ultimately give this vaccine to destitute prostitutes, the kind who can’t afford condoms. Without the vaccine, the HIV infection rate is 100%. The other 70% may have been protected. However, the trial may have gone like the Merck trial above, and the other 70% may have been at greater risk, too.

Second, millions of lives. If anyone finds a vaccine that works, even partially, millions of lives can be saved, and the wildfire spread of infection can be slowed or stopped.

Third, the absence of a really, really good model system to study vaccines for proof of concept before going to human trials. Yes, monkeys get SIV (simian immunodeficiency virus,) but many monkeys like sooty mangabeys tolerate high titers of the virus without getting sick, and they do it with some unknown immune function. They don’t make neutralizing antibodies, either. (1) They defend some other way, and we’re not sure how.

Fourth, no better ideas. Scientists are working as hard as they can, as fast as they can, but HIV is still a highly evolved, diabolical pathogen. Its major antigens (virus bits that the immune system recognizes to figure out it’s a virus) mutate like mad, like internet viruses, to use a perfectly circular analogy.

So there you have it: Merck was trying to find a vaccine to save its bottom line and thousands of lives in the absence of good pre-phase-I model system. It backfired on them.

One other really sad thing: there are a lot of other trials out there using everything from naked DNA to canarypox vectors to the smallpox-vaccine virus. They might all have exactly the same problem: they make antibodies, but those antibodies don’t stop or slow the virus, and they might make the infection rate and disease course worse.

TK Kenyon, Author of RABID: A Novel
“[A] philosophical battle between science and religion ... with four very subtle and intriguing central characters. This is a novel quite unlike most standard commercial fare, a genre-bending story--part thriller, part literary slapdown with dialogue as the weapon of choice.” –Booklist Starred Review

The Hoax of Global Warming?

2007-11-10T13:36:00.000-08:00

John Coleman, meteorologist and founder of the The Weather Channel, recently wrote an editorial on his KUSI (San Diego, CA) blog that stated in part, (scroll down to find the essay,)
"[Global Warming] is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming... It is a SCAM.... Environmental extremists, notable politicians among them, then teamed up with movie, media and other liberal, environmentalist journalists to create this wild "scientific" scenario of the civilization threatening environmental consequences from Global Warming unless we adhere to their radical agenda."

And what does your humble Non-Majors Science Instructor say?

Well, he has a point. The data that backs up the whole global warming theory is sketchy, at best. We’ve all seen the scary graph where the average recorded temperature line bobs along for a couple of centuries and then suddenly spikes up in the seventies.

As a scientist, that graph impresses me, but any scientist would ask: Where does that data come from? The acquisition method determines the data.

Now, most of the data points taken on that scary graph are from thermometers that are stationary and have been hanging in the same place for decades, even for over a century.

On the surface, this ensures continuity of data. You don’t want to take the official temperature one day in the middle of a grassy park and the next day, five inches above the steaming asphalt, or five inches above a frozen-over pond. You've got to control the variables. The position of the thermometer is certainly a variable you must control.

The problem with this is not day-to-day comparisons, but decade-to-decade comparisons. Many of these thermometers are now in the centers of huge cities. Urban heat island effect is well-documented and quite intuitive. The temperature in the centers of cities can be as much as twenty (20) Fahrenheit degrees warmer than surrounding rural areas.

For example, the official thermometer in Phoenix, AZ is at Sky Harbor Airport.

Three decades ago, Sky Harbor was on the edge of Phoenix and surrounded by cotton fields and empty desert. At night, the desert and raw soil cooled quickly, and the summer temperatures even in the center of Phoenix dropped into the sixties and seventies, Fahrenheit.

Now, the cities of Phoenix, Tempe, Mesa, Glendale, Chandler, Scottsdale, etc., have grown together like merging cancer tumors into one huge, sprawling, asphalt-paved ubercity. In the summer, the blacktop absorbs the heat from the blazing sun all day long and reradiates it at night, so Phoenix does not cool below ninety degrees Fahrenheit for weeks, sometimes months. In 2007, the high temperature was over 110o Fahrenheit for 32 days. Sometimes, the low is above a hundred degrees.

The official thermometer hangs in almost the very center of that hellhole, and I mean that the hot-enough-to-melt-sulfur sense.

The urban heat island effect has certainly affected the average daily temperatures in the middle of Phoenix. That's a localized climate change, however. Not a global climate change.

EPA LINK -- WISC.EDU LINK -- GOV.UK LINK -- ABOUT.COM LINK

Now let us consider: if the whole planet is warming up, we would expect to see many new records for highest daily temperature being set and fewer records for lowest temperatures.

Chart Source: http://wmo.asu.edu/

That isn't the case. Indeed, you'll notice in the above chart that the opposite is true. The records for the lowest recorded temperatures are more recent than records for the highest temperatures.

Average Year Highest Temperature Record: 1940
Average Year Lowest Temperature Record: 1954

The above data is meant as an indication, but it's not, quite honestly, anything to base a PhD thesis on. The records data can only be considered anecdotal, or a "case study," but cannot be extrapolated to disprove the global warming theory.

However, that data sure as heck does not support global warming.

So, what do we do about it?

Here's my take: whether or not global warming is occurring, it behooves us to act as if it was for a variety of reasons.

First, in the arena of unenlightened self-interest, conservation will save you money. If you use less energy, that means you buy less energy. Gas is approaching $4 a gallon, and oil costs above $95 a barrel. These prices are unlikely to go down by any appreciable amount, in the absence of new technology. "Reduce, reuse, and recycle" could be the penny-pincher's mantra.

