MemeScreen

The Age of Misinformation

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Sun, 06 May 2012 11:27:00 +0000

Why Facebook and Twitter cost us more than just our privacy, and what you can do about it.

"The most dangerous person to get an email from is your mother," said Howard Schneider, founding dean of Stony Brook University's School of Journalism. But before I can apologize on my mother's behalf, he explains that he's speaking metaphorically: what he really means is "people you trust".

"I get emails all the time from friends and they drive me crazy," he told me in his heavy New York accent. "They'll ask me to sign a petition or do something, and with two clicks I can find out that the information is not reliable, the claims are not valid. And I'll send them back a note saying: what are you doing? why are you sending this around?"

I empathize with Schneider's frustration. You see, I too have a habit of pointing out when my friends are wrong, and if you think they find this quality endearing... well, you're wrong. I've been called an "accomplished hater", a "nit-picky faux intellectual", and a "devil's advocate" by people I know and respect; I've been accused of practicing a "hey-mom-look-at-me" style of journalism. It has been said that criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting, and I often worry that this appears to be my intent. It's refreshing to know that Schneider, co-creator of America's first News Literacy program, actually approves of my behavior, and even sticks his own neck out. It's refreshing to have him remind me that, in the age of Facebook and Twitter, pointing out to people when they're wrong is important - especially if they're a friend.

Schneider, seen here in conversation
with Arianna Huffington

I don't hear this nearly enough. Usually, when I hear the societal value of social networking sites discussed, the focus is on their role in the perennial struggle between people and power structures: on the one hand, we have the media hailing the "Twitter Revolution" in Tunisia and the "Facebook Revolution" in Iran; on the other hand, we have Wikileaks founder, Julian Assange, calling Facebook "the most appalling spy machine that has ever been invented." But Schneider's enthusiasm for the great democratizing power of social networks is tempered by a different concern. Scneider is worried about the harm these sites can inflict, not in the hands of authority, but of ordinary people.

"To the extent they can provide a tsunami of misinformation, rumors, half-truths, and assertions," he frets, "their potential to do damage is great, and we see that every day."

Surfing the Wave

I've certainly met the tsunami Schneider is talking about. It's constantly propagating through my own Facebook news feed, taunting me as it goes by; daring me to risk criticizing it, like an evil child that has fooled its parents with angelic pretense. But in case you are less acquainted, allow me to illustrate with some recent examples of items that were shared - uncritically and in all seriousness - by my own Facebook friends:

What appears to be a satellite image of a huge plume of radioactive seawater spilling out of the stricken Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and into the Pacific Ocean. In fact, it is a screen shot taken from a computer simulation whose designers "do not know exactly how much contaminated seawater and at what concentration was released into the ocean." ("Shared": 1,091 times)

An anonymously-authored article entitled "The Truth About Hair and Why Indian Would Keep Their Hair Long" that claims long hair bestows a "sixth sense", and that cutting one's hair renders them, among other things, less sensitive to "environmental distress", and more prone to sexual frustration. ("Liked": 173,313 times)

It may be that you're not familiar with these specific examples, but rest assured that many others are, as evidenced by the number of times they have been "shared" or "liked". Since Facebook users apparently have an average of 130 "friends" each, I estimate (I think conservatively) that 141,830 people have seen the misleading Fukushima graphic thanks to Facebook alone. In terms of orders of magnitude, this number is comparable with the daily circulation figures of major national newspapers. Applying the same logic to the preposterous long hair article, I have estimated its potential readership - again, thanks to Facebook alone - at over 22.5 million.

But Facebook is not accountable for these stories. It issues no retractions or clarifications. For millions of people, it has become a major source of news and information, yet it is essentially a high-speed rumor mill. And Facebook is merely leading the way: according to the Pew Research Center, 65% of American adults now say they use at least one social networking site, be it Facebook, Twitter, Google+, MySpace, etc. - and more are joining every day.

Of course, none of this proves that I'm not just a big jerk who likes to make himself feel good by crapping on his friends. So this "tsunami of misinformation" exists. But is it doing any harm?

A View From The Beach

Many - if not all - of the Facebook posts I come across that I consider to be untrue or misleading have been shared with the best of intentions; often, their intention is to further what I consider to be a worthy cause. This seems to be true also of the emails that so irritate Schneider. "They're on the side of the angels, they think they're doing the right thing", he told me. "Kony 2012 was an example of that."

I can think of a couple more examples, albeit much less infamous:

A graphic (posted alongside the comment: "I think this is what the 99% are talking about") which compares two jail terms: one given to a homeless man who robbed a bank but then turned himself in (15 years), and one given to a CEO who was involved in a $3 billion dollar fraud scheme (40 months). Omitted are crucial details such as whether or not the homeless man was a repeat offender (I decided against mailing $10 US to a courthouse in Louisiana to find out), and the fact that the ring leader of the fraud scheme received a 30-year sentence. (Shared: 55,274 times)

A graphic that appears to lend statistical support to the notion that the world is rife with dramatic sexual inequality. But when I asked, the friend who shared this admitted to having no idea where these statistics came from. I have since tried and failed to confirm their accuracy, but I find it highly suspicious that they have apparently been reiterated - verbatim - for over 25 years now. (Shared: 151 times)

These good intentions complicate things, because they make it even more tempting for me to withhold my criticisms. Moreover, when I do offer criticisms of these well-meant assertions, I find they are often defended with statements that can be distilled down to "the ends justify the means". Sometimes, I'm even chastised for being critical of "the wrong side".

But I worry about the net effect of questionable assertions on the worthy causes they are meant to vindicate. And I'm not the only one: Ken Wu, co-founder of the British Columbia-based environmental group Ancient Forest Alliance, and a man who, by his own estimation, has "probably organized more protests than anybody in this province," also harbors this concern. In fact, he says, while online social networks have greatly benefited the environmental movement overall, they have also incurred a price by facilitating the unsubstantiated assertions of environmentalists.

Wu, posing beside an old-growth
tree in BC's Walbran Valley

"The most important thing for the environmental movement, or for any movement, is that leadership is exerted so that it ratchets up the overall accuracy of the ideas held within the movement. This has become a greater necessity with the spread of social networking," he told me.

As a leader in the environmental movement, Wu strikes me as having his eye on the bigger picture, on the overall success of the movement. He knows that assertions made from within the movement can hurt it, either by damaging its credibility or the focus of its efforts. "It's going to take all kinds of people to save the environment," he said, "not just angry youths."

Surely, angry youths are likewise insufficient to ensure success in the feminist and "Occupy" movements. And surely, the challenge these movements face in appealing to a wider audience is daunting enough without unsubstantiated claims being made by their more responsible members: "In the protest scene you get a lot of fucking nut jobs, because they're attracted to controversy and strident opinions," Wu complained - just think how it must seem to those less committed to a grassroots cause.

Of course, this is not nearly the extent of the damage that Schneider's tsunami wreaks. But in other cases, the harm should be so apparent as to hardly warrant discussion: medical misinformation, for example. According to the authors of an article that was published in the scientific journal Nature, called "The Rise of People Power", at least two Canadians have already died after undergoing an unproven treatment for multiple sclerosis that has generated buzz on social networking sites. But as the authors go on to note, even here there are hidden dangers: "the mobilizing power of social networking," they write, "means that unprecedented pressures can be applied to politicians and research funders to expand access to procedures for which there is little scientific support." And yet despite the obvious danger it presents, even medical misinformation ends up in my Facebook news feed (and would, it seems, often go unchallenged if not for me):

An anonymously-authored article that claims root canals are incredibly perilous and recommends extraction "no matter which tooth has been compromised". The article relies heavily on the authority of a dentist that the medical watchdog site Quackwatch.com advises people to "stay away from". (Shared: 805 times)
An anonymously-authored article headlined "Scientists Cure Cancer, No One Takes Notice" about a simple but "unprofitable" cure for cancer that is being ignored by the media and pharmaceutical companies. Interestingly, for a while the article featured a link to Amazon.com, where the drug - which can have serious side effects - is being sold for $209.99 per hundred grams. ("Liked": 88,717 times)

* * *

By criticizing a Facebook post or a tweet that I think is false or misleading, I often risk harming a friendship. It's always tempting to just let it go without comment, but surely that is actually the more selfish option, as indulging it means putting my concern for what other people think of me ahead of the greater good of my community and society.

Do you think this is putting it too grandly? Then remember: for all the hype surrounding their societal value, Facebook and Twitter are nothing without truth - indeed, their ability to communicate truth is the very essence of their much-celebrated promise. And what can be done to preserve this promise? I can think of only three things, no one of which can substitute for the other two, but which must operate in conjunction: 1) we can all think carefully before we share something with our friends online; 2) we can think critically about what our friends share before believing them; and 3) we can help keep each other honest by (carefully and humbly) pointing out potential inaccuracies we see our friends propagating.

So while criticizing one's friends is a political risk, in today's world surely the willingness to take that risk is a virtue. I urge you to consider adopting this attitude and to take this risk yourself when you think it appropriate. And if it doesn't help you to sleep at night? At the very least, you will be able to rest assured that all your friends will be there, when the time comes, to alert you to your own mistakes.

This post is dedicated to my cherished Facebook friends, all of whom I greatly respect.

Nuclear power

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 19:48:00 +0000

Energy in North America (and the world) is overwhelmingly derived from fossil fuels. But the combustion of oil, coal, and natural gas is exacting a terrible toll: heating the planet and melting the polar ice caps; acidifying the oceans; and releasing particulate air pollution that, by one estimate, kills 50,000 -100,000 people every year in America alone. Clearly, we need alternatives.

One alternative is nuclear fission. In fact, already this low-carbon method of energy generation accounts for about 14% of the world's electricity; 15% in Canada, 20% in the US, and in certain countries the percentage is much higher.

But large swaths of the voting public are dead-set against nuclear power generation, and believe that not only should no new reactors be built, but that existing ones should be brought offline as soon as possible. Many people, it seems, are willing to accept nothing less than a nuclear-free, low-carbon near future; and presumably they believe this to be a realistic goal.

Here's why I am not one of these people.

The Case Against Nuclear Power

A damning case against nuclear power is not difficult to make: it's association with nuclear weapons, waste products that remain toxic for millions of years, and accidents such as those that occurred at Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima. Constructing new nuclear power plants is astronomically expensive; and doing so, combined with the impacts of uranium mining, is not environmentally inconsequential.

All these issues harbor room for debate - nuclear power plays a role in disarmament or proliferation (about half of America's atomic energy is derived from decommissioned nuclear warheads), long-term waste management is or isn't feasible, the severity of past and the likelihood of future disasters is small or large, and and so on; and these debates often quickly become highly complex and technical, forcing most of us to rely on our gut feelings about nuclear power.

But I think some very ugly assertions about it can be made with confidence. For example, the capacity to generate nuclear power makes it much easier for countries to then construct nuclear weapons, and provides a facade behind which this can occur clandestinely. There have been a number of instances in which radioactive waste disposal has been grossly botched. And catastrophic accidents cannot currently be guaranteed against, whether due to earthquakes, deliberate sabotage, meteorites, or other unforeseen events.

These are very real and serious problems. But of all of them, I think it's safe to say the specter of future accidents has probably the single greatest negative effect on public opinion of nuclear power.

A Word on Nuclear Disasters

In the wake of Fukushima, a poll conducted for the BBC indicated that the world's opinion of nuclear power has plummeted. Prudent politicians around the world announced they were reassessing, scaling down, or phasing out their nuclear industries - most notably in Germany, which now plans to be nuclear-free by 2022. And the International Energy Agency cut it's estimate of how much nuclear power the world will be generating by 2035 in half. Here on the West Coast of North America, which is already racked with fear of the relatively innocuous radiation emitted by cellphones and "smart meters", 8,000 kilometers of intervening ocean did not prevent sales of potassium iodide pills and Geiger counters from going through the roof.

But there are wildly contrasting claims about the true extent of the health and environmental impacts of nuclear disasters.

For example, in a video that was all over the internet after Fukushima, Helen Caldicott, perhaps the world's foremost anti-nuclear activist, made a number of very alarming statements, including the assertion that as a result of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster "nearly a million people have already died", and that "40% of Europe is still radioactive"; she even advises: "don't eat European food".

"But that's nothing", she goes on to say, "compared to what's happening now" at Fukushima.

Dr. Helen Caldicott

This video really effected a few of my friends, who noted that Caldicott is a doctor and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee. But equally relevant is that she has a history of sounding rather shrill alarms over nuclear safety: in 2010 she advised the 16,000 residents of Port Hope, Ontario to flee their town due to the presence of a uranium processing plant despite the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission's assertion that studies have shown the town to be safe.

To put the claims she makes in the video into perspective: the official story is that, after all is said and done, around 4,000 people will have died as a result of Chernobyl - which disagrees with Caldicott's claim by about 981,000 people.

Caldicott explains this discrepancy by claiming that "this is one of the most monstrous cover-ups in the history of medicine".

George Monbiot

Others have reacted differently to Fukushima. George Monbiot, for example, is an columnist for The Guardian and author who, in his 2006 book on climate change called Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning, wrote:

"Because of the industry's record of corner-cutting, because of its association with the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and because of the unresolved questions about waste disposal... nuclear power [is] second to last on my list of preferences, just above generation using coal".

But in the immediate aftermath of Fuklushima, Monbiot published a column in the Guardian called Going Critical: How the Fukushima disaster taught me to stop worrying and embrace nuclear power. In it, he admits:

"Yes, I still loathe the liars who run the nuclear industry. Yes, I would prefer to see the entire sector shut down, if there were harmless alternatives. But there are no ideal solutions. Every energy technology carries a cost; so does the absence of energy technology. Atomic energy has just been subjected to one of the harshest of possible tests, and the impact on people and the planet has been small."

Caldicott and Monbiot squared off on the issue of nuclear power just over a week later during a televised debate on Democracy Now! (watch it here). A week after that, following an email correspondence, Monbiot wrote a column entitled Evidence Meltdown: The Green movement has misled the world about the dangers of radiation in which he accuses Caldicott of

"Failing to provide sources, refuting data with anecdote, cherry-picking studies, scorning the scientific consensus, [and] invoking a cover-up to explain it".

Caldicott responded the following week with an article in The Guardian called How nuclear apologists mislead the world over radiation, to which Monbiot replied with an article called Why This Matters.

I highly recommend interested readers review this exchange, during which, in my opinion, Monbiot does as good a job as anyone could of dismantling Caldicott and exposing her alarmist assertions about the severity of past nuclear disasters and the health effects of exposure to low-level radiation as baseless fear-mongering.

(In another example of contrasting claims, this summer The Georgia Straight's Alex Roslin accused Health Canada of covering up the true danger Fukushima poses to Canadians with a series of incredibly irresponsible articles, at least one of which provoked a response from Health Canada.)

No one is claiming that nuclear disasters aren't extremely serious, but it seems very likely that they are far less serious than many people have been led by anti-nuclear activists to believe. In fact, it has been estimated that it would require a Chernobyl-sized nuclear accident every three weeks to match the death toll fossil fuels incur - and that's not counting the ill effects of oil spills, coal mining accidents (which cause significant loss of life), and international conflicts over increasingly scarce resources.

The Other Option: Renewable Energy

My case for nuclear rests primarily on the fact that our power has to come from somewhere. Anti-nuclear activists usually assert that the future lies with water, wind, and solar energy harvesting; some also mention bio-fuels. It is widely believed that it is unrealistic to expect these options to fill the huge gap that the retreat of fossil fuels and nuclear would leave, but anti-nuclear activists don't agree with that assessment.

Mark Z. Jacobson

Mark Z. Jacobson is one such person. Jacobson is coauthor of a 2009 article published in Scientific American called A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables which is easily one of the most optimistic assessments of renewable potential out there. In it, the case is made that a wholesale global shift to renewable energy is not only possible, but could be accomplished within 20 years.

Wind and Solar energy forms the basis of the plan, as, according to the article:

"wave power can be extracted only near coastal areas. Many geothermal sources are too deep to be tapped economically. And even though hydroelectric now exceeds all other [renewable] sources, most of the suitable large reservoirs are already in use."

(Biofuels are not mentioned by the authors, presumably because its mass production requires vast swathes of farmland; the global population is set to continue growing; and starvation is already a huge problem in the world today.)

There is no question, however, that if such a goal is even possible it would be a gargantuan undertaking: hydroelectric currently accounts for only about 7% of the world's energy, and all other renewable sources, taken together, account for only about 1.8%. In the article, Jacobson and his coauthor figure that their plan would require the construction of so many wind turbines and solar panels that they would blanket 1.33%* of the Earth's surface (nearly two million square kilometers), plus 270 new hydroelectric stations.

(*This includes the space between wind turbines, which the authors note could be used for other purposes.)

Finally, there is no doubt that such a plan would entail a large drop in global energy usage: according to the authors, their plan would provide 8% less power than the increasingly power-hungry world consumes today. And although they assert that "the wind often blows...when the sun does not shine" and vise versa (presumably with the exception of windless nights), a major problem associated with utter reliance on renewables is brought painfully into focus when we consider that the single largest battery in the world today is capable of supplying 12,000 people with power for under ten minutes.

Again, this is an optimistic assessment. Many others apparently do not share this optimism: Jacobson has been referred to as "the clown prince of the renewable energy circus."

* * *

I don't think anyone is suggesting that we should turn our noses up at renewable energy sources. And I admit that it is arguably implausible to expect nuclear power alone to replace fossil fuels, due to the time and expense the construction of new reactors requires, plus the political problems posed by nuclear's great unpopularity. But fast-tracking abandonment of nuclear power, as anti-nuclear activists would like and as Germany is currently doing, entails a massive effort to replace it with renewable energy - during which fossil fuel use would almost certainly continue unchecked if not at an accelerated rate.

We should certainly continue to research new methods of energy generation, be it improved solar panels, new methods of biofuel production, or thorium reactors. But many dubious new "breakthroughs" - compressed air cars and other perpetual motion machines, water-fueled cars, cold fusion, and even extraterrestrial technologies - have, I think, lured many into believing that near-perfect solutions are on the horizon or being suppressed, and have thus only exacerbated the problem.

Right now, our options appear limited to renewable energy and nuclear. And, bearing in mind that minimizing carbon emissions should be far and away our overriding priority, it seems to me wildly irresponsible to outright reject outright either one of these options.

Admittedly, I'm not quite old enough to clearly remember the terror of the Cold War and Chernobyl, and I can only imagine how counter-intuitive a pro-nuclear argument must appear to those who are. But our intuitions are of limited use when it comes to weighing the risks of sudden, dramatic accidents against the inexorable, creeping advance of something far worse.

Local food

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 18:54:00 +0000

For the purposes of this post I have imported a news story I recently wrote as an assignment for a journalism class, and chased it with a piece of fresh, homegrown editorializing.

Local Governments Imply Local Food is Healthier but Lack Evidence
By Nathan H Bird

“Foods grown/produced and distributed locally are much healthier”, states a resolution endorsed by the Union of British Columbia Municipalities (UBCM) during their recent annual convention in Vancouver. However, this claim does not appear to be based on any scientific evidence.

The resolution, entitled Barriers to Small Scale Food Production & Distribution, seeks in part to encourage the provincial government to “provide a public education component to recognize and support the distribution of local foods”.

The resolution's author, Cariboo Regional District director Roberta Faust, said that local food is “raised in a more natural way”, contains fewer “chemicals”, and that “the fresher you get food the more vitamin content” it has. But although she described the resolution as a “no brainer”, she was unable to cite any non-anecdotal evidence in support of her contention.

In fact, a 2010 review of the scientific literature by the Dietitians of Canada found that “there is no conclusive evidence to support the claim that locally grown foods are more nutritious than foods produced and imported from longer distances”.

The review, entitled The 100 Mile Diet: Is it Healthier and Safer for the Population?, suggests that local foods have much more nuanced nutritional consequences than Faust's resolution claims. For example, although it cited evidence that certain nutrients begin to decline in certain types of produce after they are harvested, it also noted that temperature and humidity play a key role in this process, and that local foods can “be exposed to room temperature/heat for longer periods” than non-local foods.

The review also stated that “more research is required” to determine whether the amount of nutrients lost in this fashion are sufficient to consider fresh produce more healthful; and it highlighted the fact that maintaining a local diet can make it difficult to follow Canada's Food Guide, which calls for moderation and variety.

When the review was brought to her attention, Faust said “I think our dietitians are just a bit behind the times.”

Barriers to Small Scale Food Production & Distribution was accepted, and won endorsement by the UBCM during their recent annual meeting despite apparently contradicting the conclusion of the Dietitians of Canada.

UBCM spokesperson Paul Taylor said that unless a resolution contains a particularly egregious claim they tend to “just let it roll.” This approach, Taylor said, saves the organization time and effort and “puts the onus on the parties developing the resolutions, because they undermine their own case if they make wobbly statements”.

Taylor also said that resolutions tend to be judged primarily on the basis of the actions they propose, rather than on their stated rationalizations. Because of this, he said, “I think most people would be willing to stand by [this] resolution” even in view of it's debatable claim.

In addition to the public education component, the resolution proposes that the “UBCM lobby the provincial government to encourage, support and enable small-scale food producers to provide foods locally without any unnecessary barriers”. It also cites the “more positive impact on the environment” local foods are widely believed to have, in addition to stating that they are much healthier.

* * *

An interesting side note to this story is that I called some BC dietitians (numbers obtained from the Dietitians of Canada website) hoping to get a nice quote along the lines of: "of course local food isn't much healthier", or something like that. In fact, both of the dietitians I interviewed said that they thought local food was healthier; although, like Roberta Faust, neither of them could back up that assertion. One of the dietitians said that local food was "a lot more nutritious", and when I told her about the 2010 review mentioned above (here is a link to it) and asked her upon what she was basing this claim, she replied that it was her own "personal opinion". I thought that was amazing, considering this person's job description. It seems clear to me that whether or not local food is "a lot more nutritious" simply isn't a matter of opinion.

Unfortunately, it is not infrequently that I encounter those who apparently can't tell the difference between matters of opinion and matters of fact.

Roberta Faust, for example, struck me as a very sincere, impassioned woman who had worked hard on the wording of her resolution, worked hard to have it taken seriously, and was unabashedly proud of what she had done. But it also struck me that she hadn't put the slightest amount of effort into determining whether or not the convictions motivating her efforts were accurate.

What is going on here, I think, is that some of those who have come to appreciate some virtue or other of locally-grown food have found it irresistible to then proceed to the conclusion that it is superior in every respect. Such a conclusion befits their belief system. And, accordingly, their intuition tells them it's true, no matter what the pesky facts are.

"Isn't the basis of belief that it doesn't require the difficulties of factual, measurable truth?", a friend recently asked me, perhaps rhetorically. I couldn't disagree more. Whether we are in government, whether we are professional dispensers of advice, whether we are community members, consumers, or parents: I think we have a clear responsibility to do our utmost in ensuring that our beliefs are entirely constrained by these "difficulties".

Circumcision

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 02:28:00 +0000

Infant circumcision (removal of the foreskin) is highly controversial, and yet in North America it is perhaps the single most common surgical procedure. Proponents claim that it promotes good health and hygiene, and some see it as a perfectly harmless religious obligation. Detractors claim that the foreskin performs various functions, and that no medical, theological, or aesthetic justifications warrant its painful and permanent removal from helpless babies.

Following, I have critiqued the major pro-circumcision arguments as dispassionately as I can, in an attempt to determine who the facts vindicate: those who are in favor of circumcision as a routine procedure, or those who are stiffly opposed.

Argument #1: It is a weapon in the battle against STDs

Modern advocates claim that circumcised males are much less likely to contract various sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), including but not limited to HIV and HPV; and upon this rests the bulk of their case. In fact, the blog Science-Based Medicine features a post entitled The Case for Neonatal Circumcision which rests entirely on this claim; and the author, Amy Tuteur, begins by voicing the frustration that many in the pro-circumcision camp must feel:

"Imagine if we could save lives from a dread and often fatal disease simply by performing a minor surgical procedure. People would hail this simple victory and rush to adopt it... Not exactly. The disease is HIV and the simple surgical procedure is circumcision and anti-circ activists oppose it under almost any circumstances."

