Sunspots 718

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: He Lives argues that Matthew 18 should not be used for general church discipline.


Computing: Gizmo's Freeware identifies the 27 best web sites for wasting your time.

Gizmodo also reports that there are data hoarders -- people who collect lots and lots of files.

Environment: Earther describes some of the really bad things that global climate change may cause.


Health: NPR reports that changing patient's attitudes helps them to take the medicine, and for it to help them. Attitude changes included having patients interpret bothersome side effects as a signal that the medicine is working.

Gizmodo, and other sources, report on research that indicates that sleeping late on weekends doesn't make up for too little sleep on other nights.

Humor: (and Health) NPR reports on how using Car Talk's diagnostic methods helps doctors diagnose illness.


Politics: Michael Gerson says "The current investigations targeting the Trump administration are not partisan witch-hunts. They are the natural result when a leader surrounds himself with crooks, cronies and conmen."

Joel Anderson has a proposal which should end most or all of the controversy over abortion. But, he says, politicians don't want to solve the abortion issue -- it energizes voters too much.

NPR reports that flood disaster money is distributed in ways that favor the rich. Surprise!

Science: FiveThirtyEight explains why it's hard to show that global climate change really exist -- a politician throwing a snowball is more dramatic, and usually presented with more confidence.


The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, I believe, it is public domain. 

Thanks for looking!

Sunspots 698

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Christianity: Christianity Today reports that many US Christians hold heretical beliefs about the gravity of sin, the importance of worshiping with others, and the nature of the Holy Spirit.


Finance: (or something) Scientific American reports that there are now a million electrically powered autos in the US.

Food: Listverse on the origins of 10 common foods (including bagels, ice cream cones, and others.)

Health: Scientific American on doctors being slow to use new technology. (The article says that thermometers were resisted for a long time!)

History: About the life of Ella Mae Wiggins, a textile worker who became a leader in the struggle for better pay and conditions for textile workers, but who was shot to death in 1929, by textile mill security employees.

Politics: FiveThirtyEight has a solid analysis of how the Supreme Court responds to resistance to its actions from Congress and/or the President, based on the history of such situations.

Science: Scientific American tells us the function of a horse's tail. Really.


The graphic used in these posts is from NASA, hence, I believe, it is public domain.
Thanks for looking!

On the implementation of penicillin - Howard Florey, Edward Abraham, Ernst Chain, Norman Heatley and others

I recently read The Mold in Dr. Florey's Coat: The story of the Penicillin Miracle, by Eric Lax.

The book was a thorough study of the history of the discovery and implementation of penicillin, with World War II as a significant part of the historical background. The title comes from the idea of some of the scientists involved, that, if Britain were about to be conquered by the Germans, they could rub spores from the mold in their coats, and go to the U. S. to continue their work. It never came to that.

Penicillin is, or was, an important antibiotic. It was the first one used on a systematic basis, to treat infections. Although not used so much now, because bacteria have become resistant to it, and some people have developed allergies to it, derivatives of penicillin are still in use. One of my family members is currently taking amoxicillin.

There are several features of the book, and the story it tells, that are more broadly applicable.

1) Lax points out that many of the most important scientific developments of the 20th century were done on very small budgets, often as a sort of hobby by the person doing the work. That was true of the isolation and production of penicillin. Leeuwenhoek, the builder of the first microscope, was, of course, not a professional microscopist -- there were no such people.

2) The account of scientific discoveries (or other notable events) that is transmitted is often seriously distorted. That is, according to Lax, true of the original discovery of the mold that produced the first usable penicillin, by Alexander Fleming. I have often heard that Fleming discovered the bacteria-killing properties of the mold by accident. Lax indicates that that isn't exactly true. He was investigating. Fleming stopped working on penicillin, and Howard Florey, and others, took it up, but Fleming got much of the credit for the development of the drug. Florey and his group, with little or no help from Fleming, did that.

