New tool visualizes freshwater ecoregions

The newest news from Circle of Blue:

In South America alone, over 465 new freshwater fish species have been discovered in the last five years. That’s the equivalent of finding a new species every four days. Many of these newly discovered fish species are in limited ranges and exist nowhere else on the planet.

Globally, freshwater covers less than 0.8 percent of the Earth’s surface, yet harbors nearly 6 percent of the planet’s described species. Despite this staggering biodiversity, no comprehensive tool to track, manage, and understand global freshwater systems has been available, until now.

In a joint effort, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and The Nature Conservancy (TNC) have released the first comprehensive global map and database of freshwater biodiversity. The tool, available online, goes far beyond tracking global freshwater systems.

Read more here.

Water key to ending poverty and hunger in Africa, UN report says

Artisanal fishermen repair nets on the Kazinga Channel in Queen Elizabeth National Park, Uganda. They are one of 13 sub-groups that could benefit from better water management in sub-Saharan Africa.
photo: C.T. Pope/Circle of Blue

My newest post from Waternews:

Almost two-thirds of sub-Saharan Africa’s rural poor could benefit from investment in water, a new UN report finds.

The jointly commissioned report, Water and the Rural Poor, was presented by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) at the Sixteenth Annual UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-16) on Monday.

“Insecure access to water for consumption and productive uses is a major constraint on poverty reduction in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA),” the report found.

With almost half of Africa’s population suffering from water related diseases, the new assessment highlighted the potential for low-tech, highly localized, solutions to have a major impact the livelihoods of the rural poor. Read more...

Circle of Blue, Waternews

Hello all! I've been gone for a while, but now I'm back. I'm writing and researching for a non-profit called Circle of Blue -- an international network of journalists, scholars and citizens that connects humanity to the global freshwater crisis. So, in addition to resuming my normal bloging about general science news, I'll now also be posting stories and news from CofB. Check out some of our latest original pieces:

China, Tibet, and the strategic power of water
The Tibetan Plateau’s vast reserves of glacial freshwater, which supply Asia’s most populous regions, are both at risk and are emerging as a issue in the increasingly tense political and cultural strife between China and Tibet, scientists and experts say.

Reign of Sand: Inner Mongolia
A comprehensive look at the desertification facing Inner Mongolia, including original articles, media, and analysis.

Food, Fuel, or Water?
As global fuel prices soar, many nations are turning to ethanol as an alternative. And, while the implications of biofuels related to grain prices have been thoroughly explored, a clear understanding of the tradeoffs between food, fuel and water is only now emerging.

A Trip

Here's a map

I spent the last two weeks traveling around Uganda. I started out here in Kabale, and then went to Kibale National Park and visited Ngogo -- a chimp research site. I didn’t see the chimps, but saw tons of Baboons. Yippee. Then I traveled to Queen Elizabeth National Park, spending some time in Myewa and Ishasha Sectors. Finally, I was in Buhoma for like a sec and then back home.

Since, I'm in a little of a rush, here are the photos (in no particular order, you can click to enlarge any of them):





























All work is my own, except for the map at the top.

On Harry Potter Mania

Warning: This blog post does not contain spoilers about the final Harry Potter book.

Just about a month ago, I had my first letter to the editor published in the New York Times. Now, after only two submissions ever, I've got another one in. This time I come to the defense of the critics. In particular, there were a lot of grumbles last week about the spoiler filled reviews of the new Harry Potter book. This raises the question: who's to blame for the spoiled plot, the reviewers or the readers of the review? I side squarely with the critics. If you're reading a review, you always risk getting more information than you bargained for*.

In some ways, my response was not to the op-ed linked above, but rather to this barrage of letters, sent to the Times by angry review readers. My letter (third down) details the fallacy of the blame the critics crowd:

Assuming you’ve read the first many hundreds of thousands of words leading up to the final book, what information do you hope to glean from a review? Those so impulse-control-impaired as to be unable to skip a newspaper article about a book they’re in line for have little hope of reading all 759 pages without jumping to the end.

In other words, if you are that concerned about spoiling the plot, why are you reading the reviews in the first place?

*Sorry, I couldn't help it, for which you have bargained, yuck!

I Called It

A sample page from the Atlas of Creation (reproduced from NYTimes.com)

I've been saying it for months now (and thinking it for years), religious fundamentalism here in the states is the thing that we most share with the other fundis we are fighting across the planet (i.e. in Iraq, Iran, or Syria or wherever). Like the Qur'an, the Bible has some fairly violent directives. For example, right after G-d says, "Thou shalt not kill" (Exodus 20:13), he decrees the punishment for premarital sex to be a good stoning (still practiced by a handful of Muslims):

Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father's house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you. (Deuteronomy 22:21)

Now, that's abstinence-only-education right there.

But I digress, stonings and witch burnings haven't happened in the states for years. Rather, the latest insult to science, reason, and the free thinking peoples of the world, is a new creationist book, written not but those who brought us Of Pandas and People, but instead by those who produced the cult classic Valley of the Wolves. Ironic right?