In fact Tuteur has good evidence to back her up: two large studies published in 2007 (one conducted in Kenya and the other in Uganda) both concluded that circumcision rendered heterosexual men significantly less likely to contract HIV; and a 2009 study (also conducted in Uganda), confirmed this, and in addition found that circumcision decreased the transmission of HPV and herpes (HSV-2), although the mechanism responsible remains speculative.

Collectively, these diseases have killed many millions of people, and I have to agree that those who would summarily dismiss these results are utterly indefensible. And yet I am sure Tuteur would agree we cannot wage war on these diseases by any means necessary; that human rights must not be trampled in a rush to victory. Thus the question becomes: is circumcision an appropriate means of tackling these diseases?

Bachmann attacking Perry for
mandating an HPV vaccine

For the sake of context, consider compulsory vaccination. For although vaccines have proven themselves a highly effective weapon in the struggle against many infectious diseases, even their most voracious proponents tend to get queasy when asked if vaccination should be mandated by the government. This is because freedom of choice is widely held to be a basic human right.

Of course, babies cannot choose for themselves whether or not to get circumcised, and thus parents are entitled to make this and other decisions on their behalf. This is undeniably reasonable.

But are parents entitled to have their babies circumcised on the grounds that it will reduce their chances of contracting and spreading STDs?

To my mind, the answer to this question is: no. After all, for the vast majority of their sex lives, males are mature adults, complete with the capacity to make decisions for themselves. Considering this, it seems bizarre to me that in making The Case for Neonatal Circumcision, Tuteur never thought to argue for the circumcision of babies.

To be fair, others have bothered to bridge this gap, and Tuteur could have mentioned that circumcision is a greater inconvenience for adults (which is certainly true); that circumcision causes adults more pain (which is debatable and ultimately unverifiable); or that adult circumcision is more likely to result in health complications (which appears to be true). But she also failed to point out that many men might well choose not to sacrifice their foreskins given the opportunity to choose for themselves, and that this makes the case for taking it from them as infants ethically questionable.

That said, it should be noted that these studies were conducted in countries wherein infection rates are much higher than they are in North America (at least for HIV), and resources relatively limited. Thus their conclusions reflect an urgent need for inexpensive interventions, and do not necessarily make a good case for routine circumcision in the Occident. There is every reason to believe, for example, that simply using a condom would overwhelm this effect; and there is little evidence that circumcision effects HIV transmission among homosexual men, who represent the primary mode of transmission in the West.

(Side note: Amy Tuteur no longer writes for the usually excellent Science-Based Medicine due to "unresolvable differences" with the editors.)

Argument #2: Circumcision protects against UTIs and penile cancer

Circumcision proponents also claim that it protects against noncommunicable afflictions such as urinary tract infections (UTIs) and penile cancer; and in fact here too it appears that the preponderance of published studies is on their side. UTIs, however, are fairly uncommon in males and one study estimated that, statistically, up to

"195 circumcisions would be needed to prevent one hospital admission for UTI in the first year of life."

(although some estimates are lower; and some UTIs are asymptomatic) Furthermore, most UTIs are treatable by other means and do little harm beyond pain and discomfort (circumcisions also cause pain); and although some UTIs can lead to more serious complications, this is so rare that a 2004 review of the circumcision/UTI literature concluded that a

"net clinical benefit is likely only on boys at high risk of UTI"

Penile cancers are also rare - so rare in fact, that it is difficult to asses its risk factors. It seems possible, however, that they are more common among uncircumcised men. Why this might be remains unclear (shameless speculation: could it be in part because fewer cells simply reduces the chances that one of them will spawn a tumor, and could this also help explain why tall people appear to be at a higher risk of cancer?), but since hygiene appears to play a role, prophylactic measures far less extreme than circumcision readily suggest themselves . In any case, since this disease is clearly associated with age, (two-thirds of American penile cancers occur in seniors), I think it can be safely dismissed as a good reason to circumcise infants.

Argument #3: The foreskin is useless; thus even small benefits warrant its removal

Of course, we cannot simply lop off every body part that is at risk of cancer and infection, and thus in making their case for circumcision advocates sometimes liken the foreskin to the appendix - that bothersome intestinal protrusion which does little beyond rendering the human body more vulnerable to suffering. Of course, their opponents disagree, often by claiming that natural selection would not have made such a foolish error.

As someone who is keenly interested in biological evolution, I find this aspect of the debate quite exciting. For the claim, stated by anti-circumcision activist Paul M. Fleiss, that

"the human body [is] a model of refinement, elegance, and efficiency, with every part having a function and purpose",

is highly unlikely (what function, I wonder, would Dr. Fleiss assign to the male nipple?); and whether or not the foreskin has utility - not to mention whether it has relevance in the context of the modern world - is an excellent question, to which a simple answer is not immediately apparent.

Koala foreskins host bacteria that
appear to assist their reproduction

Perhaps the most commonly alleged function of the foreskin contributes to sexual pleasure (for him or her or both); and this is supported by the observations that the foreskin houses a high concentration of nerves, and that its loss reduces penile girth. But pleasure is subjective, and thus the degree to which it is impacted by circumcision cannot be verified with absolute certainty. Moreover, reports from men circumcised as adults (and from their partners) appear to be mixed; and it seems possible that there exists some key difference between neonatal and adult circumcision with respect to sexual pleasure.

Opponents of circumcision also point out that foreskins are nearly universal among mammals, and that this would not be so if they did not posses survival value. To this it must be said that nonhuman foreskins differ from our own in potentially key respects; and their value to humans could have been rendered superfluous by the dawning of modern civilization: by clothing, regular bathing, or medical science. However, the observation that we have retained them despite evolving in uncivilized circumstances, does suggest that their portrayal as a significant detriment to health and hygiene is probably unfounded.

More importantly, this conclusion is supported by the observation that few if any North American health organizations advocate routine circumcision on medical grounds, including The College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia, which has unequivocally stated that

"routine infant male circumcision... is not recommended."

Argument #4: It's a religious obligation/cultural tradition

God, it is widely believed, gave our sons foreskins so that we might slice them off (in fact circumcision is very prevalent in the Muslim world as well as among Jews, although many of the former apparently consider it to be proper, as opposed to obligatory). This poses a dilemma for anti-circumcision movements, for it is difficult to effectively fight against if one is content to allow its proponents to retreat from medical to theological grounds; and yet it can be difficult to fight on theological grounds without appearing to attack that theology as a whole.

Foreskin Man battles
Monster Mohel

For example, take Foreskin Man. The anti-circumcision superhero comic was widely condemned as antisemitic, the hero's blonde hair was described as "suspiciously Aryan", and it was even been compared to "1930s Nazi propaganda", when it depicted a demonized Jewish mohel as a villain. In contrast, little indignation was aroused when Foreskin Man did battle with an equally demonized circumcision-performing doctor.

Theological grounds are also more advantageous to the defense of circumcision in that while it must be shown to have health benefits to be endorsed as a medical procedure, those who merely proclaim it a religious right can content themselves with asking "what's the harm?" - and the existence of millions of happy, healthy, and functioning circumcised men might seem to imply that there is none. Indeed, during a debate with atheist Christopher Hitchens, rabbi Harold Kushner felt so confident of this that he joked

"Statistically, the only long-term effect that [circumcision] seems to have on people is it increases their chances of winning a Nobel prize." (click here to see Hitchens' righteous response)

The notion of harmlessness is also how modern Western populations square their tolerance of male circumcision with the ubiquitous laws that expressly prohibit its female counterpart - laws which permit no religious or cultural exceptions.

And yet there clearly are harms associated with infant circumcision - or, at the very least, there are risks - which to my mind clearly supersede any conceivable non-medical argument:

like all surgeries, it can result in complications ranging from minor infections and bleeding to permanent scarring or death;
it is painful, and use of anesthesia accompanies still further risk of complication;
it risks negatively effecting a child's future sex life and that of their future partner;
it irreversibly alters one's appearance (perhaps barring restoration therapy); and
it risks violating the wishes of children, possibly causing them to resent it as they age.

This last point is perhaps especially true in the case of religious circumcision, since people are even less likely to be devout Muslims or Jews as infants than they are to be sexually mature and suffering from penile cancer. And if they do not come to share their parents spiritual views, the knowledge that they were circumcised as a way of signifying to which religion they belonged might be even less palatable to children than the knowledge that it was done for misguided medical reasons.

* * *

It should further be noted that circumcision was commonplace in North America well before evidence of any medical benefit was available - in fact before HIV and HPV were even discovered; and that long-abandoned arguments in favor of it (such as the discouragement of masturbation) still indirectly impact the decisions of parents today. For example: they persuaded many states and provinces to subsidize routine circumcision under their public health plans, as many states still do; and they caused it to be widely seen as "normal" by pushing circumcision rates well above 50%. A great many parents choose circumcision merely so that the son "looks like the father", regardless of whether it made sense that the father was circumcised in the first place (I can't help but wonder whether some maternal instinct to reassure partners of their biological fatherhood is at play here); and perhaps this suggests that, along with the wishes of the infant in question, those of his future progeny should also be factored into the equation.

We certainly have a duty to do our utmost to rid ourselves of infectious diseases. And we have a duty to make children aware of their heritage. But we also have a duty to respect, insofar as is possible, the individual's right to freedom of choice; and to think critically, that we might disrupt the propagation of nonsensical memes from one generation to the next. Since the medical consensus is currently against routine circumcision of North American children, and since I cannot bring myself to accept spiritual or cosmetic reasons as sufficient to place an unwitting child under the knife, I think it is clear which responsibilities take precedence in this case.

This post is dedicated to my dear mother.

The sun part 2: sunscreen

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 18:21:00 +0000

As a tree planter, many of my spring and summer days are spent outside, at high altitudes, and in places most notable for their lack of available shade

And yet I never use sunscreen. In part, this is because I don't have to worry about sunburns as much as do the fair-haired, and because I have a mild aversion to skin creams and lotions. But it's also because I've never understood how sunscreens work; and because I've long heard rumors of dire side effects: for example, my ex-physiotherapist once told me that sunscreen causes skin cancer.

However, I certainly appreciate the power of ultraviolet (UV) sunlight, which can sunburn, bleach pigments, and sterilize drinking water. So I can't help but wonder: are my coworkers and I really better off without sunscreen?

Like Sunbathing through a Window

Before planting this year I tried to develop a gradual tan, and maybe synthesize a little vitamin D, by doing my studying in short sleeves next to a window. So imagine my surprise when I discovered that most windows are actually opaque to the very portion of the UV spectrum, called UVB, that is primarily responsible for inducing vitamin D synthesis, and for causing tans and sunburns. Catching rays through a window, apparently, is a complete waste of time unless you're cold.

But I was even surpriseder when I discovered that most windows are transparent to another portion of the UV spectrum, called UVA, which penetrates more deeply into the skin. Because it does not cause sunburns - or any other acute symptoms - UVA is sometimes referred to as "silent" radiation; however it is now known that both UVA and UVB can cause "photoaging" and cancer. Thus, those who spend much time behind sunny windows, including car door windows, probably absorb more solar radiation than they are aware - in fact, this may help explain why skin cancers in the United States are more common on the left side of the body.

What does that have to do with sunscreen?

Like windows, many sunscreens are better at obstructing UVB than UVA radiation. And so although they reduce the amount of radiation absorbed per unit of time, they may also encourage people to spend longer in the sun, obliviously bearing the full brunt of those "silent" UV wavelengths.

Indeed, some observational studies have actually seen a correlation between sunscreen use and an increased risk of melanoma (the deadliest form of skin cancer) and the idea that sunscreen is carcinogenic doubtless owes a favor to these alarming results. But a recent review criticized these studies for their "failure to control for confounding factors" - such as incomplete UVA protection (and the fact that previously high-risk people are more likely to use sunscreen). In other words: these studies do not imply that the chemicals in sunscreens cause cancer; but they may suggest that sunscreen results in riskier behavior. Among others, this may be of interest to those who use so-called "natural" sunscreens in the belief that they are safer.

(Side note: by blocking UVB sunscreens also interfere with vitamin D synthesis, but it's highly doubtful that this is significant for those - like tree planters - who get enough sun to warrant the use of sunscreen.)

Why aren't sunscreens effective against UVA?

In defense of the industry, sunscreen manufacturers have traditionally focused on UVB because UVB causes sunburns, and sunburns have long provided the best way to test their products on human skin. Moreover, the dangers posed by UVA haven't always been appreciated; and commercial formulations are always improving.

But it seems fair to say that change has been painfully slow: the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) just recently updated their sunscreen regulations for the first time in over three decades. And although the new regulations include improved UVA standards, these have already seen bitter criticism. Most notably, the Environmental Working Group (EWG) risked making the FDA very sad when it responded that under the new rules even so-called "broad spectrum" sunscreens may not provide sufficient UVA protection, and that

"After 33 years it is evident people just can't trust the FDA on this issue."

Instead, the EWG advises consumers to look past advertised claims like "High SPF" and "broad spectrum" to the ingredients list when attempting to gauge a sunscreen's UVA effectiveness and overall safety.

The Ingredients of Controversy

"No ingredient is without hazard" warns the EWG's online sunscreen guide, and I agree on the grounds that even the most innocuous substance can be hazardous in the wrong circumstances. They also point out that higher SPF ratings often indicate a higher concentration of active ingredients and thus a potentially greater risk of side effects.

Half non-nano, half nano zinc
sunscreen

That said, sunscreens dominated by UV-reflecting ingredients like Zinc or Titanium are widely seen as being fairly safe and effective against UVA. Some are concerned that manufacturers have taken to reducing these ingredients to tiny, nano-sized particles (in part to reduce their visibility on the skin), but as yet it appears that none of the coherent arguments against these nano-particles have gained much traction.

More controversy surrounds UV-absorbing ingredients, although this doesn't appear to be because they're inherently riskier, as is often implied. In particular, despite it's UVA effectiveness, the EWG has singled out oxybenzone as an ingredient to avoid. In part this is due to the fact that it can permeate the skin and mimic the effects of estrogen in the body, and because some people are allergic to it - but only after it's been exposed to sunlight (ie., it's a "photoallergen"). Most alarmingly, the EWG suspects that sunlight could also cause oxybenzone to degrade into cancer-causing free radicals (which, if true, would make it a "photocarcinogen").

But, among others, The Skin Cancer Foundation have begged to differ, saying

"there has never been any evidence that oxybenzone, which has been available for 20 years, has any adverse health effect in humans."

Indeed, it appears to be a very weak estrogen mimic, and as such it is arguably insignificant when topically applied (it turns out that many things can mimic estrogen). And although oxybenzone can penetrate the skin, it's expelled in the urine and doesn't accumulate in the body. Most importantly for my purposes here, evidence of its photocarcinogenic potential appears slight (no evidence links it directly to cancer in humans); and in any case oxybenzone-free sunscreens are widely available.

A very similar controversy surrounds a vitamin A derivative called retinyl palmitate, which is often added to sunscreens as a inactive ingredient. It too is widely used to make both cosmetics and foods; and although it too is considered safe by most other authorities, the EWG suspects it of being a photocarcinogen. The basis for this concern appears to be a sinlge unpublished study on hairless mice, and the EWG's interpretation of it's results has been hotly contested. The bottom line: there is no credible link between cancer in humans and retinyl palminate; and sunscreens free of it are available to the wary.

* * *

In the end, my investigation probably won't change my habit of relying on clothing to protect me at work, as I feel I can responsibly manage my sun exposure without sunscreen (besides, oily lotions are scientifically proven to be totally gross, and effective sunscreens have yet to be marketed in the form of a pill).

But this is not to give credence to the idea that sunscreens cause cancer, which, despite the sheer number of sunscreen controversies, appears to lack a solid foundation. In fact, it now seems obvious to me that those who actively propagate the notion that sunscreens cause cancer are simply being irresponsible: there is nothing intrinsically wrong with sunscreens as far as I can tell. In part because of this rumor, I have long avoided sunscreens, and I worry it might also discourage those who are in even greater danger from the sun than I. So from now on, when I encounter this rumor I will make a point of asking for justification - I encourage readers do the same.

On the other hand, I am also going to start voicing concern to those of my coworkers who seem to depend too heavily on sunscreen, for I am convinced that clothing should be a prudent tree planter's first line of defense. They're cheap. They're relatively free of controversy and potential side-effects. They're UVA-effective and won't instill a false sense of security. They're unquestionably sweat-proof. And - even among tree planters - there's a smaller danger of their being imperfectly applied.

A special thanks to PM ;)

The sun part 1: the color of plants

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 13:49:00 +0000

For the sake of argument, light is made up of particles called photons; and although the sun emits photons of every conceivable color, if you could collect and sort them like so many M&Ms you would find a preponderance of "green" ones. In other words: the sun shines green more intensely than it does any other color.

(That the sun does not appear green may seem to belie my claim, but this is simply because we humans perceive sunlight as a blend of colors. In fact, sunlight is white - not yellow as artistic renditions had me believing. But it has been pointed out that if the sun really were yellow, then so too would be the clouds.)

It is unsurprising then, that the human eye is most sensitive to green light. After all, it has evolved specifically to take advantage of a green sun.

But it is much more surprising that plants are usually green. I mean, seriously: why are plants green? Some readers might be quick to answer that it's because they contain chlorophyll - a green pigment essential to photosynthesis and thus the survival of most plants. But this is no answer at all, for it merely begs the next logical question: why is chlorophyll green?

Keep in mind that an object's color is determined by the light that it reflects. This means that green objects appear so because they are relatively poor at absorbing green light. Since plants must capture light to survive, it is strange that those parts of them engaged in photosynthesis usually reflect the very color that is most prevalent in the sun's shine. Indeed, it's strange they aren't black (as astrobiologists suspect could be the case on other Earth-like planets): it would make little sense, for example, to construct a green solar panel.

Could it be that our sun shines green light too intensely? that the green hue of plants is meant to act as some sort of natural sunscreen?

Technically, plants can't get sunburns, but their DNA is not immune to damage from the sun. Plants can even get cancer-like diseases, but these appear to be far less of a concern for them, what with their non-essential "body" parts and rudimentary circulatory systems.

But the bottom line is that neither humans nor plants are in danger from green light, however intense. It is, of course, ultraviolet (UV) light that can damage DNA, and it does this not because it is abundant in sunshine but because it is sufficiently energetic: because, unlike visible light, UV is "ionizing radiation".

But wouldn't black plants get too hot?

It is true that black plants would absorb more light and thus would get hotter than green plants do, and it is possible that this could put them at a disadvantage, for example by increasing their rate of transpiration. But it seems to me that, by itself, this is probably insufficient to explain why it is that plants are green instead of black: for one thing, even in cold, damp, and poorly lit environments, plants tend to choose botanical fashion over function.

Hmm. Are plants green... by accident?

Now I think we are getting closer to the truth: plants are green, not because the sun shines green light so intensely, but in spite of that fact. Certainly, there has been some sheer luck involved (for example, in plants chlorophyll resides within intracellular structures called "chloroplasts" which, incredibly, are thought to be descended from ancient bacteria [see "endosymbiosis"]). And, at this point, chlorophyll represents a well-established mode of phototrophism, so it is doubtful that it could be easily supplanted by an equally useful black pigment.

But even simpler microorganisms like green algae and cyanobacteria utilize chlorophyll, and taken together it's hard to chalk up these observations to chance. To me, they seem to imply that chlorophyll simply happens to have qualities that are able to compensate for any potential drawbacks associated with its hue.

However an "accident" can still have a casual factor. For example, one interesting idea known as the "purple Earth hypothesis" postulates that a purple photosynthetic pigment known as retinal (which absorbs green light particularly well) once dominated the Earth; and that chlorophyll-based photosynthesis co-evolved with and gradually out-competed retinal, probably by virtue of being more efficient. Since chlorophyll and retinal have complimentary absorption spectra, it is thought that chlorophyll might have evolved to target the blue and red light that the retinal-based competition was neglecting.

But the purple Earth hypothesis is not without critics, and in fact there appears to be no generally accepted, simple answer for those fool enough to wonder why we live on a blue and green planet, rather than on a blue and black one.

* * *

Will a simple answer present itself one day? Would we end up with black "plants" if the history of the Earth could be reset and rerun? What would life be like on such a planet? Might black "plants" arise sometime in Earth's distant future? And isn't it amazing, how science takes all the mystery out of life?

Acupuncture

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Sat, 07 May 2011 17:06:00 +0000

Here in British Columbia, our provincial medical services plan subsidizes acupuncture treatments with public funds, and acupuncture is a designated health profession. My student medical plan offers me subsidized acupuncture treatments, and there's a temporary acupuncture clinic on my university campus. According to Google maps, there are fifteen acupuncture clinics operating within five blocks of my apartment here in downtown Victoria, including at least two acupuncture colleges whose students qualify for government loans. Very many of my peers have expressed great faith in acupuncture, and a few are aspiring acupuncturists.

In other words, my community has granted acupuncture mainstream acceptance.

This fact has piqued my interest as taxpayer, a community member, as a student of biology, and as a nerdy science blogger. So recently, I went around to seven different acupuncture schools and clinics in my neighborhood, collecting brochures, and pressing the staff on a couple key points; and following, I have attempted a fair but meaningful criticism of the answers these questions received.

"What is acupuncture?"

The brochures I collected offer understandably broad definitions of "acupuncture":

"Acupuncture is based on the recognition of a system of energetic pathways in the body called meridians. Meridians connect the body's surface to the internal organs and contain energy called Qi ... by inserting special needles at specific points on the meridians, acupuncture can correct energetic imbalances or blockages, which may be the cause of distress."(1)

"Acupuncture is the insertion of fine needles into the body at specific points shown to be effective in the treatment of specific health problems."(1)

"An acupuncturist will place fine, sterile needles at specific acupoints on the body. This activates the body's Qi and promotes natural healing..."(2)

But as their authors might agree, "acupuncture" can vary. Sometimes the needles are gently manipulated after insertion and other times they are not. In some cases they are heated, or charged with electricity. Some acupuncturists use lasers. Many acupuncturists augment their treatments with prescriptions of various herbs or creams, with "moxibustion" (the burning of mugwort to 'warm' acupoints), massage, acupressure, or "cupping" (the placement of suction cups on the skin). And diverse systems such as traditional Chinese acupuncture (which views the tongue as a kind of map of the body), Korean hand acupuncture (which views the hand as a map of the body), and auricular acupuncture (which is largely French in origin, and which views the ear as a map of the body) are all huddled together beneath this linguistic umbrella.

(As an interesting side note: it is a basic precept of reflexology that the foot is a map of the body; and of iridology that the iris is a map of the body.)

To it's credit, one brochure explicitly acknowledges this, advising patients:

"in different countries, different styles [of acupuncture] have developed based on differing opinions as to theory and technique ... learn as much as much as possible about the treatment being proposed."(1)

"What can acupuncture do for me?"

The diversity of word "acupuncture" turns out to be of direct relevance to my community, because a few of my local clinics advertise examples from a list of health conditions for which the World Health Organization (WHO) has endorsed it. This is a truly extensive list, and includes afflictions as diverse as anxiety, arthritis, colds and flus, dysentery, hiccups ("hiccough"), pain of all kinds, pneumonia, smoking addiction, and urinary tract infections. Make no mistake: the WHO endorsement of "acupuncture" for so many different reasons is an extremely impressive indication of acupuncture's overall effectiveness.

Or at least it would have been impressive if I had never heard of the internet. Upon locating the WHO list on-line however (here's the complete list) I discovered that it employed an extremely vague definition of "acupuncture":

"In this publication the term 'acupuncture' is used in its broad sense to include traditional body needling, moxibustion, electric acupuncture, laser acupuncture, microsystem acupuncture such as ear (auricular), face, hand, and scalp acupuncture, and acupressure."