Second, we in the Western hemisphere buy a lot of oil from people who are committed to destroying democracy, liberty, and liberal ideals. No, I'm not talking about Canada (the number one exporter of oil to the U.S.,) but the Islamic theocracies and monarchies of the Middle East. Seriously, the governments over there have said that they want to destroy democracy and liberalism and replace it with Islamic theocracies in the whole world.

Third, many resources are probably finite. Assuming that the theory that hydrocarbons, especially petroleum, are dead dinosaurs ("fossil fuels") and thus they are running out is true (and there are theories that it isn't, such as the one expounded in The Deep Hot Biosphere, and Freeman Dyson, a genius, wrote the forward to this iconoclastic book, and Thomas Gold is a highly regarded professor at Cornell) then conserving finite resources only makes sense. Scarcity drives up prices. See the first reason above.

Fourth, whatever the effect on global climate change, extravagant use of petrochemicals and other contaminants increases the air, soil, and water contamination in the local environment. That's your backyard that you're poisoning.

TK Kenyon, Author of RABID: A Novel
"A genre-bending story, part thriller, part literary slap-down." --Booklist Starred Review

2007-10-18T19:47:00.000-07:00

James Watson: Science at its Worst

In a profile of James Watson, renowned 1962 Nobel Laureate for co-discovering the double-helical structure of DNA and chancellor of the renowned Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York, the Sunday Times Magazine of London quoted him as saying that he's "inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa" because "all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really."

Furthermore, while he hopes everyone is equal, "people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true," Watson said. He also said people should not be discriminated against on the basis of color, because "there are many people of color who are very talented."

In addition, Watson in his new book "Avoid Boring People" says, "There is no firm reason to anticipate that the intellectual capacities of peoples geographically separated in their evolution should prove to have evolved identically… Our wanting to reserve equal powers of reason as some universal heritage of humanity will not be enough to make it so."

Watson obviously needs Sherlock Holmes to explain it all for him, because he doesn't understand anything about standardized testing or how it relates to genetic inheritance of intelligence.
Granted, in many standardized testing situations, taken as a cohort, people of African heritage have had a lower median on their bell curve than people of other races. However, when you control for socioeconomic background, the race factor drops out entirely.

Entirely.

Yep. Poor, disadvantaged black people score equally with poor, disadvantaged white folks and poor, disadvantaged Asian folks. Middle-class black folks score equally well as middle-class white or Asian folks. Ditto for upper-class sons and daughters of doctors and lawyers. When you control for socioeconomic status, race is unimportant in standardized testing scores.

Let's say it again to be perfectly clear: When you control for socioeconomic status, race is unimportant in standardized testing scores.

Due to historical inequality of opportunity, a higher percentage of poor, disadvantaged black folks drag down the curve.

Two generations ago, people of African descent received worse scores than today.

Two generations from now, with rigor, more black people will be lifted out of poverty, and their kids have more tutoring and prep opportunities and better schools, and their scores will improve.

Note that: the genetic composition of the cohorts has not and will not perceptibly change, but scores have and will improve. That's not genetics. That's environment.

Such blatantly racist comments smack of eugenics and denigrate all of science by suggesting that we suppose such idiocy. Watson has since apologized for his comments, but I hope that people realize that these comments were not scientifically valid, were not supported by data, and are the worst misapplication of science.

TK Kenyon
Author of RABID: A Novel
"What begins as a riff on Peyton Place smoothly metamorphoses into a philosophical battle between science and religion. Kenyon is definitely an author to watch, she juggles all of her story's elements without dropping any of them--and, let's not forget, creates four very subtle and intriguing central characters."
–Booklist Starred Review

2007-10-12T13:50:00.000-07:00

To all the male chauvinist idiots who bemoan Doris Lessing winning the Nobel Prize:
Doris Lessing won the Nobel Prize for Literature because she deserves it, that’s why.

The criticism of Doris Lessing recently receiving the Nobel Prize is thinly disguised misogyny, salted with a snobbish distaste for fiction marketed as science fiction.

Literary critic Harold Bloom, commenting on Lessing's Nobel, told The Associated Press. "Although Ms. Lessing at the beginning of her writing career had a few admirable qualities, I find her work for the past 15 years quite unreadable ... fourth-rate science fiction."

Let us remember that is almost the exact quote that Kirkus Reviews used to slam Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano before it was recognized that he was not writing “fourth-rate science fiction,” but post-modern literature worthy of every prize in the book.

Harold Bloom and the rest of the self-appointed literati have their panties in a wad that some other literati dare defy their taste.

They are angry that a woman, one who describes the rich and varied experience of being a woman, from that the angry and territorial women in The Golden Notebook to an older woman who still can love and lust (Love, Again, 1996.) Men have decried her writing as unfeminine and strident, even though depictions of such emotions in male characters would have been lauded as righteous anger or machismo.

Her most recent novel, The Cleft, has been roundly reviled because it is obviously science fiction and, as science fiction, it is not scientifically accurate, which is suspiciously like reviewing a restaurant and pronouncing the food inedible and the portions, too small. One of the definitions of post-modern fiction, as opposed to mere SF, is the inclusion of the supernatural in a scientific framwork. The Cleft is magical realism, not science fiction, and if Gabriel Garcia Marquez had written it, he would have been heralded for his bravery and seeing deeply into the natures of women because he is male.

The men who deem themselves to be the taste-makers have their over-sized noses out of joint. They will probably slam Doris Lessing’s work and the Nobel Committee’s taste again and again in the upcoming weeks because the coveted prize went to a woman instead of a man.

It’s sexism, pure and simple, just like Doris Lessing’s characters were angry about in The Golden Notebook in 1962.