The Atlas of Creation, produced by the Turkish Adnan Oktar (i.e. Harun Yahya), was sent out, free of charge and unsolicited, to thousands of academics, congress members, and relevant persons, across the US. I haven't had much time to peruse the book, and I doubt I ever will. But I did stumble may way to Chapter 16: The Fact Of Creation. Where Yahya chronicles the unexplainable miracles of G-d's creation (in fact, most of the examples are really good studied systems in Evolutionary biology). Here Yahya claims:

This great wisdom, design and plan that prevails overall in nature, provides solid evidence for the existence of a supreme Creator dominating over the whole of nature, and this Creator is God. God has furnished all living beings with extraordinary features and showed men the evident signs of His existence and might.

One of his examples: whales and their breathing systems. Humph. So, after only one chapter back claiming that "[t]hey [westerners, scientists, intelligent people, take your pick] have never found a single transitional form such as a half-fish/half-reptile or half-reptile/half-bird," he uses an animal where actual "transition fossils" do exist to prove that G-d made whales as is. Aside from the flashes of Kirk Cameron here, I'm boggled by how many people have missed the half-land-mammal/half-whale fossils that were discovery not too far from Turkey.

Now don't get me wrong, I think the term "transition fossil" is loaded and an inaccurate term, but how is that creationists can continue to claim that they don't exists when they clearly do? Half-bird/half-dinosaur fossils, check. Half-man/half-ape fossils, check. Half-crocodile/half-duck fossils, check (well at least on TV).

I will praise Yahya for one thing though, not once (as far as I've read) does he refer to the Christian god as "God" and the Islamic god as "Allah". In his lexicon, they are one in the same "God" (even though he hates Jesus). Thank deus!

Minor Update: While I was gone last week, Slate.com apparently published an article about gut reactions. Neat.

Minor Update Two: Yahya doesn't actually hate Jesus, but he does had the Jews. But Jesus was a Jew, some maybe he does hate Jesus. I'm not sure.

Xenophobia leads to American Job Loss

Via the AP and MSNBC, Microsoft plans to move some operations north, to Canada, in order to avoid the pending immigration issues in the States. The layman's assumption that immigration hurts the economy is dead wrong. Further restrictions on visas will only lead to more and more job loss in the States, choking-off both a willing-and-able labor supply and scaring-off technological innovators. For more on the history of immigration in the United States see here. And for a more detailed look at the MS/Visa issue than in the initial AP reports, see here.

Money, Cash, Hoes?

I couple of a days ago I had a riveting iChat with one of my long standing buddies about the function of wealth and social status. His basic argument was that he could use the little money he had now to advance his social status and thus find better mates. My premise, though similar, advocated financial restraint via investment at the beginning with an ultimate higher pay-off later:

Him: but if you spend a lot of money now, then you get to present yourself better and move into social circles where you otherwise wouldn't have been allowed which leads to a wider variety of opportunities
Me: that's the fallacy of the poor son
Him: and a larger access to resources
Me: didn't you read God Bless You Mr. Rosewater?
Him: by using what I have at my disposal, I've become more adaptable to change
Me: or rich dad poor dad?
Me: basically, conspicuous consumerism
Me: only works if you have a ton of money
Him: fine you suffer and I will go and have my fun
Him: then when you're 80 you can enjoy your money and realize no one is going to touch your wrinkly old sack

It turns out that both of our strategies may work out in the end. According to a new study published in Proceedings of the Royal Society, and reviewed in the The Economist, males' financial strategies may be a product of their testosterone and their perceived/relative abilities to get mates. The study used the classic dividing game: where one participant decides how to divvy up a sum of money and the other either accepts or rejects the split. If the later rejects the division, than neither of the participants gets anything -- if he accepts, both get what was decided upon.

In the past, researchers have found that people will punish selfish individuals by rejecting "unfair" splits (7:3 divisions, for example). Logically, when using a multi-iteration strategy, the divider will learn that unfair splits won't fly and eventually settle on a half-half divvy (really, more usually 6:4). The new study however, based on a single iteration model, correlates a rejection of "unfair" divisions to a higher-level of testosterone in males.

In a single round game -- where no learning can occur -- the optimal strategy should be to accept any offer, since no other chances to play will happen. But the researchers found that males with higher T-levels will more likely reject unfair splits, even if it means gaining no eventual financial advantage. From The Economist:

What Dr. Burnham's result supports is a much deeper rejection of the tenets of classical economics than one based on a slight mis-evolution of negotiating skills. It backs the idea that what people really strive for is relative rather than absolute prosperity. They would rather accept less themselves than see a rival get ahead. That is likely to be particularly true in individuals with high testosterone levels, since that hormone is correlated with social dominance in many species.