This is significant, because it means that the WHO endorsements are based on a collection studies that actually examined very dissimilar procedures. This in turn seems to mean that acupuncture clinics in my community are promoting their services based on the outcome of studies that did not necessarily involve the specific procedures they are offering. As just one example of the kind of ethical concerns this raises: "electro-acupuncture" is virtually identical to a conventional procedure (known as TENS) that is actually used to treat some of the WHO-endorsed conditions (osteoarthritis, various kinds of pain) - and yet neither of these two clinics appeared to be offering electro-acupuncture.

But the WHO endorsements were presented as being merely examples of the kinds of complaints that "acupuncture" can address; and in addition I also collected brochures advertising a treatment for

AIDS, anemia, attention deficit, cancer, carpel tunnel, "computer syndromes", Crohn's disease, deafness, diabetes, ear ringing, epilepsy, emotional problems, eye problems, heart disease, hepatitis, herpes, "insufficient milk", kidney disorders, liver disorders, lupus, menopause, mental retardation, menstrual disorders, "neuroasthenia" (possibly an imaginary disease), pinworm infection, parkinsens [sic], reproductive problems, shingles, stroke, tuberculosis, thyroiditis, and yeast infections.(2)(3)

Until very recently, acupuncture was also being solicited in my neighborhood for "body-shaping" purposes; and one of my brochures states that

"even after your symptoms have resolved, acupuncture can help you in maintaining your health, and possibly prevent future imbalances." (5)(4)

Indeed, when I inquired as to whether I could benefit from acupuncture despite lacking any specific complaint, staff at a local college responded confidently in the affirmative.

"How does acupuncture work?"

Too sexy for his meridians

I invariably received a reply to this question that prominently featured the words "qi", "meridians", and "acupoints". Only one practitioner mentioned "chakras" in lieu of prompting.

In fact, it appears that many of their advertised services utterly depend on the existence of these (or similar) phenomena. For example, qi and meridians underpin the incredible versatility they ascribe themselves by implying that very dissimilar complaints can have a common "root cause" and thus can be treated in a similar way. And their presumed existence allows acupuncturists to solicit, not mere relief, but a potentially profound and lasting cure as indeed many of them clearly are:

"Not only can acupuncture treat signs and symptoms of pain and discomfort, it can also get to the root cause of the problem."(4)

"Your [acupuncturist] will ... preform a physical exam to determine how and why your body's vital energy, or qi, is out of balance, and what the root causes are contributing to the overall problem."(4)

"All activities, both physical and mental, are manifestations of Qi. The body is woven together and interconnected by a network of meridians through which the Qi and blood flow ... By inserting special needles at specific points on the meridians, acupuncture can correct energetic imbalances or blockages, which may be the cause of distress."(1)

But despite their being of obvious interest to acupuncture practitioners, students, and patients (or to anyone with a passing interest in human health, or indeed in anything remotely biological in nature), my brochures also inform me that

"modern Western medicine cannot explain how acupuncture works",

and claim that these

"energies and substances [are] unfamiliar to the West".(1)

I can see how this might have seemed convincing in the 1970s or 80s, but it seems to ring pretty hollow today, now that acupuncture has been a designated health profession here in "the West" for the last 15 years. Given that their services and teachings are fundamentally predicated on a decent understanding of these "energies and substances", this kind of arcane language seems inexcusable to me.

For one thing, it seems that even the "East" is grappling with the concepts of qi and meridians: according to this official account, although Chinese scientists recently used their country's "most expensive ever science project" to try and "solve the mystery of acupuncture points" in the end they could only announced having found a "gathering of micro-vessels" - certainly a remarkable manifestation of "the body's vital energy". In fact, if this is the best the "East" can do they might be interested in my "Western" brochures, since one of them claims that:

"recently, electromagnetic research has confirmed [acupoints] locations",(1)

and another offers a

"computerized meridian analysis and diagnosis".(3)

For another thing, acupuncture has been extensively studied here in "the West", although it is true that this has not been easy. Indeed, it seems to have been the subject of many hundreds of studies; and many of these do propose an alternative mechanism by which acupuncture might be "explained". It's called "the placebo effect" - a conclusion that severely undercuts acupuncturists claimed access to a "Western"-neglected root cause of all illness.

(Click here to have "modern Western medicine" "explain" acupuncture.)

The notion that acupuncture works due to the manipulation of qi, on the other hand, conflicts not just with "Western medicine" but also with basic science: for example, the germ theory of disease and the theory of evolution (make no mistake: the central unifying concept of modern biology would face a serious reassessment in light of such a fundamental "life force"). It seems that my local acupuncturists are actually saying is that "our claims are based on phenomena for which modern biology does not account". Unfortunately, it is hard for me to picture the market failing to punish them for rising to this level of honesty: language frames thinking, and acupuncturists are well advised to contrast themselves with "Western medicine" as opposed to "basic biology".

"How old is acupuncture?"

To be honest, I didn't ask anyone this question on my neighborhood acupuncture tour. But neither did I have to: almost without fail I was told that acupuncture is an "ancient" practice. This didn't impress me with my local acupuncturists profound respect for the history of their discipline, however, because I was told that acupuncture is 2000, 3000, and 5000 years old. To be fair, online sources exist for all three estimates.

This claim of ancientness has value to any acupuncturists seeking to attract patients (or students), because it clearly suggests that the procedures being offered are effectively the same as those offered by acupuncturists thousands of years ago. It portrays a thoroughly time-tested Chinese folk remedy that has been gradually perfected by untold generations of trial and error. And in the minds of many, this claim endows a credibility that no scientific study could ever hope to match - or to undo.

However, as previously noted, today these allegedly "ancient" procedures often incorporate technologies that are clearly endemic to the industrial era, such as electricity and lasers. Indeed, it turns out that even acupuncturist's most common tool - the stainless steel needle - is only about a hundred years old. Considering this, it's almost comical that one of my brochures states:

"Acupuncture is an ancient Chinese medical procedure that involves the insertions and manipulation of sterilized stainless-steel needles in the body."(3)

This is a nontrivial point, because stainless steel can be fashioned into extremely fine, strong, and flexible needles; and any acupuncture that occurred in ancient history probably bore precious little resemblance to its contemporary descendant. In fact, a glance at some old school "acupuncture" needles has convinced me that it's very unlikely ancient Chinese peasants were lining up in droves to have their dizziness, fatigue, emotional problems, or hiccups addressed by this method. And trust me, I've had the goddamn hiccups.

Some ancient "acu"puncture needles...

...versus the modern variety.

It is even less likely that ancient acupuncturists ever addressed obesity, cigarette addictions, or street drug highs as they do in my community today. In fact, as far ancient history is concerned, the vast majority of services my neighborhood acupuncturists are offering are thoroughly untested.

It certainly seems to be true that modern acupuncture is based on concepts that are thousands of years old, but this is a very different claim. After all, surgeons do not suggest that experimental procedures are time-tested simply because a recognition of flesh and bone extends into antiquity.

In reality, it appears that "acupuncture" is a diffuse, modern, and fairly "Westernized" offshoot of a much broader school of medicine popularly known today as "Traditional Chinese Medicine" (TCM); and acupuncturists claims of ancientness seem to jar with the fact that the Traditional Chinese Medicine Association of British Columbia actually opposed the official designation of acupuncture as a health profession, on the grounds that acupuncture is

"only one part of the more broadly based practice of traditional Chinese medicine"

* * *

Everyone I spoke to on my little neighborhood "acu-tour" was extremely friendly, and willingly answered all my annoying questions. I was showered with brochures and enthusiastically lectured on the principles of acupuncture. To be clear: every acupuncturist or staff member I spoke to appeared entirely compassionate, sincere, and intelligent.

Nonetheless, it seems to me that acupuncturists in my community are a) claiming to offer a profound and versatile healing service despite good scientific evidence to the contrary; b) soliciting their services in the name of misappropriated scientific evidence and distorted historical fact; and c) promoting and teaching a parallel version of biology for which little evidence exists. And in my opinion, by doing so they risk causing their patients to misdirect their resources, or to take unnecessary risks (after all acupuncture is certainly not risk-free), and they risk misleading our youth and thus impoverishing our culture (not unlike the teaching of "intelligent design" or an altered version of history).

(As if it weren't bad enough that I'm helping to bankroll these endeavors with my tax dollars, a CBC news investigation recently highlighted another example of the dangers inherent in subsidizing such an ill-defined and pseudo-scientific treatment.)

Of course, it is always possible that acupuncture is the future; that these people will help lead us all into a better, healthier, and more enlightened tomorrow. But it seems clear that the road there is paved entirely with their good intentions.

Cited brochures were obtained from:

I also visited and spoke to staff at:

Love

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Tue, 30 Nov 2010 19:00:00 +0000

"Reason and passion are inexorably linked."
-Helen Fisher

Love can be a source of great confusion. The very meaning of the word is debatable, let alone the role it plays in our lives.

If you too crave clarity, read on. All will be made clear, I promise.

Part 1: The Meaning of "Love"

What I mean to indicate, of course, is romantic love: amore. To my mind, romantic love is best thought of as a sensation, or something that influences human nature. It probably "exists", but only in the minds and bodies of lovers. Therefore I see love as being an absolutely biological phenomenon.

According to Wikipedia, love is "emotion", but in her [excellent] 2004 book Why We Love, the preeminent anthropologist and "love expert" Helen Fisher disagrees (she does so again in this one of her two TED talks), pointing out that love is actually more akin to thirst or hunger than it is to anger or happiness, in that it is more difficult to suppress; is not closely associated with a universally recognizable facial expression; and clamors for satiety via similar neurochemical pathways. I have to agree with Fisher that love is not a true emotion but a drive.

That is not to say that I see the "love drive" and the "sex drive" as being one and the same. After all, one can sometimes occur in the absence of the other; and, as Fisher notes, love denied is usually far more emotionally crushing than is sex denied. In fact she claims that romantic love is distinct from what she calls the lust and the attachment drives, each associated with a hormonal profile that has been seen to predominate the successive stages of most romantic relationships;

"Lust is associated primarily with the hormone testosterone in both men and women. Romantic love is linked with the natural stimulant dopamine and perhaps norepinephrine and serotonin. And feelings of male-female attachment are produced primarily by the hormones oxytosin and vasopressin."

While some may object to this reductionist approach to love, I would argue that an appreciation of its biochemical basis not only allows us to better appreciate what love is, and how and why it evolves, but also how sexual preference - and all variety of romantic dysfunction - can have an innocent and purely physical, as opposed to a psychological, explanation.

But there is value also in viewing love as being greater than the sum of its parts. After all, science has only a limited understanding of the amazing human body (those who wonder whether science ever could explain love might like this Rationally Speaking podcast on the subject). Plus, as Fisher says, romantic love is "deeply entwined" with lust and attachment; and it bears a close biochemical resemblance to the distinct brand of "love" we tend to feel for close relatives as well as that we reserve for friends, pets, and reputedly all-powerful supernatural beings (a phenomenon that has been shrewdly referred to as "political love"). Therefore I hope you will not mind, dear reader, if I henceforth use the word "love" to refer to the set of sensations that are characteristic of all three of these drives.

But if love is a drive, what is it driving us toward? The obvious answer, I think, is parenthood. That is not to say that successful reproduction is a necessary part of love, but merely it's ultimate goal from an evolutionary perspective. And if I have succeeded in arguing that love is a biological phenomenon then reproduction is unquestionably the primary reason for its existence. But this is only a partial answer, for although love is surely "meant" to facilitate this end, it does so by causing us to build families, often via some kind of "marriage". And because families are social- as well as parental units, how we build them is profoundly impacted not just by our nature but also society at large (maybe this is why people sometimes mistake romantic love for a purely social construct). Do these two forces pursue confluent or conflicting agendas?

Part 2: Love and Society

Most people today live in monogamous societies, and yet the statistical odds of having a "happily ever after" monogamous relationship are sobering. In the United States, divorce rates are now estimated to be as high as 40% (higher still for those who marry young), and cheating is a very common cause for divorce. Moreover not all trespasses are discovered: some studies suggest up to one in 25 "fathers" are unwittingly helping to raise another man's child.

Observations like these have caused me to seriously consider a career in milk delivery, but others reflect on them somewhat more deeply: the political right alleges that our society is too progressive, while the left suspects that society is pressing us to conform to an artificial conception of romantic love. This suspicion calls for an investigation of some alternatives to the nuclear family model, in case something else is better suited to us as a species. Matt Ridley dedicates a part of his [recommended] 1993 book The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature to doing just that, observing: "that most people [today] live in monogamous societies ... may only tell us what democracy usually prescribes, not what human nature seeks."

Polygamy, for example, is fairly uncommon today but it is still widely tolerated, and was far more common in practice among earlier civilizations. Ridley describes the love lives of some of history's most powerful men:

"The Babylonian king Hammurabi had thousands of slave 'wives' at his command. The Egyptian pharaoh Akhenaten procured 317 concubines and 'droves' of consorts. The Aztec ruler Montezuma enjoyed 4,000 concubines. The Indian emperor Udayama preserved sixteen thousand consorts in apartments ringed by fire and guarded by eunuchs. The Chinese emperor Fei-ti had ten thousand women in his harem. The Inca Atahualpa... kept virgins on tap throughout [his] kingdom."

He goes on to claim that these were nothing more than "extreme examples" of polygamy: that throughout history a man's power generally predicted the size of his harem. On the other hand, Polyandry (polygamy's inverse) has occurred only rarely, primarily in geographical regions in which men's ambitions were curbed by a scarcity of resources (the Arctic, Tibet).

But is it fair to say that polygamy is better suited to our particular species than is monogamy? I think no: uncivilized men, as we can still see today, are rarely capable of securing the resources necessary to acquire, support, and protect multiple wives. Generally, such a feat requires pronounced social stratification; and therefore surely the more defensible position is that polygamy, not monogamy, is a product of civilized society. Also supporting this conclusion are my impressions that contemporary polygamy requires at least as much discipline and hard work as does strict monogamy; that even polygamous husbands usually have favorite wives; that it often seems to involve non-voluntary, "arranged" marriages; and is very often the product of religious conviction.

Polygamy is a hot topic here in British Columbia because as I write our supreme court is hearing a case in which the leaders of a polygamous, fundamentalist Mormon community called Bountiful are arguing against the very rarely enforced Canadian prohibition on taking multiple wives. The "latter-day saints" are arguing that the law is unconstitutional; the Crown, that striking it down would be socially destructive. Personally, I'm not entirely sure the law should be kept, mainly due to the impracticality of enforcing it, but my sympathies are with the Crown, because I think that polygamy not only feeds off inequality but also perpetuates and deepens it: men and women are conceived at remarkably equivalent rates.

Polyamory is a somewhat ambiguous system in which people take many different lovers, but generally it indicates a more egalitarian arrangement than polygamy or polyandry: it might refer to a kind of "open" marriage, for example. Polyamorists rebel against what a friend recently referred to as "the farce of sexual ownership"; and a popular guide to living a gratifying polyamorous lifestyle is entitled The Ethical Slut. They suggest that marriages are plagued not by extramarital sex but by the social taboo against it: love is beautiful and should be indulged, jealousy and dishonesty are repulsive and should be suppressed. The biologically-minded polyamorist might also mention that our closest living evolutionary relatives, chimpanzees (and especially bonobos), might well be considered polyamorous in their natural state - a fact that might seem to suggest it lurks in the depths of our evolutionary past; and thus also in human nature.

But I would disagree. It is difficult to claim that sexual infidelity is not, at least somewhat, 'in our nature": I simply maintain that so is sexual possessiveness, and that this latter tendency is usually the more difficult to suppress. In fact, it has been said that "he [or presumably she] who does not feel jealousy is not capable of loving", and with this I do agree - keeping in mind that this does not mean that jealousy is necessarily an integral part of love, but that love necessarily hands its subject the power to - potentially - make one feel jealous.

This is an uncomfortable point, because polyamorists in many ways are right to view jealousy as repulsive: for example, of the women murdered in the US each year, anywhere from one to two thirds die at the hands of a man with who they've been intimate. In The Red Queen, Ridley points to the famous story of the mutinous crew of the 18th century British navy vessel The Bounty - 15 men and 13 women - who landed on a deserted tropical island, now known as Pitcairn, to start a new life.

"When the colony was found eighteen years later, ten of the women had survived and only one of the men. Of the other men, one had committed suicide, one had died, and twelve had been murdered. The survivor was simply the last man standing in an orgy of violence motivated entirely by sexual competition."

On the far-away Chatham Islands, also in the South Pacific, the inhabitants were moved to curb jealousy- inspired violence by practicing selective castration and idealizing non-violence. Unfortunately these peaceful peoples were almost entirely killed, enslaved, and consumed as soon as the relatively war-like native inhabitants of neighboring New Zealand caught wind of their existence from European sailors.

Jealousy may well be repulsive, but polyamory writ large would either have us, as a society, deny it or the love drive altogether. In Why We Love Fisher says "polyamory is utopian - and impractical"; and once again I agree with Fisher.

Homosexuality, of course, cannot directly lead to children. Because of this, it has often been stated (notably by those attempting to rationalize prejudice) that "homosexuality is unnatural". In response, it is common for those offended by this kind of nonsense to point out that homosexuality is frequently practiced by other species in the wild. But while true, this well-intended point only plays into a trap: for by this reasoning rape is also "natural", as it too occurs in the wild; devouring your mate following copulation is "natural". Moreover it implicitly accepts the lamentable fallacy that forms the core of this attempt to justify homophobia: the idea that "unnatural" somehow equals "bad", "wrong", or "immoral" - it doesn't.

Those on the political right might blame the existence of homosexuals on society. The left generally celebrates their on-going emancipation from it, but sometimes marvels at the existence of an allegedly heritable trait that in theory should be seldom propagated.

For example, a friend recently asked me out of curiosity if I knew of an "evolutionary explanation for homosexuality". Now that I've enjoyed some dwelling time I realize that the best way to explain the prevalence of homosexuality applies equally when considering all forms of human family structure: people are highly complex, adaptable, variable, and social animals, who engage in interactivity that is still more complex. And I honestly believe that that this answer is neither a cop-out, nor contradicts the notion of a typical human nature.

* * *

Ridley concludes that the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the typical human mating scheme is one of heterosexual monogamy that is riddled with adultery. Comparative anatomists point out that males of species that are, on average, slightly taller and more muscular than females as a rule actively and continuously compete for mates; and species whose males penis-to-body size ratio rivals our own as a rule include females that display a limited but significant degree of interest in promiscuity. Evidence of the male capacity for promiscuity is found in the history of polygamy, but geneticists point out that men possess a gene known to be associated with monogamy among male voles, and which, when transplanted, can lead to mice forming more monogamous partnerships.

So love, it seems, does not always pull us in a single, coherent direction; moreover it can conflict with the evolving demands of society. Luckily, most humans are not enslaved by their average body-to-penis size, but can use reason to navigate this sea of influences. Indeed, the evidence suggests that we do just this: new research from Sweden indicates that couples live together for "purely rational", rather than "traditional or romantic reasons."

Most on the left probably don't question monogamy, but marriage: a recent poll conducted for Time magazine showed that 40% of American think that "marriage is obsolete". Presumably this remarkable result is due to statistics like the divorce and adultery rates previously mentioned, or that single parents - mostly women - apparently outnumber their coupled counterparts; but also by the increasingly obvious fact that marriage in the ceremonial sense is not a prerequisite of a "happily ever after". But I think that the essence of marriage is a promise to be faithful despite temptation; and because the wandering eye is a part of human nature, vows of fidelity will always have meaning. Moreover, because "'till we tire of each other do us part" will always lack adequate profundity, these vows will never cease to be ostensibly life-long. That they are often temporary is somewhat beside the point.

That many of them are life-long, however, is remarkable. Scientists claimed to have "discovered true love" when it was revealed only 10% of long-term couples still experience the biochemical reactions usually associated with newer couples. For the rest of us though, love evolves, and sometimes runs out of "gas" entirely. This oft-lamented fact makes sense when we accept that love is prompting us toward parenthood - a goal that it need not be necessarily permanent to accomplish, especially considering the artificially extended human lifespan. But it becomes increasingly confusing when we approach the notion of "soul-mates", a reprehensible idea for which there is wide-spread sympathy, despite the fact that it implies the existence of a soul, as well as a "guiding hand" that might allow these souls to find each other among Earth's over 6 billion people; raises false hopes of a faultless union when in fact any long-term relationships is likely to require vast effort to maintain; might help convince people to maintain destructive or abusive relationships; and can exacerbate the turmoil of a love denied.

By convention, rationality is seen as dispassionate, and passion irrational. But I think the bonds we forge of them are strongest when alloyed.

Milk 2

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Fri, 05 Nov 2010 23:38:00 +0000

Some say that "homogenized" milk cannot be properly digested by the human body and should be avoided.

Others wonder about the hormones and other drugs that are sometimes administered to dairy cattle, and the effects this might have on the milk they produce.

Still others have requested that I "hire an editor".

In fact, all three of these concerns where floated by comments I received after my last post (wherein I criticized the distinct notions that cow's milk is an "unnatural" human beverage, and that pasteurization sucks). Since these particular remarks were not made visible on this blog, I have taken the liberty of partially reproducing and individually addressing them below, while secreting the identities of their respective authors.

Comment #1: "Did you research homogenization of dairy? [My concerns are that] fat globules that [small] don't occur in nature and our bodies aren't designed to process them."

(click here to have "the Professor" quickly explain homogenization to you, and how it differs from pasteurization)

Dear Commenter: I have been unable to definitively verify whether or not homogenization can indeed sometimes create "unnaturally" small milk fat globules. This is because milk fat globules (which are composed primarily of "triglycerides") are actually secreted from the udder in a very wide and irregular array of sizes (typically something like 0.1-15 micrometers in diameter), but I think it is fair to say that very small triglyceride globules are known to occur quite "naturally".

Furthermore, while it is true that homogenization does reduce the average size of these globules (from approximately 2.0 micrometers to 0.5 micrometers), it doesn't simply do this by making them all smaller. In fact, homogenization is specifically intended not so much to reduce globular dimensions as it is to standardize them (thus the "homo" prefix).

It could well be that these points are irrelevant, however, as basic nutritional science casts further doubt on your second concern: fat globules are apparently broken down into individual triglycerides, and even these are themselves broken down into their constituent pieces (or "monomers") before being absorbed into the bloodstream. This leaves me wondering how it is that fat globules could ever possibly be considered "too small" for our bodies to process.

For the sake of perspective, dear commenter, I should also point out how easily your expressed concerns can be turned on their head. After all, milk is "meant" to be consumed at the breast, not stored in containers where fat globules can then grow through accretion; and there is far more reason to believe that bigger globules are the harder to digest: I honestly believe that you would be on firmer ground claiming that not homogenizing milk results in fat globules of a size that "doesn't occur in nature" and that "our bodies aren't designed to process". Of course, I don't mean to suggest that storing milk for later use is therefore a worrisome practice.

In addition to your own, the internet has made me aware of further criticisms of homogenization, and I have also heard some of these out. Fortunately for homogenized milk drinkers, they generally appear to exhibit the following rather ingenuous themes.

The "extreme pressure" homogenized milk is subjected to is dwelt upon, without elaborating on the supposedly dire consequences of this fact in the least.
Often it is claimed that "natural butterfat cells" in milk are "destroyed" by homogenization, despite the fact that these "cells" are are actually more like "clumps" that appear to be perfectly capable of spontaneous reassembly.
The advantages of homogenization are fantastically undersold to the extent that its only admitted merit is to service the whims of the greedy dairy corporations. Unmentioned are the facts that it also reduces waste (at least theoretically) by increasing the longevity of milk and eliminating the cream layer; that it allows for fat content standardization; that it allows milk to be more easily fortified with the fat-soluble vitamins A and D; that it compensates for the tendency of pasteurization and refrigeration to promote fat separation and thus makes milk processing greater than the sum of its parts; that it gives dairy a creamier texture; and that it helps to preserve its flavor.
The most substantial allegation seems to be that homogenization results in the increased uptake of a substance intimidatingly named xanthine oxidase (but affectionately abbreviated XO), which - it is further hypothesized - can cause heart disease. The roots of the XO hypothesis apparently go back to 1971, and although it seems to have endured in the popular mind, it has not fared nearly so well in the scientific arena, where it has long been thoroughly trashed - not least of all because it again depends on the idea that fat globules are absorbed whole and intact into the bloodstream.

