Jus' Sayin'

When medicine -in this day & age- has to deal with a pile of "medical" garbage magically transmuted into "real" medicine in the mind of a political hack...

it's no wonder that real scientists and researchers who spend endless hours, blood, sweat and tears at work...that are hit again and again with the cold whip of comunal criticism, sometimes dispair...

Especially, when all you need to "educate" the masses is to claim to see the "answer"...and if your bullshit is good enough, fanning the flames of madness can be had with but the conjured image of an idea...

Noble reflection of reality and inner knowledge....an intimate connection to THE answer for us all?...

uh....you be the judge....

"Storm" live by Tim Minchin

Just too good to let slip by....

Tim Minchin graciously provided for purview a wonderful live version of STORM

(lyrics posted here).

Enjoy....

Elevating Science, Elevating Democracy

Very nice and well written piece in the New York Times.

"The knock on science from its cultural and religious critics is that it is arrogant and materialistic...So the story goes...But this is balderdash. Science is not a monument of received Truth but something that people do to look for truth."

The Emperor’s postmodern clothes

The often over the top relativism in much of today’s academic environment (perhaps with emphasis in the humanities) is an increasingly frustrating phenomenon. The seemingly stunning disregard for evidential empiricism and apathy towards observable reality has resulted, for example, in the metastasis of un-proven and dubious medical modalities into the very institutions charged to protect reason and critical thought.

Here is a humorous comparative list translating some “politically correct” phrases into what is really meant when they are uttered. Postmodernism is an interesting philosophical exercise with respect to human social interactions, but it does have one major drawback if extended beyond the realm of the mind – reality.

A brief guide to deconstructing academically fashionable phrases for the uninitiated (partial exerpt)

David A. Levy

All points of view are equally valid

…….I am willing to abandon all logic and evidence just to maintain the illusion that I am being open-minded and fair.

There is no objective reality

…….except for what I’m saying right now.

In our culture, empiricism is over-privileged

…….I don’t have any facts to back up my argument.

I’m not saying better,I’m saying different

…..I’m saying better.

Let us start a dialogue

….Let me start a monologue.

This warrants more conversation

…I can’t believe that you have the temerity not to agree with me.

Don’t you think that sounds kind of racist?

….good luck disagreeing with me now.

One can prove anything with statistics

…I should have paid more attention in stats class.

The interreferential nature of our phenomenological field can be neither deconstructed nor decontextualized from our ontological meta-narrative

…Don’t I sound really intellectual and hip?

Science is merely one more opinion

…My Uncle Bill told me so.

Ref: Skeptical Inquirer Vol32, No. 6 Nov/Dec 2008

Understanding Chopra woo

Another reason to support separation of "church" and medicine...

Being that there are a lot of folks who think Dr. Chopra has unique qualifications and solidly researched support for his quest to "integrate" scientific medicine with whispy shades of a strange belief based system -religion- here are two well put together posts regarding Deepak Chopras modus operandi.

Pharyngula 2006:

"Chopra is a doctor, supposedly, but every time I read something by him that touches on biology, he sounds as ignorant as your average creationist. He also writes incredibly poorly, bumbling his way forward with a succession of unlikely and indefensible claims. "

Skeptico 2005
"Skepticism has become a legitimate form of inquiry that Deepak parenthetically acknowledges (in a left-handed sort of way) as occasionally laudable, another refrain we often hear in the form of “I’m a skeptic too, but…,” where skepticism is fine as long as it is someone else’s codswallop under the microscope."

It is important to note that Chopra, over the years, has developed whole made up world views from stunningly naive, flimsy and often outright wrong assumptions about the actual nature of phenomena around him.

Mind you he has said some pretty interesting things regarding human wisdom and how we can all get along but this guy is just as fallible and screwed up as any of us. He really needs to get off that high horse and admit it though.

If Chopra wants to promulgate a belief system, that's fine. What he can't -or at least shouldn't be aloud to do- is force this system on everybody else. This is exactly what he would like to do imposing "magic" based medicine onto science based medicine.

He should just get real, put on a priest robe, stick to teaching ancient Hindu wisdom and call it good.

On the critical need for an educated populace and transparent government

"A popular government without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to Farce, or a Tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance. And a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

-James Madison

Vote

Here in colorado we were able to cast our vote a while ago and many of us did.

For those who haven't or couldn't today is THE day. It looks like the country is in for a big turn out and history is in the making whatever your choice.

Hopefully you've considered the issues through all the sophistry and rhetoric.

Hopefully reason, inclusion and clear thinking surface as the new focus for national governance.

Hopefully most of us will excersize our basic civic duty and VOTE.

The science of economy

The process of learning necessarily implies that any held opinions and concepts need to be continually examined, re-examined and -in light of new information- often modified or expanded upon to better fit a larger picture of understanding. This takes time, leads to many twists & turns and can frustrate a lot of people!

For example, it can put one at complete odds with a "faction" of people and yet alternatively, at other times, in solid agreement with that same crowd. This goes for a plethora of 'categorized' groups- many of whom are polar opposites of each other! Granted, there are always those folks with whom the only thing you ever find in common with is the air that’s breathed!