Economists often refer to this sort of behaviour as irrational. In fact, it is not. It is simply, as it were, differently rational. The things that money can buy are merely means to an end—social status—that brings desirable reproductive opportunities. If another route brings that status more directly, money is irrelevant.

Human financial investment strategies may depend on mating opportunities

Practically, this means that males should assess their status and abilities to compete with other males, and then decided on how to invest/use money. If they have higher testosterone levels (which in humans usually equates to more frequent short-term mating opportunities), it makes less sense to save, since more money isn't necessary for reproduction. Other males, with lower testosterone, will pick more "logical" investment strategies in hopes of advancing their mating opportunities in the future and/or investing more in their long-term mates.

In a Mirror, Darkly

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.

The Times just published a great op-ed about the recent reversal of fortunes for the common man at the highest judicial level:

It has been decades since the most privileged members of society — corporations, the wealthy, white people who want to attend school with other whites — have had such a successful Supreme Court term. Society’s have-nots were not the only losers. The basic ideals of American justice lost as well.

If the Roberts Court really is the dark mirror image of the Warren Court, I hope for god's sake that there is a Spock up there somewhere on the bench. And I'm going to go ahead and call it: I give Roe v. Wade two years tops, before it falls to the evil Kirk. If this turns out to be true, boy that'll be sweet (for me, not for the advancement of an open and understanding western society with equal rights for women). Damned activist judges!

RE:Comments
I've been away, and I'll get right on in it.

Letter to the Editor

Aix-en-Provence, near my old host-family's place

The Times ran a piece about Camembert a few days ago. The article discusses the possibility of allowing non-traditional batch-made chesses to be labeled as Camembert. I lived in France for the better part of '04 -- and I've eaten my fair share of Camembert -- so trust me when I say raw-milk Camembert is the only kind of a Camembert that is real Camembert. Trust me even more when I say, that everything I said in my letter in the Times today is right on:

The first time I bought Camembert in the United States, though, I was appalled. I had never tasted such a bland, hard “soft cheese” in my life. The culprit was the milk. Just as you should never eat Camembert cold, you should never make it with pasteurized milk. Since, I’ve learned to find “contraband” cheeses here. But if the French boards allow an A.O.C. certification for these batch-processed abominations, all will be lost. The taste of real Camembert will be gone forever.

I would add, that by "warm" (in unquoted text), I mean room-temp warm, not heated like bad Brie.

The Times Responds to Brownback

(modified from source image)

The New York Times' science section is bursting with articles about evolution today. Among the highlights:

• An analysis of the emerging understanding of development and its role in evolution.

• An explanation of a possible paradigm shift within the field.

• Three treatises on human evolution, including one on the soul.

• A look at possible macroevolution in real-time.

• And a quote section by famous scientists/philosophers.

Nowhere to be seen in the quotes though, is there anything said by Brownback in his scandalously inaccurate op-ed. Perhaps even better than the Coyne essay, this barrage of articles almost point by point shoots down Brownback (for a detailed look at Brownback, see my previous entry). Perhaps the Times Science editors were ashamed of letting Brownback pontificate on the op-ed page without a good fact-checking, or maybe they were compelled by the Republican debates in general. Either way, if you're looking for a good crash course in evolutionary biology this morning, read, read, read on! The paper of record has vindicated itself. Hizzah!

Australia, Aborigines, Alcohol and Abuse

(image: Stuart Edwards)

Fast fact: aborigines in the Northern Territory live some 17-20 years less than the rest of Australians.

In case you missed it, Johnny Howard is taking over Aboriginal communities in the NT again (where NT = Northern Territory). He's making it illegal for them to buy/possess pornography and alcohol, linking welfare checks to school attendance and requiring health checks on everyone under 16. Looks like Oz is reinstating race-based policy. It's election season in Australia, and some are lamenting that the Howard government is lobbying for votes (he called it a "national emergency" that I guess he himself has ignored for the last eleven years).

While it is true that something should be done to combat the alcohol and child sex abuse rampant in the NT (both Anglos and natives are guilty of the latter and former), instituting state sanctioned racism is a bad idea, as the BBC points:

"Some of the things that I know will happen in response to this - we will have an increase of violence, we will have an increase of suicide and suicide attempts," she told Australian radio.

"There will be greater feelings of despair and 'we can't do it ourselves' in our communities," she said [Professor Judy Atkinson, Southern Cross University].

Australia needs to be real careful here. I hate seeing a western democracy deny some civil liberties to a subsection of its population.

One Last Thing on Stem-Cells

I've written a lot on stem-cells this month, and I promise to stop soon, but first I found this list outlining some of the advances from embryonic stem-cell research. Reproduced with love from Think Progressive:

– June 20, 2006 — CBS reports that ES cells have been used to help paralyzed rats walk.

– July 5, 2006 — Science Daily reports that ES cells have been used to create T-cells, which could lead to a cure for AIDS.