(Click here for a taste of the sort of anti-homogenization diatribes to which I am referring)

Personally, I find these arguments to be quite comforting: if there were truly a legitimate cause to worry about homogenization, I would assume that its critics would be expounding it, instead of relying entirely on an "appeal to nature" (the logical fallacy of necessarily equating "natural" with "good"), viscerally-stimulating but scientifically meaningless descriptors, and a discredited 40-year old hypothesis, as they currently seem to be.

Comment #2: "Another consideration when deciding whether or not to drink milk would be the BGH ["Bovine Growth Hormone"] and other drugs that may be in it."

Dear Commenter: For clarification I should first point out that BGH is actually quite "naturally" occurring, although I'm sure you meant "rBGH" (the "r" stands for "recombinant"), its synthetic, Monsanto-developed, and (perhaps inevitably) controversial counterpart that is sometimes administered to dairy cattle to increase their milk production.

That said, if you live in Canada like me, you don't have to worry about rBGH actually being in your milk because it was banned from this country in 1999.

That said, if you live in America, where rBGH is perfectly legal and widely used, you still don't have to worry about rBGH being in your milk because rBGH is a "protein hormone" which, like most other proteins (indeed, like triglycerides), is absorbed by the human digestive tract not as a biologically active whole but as dismembered and perfectly innocuous monomers. Furthermore, even cows that have not been treated with rBGH can give milk that contains BGH; and you might care to note that the two are "biologically indistinguishable" from each other.

But obviously rBGH does have an effect on the cows that are injected with it. Because of this, I neither can nor will claim that its use is utterly harmless and/or ethical in all respects. rBGH has apparently been found to effect milk composition - albeit very slightly and in a manner of debatable consequence; it can also effect milk cow health - indeed, it seems to result in more frequent incidence of "mastitis", or inflammation of the udder; and this in turn can warrant the increased use of antibiotics. It seems to me that these facts give rise to some perfectly legitimate concerns.

Unfortunately, some of these are less immaculate. For example, it is often claimed that rBGH-produced milk should be avoided because it might contain elevated levels of substance that somebody decided to name Insulin-like Growth Factor 1 (IGF-1); and that elevated IGF-1 blood levels are associated with certain types of cancer in humans. But while these may indeed be legitimate points, the picture they depict is greatly altered when the following dots are also connected: that IGF-1 (like BGH) appears to be a harmlessly digestible protein; that (unlike BGH) it is anyway "naturally" produced by the human body; and that its abundance in our blood is not suspected of causing cancer but merely of indicating its presence.

It might also be worth noting that the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) continues to insist that rBGH "can be used without any appreciable risk to the health of consumers"; and that the Canadian ban came only after an exhaustive nine-year review considered evidence that it adversely effected the health of dairy cattle.

Of course, the underlying implication of your comment is common to many if not all of the popular milk-related concerns I have recently been sizing up: that dairy companies, and the regulators that monitor them, might be too incompetent, callous, or corrupt to ensure that commercial milk does not contain unsafe amounts of potentially unhealthful drugs or other substances. This fear has been legitimately stoked by the 2003 documentary The Corporation, (here's the clip) in which two former Fox News reporters claim to have been fired after resisting indirect pressure from Monsanto to alter their report on rBGH-produced milk (whether or not the insights of these journalists could really have thrown the entire scientific debate over rBGH into turmoil is one thing: the realization that private interests can restrict the flow of information is quite another); by the 2008 news that the Chinese firm Sanlu had become embroiled in a scandal that involved the tainting of milk with a substance called "melamine", which superficially boosted the protein content of their product in exchange for compromising the health of some 300,000 children, including the small crib-full who it apparently killed (in the aftermath another two people were executed); and possibly even by the recent and dramatically evidenced failures of American business regulation.

But it seems to me that these events are examples of some inherent traits of capitalist societies, wherein the unscrupulous defeat the ethical in the absence of diligent and incorruptible regulation, and wherein anonymous strangers produce nearly everything we eat, drink, and possess. And that, dear commenter, is a discussion that could spill into hours.

Comment 3: "How dare you?! Hire an editor... [sic] And if you are going to get me interested enough in your writing to actually read it, the least you can do is answer the two questions you present!"

Dear Commenter: A fair criticism, and I sincerely thank you for taking the time to level it. As evidence that I am doing my best to edit myself, here are some interesting and tenuously milk-related facts that otherwise would not have made the cut. Hopefully, taken together, they will provide you with a satisfactory answer to the question you present.

As you may know, cows in the predominantly Hindu nation of India enjoy a relatively privileged status. But did you know that, according to Christopher Hitchens, "the government of India even offered to import and protect all the cattle facing slaughter as a result of the bovine encephalitic, or 'mad cow,' plague that swept Europe in the 1990s"? Interestingly, India is also the single most prolific dairy-producing country on the planet.
The oil corporation Beyond Petroleum (BP) that was responsible for the recent and tragic oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico was recently awarded an Ig Nobel prize in chemistry for "disproving the old belief that oil and water don't mix." In fact milk is technically an oil-in-water "emulsion".
In Saudi Arabia a recent "fatwa" has finally made it morally permissible for unrelated men and women to mingle in that socially conservative kingdom - but only after the two engage in some hot breastfeeding action. In other news, the US has recently recommitted itself to arming the leaders of this Wonderland-like nation to the teeth.
Cows sleep lying down: "cow-tipping" is a strange myth.
Did you know that milk proteins can be used to make hats and socks? In fact, milk-sock technology dates back to the First World War. Milk fiber is sometimes hailed as being "sanitary" and "green", as well as for being an elegant clothing option; but it is also quite delicate and expensive, and has enjoyed only limited commercial success. Some say it's "like wearing a milk bath", but
really, dear commenter, why the hell would I ever want to take a milk bath?

Milk

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 21:26:00 +0000

Some say that cow's milk "does a body good", but others believe it's unnatural and unhealthy.

Some say milk is a natural "super food", lamentably ruined by commercial processing; but others have compared the act of drinking "raw" milk to "playing Russian roulette with your health".

Recently, I have been investigating these sharply conflicting views; and following, I have carefully arranged the unseemly products of my ruminations.

- Part One: Is it 'Unnatural' to Drink Milk? -

The Straw Cows: It is pointed out that humans are the only mammal that routinely drinks the milk of another species, and the objective strangeness of the practice is dressed up as perversity through all manner of shameless hyperbole (see this image). It is also pointed out that many people (and indeed all other mammals) become "lactose intolerant" in maturity. These facts are taken to imply that it is "unnatural" for people to drink cow's milk, which in turn is taken to imply "unhealthy".

The Tipping: It is true that humans are the only animal that farms another species for it's milk. However, as this brief clip from the BBC shows, some very clever ants were doing essentially the same thing long before we were. On the other hand, those of you who object (quite rightly) to the suggestion that we should take our moral cues from the natural world, have thus admitted that a lack of natural precedent is, in fact, a terrible argument to bring against any human endeavor.

It is also true that adult lactose tolerance (ALT) is effectively unique to humans, but this is hardly a strike against milk.

There are two excellent evolutionary reasons for this particular human uniqueness: firstly, milk contains a sugar called "lactose" that requires special enzymes to digest; and secondly, lactose is extremely rare in nature outside of a mother's milk. Thus, natural selection has, as a rule, favored those mammals that lose this taxing and useless ability after weaning. Even in humans, ALT was effectively nonexistent until sometime within the last 10,000 years, when the first cattle were domesticated. However, as soon as this happened, human genes for ALT spread - from multiple points of origin - to the extent that it became effectively universal in certain populations (notably, those of Northern Europe). It is a strong indication of the nutritional merits of milk, that wherever there were dairy cattle, the ability to digest lactose has historically conferred a massive survival advantage upon those who have been lucky enough to inherit it.

The meteoric rise of ALT also clashes with claims that consumption of cow's milk is correlated with all manner of (usually auto-immune) diseases, as is often alleged. Moreover, I am unaware of any sound scientific basis for any such claims. It is true that milk allergies a among the most common food allergies, but this is no more an argument against milk than it is against shellfish and peanuts; and in the 2006 book The China Study, authors T. Colin Campbell et al. warn of "the dangers of cow's milk" and claim that it's consumption is correlated with incidence of type 1 diabetes and multiple sclerosis, but the integrity of their data fell prey to a subsequent reanalysis.

In truth, cow's milk is a complex and variable substance, but nothing it tends to contains is known to be necessarily harmful. Those who persist in this belief that milk is bad for you might greatly benefit from the twelve minutes it takes to listen to this recent Skeptiod podcast on basic food science.

Moreover, milk is known to be highly nutritious, not just for people, but also for many different species of microorganisms, many of which can multiply "exponentially" in milk, and many of which are pathogenic to humans. Because of this, it is mandatory to sterilize milk for sale in many 'developed' nations including Canada and the US. Usually, this means "pasteurization", the process by which milk is partially sterilized by subjecting it to a seconds-long burst of a moderate amount of heat.

- Part Two: Does Pasteurization Suck? -

The Straw Cows: Claims are made that raw milk has virtues ranging anywhere from a superior taste, to a perfect compatibility with lactose intolerance, to a capacity to "cure AIDS". People protest that pasteurization kills "friendly" bacteria, which are thought to be good to eat. Many people go so far as claiming that pasteurized milk is deleterious to your health; and some have even wondered whether it isn't a key part of the big pharma/ dairy/ government conspiracy to keep us all sick, ignorant, and consuming their wares. Still others simply value the freedom to "choose their poison" - even in the most literal sense.

The Tipping: Considering, again, how quickly ALT became so widespread in humans, the often-encountered statements to the effect that "lactose intolerance is not a factor" when one is drinking raw milk would be stupendously amazing if true. In fact, it would imply that ALT did not become useful 10,000 years ago when cows were domesticated, but only 150 years ago when pasteurization was 'invented'. Presumably, much of the milk consumed before this time was "raw": obviously, lactose tolerance is "a factor" in the digestion of raw milk.

That said, like most BS this has congealed around a small kernel of truth. The classic symptoms of lactose intolerance - gas, bloating - result when the unruly bacteria in your gut have a party with the dairy you have eaten but neglected to digest. However, yogurt tends to have less of an effect on the lactose intolerant because of the famous "good", "friendly", or "probiotic" bacteria it often harbors. Similarly, non-pathogenic bacteria can sometimes also be found in raw milk, where they might aid - somewhat - in the digestion of it. In any case, even accepting this possibility for the sake of argument, it is pathetic as evidence that "there are significant nutritional values to drinking raw milk [sic]."

Some bacteria can also keep dairy free of their more sinister, disease-causing counterparts due to the "lactic acids" they produce. But the simple fact is that these "good" bacteria thrive under the same conditions that the "bad" guys do, and cannot be depended upon to keep dairy pathogen-free. Moreover, their actions quickly sour the flavor of milk.

In fact, the benefits of probiotic bacteria have been fantastically oversold in general. In truth, the vast majority of the "friendly" bacteria you eat are simply killed and digested, and the few that survive the trip to your colon immediately face aggressive competition from the established residents. Those few that survive and thrive against the odds are also perfectly capable of reproduce, and do not need to be continually replaced by ingestion. Moreover, arguably everything you eat has bacteria on it. In fact, the only situation I am aware of in which the consumption of probiotic bacteria might have any appreciable effect on your health is immediately following a course of intestinal flora-razing antibiotics, but in that case, ask a doctor.

Stepping back, I find it strange that pasteurization - again: the brief warming of milk - is so often maligned despite the fact that dairy often receives much rougher treatment at the hands of customers, who add it to scalding hot coffees and use it to make bread, sauces, and mashed potatoes. I wonder why I hear so much about the dangers of pasteurization, and so little about the dangers of heating milk at home: I wonder if many people have thought their opposition to "pasteurization" through any more than people did before signing Penn & Teller's petition to ban "hydrogen monoxide" - also known as water. (Here's the clip.)

One might further wonder why dairy companies pasteurize their milk if it really is such a deleterious practice. Indeed, why do many world governments insist on them doing so? It seems to me that there are only two potential answers to this question, and that one of these quickly disappears down the rabbit-hole of conspiracy theory. The remaining answer goes something like: "to compensate for the uncleanliness of the modern factory-farm." Indeed many people have stated that pasteurization is unnecessary when milk is harvested responsibly from small family-owned farms.

But the truth is that it is perfectly impossible to obtain cow's milk under sterile conditions no matter how small or sanitary the operation. In fact, milk in the udder is not a sterile substance. In addition, micro-organisms can be airborne, cow-borne, person-borne, equipment-borne and so on. Those who doubt this reality will be God-smacked by results of this gruesome Myth Busters experiment, misleading only in that bacteria like milk much more than they do toothbrushes. To claim that milk pasteurization is only necessary for industrial-scale dairy farms is to display an ignorance of the human suffering that very often results in their absence; and, more generally: a myopic understanding of microbiology.

Lastly, while it is true that the heat-sensitive molecule known as vitamin C might be vulnerable to pasteurization, this can hardly be considered an especially tragic loss, especially considering that pasteurized milk (in North America) also tends to be fortified with the even sexier vitamins A and D. Claims that pasteurization denatures milk proteins in such a way that they can cause disease have precious little basis in contemporary food science; and the claim that "raw milk tastes better" is most likely due to factors - such as its higher fat content, which is intentionally reduced in commercial milk - that have little to do with pasteurization per se. Raw milk enthusiasts continue to suspect that "there's something in raw milk that's beneficial", but what that might be and how it might help us is perfectly unclear. In other words: there appears to be no good health reason to choose raw milk over pasteurized.

(That said, I wouldn't go so far as to label raw milk necessarily "dangerous" - a term which is too vulnerable to apparent contradiction by a single uneventful experience. Instead, I would call it "an unnecessary risk"; and would personally advise against going out of your way to obtain it.)

* * *

Despite this, the illicit nature of raw milk (in Canada since 1991) has chafed many of those who are sensitive to intrusions on their personal sovereignty. Recently, they were invigorated when a suspected raw milk dealer successfully defended himself in court on the grounds that he wasn't selling milk, but simply allowing his customers to invest in dairy cows. Meanwhile, in California, the milk dealership Rawsome Foods was raided by armed police in what proved a polarizing event: some could only describe it as "shocking" (quite literally); but comedian Stephan Colbert compiled this fantastc report asking if raw milk activists weren't "putting the 'dumb' in 'freedom'."

For my part, I worry that they are symptomatic of a larger trend. The old "natural philosophers" could sometimes become authorities in math, astronomy, biology, physics, alchemy and so on. But as the body of our collective knowledge has snowballed, increasing individual specialization has been the inevitable price. Today, scientists are rarely preeminent in more than a single field of inquiry. Yet another facet of this phenomenon, is that the citizens of democratic societies are increasingly being faced with important decisions that require relatively obscure technical knowledge in order to be properly apprehended.

It seems to me that, unless public science education can stay in lockstep with its ever-accelerating pace, the march of progress could eventually force our civilization to choose between some cherished democratic principles, and abject disaster. What do you think?

The evolution of religion

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Thu, 23 Sep 2010 02:13:00 +0000

Religiosity has dominated human history. All known civilizations, I am told, have played host to some kind of religious belief system; and, despite the fact that many of these appear to have independent and isolated points of origin, supernatural beings, souls, and an afterlife have been persistently reoccurring themes. This has often caused people to wonder:

Why do humans tend to hold these kinds of religious beliefs?

Following, I give five easy answers to this great mystery, and provide you with your very own opinions on each. Anyone who can think of a sixth answer is to be immediately burnt at the stake.

1. Because these beliefs are actually objective truths.

That so many different people throughout time have acknowledged their existence implies that supernatural beings really do exist. After all, surely it is folly to suggest that human societies have repeatedly invented these beliefs purely by chance. Instead, it is thought that the commonalities of the many world religions points to the existence of a "Universal God"; and that their differences represent nothing more than discrepancies in the interpretation and expression of this fundamental truth.

What you think: You appreciate this logic, if only for the soothing effect it can sometimes have on interfaith relations. But you wonder if the best explanation for the similarities of the world religions wouldn't better account for their many dramatic departures.

2. Because these beliefs have played crucial, functional roles in human societies.

The commonalities of the many world religions is attributable to the fact that these beliefs have historically serviced universal human needs. For example, they have provided explanations for the mysteries of existence; helped us face incalculably complex situations; lent authority to political leaders; and helped to standardize our social behavior. Because all human societies have faced a similar set of problems, it is no coincidence that they then developed similar ways of solving them.

(Click here to hear Jared Diamond explore this possibility in detail.)

What you think: While this implies that religions have performed useful societal functions in the past, it also implies that religion is ultimately vulnerable to the loss of these functions - for example, to scientific and political advancement - with its only defenses being traditional and institutional entrenchment. You would argue that recent history has testified against this case. As Dean Hamer writes in his contoversial 2004 book The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes,

"Even in China and the former Soviet Union - where powerful governments used every possible form of persuasion to replace God with Communism - more than half of the people retained their spiritual beliefs. Meanwhile, the forces of fundamentalism - whether Christian, Jewish, or Muslim - are sweeping across the globe from South America to the Middle East to Africa."

3. Because these beliefs are in our genes.

Here lurks the "God gene hypothesis", or the idea that people are genetically "hardwired" to be religious. In his book, Hamer speculates that natural selection has favored certain human genes because they instill a spiritual outlook in humans; and that this spiritual outlook manifests itself in human culture as religion. He even goes do far as to propose a gene, called VMAT2, that he says could be largely responsible for our tendency to religiousness. This implies that our religious ancestors enjoyed evolutionary advantages over their more secular rivals. What kind of evolutionary advantages might spirituality provide? There are two main schools of thought:

Individual people benefit from religion because it makes us more optimistic, gives us strength of will, and helps us cope with tragedy, thereby making us less vulnerable to physical hardship and disease.

Groups of people benefit from religiosity because it fosters internal cohesion and a willingness among group members to sacrifice their personal welfare to the greater good, causing "God genes" to proliferate through a process that biologists call "group selection".

What you think: The existence of many perfectly happy non-spiritual people would seem to argue against the idea that religion significantly brightens one's outlook, or increases one's enjoyment of life. Let alone to the degree that it might confer an evolutionary advantage. Further, your long-standing assumption that belief in an afterlife helps people to deal with tragedy is about to be badly shaken by the comedian Doug Stanhope.

At least the second idea, that religion might benefit people as a group, appears to have the support of some observational evidence. For examples, religion is often seen as a useful tool for the purposes of recruiting and inspiring soldiers; and religious peoples often come together to form major political forces (think the "Christian right"), while trying to attract a crowd of atheists has been widely compared to "herding cats". However, a major drawback to this idea is that the concept of "group selection" has been largely discredited in evolutionary biology. In other words: even if it is true that groups of people really do benefit from religiousness as a whole, you doubt that natural selection could possibly have translated this benefit into a "God gene".

(The God gene hypothesis has also proven vulnerable to the sort of criticisms evident in this little performance by John Cleese.)

4. Because human nature predisposes us to these beliefs.
Humans are indeed genetically predisposed to religiosity, but this predisposition has been only incidentally instilled: religious thinking is not so much a product of evolution as a byproduct of it. This implies that religious beliefs themselves might not have survival value, but that they arise from instinctual thought processes that do.

For example, it has been pointed out that humans instinctively subscribe to concepts like "mind/body dualism" (in a nutshell, this is the notion that the "mind" of a person can exist separately from their body). It is speculated that this instinct might have helped our evolutionary ancestors to mentally distinguish between the living and nonliving worlds - an ability of incalculable value in term of survival. Further, it is speculated that this instinct is largely responsible for the human tendency to believe in souls.

Possible evidence for this way of thinking comes from show business, where dualism-inspired plots run rampant. Remember all the ghost films you have seen? or those that feature some sort of "body-swapping"? Recently, this phenomenon happened in the movie Avatar; in this episode of the revived cartoon Futurama; and it is a reoccurring theme in the TV show Stargate: Universe, as just a few off-the-top-of-my-head examples. Tellingly, it appears that even very young movie-goers are perfectly capable of unblinkingly following a character's "mind" into multiple bodies.

(Click here to have Steven Pinker elaborate on this answer.)

What you think: Repeat after Steven Pinker.

5. Because these beliefs are good at colonizing the human mind.

Religion is not just an odd quirk in our mental architecture, but is in fact best seen as something that occupies this niche. Religions are not the result of purely genetic evolution, but of what the philosopher Daniel Dennet has called "cultural-genetic co-evolution".

In fact, it is speculated that cultural and genetic evolution are somewhat analogous. For example, if we view ideas - including religious ideas - as being entities that exist in a finite living space (a collective human mind) and which compete for reproductive opportunities (communication), it would seem to follow that they would then undergo a sort of evolution by natural selection just like wild animals do. The observation that popular ideas and animals evolve in very similar ways is what led Dawkins to coin the word "meme" (which rhymes with "theme" and is a kind of cross between "gene" and "memory") in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, meaning it to denote a theoretical unit of communicated information.

From this perspective, memes - including religious memes - could theoretically spread and thrive even despite their being entirely counterproductive to human survival. Because of this possibility, memes have sometimes been referred to as "mental viruses". (Also, both viruses and ideas are incapable of replicating themselves and instead rely on getting their hosts to do it for them.)

(Click here to see Dawkins talk briefly about this idea.)

* * *

As you may have noticed, none of these five answers to the question of why people tend to believe in supernatural beings, souls, and an afterlife, are necessarily incompatible with the remaining four. I have grouped them separately here because it seems to me that each of these answers proposes a distinct mechanism to explain the historical and contemporary ubiquity of religious belief systems. As far as I know, any combination of these answers is possible, and I would be very surprised to discover that only one of them is "right".

In fact, I think my own ideal response currently involves a combination of answers 2,4, and 5. What do you think? Oh, wait...

Garlic

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Sun, 12 Sep 2010 23:25:00 +0000

Pauly in prison, using a razor-blade to slice garlic "so thin", we are told,
"that it used to liquify in the pan with just a little oil." (Goodfellas, 1990)
I can do this too, now that I shave like a Wise guy.

Is garlic good for you? Or is that a stupid question?

I mean, I know it was eaten by Egyptian laborers who built the pyramids and the Olympic athletes of ancient Greece for strength. And granted, some French convicts who had been sentenced to death by grave-digging in the 18th century apparently used it to foil the plague; soldiers during the second World War (during which it was sometimes called "Russian Penicillin") used it to battle gangrene; and Chinese healers have traditionally recommend it for diarrhea, internal parasites, and poison. It was also given to me - raw, crushed, and coated with honey - whenever I got sick as a child growing up on the west coast of North America.

But while the unending litany of happy effects that have historically been attributed to garlic might seem to suggest that my question is indeed a stupid one, upon reflection it occurred to me that I would be equally astonished to discover that half of these claims are well-founded, as I would be to find that half of them are not.

And so, as a fan of being astonished, and also because it's garlic season, I have stubbornly decided that this stupid question is indeed ripe for investigation. Gather 'round, dear readers, and allow me to share with you the vegetables of my labor.

DEVILISH DETAILS

Domestic garlic (Allium sativum) and onions are fairly closely related; and among their more interesting family resemblances is an enzyme called alliinase, which, like a terrible secret, they keep well hidden until rage interferes with their better judgment.

The main evolutionary 'purpose' of alliinase appears to be to provide the plant with protection against predators. When the flesh of an onion or clove of garlic is injured - whether by bacteria, an animal, or an animal with a garlic-press - the alliinase in the damaged cells is spilled, and is thus brought into contact with other cellular components, producing chemicals that are meant to keep the offending organism at bay. By this ingenious means, plants can use unstable and dangerous chemical deterrents without having to continuously manufacture them, and while minimizing the risk of accidental self-mutilation.