TK Kenyon
Author of RABID: A Novel
“A genre-bending novel, part thriller, part literary slapdown.”
–Booklist Starred Review

2007-07-03T08:44:00.000-07:00

EBAY CHARITY AUCTION:

NAME A CHARACTER IN A NOVEL

BENEFITS POLARIS PROJECT

ANTI-SLAVERY ORG

T.K. Kenyon, novelist, is auctioning off the naming rights for a character in her next novel. All proceeds from the auction will go to Polaris Project, a charitable organization dedicated to stopping human trafficking and modern-day slavery.

The 10-day auction on Ebay.com will begin on Monday, July 2, 2007, and run through Thursday, July 12, 2007.

http://www.ebay.com/, Ebay Item #190128549494

Yes, slavery still exists. We not only can't protect our borders, our government can't even enforce the Emancipation Proclamation.

Please bid on this unique opportunity to see your name in a novel and to promote this worthy charity, and tell your friends!

2007-01-26T14:03:00.000-08:00

Frankenchicken:

How Scientists Inserted Genes Into Chickens to Make Drugged Eggs

To make new pharmaceutical drugs, you have to break a few eggs.

In this case, you have to break a few genes that produce proteins that are in eggs.

Scientists at the Roslin Institute in Midlothian, UK, inserted genes for interferon alpha 2a (an anti-viral protein often used to treat hepatitis, the active compound in Roferon-A,) interferon beta-1a (used to treat multiple sclerosis, the active compound in Avonex and Rebif,) or an antibody against melanoma (the really bad skin cancer) into chickens. The eggs that the chickens laid then had lots of the protein in them. You can purify the protein from the eggs to make drugs.

The rationale for doing this is that chicken farming is a lot cheaper than bacterial or mammalian tissue culture production in bioreactors, which is the current method of producing most large-molecule protein drugs.

So how do you make a Frankenchicken?

First, Dr. Helen M. Sang and her associates used a retrovirus. The particular retrovirus used was an Equine Infectious Anemia Virus (EIAV), a commonly used, commercial vector. The genes that cause disease and virus production have been removed from this virus so that other genes may be inserted.

Retroviruses break open the DNA of the host they infect and insert themselves into the host’s chromosomes. From within the hosts’ chromosomes, they use the hosts’ own protein-making and cell-making machinery to produce a few new viruses that then go infect other cells. That’s how they ride along for years, causing minimal or no disease. For example, HIV, a human retrovirus, infect human white blood cells and inserts itself into the white blood cells’ DNA.

All the disease-causing genes were removed from the EIAV vector. Then, the scientists added the genes of the drug proteins to the vector. Now, when the retroviral vector inserts into the host’s DNA, it will make the protein drug instead of making viral proteins and new viruses.

So why does the drug only appear in the eggs? Why isn’t the drug in the whole chicken?

The virus figures out where to insert itself into the host’s DNA by comparing its DNA sequence to the host’s. In a place where the virus’s DNA matches the host’s DNA closely enough, the DNA entwines around each other and the virus’s DNA splices into the host’s DNA.

Then, the scientists made some changes to the DNA around the drug genes so that it matched a particular chicken gene: ovalbumin. Ovalbumin is the predominant protein in egg whites.

The virus integrated into the ovalbumin gene’s place because that’s where the DNA sequences matched. Now, in the mature chicken, in cells that are supposed to make ovalbumin, the drug proteins are made instead. The only places in a chicken that make ovalbumin are the organs that make the eggs. Thus, the eggs are filled with the drug protein instead of ovalbumin.

The EIAV vector with the drug gene was used to infect chicken one-cell embryos. The gene in the viral vector replaced the ovalbumin gene in the chicken embryos’ DNA. The embryos were then put back into an egg (like a breakfast egg, like you buy a dozen of in the grocery store.) The one-cell embryo divided and grew normally inside the egg until it hatched, as a transgenic chick.

And that’s how you make a transgenic chicken and drug-filled eggs.

By: TK Kenyon
Author of Rabid: A Novel, coming in April, 2007 from Kunati Books
"-- shady clergy, top-secret scientific research, marital infidelity, lust, love, honor, faith-- "

2007-01-24T10:31:00.000-08:00

Hello All,

Just to let you know: my novel RABID is available for pre-order at Amazon. They've discounted it quite a bit, from $27 to $17.79.

If you were thinking about buying it, now is a good time. If you find it cheaper at your local B&N or indie bookstore, you can always cancel an Amazon order.

Thanks,
TK Kenyon

2007-01-23T07:22:00.000-08:00

The Other Nobel Prize:

And the Crafoord Goes To … Dr. Robert L. Trivers For Sociobiology!

The Nobel Prize is widely acknowledged as the Big Banana for scientists, but Nobels are only awarded in the fields of chemistry, literature, peace, medicine or physiology, and economics. There is, however, the Crafoord Prize, which has essentially the same status as a Nobel, for other scientists. Crafoord Prizes are awarded in the fields of mathematics, geoscience, bioscience (particularly in relation to ecology and evolution), and astronomy.

This year, the Crafoord Prize was awarded to Dr. Robert L. Trivers, who was one of the pioneers in the field of sociobiology. While Darwin discussed some aspects of sociobiology in his seminal books on evolution, most of these concepts lay dormant as biologists pursued the minutiae of the descent of man and fruit flies. Trivers and his colleagues, however, picked up the gauntlet that Darwin threw down and used it to expand our understanding of why humans and animals behave the way we do.

Sociobiology is based on the idea that behavior that is determined by genes can be adaptive and passed from generation to generation. The most controversial behaviors studied are aggression and antisocial behaviors. Some people don’t like the idea that there is a biological basis for murder and evil. It’s anathema that Satan isn’t in your soul, he’s in your DNA.