– July 11, 2006 — The Guardian reports that ES cells have been used to create sperm that successfully fertilize mouse eggs, which could aid those with infertility.

– Sept. 21, 2006 — The Washington Post reports that ES cells have been used to slow vision loss in rats.

– Oct. 23, 2006 — The Washington Post reports that ES cells have been used to reduce the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease in rats.

– Oct. 31, 2006 — The New Scientist reports that ES cells have been used to create insulin-secreting cells, which could be used to treat diabetess.

– Nov. 10, 2006 — Nature reports that ES cells have been used to make a vaccine that protects mice from lung cancer.

– Nov. 22, 2006 — The New Scientist reports that ES cells have been used to create cardiovascular “precursor” cells, which could be used to treat heart disease.

And that's just from 2006!

Let's Save Real People

68% of Americans support embryonic stem-cell research; of the 500,000 or so frozen embryos less than 3% will ever be adopted; of those the 3% adopted and implanted, only 14% have the potential to be conceived. Meaning that some 497,900 of the embryos will in essence be discarded. Yet, President Bush just vetoed another stem-cell initiative that would free-up federal funding for life-saving research. His take, destroying the embryos is murder. They're value is equal to the life of a Parkinson's suffer, an Alzheimer's patient, or a paraplegic.

Scientist's are outraged by the decision and the proposed alternative. News@Nature reports:

Scientists, scientific societies and congressional critics decried the veto and dismissed the executive order as a red herring. The American Association for the Advancement of Science said that the order "is not a substitute" for the vetoed bill and noted that the new approaches supported by the order seem to already be eligible for federal funding. (1).

And other bloggers are irritated by Bush's inconstant stance on the value of "life". Keith Boykin writes:

Two of the most defining issues of Bush's public life belie his purported belief in the sanctity of human life. As governor of Texas , George Bush presided over the nation's busiest execution chamber. And as president, Bush launched a war that has killed thousands of innocent civilians. He, of all people, is the last one who needs to lecture anyone about the sacred nature of all human life.

My take: the intention of stem research is to save or improve the lives of all. By Bush's reasoning, the intention to create one life is more valued than the intention to save millions. To put it another way, if you could rescue one crying infant from a fire or 1,000 frozen embryos in Petri dishes, which would you choose? If you choose the former than you value actual human-life over potential human-life, if you choose the later you, than you agree with Mr. Bush. Or to appeal to dripping emotivity, whom would you rescue from peril:

1,000 5-day-old Blastocysts

Or a Real Baby

I'd choose the real baby every time. But of course, we don't have to make that choice -- most of the frozen embryos are already slated for destruction.

Let Crazy Vote

States are trying to take away voting rights from the mentally handicapped. Perhaps a good idea. BUT, aren't we all irrational when we vote anyway?

ADDITION: As John more or less points out, if you've taken an abnormal psych class, you'd know that the DSM-IV is the worst diagnostic tool ever.

Six Embryos Equal One Baby

President Bush is poised to veto another stem-cell bill any day now. I'm waiting with baited breath. During the interim however, I've been looking into so-called "embryonic adoption" (the practice of taking frozen embryos, which would otherwise be discarded or go to scientific research, and turning them into babies). These little frozen guys have been called "souls on ice", "frosties", "snowflakes" and other equally adorable names, and they are the Bush administration's answer to the IVF dilemma. With the recent chatter about the implications of the newest stem-cell advance (in particular, a comment made by a fellow blogger), I got to wondering, what's the real chance of an embryo becoming a baby once adopted?

The success rate of in vitro fertilization is a complicated statistic to measure. The laundry-list of compounding variables is extensive: the age of the mother; the father's fertility; the mother's general health; the complexity of the infertility issue; the general practices of the clinic, to name a few. Moreover, individual clinics advertise numbers to entice "buyers" (even though they must report their actual success rates to the CDC annually), and they don't always reflect easily understand statistics*. Finally, clinic-reported success rates are usually expressed in a population level manner (summed, averaged, totals), whereas to understand how many adopted embryos will become babies, we need only the data for the "frozen donor embryos".

The best source then, for this type of data is the aforementioned annual CDC report. The most recent report available is from 2004, so the data may be a little out of date (in general success rates have gone up annually since 1978). Unfortunately, the report doesn't detail frozen donor success rates very well, so the following back-of-the-envelope calculations are necessarily derived from the frozen nondonor embryo data (there is only a slight difference in frozen nondonor and donor data, with the success rate for donor embryos being marginally higher). The total number of live-births from nondonor frozen embryos in 2004 was 4,658. However, the live-birth data isn't the number of infants born, so a bit of math is necessary to find the actual birth rate. Using the Figure 38 (pg. 51 of the report), then, and counting multiple-non-twin-births as quadruplets†, we find that there were about 5,981 actual infants born from frozen nondonor embryos in 2004. In other words, females implanting their own thawed embryos had about 5,981 babies that year.