On the one hand, we need to acknowledge and consider solid reasoning while, on the other hand, take issue with hubris & bullshit no matter the origin- be they liberals, conservatives, independents....neocons, neosocialists, neoluddites, isolationists, consumerists, comunalists,...theocons, fundies, dogmatists, apologists... bioluddites, nihilists, primitivists, anarchists, globalists, anti-globalists, corporatists, anti-corporates...yadda… yadda…

Obviously, categorizing ourselves in these ways is quite arbitrary anyway and is really only marginally useful if you think about it a while. In fact, I find even the most stalwart extremists I know succeed only in fooling themselves much of the time.

The reality is we are quite schizophrenic when it comes down to it and can be described -at one moment or another in varying degrees- with any of the spectrum of descriptive adjectives we've come up with so far. We are Narcissus and Goldmund blended -a bizarre fusion of tangled humanity. On the other hand, many of us strive to reach out for that “candle in the night” in a search for the truer nature of things.

In that vein, I've been following a variety of economic topic threads with the goal of trying to understand the bigger economics conversation a little better…Short take so far is nothing new. That is, 'purism' of any sort doesn't work and striving for a smeared and messy, yet transparent and educated participatory "middle" seems most realistic -even with its concurrent complexities. Here the gorilla in the room -whatever it is for you- becomes a more benign presence and allows for more 'humane' versions of free market (& capitalist) economies of scale.

Anyway, thought you might be intrigued with this economics book list I'm building up. It's proving useful as a data base for the so called "dismal science" and offers tools to differentiate between the "wheat & the chaff" and what's already right & what's not.

Though my keenest interests lie elsewhere -actually waaaay elsewhere- I guess it's important to have some working awareness of a topic that so affects us all. If you have any favorite economy book, lectures, or other suggestions, please send them along!

Economics book list (partial):

Game Theory: Analysis of Conflict

Economics and the Theory of Games

The Worldly Philosophers

Nudge

New Ideas from Dead Economists

Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science

The Undercover Economist

The Race Between Education and Technology

The Mind of the Market

Poverty Traps

Inequality in America

Social Movements: Identity, Culture and the State

Carl Sagan: A thousand years of darkness

The importance of questioning not just the permanence of the stars, but also the justice of slavery can not be overstated...

...only then will history not -once again- be damned to repeat itself.

Carl at his best.

StevenPinker: on the decline of violence

....or it helps to continually learn, listen & understand -as best we can- when trying to affect change in the ways of the world.

In that regard here is an interesting review of Steven Pinkers lecture (& upcoming book) with respect to the study of human violence from a historical perspective...important to "consider as one considers".

Of course regarding violence, things can easily go to hell in a hand basket -and often do- for a variety of reasons...still, teasing out these observable phenomena can prove very useful in understanding human collaboration.

Steven Pinker on the decline of violence

"Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard, begins his presentation with an image of corpses on a truck, being taken from Auschwitz concentration camp. The image is one of many characteristic of the 20th century, a century that included brutality under Stalin, Hitler, Pol Pot and the genocide in Rwanda. The 21st century, which has barely started, already includes the brutality of Darfur and the daily destruction in Iraq.

These sorts of images can lead us to thinking that modernity brings terrible violence. Perhaps native people lived in a state of harmony that we’ve departed from.

This, Pinker tells us, is bullshit. “Our ancestors were far more violent than we are.” We’re probably living in the most peaceful time of our species’s existence, a statement that seems almost obscene in light of Darfur and Iraq.

The decline of violence, he tells us, is a fractal phenomenon - we see it over the centuries, the decades and the years. That said, we see a tipping point in the 16th century - the age of reason - particularly in England and Holland.

Until 10,000 years ago, all humans were hunter gatherers. This is the group that some believe lived in primordial harmony - there’s no evidence of this. Studying current hunter-gatherer tribes, the percent of male adults who die in violence is extraordinary - from 20 to 60% of all males. Even during the violent 20th century, with two world wars, less than 2% of males worldwide died in warfare.

Moving slightly further forward, we can see that violent punishment was common in the Bible - Moses tells his followers to kill all the men and married women of a village and rape the virgins. The death penalty was used for murder, idolatry, disrespecting your parents and “collecting sticks on the sabbath”.

The Middle Ages were filled with mutilation and torture as routine punishments for trangressions we’d punish with fines today. This was merely another charming feature of a time that featured passtimes like “cat burning”, dropping cats into a fire for entertainment puposes… Some of the most creative inventions of the Middle Ages were fantastically cruel forms of corporal punishment.

One on one death has plummeted through the middle ages, with an “elbow” of the curve in the 16th century. Despite a slight uptick in the 1960s - “perhaps those who thought that rock and roll would lead to a decline in moral values had it right” (joking) - we’ve seen two orders of magnitude fall in one on one violence from the middle ages to today. State sponsored violence has also fallen sharply - we’ve seen a 90% reduction in genocide since the end of the cold war. State on state conflicts are dropping every decade.

So why do we so mispercieve the violence of our society? For one thing, our reporting is better. AP is more likely to cover a war somewhere on the planet than a 16th century monk. We’re subject to a cognitive illusion - memorable events (brutal murder) are judged to be more probable than they actually are. Finally, our standards tend to change faster than our behavior. We may be offended by capital punishment today because it no longer fits with our vision of ourselves, but it’s worth remembering that not long ago, that sort of punishment was exceedingly common and there wasn’t strong protection of rights in the courts to prevent it from taking place.

So why is violence becoming less common? He offers four explanations:

1) Hobbes got it right. “Life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” In anarchy, there’s a temptation towards pre-emptive violence, hurting the other guy before he hurts you. But with the rise of the Leviathan - the State - there’s a monopoly on violence. This helps explain why we still see violence in the absence of the state - zones of anarchy, failed states, street gangs.