Trivers's current research follows a group of Jamaican children and attempts to correlate their degree of symmetry (both behavioral and physical, i.e., genetic blessedness and developmental physiology) with attractiveness, dancing ability, aggressiveness, number of friends, health status, growth rate, academic achievement, and athletic ability. He also studies genetic components in deceit and self-deception. He proposed the theories of reciprocal altruism (1971,) parental investment (1972,) and parent-offspring conflict (1974.)

TK Kenyon

2007-01-18T06:53:00.000-08:00

If The Sun Is So Hot, Why Is It So Darn Cold?

If the Sun is producing so much energy and burning at 15 million degrees Kelvin, why is it so amazingly cold in the winter?

First myth debunked: The sun does not get hotter or colder. The sun stays the same temperature.

Second myth debunked: The Earth goes around the Sun in nearly a perfect circle. Yes, you’ve been told it’s an ellipse, which is an oval, but the Earth's orbit is barely elongated and very close to a circle. It isn’t cold because we’re nearer or farther from the sun during the year.

Besides, when it’s winter here in the U.S., it’s summer in the southern hemisphere. Australia is just as far from the sun as we are, but they’re at the beach.

So how can it be icy-cold winter up here in the Northern Hemisphere, but nice and toasty warm south of the equator?

The Earth’s axis, the imaginary line through the center of the Earth through the poles, is tilted. That’s why globes lay back on their sides some instead of spinning straight like a top.

To simulate this, hold a pencil in your right hand, make a fist around it (thumb up), now tilt it until the top of the pencil is pointing to ten o’clock.

That’s the way the Earth looks from space.

Rotate your wrist forward and back around the pencil, so that the pencil doesn’t wobble. That’s the Earth spinning.

Now, whatever you’re drinking is the sun. Assuming you’re holding the pencil in your right hand, put it on the left side of the cup. With your knuckles closest to the pitcher, er, cup, you can see that the sun will strike your pinkie knuckles directly. This is summer in Australia. The sun’s rays are close together and strike Australia dead on.

Now look at your first knuckle. Though it’s farther away from the beer, um, coffee, that’s not what we want to look at. Think about the Sun’s rays striking your knuckle. Your knuckle is slanted away from the sun, so the rays are more spread out. There’s more space between each ray. This is winter in the northern hemisphere, where the Sun’s rays are spread out, and the same amount of sunlight hits a bigger area of land, so it isn’t as strong.

Now put your hand on the right side of the pitcher and look at summer in up here and winter in the Down Under. The top of the pencil should be pointing toward the Corona . . . or latte.

To feel the effect of spread-out rays, try this with a light bulb: feel the heat with your hand flat in front of it, then slant your hand back and feel that it is cooler when the same amount of light spills over more of your hand.

Don’t you wish you were in Australia, catching some rays?

TK Kenyon

If you found this story helpful, please Digg it.

For more literary pursuits, try TK Kenyon's column Recommended Reading at Suite 101.com.

For very literary pursuits, try reading the first chapter of RABID: TK Kenyon's blockbuster novel coming in April, 2007. Read starred reviews of RABID here.

2007-01-18T06:42:00.000-08:00

If The Sun Is So Hot, Why Is It So Darn Cold?

2007-01-14T09:54:00.000-08:00

THE FLU:
Influenza or a “Stomach Flu?”

Sometimes, I’m stickler for vocabulary.

I’m not trying to be prissy, but “The Flu” is one of those medical terms that should be used accurately, and a lot of people misuse it.

“The Flu” is commonly used to refer to two different maladies: influenza and the so-called “stomach flu.”

Influenza is the real flu. It begins suddenly with a high fever, aching joints, and a cough. The cough can persist for weeks.

The influenza virus infects the lungs, and thus influenza is spread by aerosolized droplets. When a person with influenza coughs, they spray miniscule droplets of saliva, diseased lung tissue, and virus into the air. It’s highly infectious, and a whole bunch of people near them will get the flu by inhaling those droplets.

The annual flu shot or other immunization protects you against influenza. The influenza virus mutates easily and regularly, and thus several new strains of the flu float around every year. That’s why you need a flu shot every year.

The “Bird Flu” is a hypothetical variant of influenza. Birds get the flu, too. They have their own strains of the influenza virus. If a bird strain and a human strain infect the same bird, the two viruses can recombine their chromosomes, and thus a very deadly new strain of the flu may emerge.

The so-called “Stomach Flu,” on the other hand, is a group of stomach maladies that is not the flu and is not related to influenza.

This includes classical food poisoning, like from undercooked chicken or eggs, and a whole host of gastrointestinal viruses, like the Norwalk viruses that are sometimes are found on cruise ships, that are spread either through food or, more likely, by the “fecal-oral route.” (Yep, it’s as gross as it sounds.) These viruses are contagious but not by aerosolized droplet spread.

These stomach bugs have symptoms like a low fever, vomiting, stomach cramps, and/or diarrhea. There is no cough. That’s the difference. If you’re not coughing, it’s not the flu.

The flu shot does not protect you from these stomach bugs.

Please use these terms correctly. They are not interchangeable. At the very least, define whether or not you had a “stomach” flu.

TK Kenyon

2007-01-12T09:37:00.000-08:00

Preventing Alzheimer's Disease:

Pickle Your Brain With Booze

And other good ideas

That’s right. The best and latest research shows that the best way to avoid, slow, or delay Alzheimer’s disease and preserve your brain is to pickle it with booze, cigarettes, caffeine, ibuprofen, and the occasional fish.