Next, in order to determine the number of embryos transferred per actual birth, we need to turn to the national summary data (pg. 81). In particular we are interested in the section called "Frozen Embryos from Nondonor Eggs".

In total, 16,296 transfers of this type were preformed on women under age 42. However, "transfer" here doesn't mean number-of-embryos-transferred but rather, the number of transfer-events recorded. So, in order to figure out how many actual embryos were transferred, we have to find the weighted average of "Average number of embryos transferred" (~2.58) and multiple it by the total number of transfers (16,296). As it turns out, approximately 41,982 frozen nondonor embryos were transferred in 2004, from which 5,981 births were recorded. A 14.4% success rate. Or expressed another way, for every infant born from a thawed embryo, six embryos didn't make it.

The reasons for this low success rate are complicated. Frozen embryos aren't as hardy as fresh embryos, in general (graph left). Moreover, the best embryos have usually been selected and used during the first cycle of implantation, so the frozen embryos are the "worst of the crop". Also, the embryos, though seemingly viable, often don't implant right or spontaneously abort sometime during the pregnancy for unknown reasons. In addition, if multiple embryos are successfully implanted, parents will frequently elect to selectively terminate some very early in the pregnancy (multiple births from IVF can cause a host of complications best avoided by early termination). Finally, all of the general complications associated with IVF can come into play.

The embryonic stem cell debate revolves around the intrinsic value of the human embryo. Even the most fervent supporters of the research view human embryos as a special entity, when say, compared with mouse embryos. Their inherent potential to become human beings makes them unique in the eyes of all. President Bush went so far as to liken the destruction of this potential to murder when he vetoed the first Stem Cell Research Enhancement Act back 2006: "[T]his bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others." (1)

However, what the above approximate calculations reveal, is that even in a best-case scenario, where all 500,000 frozen embryos are adopted, about 428,000 have no potential, they just won't make it. In truth, about 97% of the "frosties" will never be adopted anyway and simply expire in the freezer (no use to anyone). Not the most pleasant of thoughts, but a reality that the Bush administration and many others have simply ignored.

*The "success rate" of clinics is a somewhat odd static often measured in live-births-per-cycle or live-births-per-transfer, where a cycle is egg extraction, fertilization, transfer (of multiple embryos), and pregnancy and a live-birth is mostly what is sounds like, except that it is counted as one live-birth, no matter how many babies are actually born/survive past birth.

†I count all multiple-non-twin-births as quadruplets in an attempt to account for the discrepancy between frozen donor and frozen nondonor rates -- somewhat arbitrary, but all calculations are offered only as approximates.

Would You Like to Have Your Daughter Marry a Negro?

The history of repugnance’s role in US politics runs deep. With the publication of the “The depths of disgust” in Nature this week (a pop-science article, which discusses recent psychology developments concerning the nature of the knowledge gleaned from revulsion), the concept of the wisdom of repugnance has once again entered the arena of public discourse.

The term was coined only ten years ago this month by Leon Kass in an editorial piece for the New Republic as a response to the recent development of Dolly and the possibility of human cloning (the title of this blog is taken from that article). Kass later expounded upon the subject in his Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity (2002).

Since, the phrase has been infused into myriad bioethical debates: stem-cell research, genetic engineering, therapeutic cloning, to name a few. But Kass’s basic line of reasoning remains unchanged. He asserts that disgust, being a legitimate human emotion, can and should serve as an ethical and legal argument against various biomedical pursuits. To that end, he contends that the burden of proof lies not with those who express the disgust, but rather with those who would seek to upset the status quo:

The burden of moral argument must fall entirely on those who want to declare the widespread repugnances of humankind to be mere timidity or superstition.

Kass, former chairman of the President Bush’s Council on Bioethics (2001-2005) and also once against in vitro fertilization, goes on to argue that the real loser of the cloning process would not be society, but the clone itself:

What will father, grandfather, aunt, cousin, sister mean? Who will bear what ties and what burdens? What sort of social identity will someone have with one whole side -- “father's" or "mother's" -- necessarily excluded? It is no answer to say that our society, with its high incidence of divorce, remarriage, adoption, extramarital childbearing and the rest, already confounds lineage and confuses kinship and responsibility for children (and everyone else), unless one also wants to argue that this is, for children, a preferable state of affairs.

Does the sight of an interracial couple elicit disgust in your heart of hearts? If you lived in New York City in '63 it might have, no matter what your race. The New York Times reported in October that year that when a young black woman was seen with a young white man at a night club, a black entertainer stared at the couple, "He is very disgusted that I should be here with you," she told her escort. (Image and quote reproduced from "Negro-White Marriages on Rise Here", New York Times, Oct. 18, 1963)

A similar appeal to the welfare of children was made more than forty years ago during the Supreme Court proceedings of McLaughlin v. Florida. James Mahorner, then assistant attorney general of Florida, contented that his state’s anti-miscegenation cohabitation law served to ultimately protect the would-be mulatto child:

Mr. Mahorner also argued that the state should be allowed more power over marriage and sexual relationships than over other matters where race is involved because of the state’s responsibility for the welfare of children. He said the state could properly conclude that the children of interracial marriages may be at a psychological disadvantage and could therefore act to prevent their creation. ("Race, Sex and the Supreme Court", Anthony Lewis for the New York Times, Nov. 22, 1964.)