2) In the past, we had a widespread sentiment that life was cheap. As we’ve gotten better at prolonging life, we take life more seriously and are more reluctant to take life.

3) We’re seeing more non-zero sum games, as people discover forms of cooperation that can benefit both parties, like trade and shared peace dividends. These zero-sum games come with technology, because it allows us to trade with more people. People become more valuable live than dead - “We shouldn’t bomb the Japanese because they built my minivan.”

4) Finally, Pinker leans on Peter Singer to speculate about “the expanding circle”. By default, we empathize with a small group of people, our friends and family. Everyone else is subhuman. But over time, we’ve seen this circle expand, from village to clan to tribe to nation to other races, both sexes and eventually other species. As we learn to expand our circles wider and wider, perhaps violence becomes increasingly unacceptable."

A non-zero sum game of human to human interaction makes the most intuitive sense to me and is reminiscent of aspects of evolutionary game theory, though the "expanding circles" notion is intriguing. However, Peter Singer goes way too far in other writings where he or at least some of his readers manage to confound unrelated ideas into a bizzaro house of cards version of 'animal rights' mindlessly parroted, overused and abused by 'animal rights' activists.

It’s likely, that a combination of Pinkers’ hypotheticals blend together –possibly along with other intangibles- to affect this fascinating fractal phenomenon observed as a general reduction in human on human violence.

What is going on that is right is as important to know as all that is going wrong. All in all this presentation offers some interesting food for thought.

Acupuncture: still no point to the point...

This has been a summer full of distractions and challenges needing a lot of attention. Add to that a touch of blog writer “blues” and you get a dry spell regarding postings. Consequently, this blog –not to mention the new blog baby - has been neglected and hungry for forward movement and novel discussion.

Hopefully, this little post will get things going again. All in all, this is a fun and gratifying way of expressing ideas and thoughts and helps to keep the mind sharp and attentive.

The following is a comment on my “Veterinary acupuncture” post that, although friendly and thoughtful, latches on to a few canards and fallacies in order to defend the concept of acupuncture as a viable medical therapy. Obviously, I disagree and felt compelled to write a quick response which follows the commentators blurb.

"Unfortunately there are far too many veterinarians, physicians and researchers who dismiss acupuncture as a hoax or as in this case lacking adequate scientific and clinical proof to warrant its use. Clearly the problem has been that clinical and scientific studies of acupuncture have lacked adequate controls. Without proper controls study results are nothing more than hearsay. However more recent scientifically controlled studies would argue that perhaps acupuncture therapy has merit. In this regard recent studies using microarray technology to examine acupuncture effects on gene expression in peripheral blood are no less than fascinating. For example Shiue et al (2008) have shown that acupuncture therapy significantly reduced allergic rhinitis symptoms, including nasal symptoms, non-hay fever symptoms, and sleep in human patients and this was accompanied by and alteration in the balance between T-helper 1 and T-helper 2 cell-derived proinflammatory versus anti-inflammatory cytokines in the blood. Such studies are paving the way for a more scientific explanation of acupuncture's effects. One only has to examine the recent fMRI studies of acupuncture effects on brain activity in humans and animals to conclude that acupuncture point stimulation has remarkable effects on brain activity compared to non-acupoint stimulation (see for example Napadow et al., Hum Brain Mapp, 2005). These are real effects and whether they underlie the ability of acupuncture to alter pain sensation in humans and animals remains to be proven with certainty, but nonetheless acupuncture has the capability to change brain activity. In our own studies we have found that acupuncture can prevent tumor growth if given at the very early stages of tumor cell proliferation. Conversely if acupuncture is applied later on after a tumor begins to grow, it significantly enhances tumor growth, which is why acupuncture is typically not recommended as a treatment for cancer. On the other hand acupuncture provides clear relief of pain in animal models of neuropathic pain and inflammatory pain. These effects are real folks and I have seen them first hand, so I refuse to believe that acupuncture is of no value in the medical community, be it veterinary or human medicine. There is evidence that acupuncture does not work in certain individuals and works well in others, so there is clearly individual variation in the ability of acupuncture therapy to work effectively. Taking all of this into account, I would argue that you shouldn't dismiss acupuncture until you have tried it!”

The real unfortunate issue is not that acupuncture is dismissed as a hoax, but that – even with a preponderance of disappointing evidence- this modality continues to expect unearned acceptance.

Though plagued with poorly designed studies that are often replete with equivocal results or laced with regional geographic bias, better designed acupuncture studies are out there. However, the news is not good for any real acupuncture effect. The infamous placebo –among other problems (i.e.; expectation, suggestion, counter-irritation, operant conditioning, and other psychological mechanisms) - continue to confound even “modern” acupuncture technique (that is to say; those acupuncture practices that use needling and claim no association with the ‘elam vital’, points, or meridians).

The studies you mention do not address a critical issue with respect to acupuncture- whether or not its putative effects exist. The attempt to correlate a claimed acupuncture effect to epigenetic influence puts the cart before the horse (and is reminiscent of what ‘nutritional supplement support’ advocates claim for a favorite herb, vitamin, or tonic du jour) and purported brain responses apparently observed by fMRI are interesting but it seems apparent that any mechanical puncturing of the dermis –on points or no points, shallow or deep- will effect changes.