I discussed the most shocking finding, that smoking is negatively correlated with getting Alzheimer’s Disease, in a previous essay. Basically, there’s some good research out there, both on the epidemiological and the molecular scale, that shows that people who smoke are less likely to get AD, that nicotine binds to one of the proteins implicated in AD and reduces its aggregation, and that nicotine exposure increases the number of nicotinic acid receptors in a smoker’s brain. Read the previous article on AD and Smoking to understand what all that means.

But now, the rest of the prissy lifestyle choices will also destroy your brain. If you’re a teetotaling, caffeine-abstaining, chocolate-avoiding, pharmaceutical-abjuring vegan, then you can kiss your brain good-bye.

If you want to keep your brain happy and healthy, first, have a drink. Both wine in particular and alcohol consumption in general decrease risk of AD. One caveat: all of these studies focused on light to moderate drinking, on the order of one to three drinks per day, especially of red wine, and with the lower number of drinks for women. Any source of alcohol seems to help, though red wine is a good source of reversterol and tannic acid, which were helpful at a molecular level in other studies.

Next, eat Indian food or a Mediterranean diet, which has lots of fish, rice or pasta, red wine, and olive oil.

The spice turmeric contains the compounds curcumin and other curcuminoids that amyloid fibrils.

Eating the Mediterranean Diet reduced chances for AD, even when the researchers controlled for cohort, age, sex, ethnicity, education, apolipoprotein E genotype, caloric intake, smoking, medical comorbidity index, and body mass index.

Get married, or at least live with someone.

Stay in school. Go to college and grad school. Increasing educational levels have long been found to delay or prevent AD. If you’re past the college age, being mentally active in a variety of ways helps reduce your chances for AD. Specifically, novelty-seeking behaviors (trying new foods, new activities or hobbies like learning chess or knitting, listening to new types of music, or reading books on new subjects) and social activities that involve the exchange of ideas (talking about politics, but not merely social activities like playing a game you already know, like canasta,) reduce your chances.

Ah, yes, here it is. Eat chocolate! The darker, the better. It has huge amounts of anti-oxidants and other psychoactive peptides. Some people have noted that, if it wasn’t so prevalently and commonly used, if chocolate had been discovered recently, the government would probably regulate it as a controlled substance. Raise a cup of cocoa to lack of government intervention!

An Advil (or other NSAID, like Aleve, or generic ibuprofen) a day keeps the neurologist away. NSAIDs like ibuprofen and naproxen (Advil and Aleve) bind to amyloid plaques in the brain and may help clear them. However, be careful about gastrointestinal problems when you take NSAIDs. They’re rough on your tummy.

Take a walk or get other exercise. Both regular physical activity specifically and not being overweight in general have been found to reduce your risk of AD.

Eat a fish every week. At least one fish a week decreases your chances of getting AD by 60%. That’s HUGE.

Drink filtered water. Even one-tenth (10%) of the EPA allowable limits of copper in drinking water affected the formation of plaques in the brains of rabbits, dogs, and a mouse with Alzheimer’s-associated genes.

Don’t eat so much. In a study of mice with human mutant Alzheimer’s-associated genes, merely reducing their food intake (calorie intake, actually, not the volume of food) greatly increased their survival and reduced the pathology in their brains. This may be somewhat associated with the positive correlation between being overweight and being more prone to AD (see above.)

Some things that make no difference: No statistically significant association was found for family history of dementia, sex, history of depression, estrogen replacement therapy, head trauma, antiperspirant or antacid use, high blood pressure, heart disease, or stroke.

To summarize, the general consensus is that some booze, especially red wine, some coffee, a fish a week, some exercise, a dab of chocolate, and doing new stuff will reduce your chances of getting Alzheimer’s Disease.

If you found this article helpful, please Digg it.

TK Kenyon

2007-01-10T09:11:00.000-08:00

How to Prevent Alzheimer's Disease:

Light up a cigarette.

No, seriously. Light up a cigarette.

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is Hell. It’s pretty close to my own personal definition of a literal Hell.

I’ll do just about anything to avoid AD. Chances are, because my three living grandparents are all over 88 years old, I’m going to live a while, assuming I avoid stepping in front of busses. Recent evidence suggests that damage due to the APOE4 allele only kicks in after the age of 80. Before that, it’s just laziness (or due to other neurodegeneration.)

So I’ve been incorporating all those prim little lifestyle changes that are supposed to guarantee a long, healthy, happy life. I’ve cut down on coffee and chocolate. I’ve never smoked and rarely have a drink. I try to minimize the number and amount of painkillers and other drugs that I take. I’m a vegetarian and eat lots of pretty colors of food every day and take my multivitamin.

If I don’t live forever, it will certainly seem that way.

Here’s the joke: My heart may be in pretty decent shape, but that Baptist nun approach to life is a recipe for Alzheimer’s Disease.

That’s right. The best and latest research shows that the best way to avoid, slow, or delay Alzheimer’s disease and preserve your brain is to pickle it with booze, cigarettes, caffeine, ibuprofen, and the occasional fish. Oh, and eating your vegetables doesn’t help at all.

First of all, the biggest shocker: smoking reduces your chances of getting AD. Ref1 Ref2

Seriously, it’s true. It’s not widely publicized because it’s terribly politically incorrect.

Smoking also reduces your chance of getting Parkinson’s Disease.

Actually, to maximize your chance of avoiding AD and living a long life: smoke for a while, then stop. (Easier said than done.)

Before we go any farther, I don’t think anyone is recommending that you take up smoking. That particular device, the cigarette, has thousands of other compounds that cause heart disease, cancer, halitosis, body odor, and wrinkles. Smoking also vastly increases your chances of getting a vascular form of dementia caused by many small strokes. So, it’s really not a good idea. I don’t smoke. Never have. Never will.