Indeed, the wisdom of repugnance was the main reasoning behind most anti-miscegenation laws early in the 20th century, so it is no accident that similar arguments concerning human cloning and the like would crop up today. The Nature piece itself sheds some light on the repulsion felt by those against exogamy:

In making symbolic distinctions between us and them visceral, disgust could potentially foster greater cohesion within groups by bringing people together in defence against a common out-group.

Moreover, some of the strongest proponents against interracial marriage argued with a fervor of revulsion much stronger than that of Kass. For example, when Seaborn Roddenbery (Democrat of Georgia) introduced the anti-miscegenation constitutional amendment to the House in 1912, his floor speech was filled with deep seeded intuitive repulsion to the very idea:

No blacker incubus ever fixed itself on this republic than the embryonic cancer of negro marriage to white people that has lately been in evidence. No more voracious parasite ever sucked at the heart of pure society and moral status than the one which welcomes or recognizes every where the sacred ties of wedlock between Africa and America. (Quote as reported by the Chicago Daily Tribune, "Denounces Legal Uniting of Races," Dec 12, 1912).

Yesterday's common held repugnances don't justify arguments for continued bigotry today, nor does Kass's repugnance for cloning, stem-cell research and genetic engineering, justify the cessation of scientific advancement. Unfortunately, Kass may be right about one thing, as far as society's opinion is concerned, the burden of proof does fall on those wishing to change the status quo -- as it did for those seeking to challenge racism throughout the 20th century. Bioethical concerns often elicit negative knee-jerk reactions in the populous as a whole and it will take many more Nature-like papers to educate and to change the views of the masses.

What’s in a name?

The journal Nature ran a piece on the wisdom of repugnance this week. The bio-conservative catch phase forwards that our initial negative gut reaction to bioethical issues is always right, no matter what the available data may indicate. Among the conclusions of the article were the following:

[The] work casts doubt on the idea that disgust embodies a deep-seated wisdom. Instead it provides an emerging portrait of an evolutionarily constrained emotion that is a poor guide to ethical action.

The entire idea that disgust imparts wisdom is rather farfetched. Indeed, the concept seems to revolve around a lack of knowledge. Psychologist's argue the basic emotion of repugnance or disgust evolved as a protective measure against coprophagia and other less savory acts. But when dealing with complex social issues such as bioethical questions, a gut reaction may be the least useful. Since the concepts are often abstract (think embryos in Petri dishes turning into baby clones), our intuitive response doesn’t hold much water:

[I]n the special case of bioethics, it also means thinking carefully about what is actually being proposed, rather than concentrating on outrageous scenarios that elicit emotion even while straining credulity.

If you have access to academic journals, you can find the article using this info: Jones, Dan. “The Depths of Disgust”. 2007 June 14. Nature. Vol 447.

Nature also ran an editorial response to the Brownback oped:

[T]he idea that human minds are the product of evolution is not atheistic theology. It is unassailable fact.

Yep. That is basically the argument forwarded by every scientist that read Brownback's editorial.

In other news, Massachusetts’ legislature didn’t choose to outlaw gay marriage according to the paper of record. To celebrate this momentous event, I whipped up the following graph (links: the evo data, the gay data):


I haven’t had time to run any statistics on it yet, but I’d say the correlation is strong (regrettably, my n is probably not large enough to approach significance). What does it all mean? Well for one, we are lumped with Turkey again.

Finally, to prove that I am not some über-liberal that would allow the “slippery slope” of gay marriage to lead to incest, bestiality, or worse. I’m strongly against the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints' (FLDS) practice of inbreeding. To be sure, my opposition is not one of repugnance, but of logical argument. According to MSNBC, the followers of the faith have the world’s highest known rate of fumarase deficiency -- an enzyme irregularity caused by multi-generational cousinly incest. Not a good idea. The deficiency often results in severe mental retardation. Moreover, half of all worldwide cases are within the church community. I wonder what the FLDS’ views on gay marriage are?

Let’s Capitalize Evolution

A momentary repose from formal essaying and a more traditional style blog entry:

To begin, I’m part of email list-serv for a somewhat elite university. The emails generally are informal messages re the evolutionary linguistics and behavior lab’s business. On Saturday though, an unnamed professor sent out this email:

for those of you who were dismayed, saddened, appalled, or in tears at brownback's comments about evolution, please read and disseminate jerry coyne's essay

So, first off, I’d like to help circulate the essay.