There is little or no evidence that acupuncture is effective for any real medical disease (i.e.; neoplasm) nor, for that matter, for less well defined symptoms (including chronic pain, depression, allergies, asthma, arthritis, bladder and kidney problems, constipation, diarrhea, colds, flu, bronchitis, dizziness, smoking, fatigue, gynecologic disorders, headaches, migraines, paralysis, high blood pressure, PMS, sciatica, sexual dysfunction, stress, stroke, tendonitis and vision problems). Interestingly, promising and plausible mechanisms –if any- seem associated with completely different modalities that are confused with acupuncture (i.e.; TENS, psychosomatic, placebo).

Seeing acupuncture effects “first hand”, no matter how impressive, is simply anecdotal testimony and adds nothing to a scant evidence and science based foundation supporting acupuncture. In short, the accumulating evidence suggests most of the perceived beneficial effects of acupuncture are probably due to the power of suggestion and forms of the ‘placebo effect’.

Whether or not acupuncture is of any value to the medical community might be better discussed in a philosophy of science course. For example, acupunctures place might be better off in the realm of personal belief or preference (i.e.; priest or shaman) and well outside of medicine (If you believe in it, it will make you think you feel better – that’s your business).

As for having tried acupuncture…been there done that. I’ve also extensively observed its use in animals by certified veterinary acupuncturists.

Not impressed.

Humans are still evolving

We are but a point on the thread of time
An interesting article “Sprinting down the evolutionary highway” written by Linda Hurst touches on an important realization that has been steadily emerging from the field of evolutionary sciences- humans are still evolving.

Steven Jay Gould once noted that “there’s been no biological change in humans in 40,000 years or 50,000 years. Everything we call culture and civilization we’ve built with the same body and brain.” Other eminent scientists through time have also supported the idea that human evolution has stopped or slowed to a trickle. The reasoning partly has something to do with reaching a “survival threshold”.

For example, 50,000 years ago modern humans made a “stunning leap forward” and began to develop a finely nuanced use of cooperative abstraction thereby giving birth to potent civilizations. The theory goes that upon having reached this level –a pivotal point where survival is reasonably assured- larger evolutionary pressures began to slow.

In fact, one way or another, the idea that the evolutionary process has somehow stopped or become just a side note for present day humanity has been, until recently, a popular notion.

Fantastic advances in genomic research are revealing just how wrong these assumptions have been. It appears that through the different recent developments of human civilization –the transition from hunter gathering to agriculture to the industrial revolution- biology and environment have been interacting at what seems to be an increasing pitch. In other words, it seems that evolutionary pressures for humanity have been –not static or stopped- but actually increasing for the last several thousand years.

John Hawks an anthropologist researching these issues notes “We are more different genetically from people living 5,000 years ago than they were different from Neanderthals.” His claim stems from studies he and others have done involving the analysis of 3.9 million genetic markers in 270 peoples from four groups (Han Chinese, Japanese, Africa’s Yoruba people, and northern Europeans).

They found evidence that about 1,800 recent mutations occurred in the last five thousand years representing qualities such as skin color and partial resistance to disease. This represents about seven percent of the human genome and suggests that there has been a steady accumulation of beneficial gene mutations occurring during this time. This is a rapid rate, far faster than previously thought possible.

It appears that part of the reason has to do with the above described level of human success. The transition to a changed diet, settled habitats, and higher survival (at least to breeding) rates did not slow evolutionary pressures; they pushed them to a higher level.

Apparently the exponential growth in human population from about five million to today’s six and a half billion has created a cauldron of possible evolutionary potential. As humanity spread throughout the world different groups have had to adapt to specific regional demands (i.e.; skin color, malaria resistance, HIV/AIDS resistance, dietary tolerances) thereby pushing evolution along. Also, the shear numbers of humans has allowed beneficial mutations to pop up more frequently, then rapidly spread through the population.

Mutations are spurious and accidental changes to an organism’s DNA that may or may not propagate throughout the species. Crudely speaking, if they offer a significant enough benefit, they become part of the established genome. What is especially interesting is that the general genetic “volume” or number of genes from where the incredible diversity of life originates is relatively small. The portion dedicated to constructing proteins- and essentially us- is even tinier. According to Olivia Judson “the proportion of a genome that contains the instructions to make proteins is tiny; in humans; it may be less that 2 percent. So there’s a lot of other DNA that will experience mutations.” She notes that a significant proportion of these could be dedicated to regulating and controlling how protein coding happens. For example, how these genes orchestrate the order, sequence, and timing of protein production represent the difference between a human or a lump of algae.

It is these “regulatory” genes that might provide a big clue towards understanding evolutionary change at the genetic level. It seems that beneficial mutational changes in these genes – those that manage and control the building block genes- might account for many of the evolutionary changes we are talking about here. In fact, there is more of a difference in complexity between these regulatory genes between species than there is between protein coding genes. These regulatory genes are like puppet masters manipulating a limited number of proteins in infinitely different ways producing the variety of life.

As important as mutations to the protein coding genes might be, there seems to be far more mutational potential and actual change occurring in the larger pool of regulatory genes. Fascinating examples include two noted changes in gene variation reported by geneticist Bruce Lahn that may have affected changes in brain complexity and size.