I have considered the nicotine patch or gum, however.

But there’s good evidence that smoking reduces your risk of AD. The studies are pretty good, and they’re not sponsored by the tobacco companies. They have controlled for other risk factors, including the “Hardy Survivor” effect, which basically means that if smoking doesn’t kill you, nothing will. Ref1 Another study controlled for weight of the subjects, which is important because smokers generally aren’t as chubby as non-smokers, and being overweight is associated with AD. Ref2.

One theory as to why smokers are less susceptible to AD involves nicotinic acid receptors. When you smoke, your brain makes more receptors for the nicotine. Ref1. However, people who have dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB) have fewer nicotinic acid receptors. Ref2 People with AD also have fewer nicotinic acid receptors in their brains. Ref3

But can nicotine or smoking reduce your chances of getting AD?

First, some basic neuroscience. One of the most supported theories for the cause of AD (and we aren’t sure what causes AD) is a protein called beta-amyloid, also called Ab, A-beta, or bAP. (Thus, the folks who espouse this theory are called bAP-tists.)

Beta-amyloid protein occurs naturally in your brain, though no one knows what it does. The normal form is soluble, which means that it dissolves in water. Forms of beta-amyloid that are less soluble and tend to form clumps (aggregate) are thought to be more pathogenic. The forms that may be associated with AD are called Ab40 and Ab42. Ab42 is thought to be worse for your brain (more pathogenic) than Ab40.

The more pathogenic forms Ab40 and Ab42 are found in higher amounts in non-smokers’ brains than in smokers, Ref1 especially in areas of the brain that are associated with age-related dementia. Ref2. In general, higher concentrations of Ab40 and Ab42 have been found to be associated with AD.

Now can smoking reduce your chances for AD? In a mouse model of AD (and mouse models are imperfect for a whole variety of reasons, but that’s another essay,) mice who produce a mutated human gene for amyloid (that is associated with getting AD in humans) make amyloid plaques in their little mousy brains. When you feed them nicotine, they make fewer gunky amyloid plaques in their little mousy brains.

How can that happen? Well, it’s been found in humans that the chemical that nicotine turns into in your body, (called Nornicotine,) bonds to amyloid and reduces it’s gunking into plaques.

Nicotine also breaks down fibrils of amyloid, which are thought to be what the plaques are made of.

Some recent studies, however, have found that smoking increases your chances of dementia. Ref1. Ref2. Yet, the molecular evidence suggests that Ab disposition is less in smokers and in nicotine-ingesting mice. Why is that?

Well, there’s a whole host of possible reasons.

(1) Alzheimer’s Disease, like all “lifestyle” diseases, is multi-causal. Slightly changing the way you pick your subjects will drastically change your results. Different model. Different study.

(2) Many of the studies found positive links between smoking and dementia, not smoking and AD. You can’t definitively diagnose AD unless you autopsy the brain. (This is contraindicated in people who are still using their brains.) Therefore, these studies may be finding vascular dementia, which is very common and associated with smoking.

(3) The last possibility is that the beta-amyloid hypothesis of Alzheimer’s Disease is wrong, or at least the Ab42-is-bad hypothesis is wrong. This means that all the studies are correct. Smoking, therefore, increases your risk of AD while decreasing your load of Ab42-associated plaques.

One hypothesis suggests that the plaques are formed to keep the Ab42 (or a precursor, like ADDLs) from floating around. The floating Ab42 kills brain cells. Therefore, tying up the Ab42 in plaques is actually a defense mechanism. Thus, smokers have fewer defensive plaques, more floating Ab42, and more AD.

2007-01-09T13:11:00.000-08:00

Alzheimer's Disease: Not Just Stupid.

What It's Like To Have AD

Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) scares the beejeezus out of me. The thought of my mind deteriorating while my body rambles on is pretty much my personal definition of Hell.

You see, Alzheimer’s doesn’t just make you stupid. It isn’t just that your standardized testing scores fall. If the effects of Alzheimer’s were merely lowering my SAT and GRE scores, I could deal with that. We’ve all heard the term, “Fat, dumb, and happy.” Doesn’t sound so bad, really.

But the horror of Alzheimer’s lies in the absence of the ability to string two thoughts together. Thus, items appear out of thin air because you can’t remember that they were beside you a minute ago.

Imagine that a stuffed tiger appears on your bed. Poof! You have no idea where it came from. Might be the C.I.A. or space aliens that made it materialize there.
Now, because you’re lying right next to the stuffed tiger, and because you can’t remember that a second ago you reached over and petted the stuffed tiger, you can’t tell how big the tiger is. It’s next to your face, so that tiger looks full-sized. It’s a man-eating tiger.

And, because you can’t remember that it hasn’t ever moved because it’s stuffed, and because it just appeared out of nowhere again, that’s not a stuffed tiger. That’s a friggin’ tiger that is about to eat your head.

Now there are all these strangers around you in this place you’ve been kidnapped to, telling you that it’s all right if the tiger eats your head, and isn’t it a pretty stripy tiger that’s about to eat your head?

And a minute later, poof! A tiger appears.

That's what having Alzheimer's is like. I can't imagine anything worse.

Next article: How to avoid getting AD.

TK Kenyon

2006-12-28T14:11:00.000-08:00

A "Cloned Beef" Sandwich

Today, the FDA approved the sale of meat and milk from cloned animals for human consumption. Though it will be years before cloned animals begin showing up in the supermarket, already some people are freaking out that they might accidently eat cloned meat.

First, let’s discuss what cloned animals are and what they are not.