(Interestingly, this clever tactic was independently developed by the common ancestor of modern horseradishes and wasabi in a very striking example of convergent evolution. This should give pause to anyone who has taken the spiteful temperament of garlic and onions as biological evidence for the Christian myth that they originated in Satan's footprints as he strolled through the Garden of Eden.)

In onions, alliinase participates in the reaction that is responsible for their annoying ability to make you 'cry' while you butcher them.

In crushed garlic, however, this enzyme mainly produces a pesticide called allicin. It is allicin that, by most accounts, is "garlic's main biologically active component"; and it is allicin that has long been assumed to be largely responsible for garlic's medicinal reputation.

THE RISE AND FALL OF ALLICIN

Allicin, like most pesticides, is primarily meant to murder other organisms - or at least to get all up in their face; and apparently it does this quite well. For example, "in vitro" (or: "in test-tubes") allicin has been shown to have inhibitory effects on a "wide range of microorganisms including bacteria, fungi, protozoa and viruses", many of which can parasitize the human body.

But this is because the toxicity of allicin (despite being completely 'natural') "is rather high", as evidenced by the chemical burns it can cause when applied to the skin. It also has as strong odor, and inanimate objects it is applied to tend to acquire a garlic-y smell. Moreover, the allicin molecule is actually quite unstable, meaning it tends not to stick around for very long unless it is properly extracted, suspended in solution, and stored in cool conditions. Mainly because of these facts, allicin has not seen widespread use as a topical "antiseptic" or as a "disinfectant", although this could change now that allicin has displayed effectiveness against the dreaded multi-drug resistant strain of the bacterium S. aureus (or "MRSA"), that has been terrorizing modern hospitals.

What about eating allicin?

Garlic is sometimes eaten in the hopes that the allicin it contains will act against internal parasites. Allicin is also often touted as a heart-friendly, cancer-fighting "antioxidant"; and this claim, too, seems to be well supported by in vitro studies.

On the other hand, it turns out that allicin is also sensitive to heat, and is rapidly destroyed when cooked.

And even before you down some raw garlic in the name of good health (as, unfortunately, many do) you might care to note that what happens in vitro does not necessarily happen inside you; and that the antimicrobial properties that allicin demonstrates in test-tubes "may not be demonstrated in the body upon consumption." Indeed, it has been seen that allicin naturally decomposes "within sixteen hours" at room temperature; and much faster in the significantly warmer human stomach, where it is also exposed to gastric juices and given a wide selection of substances to react with. In fact, it appears highly doubtful that significant quantities of allicin make it into the small intestine even when consumed in the form of raw, freshly crushed garlic.

Still, things do not magically disappear when they "decompose", but rather break down into more stable molecules. In the case of allicin, decomposition apparently results mainly in the production of diallyl disulfide (DADS), which is used industrially to flavor food and is the predominant active ingredient in distilled garlic oil; and allyl mercaptan (AM). No product of its decomposition appears to be the in vitro 'wonder drug' that allicin is, but neither are they pharmacologically inactive, and at least they can make it into the gut.

However, precious few of the metabolites of allicin are what scientists call "bioavailable", meaning that they are either not absorbed by the digestive tract, or are immediately filtered out of the blood by the liver - leaving us to wonder how they could then possibly bind free radicals and fight tumors in the body as they might in the test-tube.

(Despite this, and despite the fact that few if any of them actually deliver allicin to the gut anyway, sales of allicin-containing supplements continue. Some of these use "enteric coated" capsules that protect their contents from stomach acid and release them in the small intestine. But even then they appear largely ineffectual. In any case, even if you find some that really work, there is good reason to suspect that these could do more to harm than good [remember, allicin causes chemical burns when applied to the skin for Christ's sake]. Just to be safe, therefore, I highly recommend asking a doctor before swallowing "allicin-containing" supplements.)

All of these complications, as well as the observation that allicin could not be responsible for the alleged benefits of the various forms of garlic (like garlic oil and Aged Garlic Extract [AGE]) that are known to be devoid of it, has caused the presence of allicin in garlic, once hailed as scientific proof of its "healing power", to be increasingly denounced as a red herring.

THE OTHER GUYS

However, the fall of allicin has done little to dampen garlics reputation as being particularly healthful. Instead, garlic enthusiasts have concluded that "other compounds must be responsible for the benefits of garlic"; or to postulate that "a synergism" arising from their unique combination endows garlic with special properties that the study of no individual component can appreciate.

In fact there are literally hundreds of distinct substances found in garlic. What's more, an intimidating number of these are apparently capable of various pharmacological activities. Considering this, it is hardly surprising that while some studies have shown that garlic-derived compounds can engage in a degree of "concerted action", others have noted their "apparently opposite biological effects". From where I sit, this doesn't suggest 'synergism', but one of the major drawbacks of using unrefined herbal remedies in general.

In any case, these hypothesis take for granted the very assumption I am now questioning; that garlic really is good for you; and so are of little value for my purposes here. Instead, I want to know if this assumption is founded in more than just folklore.

THE STINKING SCIENCE

I have heard it said that research into widely available herbal remedies is rarely done because pharmaceutical corporations don't want the public to have access to cheap and effective healthcare against which they would then have to compete. If there is indeed any truth to this claim, garlic has been a notable exception. Inspired by "its widespread health use around the world", scientists appear to have extensively studied the potential of garlic for use against quite a number of medical complications ranging from infectious to cardiovascular to oncological diseases. In fact, by some accounts the scientific investigations number in the thousands. But do these really support the claim that garlic has "known health benefits"?

>The Common Cold: One study of "reasonable quality" recently showed that one garlic supplement per day (which contained allicin), for whatever reason, really did help people to avoid the common cold.

While this very interesting finding certainly suggests that garlic is "good for you", on its own it provides little reason to assume it. It is not known why this might be, and as far as I can tell, this result has not been independently reproduced to date.

Another thing this study fails to do is justify the fact that I was recently admonished for recommending "liquids and rest" in the place of "ginger and garlic" to a young lady who was just beginning to suffer cold-like symptoms. Let me be clear: the claim that garlic can be eaten to treat a cold is an entirely separate claim; and it appears to be largely based on hearsay. I can't find any good evidence to suggest that you should push garlic - raw or otherwise - on cold and flu victims who are already in a state of suffering.

It seems to me as though this idea has arisen out of the notion that garlic "boosts" or "kick-starts" your immune system, as Meghan Telpner informs us in her video series Making Love In The Kitchen (funky tunes at least). In fact, these statements are misleading in both their language and their meaning: as anyone with an auto-immune disorder knows, a "boosted" immune system is not necessarily a good thing; and there is little to no evidence to suggest that it whipped into action by garlic.

Furthermore, it seems to me that this widespread over-simplification is nontrivial, as it can obscure the difference between garlic as a healthy addition to the diet and garlic as "nature's panacea".

>Hypertension: Some positive results, but it seems more accurate to say that studies of the alleged ability of garlic to lower blood pressure have so far revealed an inconsistent effect. Also, a small but respectable clinical trial found "insufficient evidence to recommend garlic intake" to prevent pre-eclampsia (or pregnancy-induced hypertension) which afflicts "2-8% of [pregnant] women", and can sometimes be fatal.

>Cholesterol Management: A lot of people were quite excited about the possibility that garlic might help lower blood cholesterol and thus the risk of heart disease. Over 100 nonhuman trials tended to be positive. But despite this promise, the biggest and best studies of people have so far proven a real buzz-kill on this score. Unfortunately, although this idea isn't yet dead, it's doing a fair job of dying.

>Gastric Cancer: Observational studies have shown high garlic consumption to be correlated with a decreased risk of stomach and colon cancer. But more studies are needed to solidify this evidence, and it is not known how garlic might be helping, if indeed it is.

>Thrombosis: Garlic apparently acts as a modest "anticoagulant", thinning the blood and prolonging bleeding time. This can be a good thing in certain situations, such as when blood starts clotting internally, but it is dubious as evidence that garlic is always good for you.

* * *

Few if any claim that moderate amounts of garlic in the diet is bad for your health. But, like Paul Bergner, author of the annoyingly-titled 1996 book The Healing Power of Garlic: The Enlightened Person's Guide to Nature's Most Versatile Medicinal Plant, many feel that the folklore surrounding garlic remains "the most powerful testimony to its effectiveness". Personally, however, I have concluded that although the evidence to date suggests that some garlic in the diet might well be "good for you", going much further than this involves treading ground that is currently too shakey; and I also feel compelled to mention that, like most things, there are drawbacks associated with its over-consumption, including but not limited to headaches, nausea, and digestive irritation (Bergner).

My view is that the potential of garlic as a food or spice as well as as an antibiotic is more than enough to explain why garlic has historically been held in such high regard (despite only peripheral awareness of the microbial world); and I can easily envision how these properties alone might have contributed to garlics formidable reputation as a medicine. Furthermore, the human bias toward perceiving false positive results, and the complex, variable cocktail of biologically active ingredients that is found in garlic are likely to have conspired in support of it.

To me, this possibility puts the unquestioning acceptance of folklore as a "powerful testimonial" to the "healing power of garlic" in rude perspective, although I admit that I may not qualify as an "enlightened person".

In any case, I believe I am capable of understanding why so many seem to perceive modern science to be only slowly and reluctantly "catching up" with ancient wisdom; and why herbal medicine enthusiasts might resent the fact that "the scientific establishment ... is often skeptical about the value of non-pharmaceutical substances" (Bergner).

On the other hand, this suggests a virtue of skepticism, and indeed of asking seemingly stupid questions in general: as Richard Dawkins noted in The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing (2008),

"science doesn't have all the answers, but it is good at spotting the important questions when they are camouflaged against a background of common sense."

Fan death

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 19:23:00 +0000

Electric fans may be a nice counter to the summer heat, but they are also said to pose a terrible danger; and I'm not just referring to their ability to grab you by the necktie and slice you up like so much bread. You see, when my dear sister came back form Asia she told me about a sinister malady called "Fan Death".

Apparently, Fan Death is appallingly easy to contract: it is said that all one has to do to is fall asleep in a room with the windows and doors closed and an electric fan blowing air at you. Exactly how these conditions can cause Fan Death is debated, but despite this lack of consensus, it is generally agreed by believers that the symptoms of fan death can be quite severe.

But what makes this mysterious, deadly, and easily-contracted affliction really interesting is that it is taken very seriously by citizens, media, government agencies, and makers of electric fans alike - but only in Korea (at least, in South Korea). In the remainder of the world, Fan Death is generally regarded as being little more than a quaint superstition.

So unless you are from Korea, it might seem as if I am taking aim at an easy target. If this is the case, you might be surprised at how readily the truth can be spun; at how easily even the airiest-sounding of ideas can be made to sound plausible; and how difficult it can be to distinguish reality from the fantastical.

Part I : Why Korea?

If you're like me, your first reaction to the idea of Fan Death is amusement: How could a fan kill you? How could such a strange belief become so widespread? What an strange place Korea must be. But the fact is that South Korea is actually a well-educated, modernized, and tech-savvy first-world country; and I am currently unaware of any good reasons why Koreans should be more predisposed than the rest of us to be credulous of Fan Death stories (I am consciously ignoring the ideas that Koreans are somehow more susceptible to Fan Death than others, or are simply more inclined to be superstitious.)

That is, except for one: although it might look like a circular argument, I'm going to propose that the single biggest reason that Fan Death is taken so seriously in Korea, is simply because so many Korean people take Fan Death seriously. Bare with me here.

I came to this conclusion when I realized that the only reason I had had such an amused initial reaction to Fan Death is because I had never heard of it before. Without me really being aware of it, my mind had reasoned that this safety-obsessed culture I live in could not possibly have failed to warn me of such a danger: fans are just too ubiquitous; and death is just too serious a safety concern. In other words, I unconsciously reasoned that:

a) if Fan Death were real, it is the kind of thing I would have heard of previously; and

b) because I had not previously heard of Fan Death, it was probably not real.

What I did not do before having a chuckle at the expense of the superstitious Koreans, is go through all the different possible ways that Fan Death could possibly work, and rule each of them out in turn. Neither did I even try to remember if I, or anyone I knew, had ever slept in a sealed room with a fan on and lived to talk about it. I didn't feel I had to. My point is that, no doubt like many of you, I automatically judged the idea of Fan Death, not by assessing it's scientific merits, but by unconsciously assessing it's popularity with my peers.

On the other hand, imagine for a moment that you have grown up in South Korea, and that you have been warned of Fan Death all your life. The fans in your home are all equipped with timers for the expressed purpose of preventing fan death; and the mainstream Korean media is telling you that Fan Death has claimed yet another victim this summer. On top of all of this, you have been given not one but several plausible-sounding explanations as to how it could possibly occur (if you doubt these exist, just wait). Were this the case, it seems to me that you might well risk superstition for the sake of prudence.

(This disturbing study, linked to previously in my post on Skepticism, provides some justification for this idea of self-perpetuating popular belief.)

But this, of course, doesn't explain how belief in Fan Death became so widespread in the first place. To this end I have heard speculation that the Korean government invented Fan Death to help save electricity during a shortage. But strange beliefs are by no means restricted to Korea, and so I wonder how worth my while it is to even explore this question. So, unless there is an objection, I'll just chalk the origins of Fan Death up to "historical accident", and instead discuss the "scientific" "explanations" for it.

Part II : Four Ways a Fan can Kick Your Sleeping Ass

1. Fan-blades can slice up oxygen molecules, degrading the air and causing asphyxiation.

Here is an awesome video that explains with apparent sincerity and in great technical detail how this supposedly happens. ("Ouch!" hehe)

One of the many problems with this explanation, of course, is that it forgets just how small oxygen molecules really are. When their true size is appreciated (to the extent this is humanly possible), it becomes clear that the spinning blades of a fan are no more likely to split apart molecules than is a swinging baseball bat. So this hypothesis is not going to win everyone over to the idea of Fan Death, but it's probably enough to at least sow doubt in the minds of a few.

2. Fans can create an oxygen vacuum in a room which can cause asphyxiation.
Okay, so this one is also fairly easy to discount. After all, picture submerging your bedroom in a huge tank of water, and then turning on a propeller and expecting all the water to leave. Or, if you prefer, imagine submerging your bedroom in water that has been dyed (say, purple) and expecting the fan to separate the dye from the water.

If your bedroom is small and completely air-tight, then you might be in danger of asphyxiating in your sleep, but this has nothing to do with Fan Death.

But while this explanation might not make you fear Fan Death either, it too can easily give birth to doubts. For examples: what if a fan decreases the amount of oxygen in each breath ever so slightly? couldn't this have eventual evil effects (after all, just look at what wind turbines can do to bats)? what if a fan can cause you to re-breath the same air more often than usual, causing CO2 poisoning? What if the fan itself uses up a bit of oxygen as it functions? One could fill volumes demystifying this seemingly ridiculous idea. But if you're still laughing at Fan Death, just wait: there's more.

3. Fans can lower your body temperature as you sleep, causing hypothermia.
Now we are getting to the good stuff. The whole point of a fan is to keep you cool, so it is impossible to deny that they can have this effect. But could they really cause hypothermia?

My first thought about this is that when I get cold at night I tend to wake up and do something about it. And anyway, why do the windows and doors of your room have to be shut for Fan Death to work this way? A fan is not going to actually lower the temperature in you room: fans primarily work by blowing the air that has been warmed by your body away from you, not by actively cooling like air conditioners do. So maybe this isn't the greatest theory, either.

Still, more doubt has been sown: we've admitted that fans can cool you. And because if you get too cool you can get hypothermia; and because if you get hypothermia you can die; this might well be enough to make people decide that, where Fan Death is concerned, they are better off safe than sorry. Sure enough, some Fan Death-ers fear that air conditioners can also be lethal.

4. Fans can raise your body temperature as you sleep, causing dehydration and hyperthermia.
But, strangely, Fan Death has also been attributed to a fan's ability to make you too hot.

In this post from the blog Ask a Korean, the authorr (who refers to themselves only as "the Korean") makes a case for Fan Death by claiming that fans can effectively turn a bedroom into "a gigantic turbo oven". I doubt this analogy is entirely justified, but the Korean seems to have converted more than one literate Westerner to Fan Death-ism.

According to this theory, during extreme heat waves electric fans can cause victims to dry out like panties on a clothesline, and thus put them at risk of heat stroke. Actually, this is easily the best explanation for Fan Death I have yet heard. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) itself notes that electric fans "will not prevent heat-related illness" in severe heat; and as we all know (let's be honest), panties do dry out faster in the wind than they do otherwise. So it really does appear to be true that electric fans can be detrimental to your health during intense heat waves.

Well congratulations, we've proven that Fan Death is indeed theoretically possible. Or, at least, we've proven that fans are not of much help to those who are very young, old, or drunk (or some combination thereof), and also dying of heat stroke. But taken together, all this has proven enough to cause many, many smart and well-educated people to claim that "Fan Death is real."

Personally, I don't feel quite so bold: all that I feel comfortable doing is recommending that you take a nice, long nap in front of a cool, breezy fan if you ever feel the urge to commit suicide.

* * *

When I wrote my post on Saunas and steam-rooms, it occurred to me that trying to definitively reply to all of the hypothesized ways a little heat and steam could be healthful was almost impossible, simply because there are too many explanations, and subtle variations of those explanations, as to why this might be so. And because so many people are convinced that saunas must have some kind of beneficial effect, every time I 'debunked' one of them, three more would spring up to take it's place. It was like trying to stop a flowing stream with my bare hand.

By way of this post, hopefully I have demonstrated why this might be. It has often been said that "you can't disprove the existence of God", but it can be instructive how difficult it can be to disprove claims as seemingly vulnerable to testing as "saunas are good for you" or "fan death is real". If you begin with the question "is fan death real?" (or "does God exist?" / "Are saunas good for you?"), and start to search for any possible way to justify an affirmative answer, the chances are good that you will apparently find a way to do it: you are just more likely to end up with the answer that you expected (or wanted) to get.

A much better approach, I think, is to first ask ourselves how likely it is that a given hypothesis is true; and whether or not there is a good reason to even be asking the question in the first place. And don't take an idea seriously just because your friends do; be aware that, in Korea as elsewhere, popularity masquerades as plausibility.

The placebo effect

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Wed, 11 Aug 2010 03:08:00 +0000

The power of suggestion is said to be such that it can cure physical ills. For example, you might have heard that by getting somebody to take a pill made of nothing but tasteless sugar, and telling them that it is in fact a powerful pain killer, that a mysterious phenomenon called the "placebo effect" can be conjured to somehow cause the sugar pill, or "placebo", to effectively act as the painkiller the deceived person believes it to be.

This idea has considerable medical implications, and yet it is widely misunderstood. I have done my best to come to grips with it here, by attempting to answer the following questions:

Is it true? What the hell is the placebo effect? And what are it's implications?

Part I: It's True!...ish

The word 'placebo' has been kicking around for quite some time, but it's meaning has been continually evolving. At the dawn of the 1900s, the consensus of the medical establishment seems to be that the placebo effect did not exist outside of the mind of the patient. However, despite this somewhat dismissive attitude, it was apparently common practice for hospitals and doctors to keep such medically inactive substances as sugar pills and saline (saltwater) injections on hand, probably as a means of comforting those whose pain (or, possibly, hypochondria) could not be treated more effectively (this practice, that of prescribing a placebo to a patient, is called 'placebo medicine').

But around mid-century, placebos were finally seriously investigated; and, surprisingly, evidence emerged to indicate that the placebo effect was not only alive and kicking, but that it kicked like a horse. It was shown that, for whatever reason, statistically significant numbers of patients taking part in "clinical trials" would respond positively to 'sham' treatments, as long as they sincerely believed that there was a chance the treatments they were receiving would be effective. Indeed, simply for knocking them out, giving them a scar, and them waking them up and giving them the impression that they had just received surgery, it was found that doctors could receive get positive feedback from their patients.

(Click here to see Penn & Teller demonstrate the phenomenon.)

For medical science, the implications of this discovery were enormous. As R. Barker Bausell writes in his [excellent] 2007 book, Snake Oil Science, to which this post is greatly indebted:

"this single finding implies that any non-harmful therapy evaluated by a trial ... has the potential to produce positive results due to the placebo effect." (my emphasis)

Suddenly, it was realized that the credibility of clinical studies depended on them finding a way to compensate for this effect. It was realized that to demand any less of them would be to render them virtually meaningless, as it would mean that any positive results they obtained would be tainted by the possibility that they were merely a testament to the power of the placebo. To this end, the practices of including a "placebo control group" and of "double-blinding" clinical trials has become standard (even in trials involving non-human animals); and the placebo effect has become the hurdle that any therapy aspiring for medical legitimacy is required to clear. The reasoning behind this, is that if it can't be shown to work better than a placebo, then we can't be sure that it works at all.

So it would seem that the placebo effect does indeed exist. Or, more accurately, a phenomenon was discovered that is now known as the 'placebo effect'.

Or was it?

Because while it became accepted that the placebo effect was an important consideration for medical science, the possibility remained that it was purely imaginary. Is the sugar pill in my lead-in story bringing about an actual reduction in pain? Or can it merely seem to?

Part II: What The Hell The Placebo Effect Is

Eventually it became clear that the phenomenon being observed in clinical trials was not in fact being caused by a single influence. Because of this, as Steven Novella writes on the blog Science-Based Medicine, the term 'placebo effect' is actually "a misnomer and contributes to confusion, because it is not a single effect but the net result of many possible factors."

As an example of one of these "factors", he mentions "reporting biases" which result from the patient's desires to please the researchers; and the researchers desires to help their patients, and to prove that the intervention they are investigating is indeed effective. Subtle, cumulative, and boring influences like these have nothing to do with the idea that a placebo can heal or reduce pain. Nonetheless, to this day they are often lumped under the heading 'placebo effect', and from there they have long encouraged bold overestimates of the power of suggestion, as we will later see.

However, neither are suggestions entirely impotent: although difficult to separate from its complimentary influences, it was eventually found that suggestion alone could (sometimes) result in real, albeit limited, physiological responses in people. In fact, it turns out that a possible explanation for this already existed. As Bausell notes in Snake Oil Science:

"There happens to be some indirect evidence... that while the placebo effect may indeed be in our minds, it is not a figment of our imaginations. This evidence come from someone whose name is very recognizable to most of us: Ivan Petrovich Pavlov, whose seminal contribution to science, classical conditioning, is hypothesized to be the primary triggering mechanism for the placebo effect."

"Classical conditioning", of course, is the name that was given to the phenomenon that Pavlov famously demonstrated by getting dogs to salivate by ringing a bell. The reason he was able to do this is because the dogs had been 'conditioned' to associate the bell with food. In the same way, the thinking goes, humans can be conditioned to respond in specific physiological ways to certain types of stimuli. In addition, a couple other distinct suggestion-related influences have also been proposed, namely: "the subject-expectancy effect"; and "suggestion by an authoritative healer".

But there is also good direct evidence that an authentic, suggestion-caused placebo effect indeed exists. This includes the results of clinical trials that have investigated the matter, neuroimaging, and the observation, as Bausell documents, "that a drug called naloxone" can be used to "at least partially block the placebo effect."

This finding, he notes, is important for two reasons, First, it shows that the placebo effect is probably not entirely imagined or due to reporting biases. Second, it suggests that "the body's very own opioid system" is at least partially responsible for it, as naloxone is, Bausell writes, known to be "an opioid antagonist, which means that it is capable of nullifying the analgesic effects of opioid-based drugs such as morphine", or, in this case, of nullifying those substances that the human body naturally produces which are mimicked by morphine and other opiate drugs (neuroimaging also seems to support this idea).

So yes, although it's effect is still often exaggerated, it seems that the power of suggestion really can lead to reduced levels of pain under certain conditions. Just like a dog can salivate upon hearing a bell that has preceded food in the past, it seems that humans can respond to the acts of swallowing a pill, receiving an injection, or participating in a medical experiment, by producing endorphins or other biochemicals that can give rise to something that might properly be known as 'the placebo effect'.

But can it heal??

Part III: The Medical Implications

Here, friends, is the real meat. Or is it "tofurkey"? You decide.