Eventually, Fleming, Florey, and Ernst Chain were awarded the Nobel Prize for their work on penicillin. Edward Abraham and Norman Heatley also made significant contributions, but they were not so honored. Eventually, they were honored in other ways. There were no female heads of laboratories, and they didn't make any ground-breaking contributions, but there were many women workers, some of whom worked at considerable risk, breathing in dangerous materials, and working long hours.

3) Scientific discoveries are often not made freely available to others. There's a lot in the book about patents, and it is clear that the British scientists involved, and, eventually, others, believed that penicillin should be treated as a military secret, and they would have been horrified if it had been made available to the Germans.

Thanks for reading. I hope you don't need to take an antibiotic.

Sunspots 521

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

The Arts: Left Behind is going to be available through Netflix. E. Stephen Burnett does not recommend it, from any source.

Christianity: The New English Translation of the Bible, which can be downloaded free, in various formats. It is not public domain.

A Christianity Today columnist has begun wearing the same outfit to work all week. (In this case, the columnist is a female.)

Computing: Metaflop is a web site that lets you create your own fonts by modifying a pre-existing one.

Wired says that Coolors is a web site that lets you create your own color palettes, easily. It works. I plan to post a poster, with colors selected from that site, tomorrow.

Gizmo's Freeware has a Free Windows Desktop Software Security list, annotated.

The History Blog tells us about the first selfie, taken in 1839.

Health: Christianity Today reviews a book that claims that Christians, historically, have embraced advancements in medicine, and should continue to do so.

Politics: Benjamin L. Corey gives statistics on how much (or little) Christians actually give that goes to help the poor, and says that his support of government assistance isn't because he is a socialist, but because, if the church isn't coming anywhere close to meeting needs, then government should, by default.

Science: Time reports on a baby, conceived in vitro, with mitochondria, taken from the mother, and inserted into the egg.

National Public Radio reports on miscarriages. They are more common than you think, and the most common cause is a chromosomal abnormality. In other words, miscarriage prevents births of severely abnormal babies.

Wired on why, and how, cats purr.

Image source (public domain)

An important book on cancer

At the urging of a relative, who lent it to me, I recently read what some have labeled the most important book on cancer published in my lifetime. The book is The Emperor of all Maladies: A Biography of Cancer, by Siddhartha Mukherjee, and it won, among other awards, the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction.

The book is written so as to be accessible to lay persons, although it has many notes, and a good index, so those seeking further information can explore further.

So what's it about? It's about the history of our attempt to prevent, and/or cure, cancer, from the beginnings of medical science until almost the present. Many names of important scientists and health professionals, and some philanthropists, politicians and what we now call activists are included, along with a sentence or more on what they were, or are, like. Many developments in the history of our work with cancer are described, such as establishing the link between tobacco and lung cancer.

What's the message of the book? More correctly, what are the messages of the book?

One of them is that cancer is many different ailments. The Human Genome Project "maps" the DNA bases of "normal" people. It's an enormous trove of data. The Cancer Genome Atlas, referred to in the book, and under development, promises to be much larger than the map of the human genome.

Another message is that we can't expect to cure cancer until we understand the workings of normal human cells better than we do now. Cancer occurs when the mechanisms that cause and control cell multiplication get out of kilter. Those mechanisms are complex. Our understanding is getting there, making some strides that scientists of a couple of generations ago wouldn't have even understood, but we aren't there yet.

Another message is that government, business, or academic bureaucracy can get in the way of doing some good things for people that are in desperate need. That's hardly a surprise, but the story of cancer has too many examples of this sort of thing.

Another message, although Mukherjee doesn't put it in those terms, is the way in which our progress toward curing and preventing cancer illustrates the thesis of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, by Thomas S. Kuhn. Kuhn claimed that science changes, not so much because of experiments, as because of revolutions in the thinking of the scientific community. These revolutions usually leave some older scientists bypassed -- they are stuck in an old way of looking at natural phenomena, and don't ever accept more correct and fruitful ways. Over and over, this happened in the biography of cancer.