One change occurred over 37,000 years ago is now observed in seventy percent of the population and the other appeared only 5,800 ago has already spread to thirty percent of the population. Laun notes “Of particular interest are the ASPM and Microcephalin genes. In each of these genes, a new sequence variant arose in the recent past of human history and has since swept to exceptionally high frequency around the world, presumably because of strong positive selection operating on the new variant...These findings suggest the tantalizing possibility that the human brain is till undergoing rapid adaptive changes.” He adds that “Our environment and the skills we need to survive in it are changing faster than we ever imagined. I would expect the human brain, which has done well by us so far, would continue to adapt to those changes.”

These changes do not have to be great seismic events to affect the ebb and tide of human evolution. Part of the drive for this change is the inexorable interplay between genes and the selective pressures of a constantly changing environment.

The point is that evolution is not done with humanity by a long shot. As we peer deep into the inner workings of the gene, we find -to the consternation of some- that it is peering right back at us.

Eugenic fallacies: bastardizing Darwin’s dream

….a glimpse into human delusions of superiority

Observing the variety of human faces one comes across, you will note a seemingly infinite variety of different features. There are oval, round, pear shaped, oblong, rectangular heads all with varying degrees and colors of curly, straight, knotted, and frizzled hair. Particular features such as noses and eyes come in a dizzying array of shapes and sizes. Indeed, the more you look, the more differences you may note.

However, if you take a step back and look at these faces from a distance, you will realize they are all basically very similar. From this viewpoint, the human species is not that different one from the other. This doesn’t seem to be so noteworthy on the surface; we are all just part of a grand family of humans. However, it’s these seemingly trivial differences –mostly irrelevant physical features- that have lied at the core of horrific wars, genocides, prejudices, and other countless horrors.

So it is that this subtle illusory separation between “him and me” also found fertile ground in the burgeoning world of nineteenth century physical anthropology. This was about the time when Darwin was completing his seminal journal “The voyage of the Beagle.” It was also a time when slavery had only just been abolished in England, and was still practiced and hotly debated around the world, including the United States.

It was a time were superficial morphological differences were literally associated with assumed biological differences between humans. With little or no knowledge of human origins and the biological sciences (i.e.; genetics, molecular biology, anthropology) it was a time where the vagaries of assumption, culture, and belief held even more sway than it does today. Humanity tended to be “classified” based on appearances- shades of which unfortunately are alive and well today.

An enlightening glimpse of Darwin’s views at the time can be seen in his work “Descent of Man” where he states “In regard to the amount of difference between the races, we must make some allowance for our nice powers of discrimination gained by long habit of observing ourselves” Even in an era of mainstream racism, he keyed into an old and chronic problem that would soon give rise to new strange and bizarre worldviews, usurping Darwin’s theories and bastardizing them with wholly unrelated and myopic biases. One such worldview was anthropological eugenics.

The bulk of these deep seeded prejudices go far back into the deep socio-cultural origins of humanity as well as the obvious and at the time inexplicable physical differences between humanity. However, the seeds of the “modern” eugenics movement can be seen growing among events in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

For example, Carl von Linnaeus while creating his great opus magnum- the binomial system of nomenclature (still in use today)- contributed to the concept of human sub speciation. He described subgroups such as afer (African), americanus (Native American), asiaticus (east Asian), europaeus (Euoropean), and monstrosus (an undefined loose group including other native peoples). This classification reflects on the general perception of the times- that peoples were considered different enough to be distinctly divided to this level.

Later, the concept of physical anthropology as a science crystallized with the work of Paul Broca, who studied craniometry in the nineteenth century as a means of classifying humans. He wrote an influential textbook that according to Spenger wells “served to galvanize the scientific community. Soon everybody wanted to measure skulls.”

An amateur scientist from England, Francis Galton (a “convert” of Brocas) funded a variety of research projects and eventually focused on measuring everything on the human body as Wells notes “in an effort to categorize human diversity scientifically.”

This mass of measurements had little coherence and could be interpreted in many ways opening the doors for nascent pseudoscience to creep into the picture. Here is where one thread of the eugenics story begins to take shape. Wells notes “This could have been dismissed as no more than an eccentric’s dabblings had his fascination with human classification not mixed with a misinterpretation of Darwin’s theory of natural selection to produce a potent brew.”

Though Darwin himself believed humanity was essentially equal with respect to biology, the same could not be said for some of his supporters. It was Herbert Spencer, a philosopher who, among others, began to twist the original intent of natural selection beyond recognition to serve his own peculiar interests. He coined the term “survival of the fittest” and used it to justify the sharp social divisions in Britain.

This train of thought expanded towards attempting to “scientifically” justify differences in culture and perceived superiority of the time. As Wells notes “Combined with the Victorian obsession with classification, this leap from ‘might makes right’ to a belief that these cultural differences must be definable using scientific methods encouraged the growth of the eugenics movement.”

It was not until the end of the nineteenth century that the eugenics movement really began to take hold. According to Wells “the reasons are complex and have to do with Victorian ideas of self-improvement, interest in new scientific fields such as genetics and the wealth of emerging data from physical anthropology.” The rest is history.

From the United States to Europe, varying strains of eugenic movements and philosophies sprouted “to improve the gene pool of humanity.” One of the darker versions was used partly as “justification” for the cult like Nazi party to proceed with the systematic extermination of millions of innocents.

The “modern” eugenics movement of the twentieth century was essentially based on an odd blending of old philosophies and delusions of grandeur mixed with ad hoc associations -flat wrong interpretations- of biology, statistics, and natural selection.