As medical science became obliged to make the placebo group the benchmark by which interventions were judged, so too was it obliged to to turn its back on the practice of placebo medicine (at least, to a large degree). Sugar pills and saline injections began to lose their traditional place in the medical cabinet. Behind this was the rationale that if we can't be sure a given therapy is inherently effective, then it probably should not be prescribed to patients.

In fact, it is exactly on these grounds that "alternative interventions" (interventions that have not, for whatever reason, been demonstrated in controlled conditions to work better than a placebo) face criticism: how can we be sure that alternative treatments work at all, if they haven't yet been shown to work any better than comparable sham treatments do?

Interestingly, the proponents of these alternative medicines often don't bother to deny that their therapies work no better than comparable placebos. Instead, they will argue that it is unfair to say that a therapy "doesn't work" just because it "only" works as well as a placebo. Apparently, they see placebos as having true healing power. And, therefore, they see the mere inducement of the placebo effect as being sufficient to qualify their favorite alternative therapies as "effective medicine".

This alternative view has been conveniently summed up for me in the brief passage on "The Placebo Effect" that appears in the essay Acupuncture And Evidence-Based Medicine: A Philosophical Critique by Dr. Micheal T. Greenwood. This essay was posted to MemeScreen by a valued reader in response to my post on Skepticism, but it is worth reproducing here. Greenwood writes:

"Objective research usually includes a placebo arm to demonstrate that the tested therapy is superior to no intervention. Implicit in such studies is the idea that the placebo effect does not constitute real medicine, and that only medicine that is better than [a] placebo is "real". Yet the placebo group often demonstrates a 30%-35% positive response (indeed, sometimes as high as 70%), which implies that many people somehow heal themselves without medicine. That they might have been deceived into healing themselves is irrelevant. An irrational dismissal of the potential of self-healing occurs when such healing is rejected because no overt outer action was taken. Such a position is not only subjective, but also ethically questionable because it robs patients of their personal power."

Greenwood's attitude is evidently shared by a scientist who put it even more succinctly in a recent issue of The Wall Street Journal ("I don't see any disconnect between how acupuncture works and how a placebo works. The body knows how to heal itself. That's what a placebo does, too."); and by the makers of the "Q-Ray Ionizing Bracelet", who unsuccessfully defended their $200 'miracle' product in court on the grounds that it it had been shown to induce a placebo effect.

It seems to me that there are a number of major problems with the argument that placebos can 'heal'. And the most imposing of these problems, is that there seems to be little to no evidence that placebos can heal. In fact, Greenwood's numbers don't imply 'healing' at all, because as we have seen, the "positive response" that placebo groups "often demonstrate" in clinical trials are often due to phenomenon as mundane as reporting biases. Moreover, it turns out that while suggestive influences can (sometimes) serve to affect (limited) desirable physiological responses; their effectiveness quickly disappears when we look beyond this. And although it seems that they can help kill pain, or make one feel 'buzzed' as if on caffeine, or even induce a slightly drunken stupor, there is no reason to believe that a placebo can make a broken leg heal faster; help cure cancer or appendicitis; fight infections; or indeed, to do pretty much anything of therapeutic merit.

In part, this is because real painkillers can provoke placebo effects too. And in part it is because, as Novella writes, "any potential placebo benefit worth having can be fully realized with science-based interventions." Some might point out here that at least placebo medicine cannot have any possible negative side effects (which is true since, strictly speaking, it doesn't have any effects), but that is only because an acute waste of one's time and money, for some reason, does not seem to count.

Which brings us to the final point I will raise here: we live in a dog-eat-dog capitalist society. And it has long been home to people who are more than willing, for whatever reason, to sell useless goods or services on the basis that they are actually medically effective. If placebo medicine came to be considered effective, that would mean that anything might be legitimately sold as being "medicine" - as long as the customer thinks it is. While some, no doubt, see few problems with this prospect, I imagine that it is nonetheless hard to deny that it would see a lot of desperate or gullible people put at even greater risk of being taken advantage of than they are already.

* * *

Don't allow the existence of the 'placebo effect' to be portrayed to you as evidence of a mysterious, internal self-healing force that needs to be unlocked and 'promoted' by alternative medicine. Our bodies our incredible things - mine in particular - and they are indeed remarkable in their ability to heal themselves without assistance; with ineffective assistance; and even with counterproductive 'assistance'. And the people and things around us can indeed have real and beneficial effects that may not be entirely understood by science.

But at this point, it seems fair to me to say that, to the extent one cannot fill a dog's stomach with food by merely ringing a bell, placebo medicine cannot heal.

Music therapy

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 04:14:00 +0000

The last post that I authored on Music was such a smash hit (don't check just trust me) that I thought I would hastily follow it up with a second-rate, sold-out, and watered-down post that will fool only my most pathetic groupies. But instead of simply rehashing the old themes of music's effect on plants; on non-human animals; and on human intelligence; I have, at the very least, come out with a brand new ditty.

"Music therapy" claims an extremely wide range of potential benefits; and thus, its practitioners say, it can be of assistance to everyone from the elderly to "teens at risk"; and from AIDS and cancer patients to those suffering from "stress" and substance abuse. Even the "hearing impaired" are listed as being appropriate patients. Music therapists, it should be noted, don't generally go so far as to claim to provide an alternative to conventional medicine, but rather a compliment to it. Nonetheless, their discipline is worth scrutinizing if only for the light it will shed on the meaning of 'therapy'; a word which ( like 'toxin') is widely abused.

It's a field which strikes me as having one foot rooted in reality and the other in the fanciful: the Music Therapy Association of British Columbia's (MTABC) website states right up front that "the therapeutic effects of music have been known since the beginning of time", as if such hyperbolic nonsense were an effective means of accruing credibility. But the Canadian Association for Music Therapy (CAMT) presents a harder target. For example, summarizing the benefits of one of their "intervention techniques" they write that:

Singing is a therapeutic tool that assists in the development of articulation, rhythm, and breath control. Singing in a group setting can improve social skills and foster a greater awareness of others. For those with dementia, singing can encourage reminiscence and discussions of the past, while reducing anxiety and fear. For individuals with compromised breathing, singing can improve oxygen saturation rates. For individuals who have difficulty speaking following a stroke, music may stimulate the language centres in the brain promoting the ability to sing.

When I first read this I thought it sounded reasonable enough (except for the final sentence, which I still find intriguingly mysterious - maybe they mean: "promoting the ability to speak"? Or do their patients relearn to sing, but not to talk? How hellish would that be?).

After all, I can see how singing might aid the "development of breath control" if, for whatever reason, that become important; and my poor Grandfather, who tragically developed dementia, seemed to be able to recall the words to his favorite songs even after losing the ability to consistently recognize his close family members, suggesting to me that this information is stored in a part of the brain that had been less effected by his illness. For all I know, mentally exercising this healthier portion of the brain by singing might actually do those in a similar situation some real good.

-the counterpoints-

That said, is this enough to justify the term 'music therapy', which implies a medical intervention? In fact, even if one is generous enough to grant, for the sake of argument, that listening to and/or playing music has real, substantiated, and concrete effects on our health, is even this enough to justify word 'therapy'? As Dr. Steven Novella points out on his blog, Neurologica:

if you studied the effects of playing soccer on health you would find that people who play soccer are stronger, in better shape, have more endurance, probably weigh less, and have a host of better health outcomes than people who spend an equivalent amount of time sitting on the couch. Should we call this "soccer therapy?" I would consider this false precision. Better just to say that exercise is better than being sedentary for specific health outcomes. Likewise, engaging the mind and interacting socially is better than being bored and lonely. At best music is a tool of therapy, it is not therapy itself.

The distinction is important, he then says, because

Attaching the word 'therapy' to the end of an activity is an attempt to give it a status it may not deserve - and that status is subsequently used to garner insurance coverage, hospital resources, consumer patronage, and research dollars. It is also used to constrain how we think about an intervention - implying that perhaps there is some specific mechanism as [sic] work, when none need exist.

Novella, of course, doesn't mean to imply that 'music therapy' shouldn't be practiced, or that it "doesn't work". Rather, he is pointing out that the language we use affects how we think about things (one might add that others know this too, which is why we have such loaded terms as "war on terror", and "enhanced interrogation techniques"); and that when an activity is labeled a 'therapy', it communicates a meaning that might not be accurate, and can thus cause us to think inaccurately about that activity. Novella suggests that this is the case with 'music therapy'.

Indeed, a cheap motel I regularly patronize recently supplied me with "aromatherapy" dish-washing soap (I now wonder if the maids thought that the scent of lavender would encourage me to spend more time cleansing the dishes than I have in the past. If so, they must have reckoned without taking my skeptical outlook into account). The existence of such products suggests to me that, unless dish-doing has truly become a medical procedure, public perception of the word 'therapy' has been lamentably manipulated.

-the counter-counterpoints-

All that said, how is one to decide what a better name would be for the discipline currently known as 'music therapy'? What should music therapists be called? And, anyways, what can be said about allegedly legitimate 'therapies' like physio-, and even talk therapy that can't be said about music therapy? Where should the line be drawn?

Should use of the word 'therapy' be regulated from the top down? or should individuals simply be made more aware of its frequent abuse? Would either of these methods even make a real difference?

Actually, I must admit to being baffled by these questions. What do YOU think?

Skepticism

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 02:23:00 +0000

"[People] are wise in proportion, not to their experience,

but to their capacity for experience"

- James Boswell

One night, when I was about ten years of age, my mom decided to play a game with me and my sister. She had us create fantastical characters (I think I was an elf), and she mapped out a little network of caverns for them to explore, full of treasure and monsters. Then, after describing the surroundings that our characters found themselves in, she asked "what do you decide to do?".

It was basically a crude version of the role-playing game, Dungeons & Dragons ("D&D"). I must have had fun that night because for years afterward I was obsessed with D&D: I played it with my friends whenever I could; I taught myself the official rules; and I even read D&D novels. I don't regret going through this phase (indeed, since an alternative was video gaming, I think that it was decidedly healthy), but I am also amazed to recall how it influenced my view of reality. For example, I remember lamenting how comparatively 'boring' the real world was, and wishing that my life was as exciting as those of the characters in my books. And at one point, I remember flirting with the idea that the gods of the D&D world were real. I even sent little semi-serious prayers to them for a while (don't laugh too hard: one of them was apparently answered).

I like thinking back to this slightly embarrassing point in my life because it reminds why I ought to be truly glad to have aged: although I now live a more stressful and complicated life; although my body has since begun to deteriorate; although nostalgia has become increasingly harder to resist; at least I am no longer quite so naive. So far, this trade-off has proven more than compensatory, if only because the accumulation of knowledge has allowed me to much better appreciate the jaw-dropping nature of the reality that comprises me, and surrounds me in both space and time. And I cherish this savvy all the more for it being the one of the few intrinsic properties I posses that does not face an inevitable decline going into the future.

My love of accumulating knowledge has meant that it was natural for me to develop an appreciation of its most prodigal wellspring - namely: science. And my love of science has, in turn, meant that it was natural for me to take a science-based view of reality - in other words: to become a "skeptic" (for a better feel for the term, watch Micheal Shermer's TED talk On Strange Beliefs).

But skeptical thinking, it seems, does not come so naturally to everybody. In fact, in merely letting science shape my view of reality, I have apparently set myself in philosophical opposition to many of the people I know and meet. Indeed, many of you have openly and vehemently disagreed with me over my philosophy. So, for both our sakes, following are the top three fundamental problems people seem to have with my skepticism, and my official responses to them.

- Science Can't Tell Us Everything -

This point is made in many guises, either to highlight to me the limitations of my personal philosophy, or to imply that something (or everything) that science is telling us could be wrong. For instance. it has been suggested to me that the supposed benefits of acupuncture simply do not reveal themselves to "blinded" scientific testing.

But, intentions aside, I agree: science can't tell us everything. In fact, I would go even further than this and say that it can't tell us anything at all - at least not with absolute certainty.

The theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss illustrates this point nicely in this cool lecture (t = 50:10) when he points out that, because all the stars and galaxies in the sky are moving ever more quickly away from us, at some point in the distant future they will all become invisible from our own galaxy: the night sky will go black. This, among other things, would make it impossible to observe a key piece of supporting evidence for the "big bang".

What's more, Krauss continues, all the other ways in which a hypothetical future civilization might be able to 'discover' the big bang (including the currently ubiquitous "cosmic microwave background radiation"), and thus the true nature of the cosmos, will eventually become undetectable. Therefore, he says, despite their best efforts, the scientists of these future civilizations

"will derive a picture of the universe which is completely wrong. They will derive a picture of the universe as being one galaxy, surrounded by empty space, that is static and eternal. Falsifiable science will produce the wrong answer."

His point of course is that, even now, we can't assume that science is giving us the whole picture; and he is absolutely right.

However, Winston Churchill once famously said of democracy that it is "the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried"; and I think that much the same thing might be truthfully said of science. After all, the universe was not 'made' to be 'discovered' by human beings, just like human beings were not 'made' to be governed. Thus, there is simply no such thing as a 'perfect' method of inquiry - any more than there exists a 'perfect' form of government. Instead, situations like these require us to adopt a 'best-fit' approach: to devise the best system we can, given the often difficult circumstances with which we are forced to work.

Therefore, I agree that science is nothing more than the best method of inquiry that is currently available to us, but maintain that it is also nothing less than this.

And I find it unfortunate that so many seem to dwell on the statement "science can't tell us everything"; while the far more interesting and productive question "what can science tell us?" is so often left begging (witness the [initially promising but ultimately atrocious] 24-part CBC Radio 'Ideas' series How To Think About Science). Is it perfect? No! But for it's purposes, it has beaten out religion, spirituality, astrology, "common sense", and "all those other forms" of inquiry "that have been tried" - hands down.

And if the alleged benefits of acupuncture don't reveal themselves to scientific testing, I am compelled to wonder: to which of these miserable alternatives are they visible?

- Ignorance Is Bliss -

Although never stated in so many words, I frequently encounter people who are more or less of the belief that science has, on the whole, done the human race more harm than it has good.

Sure, they say, it has expanded our understanding of the universe, but it has also brought us atomic weapons; sure, they have allowed us to save innumerable human lives from disease and starvation, but in so doing they have brought down upon us the myriad of intimidating problems associated with overpopulation. "Science", my philosophy instructor once lectured me, "is a double-edged sword".

To those of this mind, it can be tempting to fear and scorn science and technology; to suspect that cellphones cause brain cancer; that vaccines cause autism; that science-based medicine is a leading cause of death. And are we to expect these people to suddenly change their minds when they are told that it has been scientifically determined that their fears are baseless? Of course not - it only aggravates their initial mistrust; and thus do they spiral downward towards pseudoscience, conspiracy theory, and superstition.

In fact, this recent study suggests that people generally tend to accept popular beliefs over scientifically-validated ones. Even worse, the "participants appeared to react against the views of science when evaluating claims". Personally, I think this is because so many people tend to conflate 'science' with aspects of the modern world which they detest - pharmaceutical corporations, industrialization, atomic bombs, and so on - that the very word has acquired an undeserved and yet repulsive taint.

This is unfortunate, and more than a little ironic, since although science is perhaps indirectly responsible for the drawbacks associated with progress, it is undeniably directly responsible for having alerted us to many of them: the rising levels of mercury in our seafood; the 'hole' in the ozone layer; global warming, ocean acidification - all of these things would have remained invisible to us, if not for scientific theorizing and experimentation.

So yes: scientifically-derived knowledge has, is, and likely will continue to be, misused by people; and sometimes tragically. But the march of progress has long since begun, and, realistically, it won't be stopping anytime soon for anything short of a catastrophe. And by instinctively placing the blame for it's drawbacks on the scientific method, instead of restricting it to those who have misapplied this knowledge, we risk depriving ourselves of our only effective means of seeing, and thus negotiating, the treacherous road ahead.

(The TED talk to watch is Micheal Specter's The Danger of Science Denial)

- Shut Up Already, You Boring Science Nerd -

Right - I'm almost done.

But lastly, it is widely held that people have the right to believe whatever they want to believe. And, unfortunately, skeptics are often perceived as 'de-bunkers' who are constantly attacking the innocent beliefs of others (more than once I have even been compelled to explain the difference between 'skepticism' and 'cynicism'). Further, it has been suggested that maybe these beliefs, however misguided, are often 'good' for the people to whom they belong, whether it's because they are seen as comforting, morally inspiring, or what have you.

Needless to say, I see things rather differently. Of course people can believe what they want to believe. But misguided beliefs are not just held; they are disseminated. That's the whole point behind the concept of a "meme" (the TED talk to watch is Dan Dennett's On Dangerous Memes). And my skepticism is the most effective means by which I can protect myself - and all those who might happen to listen to me - from the many misguided notions that are out there; it is the means by which I might expand my "capacity for experience", become wiser, and therefore age more gracefully.

And it is the means by which I hope to continue distinguishing reality from the incomparably unimaginative and dull world of fiction.

(A special thanks to Steven N)

The arctic scramble

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Wed, 05 May 2010 02:23:00 +0000

Here in Canada, there is a wide-spread belief that the retreat of the polar ice-caps is precipitating an urgent geopolitical contest in the Arctic. This notion is popular with journalists who are more than happy to pen headlines that speak of a new Arctic "cold war", "gold rush", "arms race", or "scramble".

What's more, Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government has done much to propagate the notion that Canadian sovereignty in the North is indeed under siege: by famously warning of the North that we can either "use it or lose it", and by loudly denouncing Russian missions to the North Pole (the 2007 submarine flag-planting, the 2009 flight that occurred just prior to President Obama's first official visit to Canada, and an [allegedly] planned paratrooper drop), and characterizing them as provocative "stunts" specifically designed to chip away at our sovereignty.

This, no doubt, is at least partly self-serving: Harper's Conservatives campaigned in 2006 on promises to do more to bolster Canadian sovereignty in the North. Among other things, they promised to construct armed ice-breakers and military bases; to deploy a submarine detection system; and, perhaps ominously, to use unmanned aircraft (or "drones") to help keep tabs on this vast, frozen, and sparsely-populated region. These promises (to effectively militarize the North) proved popular with Canadians, and I think it is reasonable to say that the perceived threats to our arctic sovereignty played an important part in the Conservative's narrow electoral victories.

But despite it's continuing impact on Canadian politics, you may be surprised to learn that that the so-called "Scramble for the Arctic" is actually far less 'scramble-y' than you supposed. In fact, while it is true that Canada does have unresolved territorial disputes in the Arctic, there are only two disputes of much consequence in terms of Canadian interests: namely, that regarding the Northwest Passage; and that regarding the Beaufort Sea, off the coast of the Alaska/Yukon border. Furthermore, of these only one is an actual dispute over territory; and our primary antagonist is not the cunning Russians (whose attitude toward Arctic compromises was recently and promisingly demonstrated), but our friendly neighbors to the South.

The Northwest Passage

The dispute over the "Northwest Passage" (a somewhat unfortunate name which, like 'Middle East', betrays a vestigial eurocentricity), is not actually a territorial dispute, as it is sometimes suggested, but instead concerns control over the passage's maritime traffic. For it's part, Canada claims that this collection of straights constitute "internal, Canadian waters", and that foreign ships are thus obliged "to ask permission" before entering them: permission which, of course, we could then either refuse or attach conditions to. But the United States (along with the EU and Russia), while not contesting that these waters are indeed owned by Canada, nonetheless refutes this claim. In the words of David Wilkins, the former Bush administration's Ambassador to Canada, their position is that "the Northwest Passage, if and when it's navigable, is a straight to be used for international navigation - pure and simple"

As Canadians, we tend to be told that international navigation in the passage would be a bad thing because it would deny us the ability to levy a toll on the increasing number of ships expected to start using the passage as the ice melts. Moreover, we are told that it could greatly hamper our ability to prevent smugglers from using these waters, and to preempt environmental disasters, such as an "Exxon-Valdez"-esque oil spill, by refusing access to ships that fail to meet Canadian regulatory standards. To be sure, these are legitimate concerns, but they are concerns that need some perspective.

The Toll: A routinely navigable Northwest Passage could apparently shorten the trip from Asia to Europe (currently routed through the Panama and Suez canals) by approximately 5000 kilometers, so it is possible that foreign ships might be willing to pay a toll to access it. However, it is important to realize that it will take many, many more years for it to become completely ice-free, and the voyage will long remain a relatively treacherous one. What's more, as the Canadian historian Gwynne Dyer points out, even if it were to become ice-free, the voyage could still prove prohibitively risky; and all the more so since the melting sea-ice will also allow for competition from the relatively safer passage through the Russian arctic. Because of all this, Dyer says, "it's very unlikely that the Northwest Passage is ever going to become a major sea-route." Of course, he could be wrong, but the point to take away from all this is that the profits to be had by charging foreign ships for use of the passage are by no means guaranteed to be very significant, especially considering the extensive investments that would be required to enforce such a toll. (Not to mention the complications it could pose to our foreign relations.)

Smugglers: The jurisdiction to legitimately board, search, and seize foreign vessels that might be using the Northwest Passage to smuggle drugs, guns, illegal immigrants, is also cited as a good reason to establish absolute sovereignty over these waters. But this assertion, too, flounders somewhat on the treacherous nature of the voyage. Additionally, as it has been optimistically pointed out, if a smuggling problem ever did develop in the North, it would be as intolerable a situation for America as it would be for us, and a solution just as urgent (in fact, the former American Ambassador to Canada, Paul Cellucci, was moved to comment that "it's in [America's] security interest for the Northwest Passage to be part of Canada.") .But I personally think that this prospect is unlikely to make America 'see things our way'. Instead, I suspect they would simply offer to help the International Seabed Authority (ISA) patrol the area, or propose some other solution that doesn't involve their ships possibly being denied access to the Northwest Passage, or subjected to Canadian scrutiny: no doubt their major concerns. In any case, it is difficult for me to envision how our failure to prevail in this dispute would necessarily tie our hands to dealing with a major smuggling problem, should one arise.

The Environment: Micheal Byers, an expert on the Canadian arctic, says that "my worry is the tramp steamer under Liberian flag and Philippine crew. You dangle a 4,000-mile shortcut in front of them - that means time and money. There will always be someone who rolls the dice. They run into uncharted rock, and all of a sudden it's Exxon Valdez times ten." Personally, I think this is the best reason to continue to contest international shipping in the Northwest Passage. However: 1) shipping restrictions in no way preclude the possibility of environmental disaster, as Australia recently learned; 2) a Canadian initiative resulted in the insertion of a special 'Arctic clause' into the United Nations Law of the Sea Treaty (LOST), which gives us the power to enforce environmental protection laws in the Arctic up to 200 miles offshore (which makes a bit of a lie out of the claim that international shipping in the passage would be 'unrestricted'); and 3) I question the effect that militarization will have on this prospect - what are we going to do with non-compliant ships? Send ice-breakers to block their path, risking collision? Sink them with unmanned drones? Would this really help protect the environment? The growing risk of environmental disaster should really call for an expanded Coast Guard, since this would greatly enhance search and rescue capabilities that would more effectively prevent and mitigate environmental disasters. Unfortunately, our current government is neglecting the Coast Guard's arctic capabilities in favor of bulking up the Navy.

What's more, there are those who question whether Canada can hope to prevail in this conflict, regardless of how earnestly we make the attempt. Dyer, for example, goes on to suggest that those hoping that Canada will ultimately prevail in this dispute are effectively "dreaming in Technicolor". In my view he is probably right, considering the powers arrayed against us; and I think that the futility of the Canadian argument is the best reason not to allow this dispute to continue consuming national resources.

The Beaufort Sea

But this dispute is over territory, and resources to boot: a slice of the Beaufort Sea is claimed by both Canada and the US, and there are now suspicions that it harbors petroleum. Surely, any good patriot would have to admit that these things are worth standing up for.

But if there is a 'scramble' occurring in the Beaufort Sea it is a purely diplomatic one, and unlikely to be impacted by the construction of submarine detection systems, and so on. In any case, I doubt that an increased northern military capacity would really help us prevail in the Beaufort Sea dispute; and even if it would, do you think that makes it a good idea to effectively deploy our military against the US - a world superpower, and our most indispensable ally and trading partner?