Second off, I'd like to point out that the Brownback article in the Times, was followed up by this Globe op-ed piece. Fun. (I would suggest you READ everything linked before continuing in the following order: Brownback, Coyne, and DeWolf, but you won’t, so I’ll paraphrase.)

Brownback doesn’t know much about evolution as Coyne says. Here’s what he got wrong:

"There is no one single theory of evolution, as proponents of punctuated equilibrium and classical Darwinism continue to feud today."

WRONG. Sorry Brownback, there are arguments about some very specific technical aspects of evolution, but the concept as a whole is accepted and understood as one theory in the biological community.

"The most passionate advocates of evolutionary theory offer a vision of man as a kind of historical accident."

Coyne does a really good job with this one and you should read his argument, here is the gist though: Evolution is mutation and selection. Selection is almost never* an accident. The evolution of humans was no random process, but a long, slow, unguided, event involving the selection of better surviving individuals (and their genes).

"If belief in evolution means simply assenting to microevolution, small changes over time within a species, I am happy to say, as I have in the past, that I believe it to be true."

Look a Crocoduck! Oh wait, no, that's a land mammal Evolving into a whale.
(Illustration by Carl Buell)

This argument is an oldie and a goodie. Unfortunately, the idea that microEvolution cannot lead to macroEvolution has no basis in fact. For example, the “missing link” fossils connecting land mammals to whales have been discovered (in the middle east coincidently). The majority of the fossils can be found at the University of Michigan’s Zoology Museum. I’ve personally seen them, and they are pretty cool: speciation in action. Indeed, you can read all about it here and here. Moreover, those making the “missing-link-no-speciation-argument” usually don’t understand a thing about speciation. Brownback, I’d recommend Coyne and Orr’s Speciation (I own the hardback version, it is that good).

"I believe wholeheartedly that there cannot be any contradiction between the two [science and religion]."

Well, I’ll have to leave this one up to old Dobzhansky. Since I’ve quoted him before, I’ll just direct you to his essay. Coincidently, he was arguing with both Christians and Muslims back in ’73. I guess we have more in common with Islamic Fundamentalists than we let on.

Now, Coyne’s arguments are not new nor are they profound. To be sure, in the ‘90s and early ‘00s (read zeros), most scientists wouldn’t engage with creationists because they thought the case for evolution was so self-evident that any freethinking person would have to conclude it was right. Apparently that assumption was false.

Why are we saddened by his op-ed piece then (as the above email implies)? In short, we are saddened because a man like this is already president. We are saddened because Brownback is wrong and inaccurate, yet most American's think he is right. We are saddened because the American education system isn't remedying the situation. We are saddened because people that think we lived with dinosaurs just built a museum and are preventing us from doing stem-cell research. We are saddened because we want to work on science, but instead we have to refute well-written yet ultimately false op-ed pieces. Finally, we are saddened because the future of America’s economy relies on a well-educated electorate, which is not possible as long as malicious arguments about Evolution persist.

Lastly, I’d like to make a point concerning the Globe piece:

"As several commentators have pointed out, these are trick questions, because 'evolution' was never defined. Do I believe that the Corvette has evolved over the years? Yes, I do. Do I think that it evolved by random mutation and natural selection? No, I don't.”

In order to clear up the confusion surrounding the words/phrases “evolution,” “natural selection,” and “theory," I propose that the scientific community begins to refer to Evolution with a capital “E." This is not an appeal for dogma in science, but for clarification in argument. Evolution is a well-tested specific scientific theory, not some fly-by-night hodgepodgery of contradictory ideas as Brownback and DeWolf imply. Creationists, or ID proponents, speak of Evolution as some impossible surreal event. It is not. It is a very specific set of well-tested scientific ideas, not their straw man. Until Evolution is better understood by the masses or found to be wrong by science, we should keep the “E”. Hopefully, better biology education in America will let us drop it sometime before the turn of the century, but I’m not holding my breath.

*I say almost never because sometimes animals are “selected against” by very random natural disasters. Usually this doesn’t have a large effect on the whole evolutionary processes, but sometimes the event is nearly worldwide or across an entire home range (like an asteroid), and this could effect evolution.

Cheek Swab Babies and Stem-Cell Research

In 2005 President Bush stood up with “21 remarkable families” and 21 remarkable children born from discarded fertility clinic embryos. Before the embryos were adopted, they were living a sort of quasi purgatory-like existence -- frozen forever in nihility. But when 21 unable-to-conceive parents brought the little guys in from the cold so to speak, the potential children were saved from in vitro oblivion.

Near the end of his May 2005 speech Bush drove home his message: “The children here today remind us that there is no such thing as a spare embryo. Every embryo is unique and genetically complete, like every other human being.” The conservative Christian stance on frozen embryos has never been better defined -- embryos are real people not just potential people.

This viewpoint has since been the heart of the stem cell debate. When scientists create a new stem cell line, they inadvertently have to destroy an existing embryo or, in the eyes of the President and many others, a real person. No technique had yet been able to overcome this ethical hurdle, till now.