As these misguided and destructive movements faded from acceptance, their histories and sad details are slowly dissolving from much of public consciousness- this is not good. There are many today who confound and confuse bits and pieces of this pseudoscience with real science. These inaccuracies are again being “re-bastardized” into new false assumptions decrying the evils of a new “social” Darwinism completely ignoring how the story really began and perhaps missing a larger point. The fact is, evolution has never stopped tinkering with humans and there really is no “superior” version of humanity- just versions (and -so far- very slightly differing versions at that!).

Humanity is on the threshold of understanding the secrets of the genetic code and is close to stepping itno an era of unimagined potential and clear dangers. This makes it ever more critical that we shed the suffocating trappings of a "victorian ego-centrist" world view and move on. Not an easy task- but so worth the effort.

Ref:

Wells, S. The journey of man. Random house. New York. 2003

Shiva’s dance

through the curtain of consciousness

In a fascinating conversation with Susan Blackmore, the renowned neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran (Professor of Neurosciences and Psychology and Director of the Center for Brain and Cognition at the University of California, San Diego) notes that our conscious existence is “…like the whole dance of Shiva thing, that you think you are an aloof spectator watching the universe, but actually you’re just a part of the cosmic ebb and flow of the world…” That is, we are not separate entities from our bodies- no immaterial soul that can float away from the functional machinations of the brain.

A decade ago, it may have been strange to hear a scientist talk so boldly about what heretofore has been the strict realm of the metaphysical meanderings of philosophy and religion. This is because, until now, the mysterious happenings behind the veil of how our brain functions including the question of the “self” - what consciousness is- have been unanswerable dilemmas.

Stanislas Dehaene aptly describes the brain as “the outcome of five hundred million years of tinkering. It consists in millions of distinct pieces, each evolved to solve a distinct yet important problem for our survival. Its overall properties result from an unlikely combination of thousands of receptor types, ad-hoc molecular mechanisms, a great variety of categories of neurons and, above all, a million billion connections criss-crossing the white matter in all directions.”

In spite of this incredible complexity and the challenge it brings, our understanding of brain function is getting better as neuroscientists manage to peer deep into the minds inner workings gathering significant- and rapidly growing- empirical evidence of actual brain function.

For example, one of Ramachandrans early experiments using a stereogram shed light on how the brain processes perception and merges it with conscious awareness. He inputed separate images in each eye of an observer and found that even if their eyes processed an image in two different ways an internal “stereomechanism” extracted and congealed the information in such a way that the brain consciously saw not individual images, but one in full stereo.

This hinted at how the brain creates mechanisms for efficiently gathering and presenting data into a flexible “package” or self in order to react appropriately to given sensory inputs. In humans, this ability has been taken to breathtaking new levels of flexibility creating, he claims, a unique phenomenon- human consciousness.

In essence, ones “self” can not be separated from the “qualia” or experience¹ and no real separation between an “outer and inner” world really exists (this is where dualists disagree). However, the human brain seems to have an added capacity (as compared to other animals) to take these events and examine them recursively- this is the core of experiencing an event as yourself with the “feeling” of you. Ramachandran calls this added layer of analytic capacity a second parasitic brain or meta-awareness. It is not some separate ephemeris soul-like quality but an integral part of the brain.

The human ability to blend sensory experience with this added layer of “capacity” where it can be twisted and turned in a virtual environment is not a redundant computational loop- it actually forms a critical key to thinking.

Ramachandran notes “you’re doing it to fulfill a computational need, namely open ended symbol manipulation in your head. This is what we call thinking: coming up with outlandish conjectures which are made by the imagination, by juggling these symbols in your head. And closely linked to that is the emergence of language: being able to communicate these ideas, intentions, and thoughts with other people; and constructing a theory of other minds.”

These uniquely human traits stem from whatever evolutionary pressures occurred that created a need for this computational hat trick- to create a representation of a representation- to for example enable complex social interaction and cooperation. Part of the emergence of “self” could be due to a kind of “spatio-temporal smearing” as our brains create innumerable inferences from perception (think) and this could cause a sense of internal being.

This construct of how our brains integrate information resembles the Baysean Brain. Here the functions of meta-representation form part of the brains ability to perform according to Dehaens “optimal inferences and make optimal decisions based on the rules of probabilistic logic.”

In other words, the brain elaborates a mental “3-D picture” of the real world- plays with it in all kinds of ways (i.e.; stretching it , turning it inside out, imagining what its like to be in someone else’s shoes…) and finally comes up with -what it thinks- is the best way to respond to that real world. This phenomenon as a whole might be the key to the feeling of "self".

It becomes evident, based on these observations that our “self” seems to be part of an organic phenomenon intimately tied to the whirling activities of innumerable neurons and brain centers. In essence, it may be that our sense of "self" –that consciousness of being- is a temporal and spatial illusion, a “confabulation”, or a post-hoc rationalization.

This realization –if true- would not make life any less wondrous; on the contrary. As Ramachandran notes “It’s ennobling, rather than diminishing… You’re part of this grand scheme of things.” Indeed, poetically speaking our minds are like ghostly, delicately weaved curtains blowing in a cosmic wind that the universe - like a dancing "Shiva"- gently grasps and takes along as it breezes past.

NOTE: Listen to Dr Ramachandran discuss the mind in an illuminating lecture "A journey to the center of your mind".
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1)Ramachandran notes that the self and qualia are like two sides of the same coin, or better like a mobius strip. The two sides are just really manifestations of the same phenomenon.