***

The remaining disputes, like that with the Danes over tiny "Hans Island" (our only contested Arctic landmass), are not just relatively academic: as far as I can tell, they are currently being negotiated in good faith. So while I agree with this interesting article that the future could bring about as-yet unforeseen developments that could suddenly threaten the Arctic's political stability (like an independent Greenland), I still think it advisable to bear the actual nature of current situation in mind, and not to get to worked up by suggestions that "the true North strong and free" is under threat.

This is because the notion of an "Arctic Scramble" is doing more than just causing Canadian citizens to lose their hair, and compelling our politicians to make unrealistic and nonsensical promises (which, thankfully, are rarely kept). As Whitney Lackenbauer, the Canadian history Professor, reminds us: "we have broadcast to the world our intentions to beef up our military presence [in the North], as if this will help bolster our [arctic] sovereignty position". Lackenbauer, I think rightfully, then suggests that "this logic is problematic." Stephen Harper's "confrontational rhetoric", she warns, "feeds Russian paranoia that the West wants to 'keep Russia down'", and "produces a vicious cycle of mistrust" between Russia and the NATO countries. Thus, the 'Arctic Scramble' risks becoming somewhat of a self-fulfilling prophesy, as Canadians and Russians alike are apt to increasingly view their own attempts to protect their Arctic sovereignty as legitimate, and similar attempts by the other as threatening; while politicians on either side are likely to continue to both stoking the fire and riding the updraft to power.

What's more, the militarization of the Canadian North is diverting resources and attention away from the most effective and humane way that we could be solidifying our Arctic sovereignty: namely, improving the often deplorable living conditions (by Canadian standards) of the Inuit peoples. After all, they transferred their sovereignty over the North to the Canadian government with the signing of the 1993 "Nunavut Land Claims Agreement", but have yet to see many (any?) of the promises that were made to them in exchange delivered on. "If we don't uphold those promises," says Byers, "other countries will look at us and laugh, because they will realize we're not really serious about this whole Arctic sovereignty thing." If we continue to ignore this obligation, the situation could undermine Canadian Arctic sovereignty (not to mention our morality and our international reputation) far more effectively than the planting of a even a thousand Russian flags on the sea-floor of the North Pole.

Saunas and steam-rooms

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Sun, 25 Apr 2010 10:17:00 +0000

Recently I walked into the "steam-room" in my local rec center, where I am a regular, and sat down. A fellow regular was leaning against the far wall, shrouded in steam; and beside me chatted a young couple. Suddenly, I noticed that the couple was looking at me.

"Uh, excuse me?", said the young woman, her voice echoing off the tiles.

"Yes?", I said, turning toward her.

"You're bleeding", she said. I looked down and saw a small trickle of blood running down my leg from a small, mysterious cut on my knee.

"Oh! So I am!", I said, surprised. Then, noting the insignificance of the cut, and not wanting to immediately leave the comfort of the steam-room to address it, I looked at her and asked "do you mind?"
A familiar chuckle came from the back of the room.

"No", said the woman. Then she added, "but it's not going to stop bleeding if you stay in here."

"Really?", I said quickly, and watched her expression for clues that maybe she knew something that I didn't. But the woman looked at me with surprise, as if it was common knowledge that blood won't clot in the steam-room. Then she shrugged and went back to talking with her boyfriend, apparently leaving me to bleed to death, had I so chosen.

I immediately suspected that the young woman was under the impression that blood clots because the air 'dries it out', in much the same way that the toothpaste in the tip of the uncapped tube becomes hard and crusty. This is because I had long assumed the same thing; and only while taking a course in cell biology did I discover that blood-clots actually form in response to blood vessel damage. So a cut should stop bleeding at approximately the same rate regardless of humidity. (Of course, this helps explain how it is that blood-clots can sometimes form internally.)

But the woman didn't seem eager to pursue the subject any further, so I kept my mouth shut. It was easy for me to do this, because as a regular in the steam-room I get lots of practice. For example, it is common steam-room wisdom that exposure to the heat and steam bestows significant health benefits. I certainly find the steam-room relaxing, but am I really relaxing my way to health and longevity?

Heat: The Cure for All Disease?

Allegedly, the ancient Greek philosopher Hippocrates once said " give me the power to create a fever and I shall cure any disease"; people in the steam-room sometimes say that they are there "sweating out a cold"; and those in the steam-room/sauna business will sometimes attempt to convince you that steam-rooms and saunas will help you to "stay free of disease".

Actually, at first all this made perfect sense to me: after all, fevers are a wonderful defensive mechanism that can at once help to slow the reproduction of invading pathogens (like the flu virus) and enhance your body's capacity to combat infections. So it intuitively follows that if you warm yourself in a sauna, you are effectively making your body temporarily less habitable for any pathogenic viruses or bacteria that may have just begun to colonize you.

But now I wonder if I wasn't too quick to assume that a fever and a sauna both effect my body in the same way. For example, during a fever, your body increases its core temperature by shunting blood away from your skin and toward your internal organs; whereas in a sauna, your body is still actively trying to maintain its normal internal temperature (about 37 degrees C), and one of the ways it does this is to shunt blood in the exact opposite direction: away from your internal organs and toward your skin (this is accomplished by the selective contraction of blood vessels - very cool). Moreover, during an actual fever your body will do more than just cook: for example, it will also produce elevated quantities of "interferon" (proteins that "interfere" with the reproduction of viral DNA). I'm no doctor, but all this makes me very suspicious of claims that a sauna effectively induces an artificial fever.

(Another thing I'd like to get off my chest is that going to a public sauna when you know you are sick is probably not the most responsible move you could make.)

Toxic Sweat?

Repeatedly I hear it asserted that sweating in the sauna helps remove "toxins" from the skin. But there are two small problems with this assertion: the first is that sweating does not actually cleanse your body of toxins; and the second is that the toxins do not really exist.

Interestingly, only mammals sweat; and most mammals don't sweat nearly as much as we humans do. Less sweaty or sweat-less animals (like reptiles, pigs, and whales for examples) seem to get by just fine without being able to "cleanse" their skin by perspiring appreciably. So when you think about it, why should sweat glands do anything more than cool us, when our bodies can rid themselves of waste in the same way that these animals so effectively can?

Considering this, it is unsurprising that sweating doesn't actually cleanse your body of too much more than water and water-soluble substances like electrolytes.

In any case, the term "toxin", although it is a scientific term, is used improperly here, as it all too often is. This is important to realize, because none of the substances that I assume people are referring to when they say "toxin" (namely "metabolites"; "heavy metals" like mercury and lead; bacteria; viruses; and "free radicals") are eliminated in significant quantities via perspiration. Furthermore, terms like "toxins" or "detoxification" are worth watching out for, as their ambiguity makes them irresistibly attractive to the unwittingly ignorant and the willfully deceptive alike.

Steam-Rumors?

What about the steam? Is it any good for your sinuses or lungs?

Again, my impression is that, although steam inhalation may be a suitable measure in certain medical cases, it's effect on healthy individuals is more or less negligible; and, again, there appears to be little evidence that it will be of much use to those suffering from a cold. All I feel comfortable venturing beyond that is that there doesn't seem to be much in the way of non-anecdotal evidence that regular steam inhalation is particularly healthful, generally speaking. But if you have a symptom that you think a little steam would help alleviate (say, a cough) why not try it? Even better: ask a doctor.

* * *

Because I enjoy spending time in the steam-room, it would be fantastic if it also proved to be the key to an especially long and vigorous life. But unfortunately I have yet to be convinced that there is even a single substantial health benefit, beyond relaxation, directly associated with my steam-room habit. So when I see guys attempting to coax their reluctant girlfriends into the steam-room, or parents their children, with flippant promises that it will improve their health in some way, I often wonder how much thought preceded their statement.

(While I'm at it, there doesn't seem to be much evidence that you should compel yourself or others to follow a steam or sauna with an ice-cold shower or swim either, however invigorating or macho it may be to do so.)

Although these might, at first, seem like distinctly unimportant issues (after all, what's the harm in believing that your local rec center will admit you to the fountain of youth for only two dollars on week nights?), it should be appreciated that these opinions necessarily accompany mistaken assumptions about the way our bodies work, like the idea that sweat cleanses our bodies significantly, or that such things as "toxins" exist and must be consciously dealt with. And it can be really nice to know these things aren't true, especially when you don't like saunas or steam-rooms, or other alleged "detox" methods like the master cleanse (further discussed in this post), or mud-bathing.

Genetically modified food

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:42:00 +0000

Almost nothing you eat is truly natural: corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, apples, bananas (and, of course, cows and chickens), and so on, are already all very different than they would be if it weren't for us meddling humans. Over the centuries, we have altered all of these foods by selectively eating, breeding, and planting them; by hybridizing them; and/or cloning them (or their parent plants). Domestication is tantamount to genetic engineering, and we've been doing it for thousands of years.

This observation should suggest that genetically modifying a food crop does not automatically make it less fit for consumption, as many people seem to believe; and indeed, that it can sometimes be a good thing in terms of human nutrition.

But modern genetically modified organisms ("GMOs") are a novel biological phenomenon in several ways. For instance:

we can now swap genes between wildly different organisms, like plants and animals, and
we can effect more dramatic genetic changes much more rapidly than ever before.

A fear of the consequences these differences might result in has caused many to be suspicious of the whole idea of GMOs. Greenpeace's position (evident from this short video) is that genetic engineering is just too unpredictable, unethical, and/or dangerous to justify. On the other hand, GMOs are also considered to have played a role in the "green revolution", an event which is credited with having saved millions, if not billions, of human lives; and they could conceivably help us save even more lives into the future. So if Greenpeace is right, GMOs must be really bad news.

Although the majority of American soybeans and corn are already genetically modified, public disapproval has proved a major obstacle to the utilization of other GM crops. Are there really good biological reasons to just "say no to GMO"? Or does their unpopularity stem from irrational concerns?

Transgenic Foods: The "Tomato-fish"

Tomatoes are so expensive right now that my school cafeteria has altogether stopped serving them. And apparently this is because an unusually cold January just wiped out approximately 70% of Florida's crop.

Tomatoes are vulnerable to freezing because their flesh, like your flesh, is mangled by ice crystals when it freezes. Flounders, however, like many other cold water-dwelling animals, have solved this problem by producing proteins that lower the freezing point of their bodies: basically, natural antifreeze. So, theoretically, if tomato plants were given the flounder's "antifreeze-producing" gene, I would still be able to order them from my school cafeteria. Perhaps equally importantly, many future tomatoes would be saved from ruin, and the tomato's growing season might be significantly extended.

But such dramatically "transgenic" organisms (GMOs that possess genetic material copied from an unrelated species) are distinctly unpopular; and to many people, especially strict vegetarians, the thought of eating a tomato that contains "flounder genes" is often less than appetizing. Consequently, as the above banana-fish image suggests, transgenic organisms provide a good rallying point for those seeking to incite opposition to GMOs.

Personally, I think it can be helpful to remember that, strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a "flounder gene", because genes are not species-specific. Countless organisms effectively share genes as a result of common ancestry; convergent evolution; or even interspecific hybridization, which is an entirely natural phenomenon. Left to their own devices, plants sometimes pollinate the "wrong" species and give rise to a viable hybrid; and even animals will engage in inter-species mating (not just in North Carolina), and sometimes productively.

In fact, tomatoes no doubt already share genes with flounders. Moreover, you, like all humans, share genes with trees. That does not make you "part tree", and it certainly doesn't mean that you are any less edible than you would be otherwise. In short, individual genes do not in any way confer the "essence" of the organism from which they have been copied. In a limited sort of way, plant and animal species can be thought of as very long words, in that inserting letters from one word into another does not cause their respective definitions to converge.

Would the antifreeze proteins effect the nutritional value or taste of the actual tomato fruit?

I don't know - but, like all GMOs, their nutritional value could be experimentally determined. And it is worth noting that the presence of the proteins certainly doesn't seem to be stopping anyone from consuming flounders.

But what if the tomato-fish genes "escape" into the wild via accidental cross-pollination?

Unforeseeable Ramifications: "Genetic Pollution"

The speed at which genetic changes can now be made has caused many people to fear that GMOs could result in ecological disaster. Greenpeace has made this concern central to their argument against GMOs. On their website, they accuse GMOs of constituting "genetic pollution" and warn of its "unforeseeable" consequences, eloquently concluding that:

"GMOs should not be released into the environment since there is not an adequate scientific understanding of their impact".

To be sure, the possible effects of GMOs on the environment should not be taken lightly. After all, ecosystems are notoriously unpredictable, and small changes to them can sometimes have disastrous results. Nonetheless Greenpeace's argument is misleading, and the dangers posed by "genetic pollution" are heavily overstated. To begin with, an alleged "not adequate understanding" is a terrible reason to stand against GMOs in principle, as Greenpeace does: it just calls for further research. A much better argument would be something like: "... we cannot feasibly gain an adequate understanding of their potential environmental impacts, until it is too late."

But even in the face of this improved argument, it is still important to remember that there are environmental consequences to our inactions, as well as our actions. For example, "Bt corn" can be grown using fewer applied pesticides. In addition, starving masses of people have no time for luxuries like sustainability, and tend to be much harder on their natural surroundings. So by turning our backs on a way to potentially better feed them, we risk incurring damage to the environment anyway. Key differences between the environmental risks posed by "genetic pollution" and masses of malnourished people are that the former is hypothetical, highly circumstantial, and also within our ability to possibly control.

(Perhaps ironically, the use of the so-called "terminator gene" [which destroys the viability of a plant's seeds] could be a useful way to help preclude the escape of GMO genes into the wild - yet pressure from groups like Greenpeace has compelled Monsanto to publicly pledge not to commercialize terminator technology.)

And while it could be due to my lack of botanical savvy, the idea that a GMO tomato plant hybrid (for example) could give rise to some kind of new frost-resistant invasive species strikes me as being a highly questionable concern, not least of all because our food crops have been "engineered" to be high-yield and nutritious, not reproductively competitive in the wild.

***

GMOs represent a complex issue that I cannot hope to comprehensively address here. In addition to the myriad of good biological questions about their effects on nutrition and the environment, they also pose several ethical dilemmas that can understandably exert a profound influence on one's opinions regarding GMOs. But at the risk of sounding callous, these strike me as the result of technological progress and fundamental societal change, not genetic engineering per se.

However, my main point is that, from a purely biological perspective, there is simply nothing inherently bad about tinkering with the genes of our food stuffs. Whether you are for the use of GMOs or against it, this point should at least be accepted, because to do otherwise risks needlessly condemning real people to malnutrition and starvation. A good possible example of this is provided by the GMO known as "golden rice", which was designed to provide beta-carotene to the millions in the developing world who suffer from a deficiency in Vitamin A. According to Wikipedia, 250,000-500,000 children go blind each year due to vitamin A deficiency, and half of these die within the next year. Theoretically, if the rice many of these kids eat everyday contained beta-carotene, their bodies would then be able to synthesize the Vitamin A they so badly require.

But the unrelenting opposition of environmentalist groups like Greenpeace has helped stall the distribution of golden rice to the millions it could possibly benefit. You would hope that, at the very least, they would come up with a decent argument for their position (further dismantled by this Skeptoid podcast), and then state it in reasonably coherent English.

Evolution

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 23:46:00 +0000

My God...they're evolving!

I was reading Micheal Crichton's Jurassic Park sequel, The Lost World when I discovered it. By bringing dinosaurs out of pre-history, setting them down on a modern tropical island, and then suggesting that they were adapting to their new environment, Crichton confronted me with the amazing idea that the word "species" did not in fact denote a static thing, but rather something that flowed through time; something that evolved.

And by suggesting that, through this process, his already terrifying dinosaurs were becoming even more dangerous and cunning, Crichton successfully imbued the concept of evolution with a thrilling poignancy that immediately captured my imagination. The very next book I signed out of the library was The Origin of Species.

At the time I was sixteen, and I had just dropped put of school having concluded that I was wasting my time there. In retrospect - since my interest in evolution played a key role in my eventual return to the educational system - this seems more than a little ironic. But at the time, my discovery actually seemed to forcefully justify my decision to drop out of school. After all, why had I been left to languish in math, art, or "business education" classes, or been forced to read A Midsummer Nights Dream (for crying out loud), while ideas this cool remained unexplored and unmentioned? Why the hell wasn't I told about evolution in school ???

Even more disturbingly, I now know that I was not a unique case because I have met many people who badly misunderstand Darwin's theory. This is a grave tragedy: evolution by natural selection represents the single most important scientific discovery human beings have ever, or will ever make. I sincerely believe that in endeavoring to understand evolution, one becomes a better person; and that in attempting to effectively communicate it to others, one also makes the world a better place to live.

In this spirit, let me pose you a question: do you think you understand biological evolution? Here are the four most common evolution-based misconceptions that I encounter, and the reasons why they are just that. I bet you ten bucks that you've fallen for at least one of them.

Evolution is just a theory

So is the "theory of plate tectonics", but we know that earthquakes are the result of bits of the Earth's crust smashing into each other at a snail's pace. The word "theory" is actually bit of a misnomer, because it has a slightly different meaning in an academic context than it might otherwise have: this is a semantic misunderstanding. Evolution is no less than the conceptual bedrock upon which the entirety of modern biology has been constructed: it is a theory, but it is by no means "just" a theory. It happened, is happening, and so long as life exists, it will continue to happen: evolution is an inevitability.

Humans evolved from apes

Once, a young lady asked me in all seriousness if I thought I was "more evolved" than she was; a member of my family once expressed to me a belief that humans were evolving toward some higher form of life; and many, many people are under the impression that Darwin tells us that humans evolved "from" modern chimpanzees and gorillas.

These misconceptions are all based on the mistaken assumption that there is a natural tendency for evolution to make life more complex or intelligent; the implication being that life is hierarchically arranged, with humans at the top, and below us the progressively "less evolved" chimps, dogs, fish, bacteria, and so on. But in truth, I am no "more evolved" than an earthworm (let alone a fellow human being); and although it is true that humans share a common ancestor with the other apes, we have no more evolved "from" them, than they have from us. "More evolved" does not mean "more intelligent", and neither does it mean "more complex".

(A much better way to determine "how evolved" a species is, would be to determine it's average generation time, as this is really what determines how quickly a species can thus adapt itself to changes in the environment. For example, although fruit fly evolution can be induced and witnessed in a laboratory [because they mature in about a week], we humans haven't noticeably evolved in the last 100,000 years. By the only objective measure, fruit flies are actually vastly "more evolved" than us! But I digress.)

Instead, this is how you should really be thinking about evolution: imagine a stream. The water in the stream must constantly change it's "shape" in order to flow around corners, over rocks, and through shallows. But no particular shape is better or more advanced than any other, because the water must tailor itself to best suit it's immediate surroundings. And so it is with life: no one species can ever be said to be "more evolved" than another: in fact, it is an utterly nonsensical statement.

(Watch for this mistake in movies, books and TV shows. If I remember correctly, I think Crichton made this mistake in The Lost World. And the climax of this otherwise promising scene from Star Trek: Voyager gave me nightmares for weeks.)

Evolution is due to random chance

This is a favorite avenue of attack for creationists, who hold that we are forced to choose between believing that all life is just a huge freak accident, or accepting that it has somehow been deliberately designed (which, of course, implies a designer).

Unfortunately for the creationists, however, and as Richard Dawkins has often emphatically pointed out, natural selection is not random. Indeed, our first clue should come to us from the very words "natural selection", which were chosen to convey why this is so. Although genetic mutations occur "by accident", the process that favors the propagation of one over another is anything but random.

Since Darwin, few rational biologists have claimed that complex life owes it's entire existence to chance. In fact, this was one of his great insights: before Darwin, atheists were hard pressed to explain the existence of complex life without invoking random chance, which is obviously preposterous.

The survival of the fittest

First of all, you can survive all you want, and you will not necessarily evolve. Reproduction is the real goal; survival is just a means to that end. Remember, individual organisms do not truly evolve: it is only by imperfectly replicating themselves that they can do so (I say "imperfectly" bearing in mind this species of lizard that is asexual and all-female; and consequently is also at an evolutionary dead-end).

Second, the precise meaning of the word "fittest" is frustratingly elusive, which makes it inherently misleading. Not least of all it again implies that the "family tree of life" is a hierarchical structure, and that evolution is a race to the top. In part due to these drawbacks, most biologists now agree that "the survival of the fittest" is an unfortunate way to describe how evolution works. It should be more accurately stated "the reproduction of the best adapted", although this too fails to accurately sum up this deceptively simple (hmm...by which I mean "complex") concept.

***

A basic understanding of evolutionary theory is necessary for our two greatest medical advances - vaccines and antibiotics - to remain effective; to agriculture, and for meaningful participation in the debate about GMOs; to free us from the tyranny of religious belief by explaining why God need not exist should we not want it to; to help us infinitely better understand ourselves and the natural world around us; and even supplies us with an interesting model around which to construct our own creations.

So, with all due respect: screw thou, Shakespeare! Move over for Darwin already! If the world's a stage, then evolution really is the greatest show on Earth.

Now! About that ten bucks...

Music

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 12:16:00 +0000

"The trills, chills, and tears we experience from music are the result of having our expectations artfully manipulated."

- Daniel J. Levitin, This is Your Brain on Music

If you were to hear every note contained in a particular song played all at once, you wouldn't get much out of the experience: one of the most important aspects of music is that it presents us with a pattern that unfolds over time.

In doing so, music gives our brains the irresistible opportunity to second-guess how it will unfold. We do this based on clues we have gleaned from our experience with the tune thus far, as well as on our past experiences with music in general. And the music we tend to enjoy is that which we can anticipate with a reasonable degree of success. But while good music must not altogether defy our expectations, it is also essential that it pleasantly surprise us from time to time. As we all know, when a tune is too predictable, we become bored with it; in a way, good music is very much like an enjoyable game, in that it must be challenging, but not too challenging, to anticipate.

I think Mr. Levitin's perspective provides a good starting point from which to approach some music-related controversies. For instance:

Do plants like music, too?
And what about animals other than ourselves?

Many, many people would have you believe that yes, and yes: they do. Are these people just over-anthropomorphizing? Or is their logic, in fact, sound?

Plants

As you might already know, plants lack ears and central nervous systems. Despite this, it is claimed that not only can plants "hear" music, but that they actually prefer classical over rock music, and will grow more or less vigorously, depending on whether or not they are consistently exposed to the kind of music they "like".

And those who believe these claims can make a better case than you might expect.

For example, we know that plants can sense and respond to the wind, and that some predatory plants (like the venus fly-trap) can somehow sense the fluttering of an insect's wings. We don't know very much about plant's mechanosensory systems just yet, but it is clear that they have them. So if you play music loud enough, it is at least theoretically possible that your plants will be able to "hear" it.

Assuming they can "hear" it, how would music effect them?

The most common assertion is that loud, aggressive, and dissonent music (like Metallica) can be detrimental to a plant's growth; while sophisticated, soothing, and consonant music (like Mozart) can help plants to thrive. Furthermore, some people claim that this is because plants have emotions that are vulnerable to manipulation by music, just like we do.

Although many have attempted to put this hypothesis to test (with mixed results), by far the most widely-cited work is that of a lady named Dorothy Retallack, who published a book on the subject in 1973 called The Sound of Music and Plants, wherein she claimed that she had been able to both positively and negatively effect plant growth, by using classical and "acid rock" music, respectively.

By all accounts, Mrs. Retallack did a fine job conducting and describing her experiments. But if a 37-year-old report that was never published in a peer-reviewed journal is the best evidence we have that plants like Mozart, I think it is reasonable to question her conclusions. Moreover, it turns out that Mrs. Retallack performed her research while taking a mandatory course in biology en route to a degree in music; and neither she nor anyone since has been able to venture an explanation as to how or why this might be the case. (Here are a few more reasons to treat her findings with skepticism.)