The latest and greatest stem cell paper published in Nature this week describes a new source of totally pluripotent cells from full-grown adult somatic cells. In lay terms that means that custom made stem cell lines for everyone may be just a stones throw away (well, for mice at least). The coverage of the story has been huge and is sure to grow over the next few weeks, but what most have missed is the light it sheds on a little spoken of cloning technique with curious moral questions.

The technique is not entirely new, but as Alan Colman and Justine Burley in Nature point out, it has never proven very successful. The procedure involves using genetically unviable zygotes -- "pre-embryos" that is -- to create new stem cell lines. Normally, these zygotes are discarded by in vitro fertilization clinics, since they are genetically dead and unable to become full-fledged embryos or people. But what Dieter Egli and others have managed to do is use these lifeless vessels to create new stem cell lines and bona fide cloned mice. In other words, clones from stem cells (not entirely new, but they did it without destroying a new embryo).

Though the technique has yet to be proven in humans, it raises a peculiar ethical question: if one considers frozen embryos to be real people, should one consider stem cells, which can now be used to create clones (i.e. people) without destroying an embryo, potential people too? Which is to say, in theory, the technique could be used to return the 60 or so federally funded stem cell lines back into embryos, and thus back into potential people.

All right, that’s a bit of an exaggeration. Many of these lines contain contaminates and irregularities, plus the procedure may not work so well in humans. But, this research opens the door of possibility. Some of these cells could someday be returned to embryonic promise -- back into real people in the eyes of the Bush administration.

I’ll skip the philosophical implications here about the soul inherent with a life-begins-at-conception worldview (for instance, where has it been for these cell lines, floating above the Petri dish waiting for reinsertion, lost in the now defunct purgatory, hanging out with Jerry Falwell somewhere?) and get right to the point: as scientists continue to delve into the field of embryonic development, the view of cells in Petri dish as people becomes more and more indefensible.

If the technique proves workable for humans, every cell in our bodies becomes a potential person, a cloned person to be sure. And the creation of this clone no longer involves the destruction of embryos (as it normally would for humans). That of course is still years off, but this week’s announcement brings us one step closer to a future where Petri dish babies are possible and cells from a simple cheek swab are almost people. Any new presidential veto for research won't change this reality.

Why Creation Museums Are Bad for America

I remember not too long ago encountering a National Geographic lead story about evolution. "Was Darwin Wrong?" it was called. The cover image was breathtaking: a chameleon's head, macro-lens style, with scales and colors visible. As the curators of the newly opened Creation "Museum" in Kentucky would attest, this lizard's amazing abilities to change color stem not from natural selection or survival mechanisms, but instead from God's will. Indeed, with a white background and no predators in sight, it seems that they may be right: the lizard in the image was either trying to communicate with another unseen chameleon out-of-frame or simply attempting to adjust his temperature to the studio lighting conditions. Either way, communication and temperature regulation are never classified as survival mechanisms.

Not two years after the magazine's cover story finally put to rest the ago-old question "Was Darwin Wrong?" (with a resounding "No", to be sure), the magazine's website reported on another disturbing truth: less than 14% of the United States population believes Darwinian evolution -- without theistic elements -- to be the most likely explanation for the diversity of life found on the planet. That puts the United States second to last, only behind Turkey, in its inability to accept modern biology's most fundamental premise.

I'll let that notion sink in for a second by repeating the most important phrase: only behind Turkey. Of all western nations, the United States is best classified with the almost Islamic fundamentalist state in terms of its scientific literacy concerning evolution. And as anti-evolution museums, TV debates, and street-side preachers continue to proliferate across America, you're sure to never hear that fact repeated.

Indeed, the disturbing truth about Creation Museums, Kirk Cameron TV interviews (complete with crocodile-headed duck chimeras), and "alternative" biology courses, is not that they fully misinterpret the natural world, but instead that they deny the American people a chance to stand up with the rest of the industrialized planet and proclaim, "We are more educated than a nation that cheered Zane and Busey's Valley of the Wolves."

Modern biology has shown time and again that the evidence for evolution is "overwhelming," but creation mythologists continue to rewrite history and un-educate the American populous with a wholesale exploitation of the Bible. To quote Theodosius Dobzhansky's famous essay concerning this revisionist view of history: "It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts ... the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness." Indeed, it may be only inside the walls of 2800 Bullittsburg Church Road that true blasphemy occurs.

As America strives to maintain its global dominance in technological and biomedical fields, these seemly benign proclamations of faith -- like a twenty foot dinosaur panorama complete with prehistoric children -- serve only to further our decline into scientific illiteracy. Even today, less than half of the American people can give a decent definition of DNA. And, as politicians continue to debate stem-cell research, cloning, abortion, human sexuality, and sex-education, a population that believes man cohabited with T-Rex is sure to make decisions that will ultimately doom America's dominance in almost every important industrial field, save perhaps entertainment.