Ref:

Blackmore, S. Conversations on consciousness. Oxford university press. Oxford, NY. 186-197. 2006

Beyond the placebo

….notes from the front

The concept of utilizing a placebo in the clinical setting is a topic of considerable interest to many practitioners who are genuinely concerned about today’s modern take on the sacred doctor/patient relationship. This issue plays a crucial role with many of the concerns practitioners have regarding the rise of Complementary and Alternative therapies and their heavy use of unsubstantiated therapeutics.

In this context, the clinical use of a placebo is -intentionally or not- utilized as a real entity represented as an object, treatment, or unit of some therapy. The evolving nature of modern medicine has been steadily peeling away at many of the fuzzier aspects of clinical placebo use. For instance, whether they suggestively cause the mind to change the course of a disease- they don’t, or if doctors can represent them as deceptive objects (pills, needles, or whatever) as a means to an end- they can’t.

This increasingly important distinction has become an important stumbling block for non-science based CAM medicine. In the same vein, modern science based medicine has had its own historical and current struggles with aspects of clinical placebo use.

However, where CAM is basically checkmated –no placebo means no CAM for the most part- scientific medicine is able to face this issue on various fronts and begin to genuinely understand the placebos illusive properties as well as delve deeper into the all important “human condition” that are its origins.

If you take a step back from a focus on clinical placebos and consider broader human characteristics that include deception, empathy, communication, and cultural biases the doors open for a more nuanced, fruitful, and effective doctor/patient relationship. Dr Ness at Science Based Medicine has a nice piece emphasizing the “grey scale” that occurs even in science based doctor/client relationships- especially in the area of communication and how these variables can challenge doctor/patient relationships.

For example, he notes that it is not always advisable to go through every single little detail of why a certain medication is prescribed or the exact probabilities for expecting some therapeutic outcome. In addition, patients help determine -to a degree- how the doctor communicates these details to them. This is true. The huge caveat here –the gorilla in the room for many CAM practitioners- is that unlike CAM this relationship is built upon an infrastructure of science and reason.

What makes this situation truly meaningful, accurate, and effective is that the necessarily shifting demands between the needs of the patient and the doctors’ own opinions and experience are threaded together with the “real world” tapestry of science and this defines the essence of evidence based medicine.

This is not always an easy task and the current health care crisis hinders this type of doctor/patient relationship while opening the doors for the superficial gratification CAM is only too willing to provide. That said, the benefits still far outweigh the hardships and hopefully dialogues such as these will add to the goal all proper doctors have- that of being effective and human healers.

Becoming conscious

Stepping through the door

Picture the calm surface of a bathtub full of water. Now take a baseball sized rock and drop it into the tub and watch the unfolding orchestra of undulating waves play out. If you observe closely you’ll note a first series of waves emanating outward and hit the edges of the tub creating new waves that then bounce back across the surface. This action repeats itself on and on until a wildly complex interplay of undulating waves produces a chaotic mass of movement. This instant where wave upon wave dance together is an important image because it reflects what might actually happen in our own brains.

The crucial point is that it is just this type of complex undulating interplay between neurons and brain centers that seem to lift sensory stimuli to the level of awareness and beyond. In essence, it seems that the path to consciousness is not really a path, but more a simultaneous chorus of neuronal interactions where the sum total of these effects- given enough time- provide the crucial stepping stone to awareness.

In the brain, if a stimulus input is strong enough to “awaken” a certain threshold of neurons they can, for example, fire synchronously creating oscillating waves of stimuli that eventually creates the pattern necessary for awareness. These firing rates (Hz) can vary widely and it seems only a narrow range of neuronal activity favors the appearance of consciousness.

Generally speaking neuronal firing rates range from 1 Hz to 250Hz. Lower ranges between 1-2 Hz (delta waves) reflect deep sleep, 4-8Hz (theta) drowsiness, 8-12 Hz (alpha) relaxed awareness, and 18-30 Hz diffuse attentive awareness. On top of these general oscillating patterns, the brain also exhibits smaller areas of intense activity that average 40 Hz and are called gamma rate oscillations- these are associated mostly with “consciousness”.

More intense the firing involves more brain modules and reflects a “fuller” experience- but up to a point. It seems that gamma rate oscillations provide just the right level of neuronal firing in order to reach that critical threshold- much like finding the right combination for the Stargate (need to watch the movie if you haven’t!).

Francis crick and Christof Koch believed that this gamma oscillation represented consciousness “per se” but over the years numerous studies of the 40Hz= consciousness theory have revealed a deeper and more profound connection.

Rita Carter notes “40 Hz activity marks information processing that has the potential of becoming conscious, providing it is “doubled up” or re-represented at a higher level. So, for example, an island of 40Hz firing in the sensory cortex is the first level representation of a sensory event which will be one of the “contents” of consciousness if- and only if- it triggers further 40 Hz activity in a part of the brain which produces higher-order or “whole” perceptions and/or concepts.”

In other words, as previously mentioned, it is the “dancing” interaction between the lower and higher regions of the brain that seems to give rise to consciousness- it is not a bottom to top sequence. Carter adds “Conscious perception, then, is not of these first-order representations. Yet nor does it seem to be just of the higher-order re-representations that follow. The “knowing of knowing” requires both the higher order representation and the lower order representation to be present in the brain at the same time, or at least close enough in time for them to merge.”