However, whether or not plants are effected by sound is a different matter. As Mrs. Retallack herself dilligintly noted, loud music can have an effect even on a bucket of water, which will evaporate more quickly as the sound-waves create ripples on it's surface. Can music similarly effect the rate at which transpiration takes place, and thus increase a plant's water requirements? Can ultra-sonic sounds really help encourage seeds to germinate? As far as I know, it's possible. And perhaps this helps explain why so many are so convinced that their plants respond to music.

But before you assign them emotions, you might recall Mr. Levitin's insight into why we people enjoy music. He reminds us that our appreciation of music comes from our ability to anticipate future events based on what we've learned in the past. And because they are fairly sessile organisms, we can be pretty sure that plants lack this ability. Tellingly, this recent study suggests that our ability to anticipate musical sequences may arise from the very same predictive mechanisms that we animals unconsciously employ whenever we decide to move.

Animals

But many animals do have this crucial ability to "see" into the future. Moreover, they also have emotions, and there is evidence that Chimpanzees, at least, may also posses an intrinsic preference for consonance over dissonance. Some animals could theoretically enjoy music in much the same way we do; so why don't our pets dance? Or if they do (hehe), is it really because they are being emotionally manipulated?

Once more, Mr. Levitin's assertion can help us. Remember, it usually takes humans around ten years to develop a real fascination with music. And it can often take another ten for us to acquire an appreciation for the more subtle patterns characteristic of genres like jazz and classical. And as far as discerning patterns goes, humans are pretty quick studies.

In addition, music also plays a role in our sense of social identity; is tailored to the human auditory system; and as this clever Radiolab podcast implies, there is a possible connection between music and spoken language: something we humans are obviously uniquely predisposed to learn.

As with plants, I'm forced to conclude that IF animals are much effected by music, it is still unlikely that it interacts nearly as strongly with their emotions, as it can with ours. But neither would I go so far as to claim that no such interaction is possible.

Humans (The hidden track)

So maybe the health of your plants isn't going to be effected by the type of music you prefer, but what about you? Back in 1998, the governor of Georgia became so convinced that listening to classical music makes people "smarter" that he wanted the state to buy Mozart CD's for every Georgian-born baby. Does listening to Mozart really make us more intelligent?

Apparently, "Mozart Effect" is an excellent example of the media's tendency - and even eagerness - to misinterpret science for the sake of a catchier headline; and even the researchers that allegedly demonstrated it, were distinctly unconvinced of it's existence.

This myth has proven persistent, however. And there is a grain of truth to the Mozart effect. But when you see the statement "listening to Mozart makes you smarter", take "Mozart" to mean "music you enjoy"; and read "smarter" as "temporarily more proficient at tasks that test your spatial abilities", and you'll probably be closer to the truth. The Mozart effect is likely nothing more than a result of becoming emotionally "boosted" by music, and it in no way causes you to become more intelligent.

As far as I can tell, this also means that anything you enjoy - not just music - will likely have a similar effect on you; and that if you loath Mozart, the "effect" will be altogether lost. Seen like this, the "Mozart effect" might as well be known as the "James Brown effect" (for some reason, scientists seem to be way into Mozart).

No one doubts that music effects us emotionally. And our emotions are, after all, both caused and effected by real physiological processes. I think music interacts with human bodies unlike that of any other creature, and I plan to more closely investigate how it does this. So look for future posts on music, wherein I'll be taking a look at the growing field of "music therapy", and adopting a more meme-conscious approach to the subject - which I believe is the best way to understand how it is that music can effect us humans on such a deep emotional level, and yet utterly fail to similarly effect other species.

Recycling

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 09:42:00 +0000

Nobody likes a cheat. But did you know that neither do monkeys, birds, and insects? For us organisms, the ability to protect ourselves against parasites is of prime importance - and that includes parasitic members of our own species. Many animals have responded to this threat by evolving an intrinsic capacity to both expertly detect, and instinctively resent, cheaters.

But humans have become especially good at this. So even if I preface my admission by first informing you that I don't own a vehicle; bring my backpack to the grocery store; stay away from over-packaged products; don't have a lawn; and have personally planted well over a million trees by hand; you are still likely to feel a twinge of annoyance when I tell you that I don't always recycle. This suggests that it's not so much my net impact on the environment that so bothers you, as it is the simple fact that I'm cheating.

But am I, really? After all, I need look no further than Wikipedia to see that there are innumerable controversies surrounding the practice. Micheal Moore, with his book Stupid White Men, made me suspect that much of what I recycle ends up in a landfill anyway, and Penn &Teller used this episode of Bullshit! to convincingly argue that in many cases the landfill option is actually the more environmentally sound alternative.

But of the three, recycling is easily the biggest pain in the Rss. Like any sensible person, I don't want to pollute, or be thought of as a social parasite, but neither do I want to wash, sort and recycle my garbage if it isn't going to do any concrete good.

So! Should I just shut up and recycle? Or is it your disapproving attitude that should be curbed?

Who Wants Yesterday's Papers

The recycling bins that have been provided for my apartment building are always full of random, unwashed items; essentially garbage (I checked them again today just to be sure). I feel like a fool using these bins because I find it hard to believe that anything I fill them with is going to actually be recycled. How do I know my recycling isn't just being dumped?

The truth is, I can't always be sure. It's happened before, and due to the economic crisis and the declining demand for raw and recycled materials, is likely to happen again. Already, the Chinese apatite for Western recyclables is showing signs of satiety, and the recycling industry is bracing to take the hit. If this continues, more materials will likely become less worthy of salvaging.

But not all recyclables are created equal. For example, aluminum cans are made of a relatively expensive, and messily-procured material. And, unlike many others, it can also be recycled an infinite amount of times without degrading. As a result, you can be sure that the vast majority of the aluminum cans you throw into a blue bin (and even some those that you do not) are going to be reused. By all accounts, you should recycle aluminum cans.

At the other end of the spectrum, the benefits of recycling paper are among the most questionable. Often, producing products using recycled paper incurs a greater monetary and environmental cost than it does to use new material. Because no one is going to spend much time picking out the paper you threw away, I think it's reasonable to assume that a lot of paper falls through the cracks into our landfills.

Here in BC these cracks just got significantly wider, as - again because of the economic downturn - we'll soon be sending all our old newspapers to the States, or possibly even Asia, to be recycled.

The Damage Done

News items like this last one remind us that the act of recycling itself has a number of negative environmental impacts associated with it. Recyclables, of course, must be transported and processed. But the realization that the materials we recycle are often shipped halfway around the world might come as a bit of a slap in the face to those who go to the trouble of attempting to adhere to a locally-grown diet.

Another consequence of sending recyclables abroad is that they sometimes end up in places where environmental regulations are less restrictive, leading one to wonder whether the waste that western recycling programs have "diverted from landfills", have merely been redirected to even worse landfills on other continents. China is currently the world's largest importer of recycled materials, but they certainly don't use everything we in the West send them. So it appears that some of what we recycle is literally transported around the globe, only to end up fouling the local drinking water of distant peoples.

But even when recycling is carried out locally, it can still incur costs. So while almost everyone likes the idea of recycling, not everyone likes actually having a recycling plant join the community. Conversely, while nobody likes the idea of garbage, living next to a landfill apparently isn't all bad.

***

Still, it is often useful to think of the Earth as a closed system, because in many ways, it really is. We are, for example, all stuck here with each other, and all the plastic water bottles, cigarette butts, and radioactive waste that we care to produce. Obviously, we can't just indefinitely keep making and releasing these things pell-mell into the environment. So no matter how badly we may suck at it, recycling is a fantastic idea, and I think you should do it if you reasonably can.

But while I'm not sure I completely agree with the authors of the two harshest and comprehensive critiques of the practice I've read (this 1996 article titled "Recycling is Garbage" from the NYT, and this interesting 2003 paper called "Eight Great Myths of Recycling"), we should keep in mind that the logic behind recycling is not nearly as flawless and compelling as the familiar "arrow-triangle" graphic might imply. In practice, it's actually quite a messy task, and this is compounded by the fact that we sometimes go about it rather inefficiently.

So I ask that you attempt to temper your instinctive displeasure with me with the knowledge that I try to do my part in other ways, like those initially mentioned, that are not so controversial and personally inconvenient. For example, I try to keep my trash contained and avoid throwing things on the ground, which I think is more far more important than recycling, no matter how exaggerated accounts of the Great Pacific Garbage Patch might be.

And perhaps even more helpfully, at least I live in a region that sends it's trash to the States, which is far more than I can say for all you unconscionable Vancouverites.

Shaving

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 00:03:00 +0000

Almost everyone selectively removes disgraceful body hair, and many of us do it as a matter of routine. We subject ourselves to the agony of waxing, and spend small fortunes buying razor blades and various shaving lotions. But despite this investment in time and resources, we don't think about it much; it's a means to an end, and a fairly mundane and straightforward one at that. Because of this, even if you consider yourself to be an expert leg-waxer or face-shaver, a bit of skepticism and a dash of research might still confront you with some surprising and practical insights.

For example, when my mother told the woman at her local beauty salon that she had been shaving off a little bit of facial hair that had begun to appear, the woman's response was one of horror. Telling my mom that this would only encourage further growth, she advised waxing it instead (I'm unclear if there was a monetary transaction involved). My mother went home and ripped a bit of skin off her face taking the advice.

The most unfortunate aspect of this incident is that it doesn't actually appear to be true that shaving somehow causes hair to grow back faster, darker or more thickly. In fact, as far as I can tell, shaving really doesn't effect hair growth at all.

It is true that if you shave if off, your hair will reappear more rapidly than if you wax it; and it will grow back with a blunt (as opposed to a tapered) edge, resulting in more "stubbly"-looking immediate regrowth. But if you shave a shaft of hair off your nose, you will not cause it to redouble its efforts, and neither will you cause two shafts to take its place. In other words women will not grow pants if they shave instead of wax their legs, any more than men can successfully combat hair-loss with a razor. If you think about it, it actually makes good intuitive sense.

But I can make my eye brows or armpit hair grow by shaving it off. Isn't my body somehow sensing the sudden lack of hair and responding by growing it back?

Good question, me. The ability of eye brows, lashes and pubic hair to regulate it's own growth is kind of eerie - how does it know how long it is?

As it turns out, your pubic hair doesn't actually just grow to a certain length and then stop; in fact, it's only by constantly shedding your eyebrows and underarm hair that you maintain it at a consistent length (Here's a brief technical explanation of how it works). So shaving these places does not stimulate hair growth because your hair is actually always growing to a certain length, falling out, and re-growing.

I don't necessarily blame the woman at the beauty salon for not knowing all this, partly because I was also under the impression that shaving somehow encouraged more rapid regrowth until very recently. But when the people who remove our hair for a living don't understand how hair grows, something isn't right (Here are some other myths your hairdresser might have fallen for).

If my mother ever forgives me for publishing this, I think she will agree that when you consider just how long humans have been shaving for - how long we've had to figure out how it works - this story illustrates how insidious and influential the urban myth can be, and suggests that critical thinking is generally undervalued.

Bonus Meme!! - Safety Razors

For such puny little things, safety razorblades are bloody expensive. And as a disgusting, hairy man I can fully appreciate this (and I suspect it has something to do with the fact that there are often 5 blades per cartridge - how did we ever make do with only 4?). In fact, this size-value disproportion is part of the reason that the razor blade industry, led by Proctor & Gamble, was one of the first to investigate the potential security benefits to be gained through the utilization of Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags (aka "spy chips"), although there are apparently many other reasons why they might have become interested in this technology.

So, if you have been considering a resort to theft, or have been using a lighter to shave, you might like to know that if you instead use it dry your razor you can greatly prolong your blade's lifespan. Although most razors nowadays are made of razor blade steel, which is a type of stainless steel, it is doubtful that they are completely immune to corrosion. I have been drying my razor for a few years now and it seems to have made a significant difference, although I have yet to test this scientifically. Others suggest using rubbing alcohol to protect the blades. Unfortunately, according to this interesting 2007 article in the Chicago Tribune, the rather unhelpful folks at Gillette are at a lost as to how to go about extending the lifespan of their razors.

If you have tried this and are still spending way too much on razorblades, other suggestions I have come across include softening your hair by soaking it before you shave, and (for guys at any rate) it might also help if you stopped thinking about sex quite so often.

Race

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 21:48:00 +0000

"Now, I don't see race. People tell me I'm white and I believe

them, because I belong to an all-white country club."

- Stephan Colbert

The war on racism often manifests itself as a war on race. This is evidenced by slogans like "there is only one race - the human race". And the often-expressed hope that the 2008 election of Barack Obama would usher in a "post-racial" era suggests the complete abolishment of the idea of race is seen as a kind of Utopian ideal. The spice of life - variety - apparently goes with people like cayenne pepper goes with bubble gum ice-cream.

The argument against race comes in three primary flavors:

It is an artificial concept, that does not exist outside our minds.
It is a useless concept from which no good has - or will - ever come.
"Race" always has and will continue to do more harm than good: it is a destructive and divisive concept that can do - and has done - great harm to humanity.

Is "race" really nothing more than a destructive human construct? Have I finally bitten off more than I can chew? (hehe)

"An artificial concept"

"Race" is absolutely an artificial concept, and one that will likely forever defy precise definition. I say this bearing in mind that we still can't properly define the word "species" (the distinctions used to separate me from a chimpanzee are very different from those used to separate two asexual organisms or two species of bacteria) - or even "life" (what about viruses? or Lieutenant Commander Data?) Biological systems seem to love to challenge classification. And so we are forced to resort to rather vague terms that have been invented to help us describe them: we use these terms because they are useful, not because they are necessarily accurate.

But don't take that to mean that these concepts are completely made-up, or that they exist only in our minds. The fact that there is no universally agreed-upon way to describe "species" or "life" in no way means that these concepts are illusions: we may struggle to define "life", but we all agree that life exists. Why should we not take the same view of "race"? After all, people do tend to vary - however slightly - from region to region, and we could use a way to describe this.

"A useless concept"

But the belief that every human is essentially the same, and that the only possible differences between us are literally skin-deep, can be a very heartfelt one. Even apparently positive stereotypes like "Asians are good at math", or "Kenyans are fast sprinters" - which might appear to be relatively unoffensive - are often condemned for being not just technically incorrect (which they almost certainly are), but also for being morally wrong. And this conviction is well fortified: according to Wikipedia, all one has to do to be legitimately accused of "scientific racism" is "investigate differences between races" (emphasis my own).

The problem is, it is obvious that not everyone is the same, even if we do ignore skin, hair and eye color. And while they may not necessarily follow the classifications we have dreamed up (for instance there is no biological basis for terms like "black" or "white" beyond coloration), we are increasingly being faced with the apparently horrifying fact that what are best described as "racial differences" both can, and do, exist.

In fact, your race can sometimes even be medically relevant, just as your family medical history can be. As a possible example, consider the the H1N1 pandemic. The virus seems to have hit First Nations communities harder than it has the rest of the Canadian population. This has caused great controversy here in Canada, with many charging the federal and provincial governments with criminal negligence, if not direct responsibility for the deteriorating situation on many reserves.

Amidst all this, I wondered if some native Canadians might be, on average, biologically more susceptable to the virus. At first I recoiled from this idea as I do from many racial stereotypes. But then I remembered that it was only a few short hundred years ago that European-born diseases devastated the native populations. I suddenly realized that it was actually reasonable to conclude that they might well be more vulnerable to the virus. And if this was true - should this possibility be ignored? Wouldn't it be best to recognize the fact that First Nations communities might have unique needs the case of such outbreaks? As is, I have rarely heard this possibility mentioned, and the best explanation the Canadian government seems to be offering for H1N1's unfortunate success in these frequently remotely situated communities is "severe overcrowding". I don't in the least mean to discount possible social factors, but this seems a bit silly.

But wild speculation aside, here are some of the best known examples of medically relevant racial differences:

The unique metabolic and circulatory adaptations of many Arctic-dwelling peoples that help them to better cope with the cold.
The gene associated with the deadly sickle cell disease is often carried by people of African origin, almost certainly because it also provides resistance to a disease that is deadlier still - namely, malaria. This gene, for obvious reasons, is rarely seen in other groups of people for whom malaria was historically less of a concern.
Many Asian peoples cease to produce useful amounts the enzyme necessary to properly digest most dairy products past the age of four, as most Europeans continue to do. Because of this, many Asian adults are lactose intolerant.
Of course, even skin color can be medically relevant: as fair skin can invite sunburn; and dark skin can invite vitamin D deficiency.

I think the biological diversity of humans is fascinating. Why do we so wish it would go away, when the loss of human diversity in other areas - like language and culture - is so widely lamented?

"A destructive concept"

The best answer, of course, is history. So much of it is filled with atrocities that were justified by various racist ideologies, and racial differences were (and are) frequently wildly exaggerated, if not fabricated, to further these purposes. Small wonder we should look to transcend "race" altogether: we don't trust ourselves, and we have apparently good reasons not to.

But I would argue that in fact it is our ignorance of these differences is the real root of our sad historical track record: it's because we didn't understand "race" that we failed so spectacularly to come to grips with it. I'm not convinced that it is necessarily human nature to fear and loath people who are different than ourselves, and I think this position often betrays a general lack of faith in human nature. But we certainly seem to fear and loath what we do not understand. I would argue that the better we have come to understand why and how people are different, the better we have come to appreciate just how similar we all are.

And sure, race divides us; but so do families, which (it has been pointed out) is really what the word "race" indicates: "very large and partly inbred" families.

***

By attacking or denying the existence of these families, it seems to me that the war against racism has gone a bridge too far, and unnecessarily risks having it's worthy ideals discredited by scientific progress. Alternatively, by coming to terms with the existence of racial differences - by letting reality inform our convictions - we can avoid this battle, and simultaneously free ourselves to better understand and deal with the world around us in a more rational - and thus humane - way. The light of science can sometimes illuminate intimidating visages. But to flee is to rush into darkness.

The olympics

noreply@blogger.com (N. Harland Bird) — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 01:30:00 +0000

The winter Olympics are set to commence in Vancouver but a hop,skip, and a ferry ride away from where I currently sit. This immediacy has moved me to ponder the practicality of the Olympic phenomenon more closely.

The games are magnets for controversy, so it's easy to find good reasons to oppose them. The decision to host the 2010 games has been opposed by many who are concerned about their effect on the homeless; Native rights; the environment; the local economy; and media freedoms (you might be interested to hear of the recent experience of a visiting American journalist if you haven't already). As a counter to these concerns, proponents of the games tend to point to a few key pros. I have attempted to investigate these.

So how do the Olympic games allegedly benefit the human race? Do they increase our average level of physical fitness? Are they good for the economy? Do they help foster international togetherness? More...

FITNESS

The modern Olympic games owe their existence in large part to the actions of a French Baron, who was convinced that his country's catastrophic military defeat by the Prussians in 1871 was in part due to the inadequate physical conditioning of the French troops. Today, the argument that the games contribute to a populations average fitness is predicated on the idea that the Olympic spectacle inspires amateur athletes.

Moreover, a high gold medal tally is seen to reflect positively on a nations dedication to health and sporting excellence. Rich industrialized nations are therefore expected to dominate the standings, and a failure to do so can have political consequences. For instance, after Australia failed to meet it's goals in the Beijing games last year, a great cry went up in support of increased funding of Olympic sports programs. Some even demanded more gold medals from future athletes "at all costs".

The Australian government responded by commissioning a report into the current state of it's national sports programs, and it's findings are proving interesting to people the world over (including here in Canada). Released last month to much shock and horror, the report actually recommends that Australia's quest for Olympic gold be tempered. According to it:

gold medal tallies should not be the units by which national sporting success is measured.
rugby and cricket - sports Australians actually enjoy - should be favored over relatively unpopular Olympic sports like water-polo and archery.
and community and school sports programs should be favored over those for training elite Olympic athletes.

Although all this makes pretty good sense to me, I am unsurprised that the report has been showered in criticism and distain. "So much for excellence!" critics sneer, many of whom see the report as a great insult to Olympic athletes. The 'quest for gold' is seen to be a national obligation in Australia just as it is in many other parts of the world.

But it is precisely for this reason that Olympic success is usually achieved by investing vast resources in a few, select athletes who are then able to dedicate their lives to their sport; receive the best instruction and medical treatment available; train at high altitudes; and obtain the latest in "performance-enhancing" technology (like the seemingly crucial new swimsuits that appeared in Beijing last year).

In considering the winter Olympics, I can't help but wonder if the money spent training world-class biathalon, luge, and speed-skating athletes might not also be much better spent if the goal really is to increase general fitness. And I also think it's reasonable to suspect that the inspirational value of these and many other Olympic events is greatly overshadowed by the couch-potatoing they encourage.

ECONOMIC BENEFITS

Nations also compete intensely for the honor of hosting the games, as evidenced by the bribing of previous International Olympic Committee (IOC) board members, and the recent unsuccessful but energetic attempt of Barack Obama and Oprah Winfrey to secure the 2016 Chicago bid.

This is despite the fact that the only city ever to have actually profit from the experience is Los Angeles - and even they only got it right the second time around. In fact, the Olympics are almost invariably billions of dollars over budget when all is said and done. The quintessential victim of Olympic overspending, Montreal took 30 years to pay off the huge debt it incurred hosting the 1976 summer games. Most of this money was spent on the building of a stadium that is currently badly underused.

Critics argue further that while Olympic infrastructure can see decades of continued use, the creation of it serves to concentrate resources in the cities at the expense of the surrounding countrysides. In any case, it is certainly true that rural folk who might not get to take advantage of the improvements in infrastructure still must help pay for them.

Not everyone tends to lose out at the games of course. Various private interests are well served: television broadcasters expect to make a tidy profit for example, as does the IOC itself. Host cities hope to recoup their expenditures by attracting foreign investment, and corporate sponsors and incumbent politicians stand to cultivate valuable PR.

But it seems to me that economic arguments for the Olympics depend largely on the so-called "trickle-down effect": the idea that the taxpayers and consumers (who are ultimately footing the bill) benefit indirectly from the endeavor. And it is worth noting that "trickle-down economics" is a highly politicized and controversial topic unto itself.

INTERNATIONAL TOGETHERNESS

The games are also supposed to facilitate a greater understanding between cultures, and serve to help foster world peace by uniting all of humanity through the universal "Olympic values" of excellence, sportsmanship, and fun. Here's where I get to sound really cynical.

A major problem with these claims is that politically-inspired Olympic boycotts are far from uncommon: the American boycott of the 1980 games in Moscow and the retaliatory USSR boycott of the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles are only the best such examples. (A boycott of the 2014 games in Sochi, Russia has also been recently called for by the Georgian government.)

Another problem stems from the fact (mentioned above while considering FITNESS) that Olympic success is often considered a matter of national prestige. Because of this, even when the US and USSR did share the Olympic stage their contests were often invested with political significance, as the athletes produced by the capitalist system competed with those produced by the communist system. The euphoria surrounding the 1980 American hockey victory over the Russians (the "Miracle on ice"), was no doubt largely due to this effect.

When there are positive political effects, they tend to be limited and sadly temporary - like the removal of openly anti-semitic signage for the 1936 Berlin Olympics in Nazi Germany, or the greater media freedoms allowed by the Chinese in 2008.

In addition, it should be added that the games have been cancelled 3 times due to global conflicts; and I know of at least one example where an international (albeit non-Olympic) sporting event may have actually contributed directly to armed conflict.

To me, all of this suggests that those who think that the Olympics lead to peace have confused the cause with the effect.

* * *

I don't necessarily mean to suggest that the Olympic games should be terminated; I know that many people enjoy participating in and watching the Olympic games, and that is surely worth something. But it does seem to me that large holes exist in the foundations of many pro-Olympic arguments. And in ignoring them we simultaneously deny ourselves the opportunity to address them. Allow me to leave you with what I feel are the most pressing questions that should be asked of the modern Olympics:

Is it really necessary that athletes be associated so closely with their respective nationalities?
Luge??! Really - come on! What the hell is with the LUGE??
DOUBLES LUGE?? You've got to be kidding me.