Cloned animals are the identical twin of an existing animal that was born at a later time. Stephen F. Sundlof, D.V.M., Ph.D., director of FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine, said, "Based on FDA's analysis of hundreds of peer-reviewed publications and other studies on the health and food composition of clones and their offspring, the draft risk assessment has determined that meat and milk from clones and their offspring are as safe as food we eat every day. Cloning poses no unique risks to animal health when compared to other assisted reproductive technologies currently in use in U.S. agriculture."

Cloned animals are not genetically modified. They do not have bug, plant, or sea urchin genes inserted into their DNA. Genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are already in our food chain, though the only GMOs that we commonly eat are plants, such as corn with increased resistance to corn fungus. Clones are a perfect twin of the original animal, not mutants.

So, should you be concerned about eating clones?

First of all, no. It’s just an identical twin of a normal cow, pig, or goat. (Sheep have not been approved, a ironic omission considering “Dolly the Sheep” was the first successfully cloned animal.)

Second of all, cloning is a lot more expensive than artificial insemination and other reproductive technologies already in use. People are not going to clone animals to be sent directly to the slaughterhouse. They’re going to clone their best prize bull or their astonishingly productive dairy cow a couple times, and then those animals will be over-represented in the next generation of livestock.

That over-representation of genes in future generations, the homogenizing of animal herds, is the real threat that is implicit in the unrestricted cloning of livestock. It opens the door for the mammalian equivalent of monoculture and the loss of genetic diversity, what there is, in livestock. It increases the likelihood that an emerging pathogen could spawn an epizootic (an epidemic in an animal population) and could devastate livestock herds with no natural resistance and little variation in that lack of resistance.

That’s the real danger here: loss of genetic diversity.

TK Kenyon

2006-11-17T20:02:00.000-08:00

Technorati Profile

2006-11-11T08:57:00.000-08:00

Why is Snot Slimy?

Each string of mucus in your nose is a long molecule. Each of these strings has a bunch of smaller molecules called “neuraminic acid”, stuck all over it. Neuraminic acid has a negative charge. When all those negative charges interact, they repel each other, like pushing the south poles of two magnets toward each other so that the magnet poles slip away from each other. The negative charges on the neuraminic acid on the mucus strings slip away from each other when they are forced together, and so mucus feels slippery, or slimy.

Here’s another question; why does mucous have those neuraminic acids on it?

Neuraminic acid is a molecule is also on the surface (cell membrane) of your lung cells. The influenza virus (the flu virus, the coughing kind of flu, not the stomach flu,) attaches to neuraminic acid so it can infect your lung cells. Then, the virus slips inside your cells and shanghais your cells’ machines (enzymes and ribosomes) to make lots more flu viruses, until there are so many viruses that the cell explodes. Then those viruses infect other lung cells, and so on, and so on, and so on.

But mucus in your nose also has neuraminic acids all up and down it. Think of mucus as a long string of decoys to fool the flu virus. When a flu virus enters your nose, it latches onto the first thing it finds with a neuraminic acid on it, mucus. Then, you have the chance to get the mucus out of your nose, so the virus won’t infect you. Pretty neat defense, huh?

But the virus has a way around that defense.

The flu virus has an enzyme (a protein that does a job), called neuraminidase, which cuts its bond with the neuraminic acid if the virus can’t find a cell underneath the neuraminic acid. So, if you don’t blow your nose, the virus can cut itself free of the mucus, float into your lungs, and give you the flu.

Take home message: Blow your nose and wash your hands after you’ve been around someone who is sick.

2006-10-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, Grey's Anatomy Makes Me Crazy

You know, I like Grey’s Anatomy. It’s an interesting show with some astonishingly good writing about character and complex issues, not to mention some lovely, funny zingers. However, I’m getting a little tired of them screwing up the science and the medicine in service to the story.

On last night’s rerun on the season opener of Grey’s Anatomy, McDreamy and Whats-his-face are quarantined in the locker room because they might have been exposed to the Bubonic Plague. This is unrealistic for a variety of reasons.

First, Bubonic Plague is only moderately transmissible. Rather than having the index case (patient) present with enlarged lymph nodes (buboes,) they should have given him Pneumonic Plague, which is spread by aerosolized droplets by coughing or sneezing. That’s much scarier.

Second, the plague’s etiologic agent is a bacteria, specifically, by Yersinia pestis, a gram-negative rod-shaped bacteria. It can be easily cured by an antibiotic. They wouldn’t have quarantined them; they would have prescribed a broad-spectrum antibiotic like Zithromax (azithromycin, also “Z-Pac,”) or Gentamycin. There was no reason to lock them in a little room until unspecified “tests” were performed to clear them, except for storyline reasons.

Even better: monkeypox, a zoonosis that is a monkey analog of smallpox, which has been rarely transmitted between humans. Or Ebola. Because viruses can’t be cured by antibiotics, they’re much scarier.

2006-10-25T17:45:00.000-07:00

Films And Books Magazine Interviews TK Kenyon

FilmsAndBooks.com has posted an interview in which I discuss the religion and science in RABID, my forthcoming novel. It's pretty controversial stuff, and they did an excellent job of making it clear. Thanks to FilmsAndBooks.com!

FilmsAndBooks.com's interview with TK Kenyon: http://www.filmsandbooks.com/meet-an-author-interviews

2006-10-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

TK Kenyon's novel RABID to be reviewed by

Publisher's Weekly and Kirkus Reviews

My forthcoming novel RABID will be reviewed by Publisher's Weekly on November 1st and Kirkus Reviews on November 15th. I thank these two prestigious journals for noticing RABID.

RABID is the next evolution of the religious thriller novel, where science and the Church clash, and nothing is sacred. Read more at TK Kenyon's website.