Of note she states that time is a part crucial of this process “Whereas a simple image becomes conscious in about 200 milliseconds, complex images take almost half a second to emerge.” Additionally there is a correlation between the complexity of consciousness and where in the brain it might emerge. According to Carter “You would also expect to see a parallel between the level of complexity of a “piece” of consciousness, and its place in the construction chain. And you do. Roughly, the more complex the perception, the further forward in the brain the neural activity relating to it extends.”

This time dependant process tied to all the described interplay implies that the “mind” is not one region or entity. This solidifies the fact that the workings of the mind obey laws of nature- like anything else. It plays out a temporally dependant to and fro feedback sequence of neuronal oscillations that eventually trip into consciousness.

One might ask, so what? Well, for one thing, if true (as observations indicate) it pretty much makes dualist mind/body theories untenable. If that weren’t enough, it also strikes at the heart of some of the “quantum consciousness” hubris as well. There are no detectable “non local” - no instantaneous- connections between minds. There is an incredibly complex symphony of activity that does occur, but it all happens inside your own skull.

These discoveries don’t make the phenomenon of consciousness any less sublime and beautiful. On the contrary, the truth is more beautiful than anything we could ever make up.

Ref:

Carter, R. Exploring Consciousness. Univ of California Press. Berkely, CA. 2002

The Clone frontier

ANDi (inserted DNA spelled backwards) is the first rhesus monkey cloned by embryo splitting

Dawn of a new age

A new press release from the US Federal Food and Drug Administration published yesterday is a big sign that the world of genetic research with all of its potential is not going away. On the contrary, this is likely an important salvo across the bow of public consciousness that this topic- along with all the issues it brings- can not be ignored or set aside for another time.

Whether we like it or not, the exploration of the gene continues to move forward with increasing significance and real world impact. According to the press release “after years of detailed study and analysis, the Food and Drug Administration has concluded that meat and milk from clones of cattle, swine, and goats, and the offspring of clones from any species traditionally consumed as food, are as safe to eat as food from conventionally bred animals.” This is probably only the beginning of a whole new category of evaluations and recommendations as the FDA struggles to keep up with the plethora of scientific advances and how they should be assimilated into the tapestry of everyday industry, consumption, and safety.

These findings agree with the National Academy of Sciences 2002 conclusions and were also examined by a peered reviewed group of independent scientific experts in cloning and animal health. In addition, this decision opens the doors for lifting the 2001 voluntary moratorium by US producers and the US Department of Agriculture is already convening meetings with the industry to “discuss efforts to provide a smooth and orderly market transition…”

If the related world of genetically modified agricultural produce is any indication, this news will prove a hot bed for public debate, discussion, and more. It’s an area of human endeavor that deserves major discussion as it forces us to face a whole spectrum of ethical, philosophical, and scientific considerations we can no longer ignore or set aside for later.

Like it or not, the future is here. If life is a series of changes- and this may prove seismic- then human civilization is on a threshold of a whole new era. Though, this technology is still pretty much in its pre-infancy, enough is known to make it very hard to step back and reverse its course. Having an informed idea of where science is with respect to cloning technology may serve to lessen some of the concern and provide ground for reasoned discussion as we attempt to navigate a world that is familiar and alien at the same time.

In a way, cloning is familiar because humans have been manipulating the genetic code of animals and plants for centuries attempting to mold nature towards more human friendly and accessible forms. The manipulation and creation of organisms through genetic engineering and cloning is a true extension of agriculture and engineering and reflects primordial human qualities.

Sam Harris wrote an interesting article “Mother Nature is Not Our friend” where he discussed the fact that there is no obvious special favor given to humans or any species for that matter regarding the “bounty” of nature and there is really no special meaning in our present status as Homo sapiens. He writes “Life is a continuous flux. Our nonhuman ancestors bred, generation after generation, and incrementally begat what we now deem to be the species homo sapiens- ourselves. There is nothing about our ancestral line or about our current biology that dictates how we will evolve in the future. Nothing in the natural order demands that our descendants resemble us in any particular way. Very likely, they will not resemble us. We will almost certainly transform ourselves, likely beyond recognition, in the generations to come.” This is pretty heady stuff, but if you think about it, very true.

Thirty years ago Apple and Microsoft were nascent concepts in the minds of some teenagers working out of a garage in a world where the dial telephone, radio, and three channels on the television served as bastions of human communication. Today, other teenagers have belt sized communication devices that provide instant access to hundreds of informational inputs and outputs the flow of which they deftly handle with a precision that would have seemed alien those 30 years ago. If you take a step back, one can almost see the fusion of man and machine already in the making.

The manipulation of genetic codes and whole organisms that is the frontier of genetic science seems to be a part of this type of expansion; where change paradoxically provides a foundation in some way for the survival of life- whatever the form. As Harris notes “Considering humanity as a whole, there is nothing about natural selection that suggests our optimal design…we are acquiring the tools that will enable us to attempt our own optimization. Many people think this project is fraught with risk. But is it riskier thanm doing nothing? There may be current threats to civilization that we cannot even perceive, much less resolve at our current level of intelligence. Could any rational strategy be more dangerous than following the whims of nature? This is not to say that our growing capacity to meddle with the human genome couldn’t present some moments of Faustian over-reach. But our fears on this front must be tempered by a sober understanding of how we got here.”

The machinations of humanities probing mind are now taking us beyond the constraints of our own biological evolution. Though fraught with risk and danger, a new world of genetic science with its potential for change, may open the doors to something wondrous.