TK Kenyon

The Spectrum of Autism Research: From Brilliant to Just Plain Stupid

2006-10-23T13:48:00.000-07:00

This week, several research papers on autism spectrum disorders were published by press conference, a practice universally acknowledged as hiding one’s research.

One was a brilliant but extremely short paper pre-published in the prestigious Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) by a team of molecular biologists researching genes associated with autism spectrum disorders. This paper may very well explain why some people are predisposed to developing autism, and the gene in question (MET, a tyrosine kinase receptor) explains the range of neurological, behavioral, and digestive symptoms associated with autism spectrum disorders. It’s a lovely piece of science. More on this paper below.

The other paper was produced by a triumvirate of rogue economists who tried to apply economic statistical theory to autism, a subtle biological condition, and made some of the most astoundingly stupid conclusions that I’ve ever seen. Because they did no empirical science (despite their claims in their paper, which I read, all 67 pages of it,) none of their findings can be disproved in the scientific sense of the word. These three men (Michael Waldman and Sean Nicholson of Cornell, and Nodir Adilov of Indiana University) wound through an amazingly vapid intellectual argument to arrive at what might be the exactly wrong conclusion.

Here’s what those idiots did: they selected a few counties (in California, Oregon, and Washington,) and looked at precipitation records for those areas between 1972 and 1989. That’s right, rain. They found that autism rates incrementally increased more in rainy counties than in less rainy counties.

They then inquired about cable television subscription rates in these counties and found that cable television subscription rates also increased, an astounding finding that one could have figured out by being alive and conscious. In a later test involving counties in California and Pennsylvania, they correlate those areas with the most cable TV subscriptions to county autism rates.

So, they blamed the increase on autism on increased TV viewing.

Here’s only a few of the problems with that data:

Autism rates increased substantially during the time period studied. If the authors had used any increasing variable, they would have found the same correlation.

The Dow Jones Industrial Index increased from 900 to 2300 in that time period, which positively correlates with the rise of autism rates.

The per capita income in the U.S. grew from around $15,000 to $23,000 in that time period. Autism thus correlates with increased income.

Childhood obesity increased from around 7% to about 11% in the same time period.

The feral and domestic cat population in the U.S. doubled from 30 million in 1970 to 60 million in 1990, which positively correlates with the increase in autism diagnoses.

In 1970, only 24% of mothers with children under the age of two worked even part-time. In 1984, that number had nearly doubled to 46.8%. Today, 55% of women with children under one year old work full-time. Consider that statistic. Now consider this line of reasoning:

In 1970, there were very few two-income families. Increase in working women correlates to an increase in two-income families. Two-income families can better afford to subscribe to cable television, which explains the increase in cable TV rates.

However, when women work, they do not stay home with their tots and watch TV. The tot goes to daycare, where most of the time the tot is engaged in structured play and activities, not television watching. Thus, TV-watching by tots may have decreased during the time that autism rates increased, suggesting that TV has a protective effect on autism.

That line of reasoning is every bit as well supported as the line of reasoning in the Cornell-Purdue paper. What’s more, it incorporates data that the three men never thought of: whether or not the televisions were actually watched.

In addition, the three men who wrote this article fail to account for excellent research that shows that the neurological damage associated with autism begins before birth. Their conclusions actually should state that pregnant women watching television causes autism.

This paper is an excellent example of non-scientists (they’re all economists!) trying to apply non-scientific principles (economic statistics) to science and then even forgetting to apply their own rules. Rarely in economics does one find monocausal patterns. There is almost never one cause that produces one effect. This specious attempt to blame autism on television viewing by infants is an example of using the wrong tools and doing the job badly.

The molecular biology paper, on the other hand, produced by Daniel B. Campbell, James S. Sutcliffe, Philip J. Ebert, Roberto Militerni, Carmela Bravaccio, Simona Trillo, Maurizio Elia, Cindy Schneider, Raun Melmed, Roberto Sacco, Antonio M. Persico, and Pat Levitt, is a exquisite piece of statistical modeling that explains nicely why some people are more prone to developing autism spectrum disorders. The candidate gene, MET, is a tyrosine kinase receptor, which means that it is a telephone for conducting signals inside a cell, and MET signaling can result in the cell reproducing, changing, or dying. MET participates in brain growth and maturation, immune function, and repair of the digestive system. Children with autism often have symptoms of disturbances in some or all of these systems. This research ties together these disparate symptoms and explains why children with neurological symptoms often have diarrhea or immunological problems.

There are two common alleles (forms of the gene) for the MET gene. In this case, the change in the gene results in more or less of the protein (and thus the tyrosine kinase receptor) being produced in the cells. Remember that each person has two copies of a gene (one from your mom and one from your dad,) so you have two flips of the proverbial gene coin.

The C allele is associated with an increased risk for autism. The C allele makes less of the MET protein. In this case, less is bad.

The G allele is protective against autism. The G allele means that more MET tyrosine kinase receptor protein is made and thus there is more met signaling.

The relative risk of being diagnosed with autism was 2.27 times higher if you have two copies of the C allele (the CC genotype) and 1.67 times higher if you have one of each allele (the CG genotype, heterozygous) compared with having two of the protective G alleles (the GG homozygous genotype).

There you have it: an excellent autism paper and piece of scientific-sounding poop. I desperately hope that people won’t go bonkers over restricting television viewing for their kids because they believe that, otherwise, the kids will get autism. There are a lot of reasons to moderate television viewing, but fear of autism isn’t one of them.

I also hope that parents of autistic kids won’t beat themselves up over their television viewing because they erroneously think that they caused their kids’ autism. That statistics paper should only be used for potty training.