We have made some progress, in preventing some forms of cancer, and in curing some others. But there are many cancers we don't have much of a handle on yet, and many patients who suffer through chemotherapy without much benefit. A sobering story.

Cancer is such a complex subject that it is probably not possible to come close to understanding it without reading a book such as Mukherjee's, or the equivalent. I'm glad that I understand this disease, which stands a good chance of ending my own life, a little better. (I am not aware that I have any form of cancer, but you never know, especially the older you get.)

Thanks for reading.

Malaria vaccine?

The World Health Organization says that malaria is one of the six most important infectious diseases, killing about a million people a year, mostly children in third world countries. The Wikipedia says that the disease is not only more likely among poor people, but that it causes poverty.

Michael Gerson, a columnist for the Washington Post, has written a recent column on the successful development of an anti-malaria vaccine. He points out some of the amazing difficulties that had to be overcome, and those that will have to be overcome in the future, to make this a practical medical treatment. One such difficulty is that it was necessary to do surgery on individual mosquitoes to obtain cells for use in developing the vaccine. Malaria parasites are transmitted by mosquitoes, and some stages of the microbe live in human blood cells.

Thanks for reading! Thanks to God for this step toward eradicating this terrible scourge.

The Global Burden of Disease study

National Public Radio has reported on a massive study, on the Global Burden of Disease, which attempted to answer the question "how many people are sick, disabled, or die, from what causes, at what ages, in each country of the world?"

Perhaps the most important finding of the study is that, as the world's population ages, more and more people will be living with serious disabilities, because people who are older are more likely to have such disabilities.

Another finding of the study is that "The U.S. ranked about 32nd in healthy life expectancy, behind both Canada and the U.K.," which is one of many indications that the US healthcare system is certainly not "the best in the world," as politicians have often claimed. (Speaker of the House Boehner said so in 2012. I think President Obama said it during his first campaign for the Presidency, but I can't find a reference to that.)

The original study was published as a group of reports in The Lancet, the most important medical journal in the United Kingdom (Investigators included scientists from the U.S., and other countries.) At least some of these original reports are freely available. Here's the table of contents, with links to the articles. The on-line version includes a remarkable interactive bar graph, which shows the effects of various kinds of problems (such as war and disaster, and cancer) on people, at certain ages, and the effects on males and females. Warning -- that bar graph takes some time to load.

The authors recognized that, for some countries, the data was far from complete, but the main conclusions are not affected by this.

To read a short list and discussion of the most important problems with healthcare in the United States, go here. (That post was written in 2009, before the adoption of "Obamacare," but the problems haven't changed much. There may be other serious problems caused by that law.)

Thanks for reading. Stay healthy!

Dying and religious belief

An on-line acquaintance sent me a link to an news report entitled "Strong Religious Faith Associated With Aggressive End-of-Life Care," for which I am grateful.

Although the link I received allowed me to see the report freely, it is possible -- I'm not sure -- that any reader of this blog who tries to access it may be required to obtain a free membership to Medscape Medical News. The on-line report gives this reference to the original study: JAMA. 2009;301:1140-1147. JAMA is the Journal of the American Medical Association, a prestigious and widely read refereed periodical.

The contents of the report match the title. People with strong religious faith, in this study, at least, received more intense end-of-life care. They had made significantly less preparation for dying, that is, were less likely to have made a living will, or have appointed a medical power of attorney.

There were 345 patients analyzed.

A number of questions come to mind. Was the more aggressive care because the patient wished it, or the family? Was there a difference between Protestants and Catholics? (I'm not sure if any Jews, Muslims, or members of another faith were included.) And, most importantly, why was more aggressive care requested?

I quote from the report: "positive religious coping was significantly associated with being black or Hispanic, and that those with a high level of positive religious coping tended to be younger, less educated, less likely to be insured, less likely to be married, and more likely to have been recruited from sites in Texas. . ." The report says that adjustments were made to remove possible statistical influences due to age and ethnicity. It does not say that being single, or less educated, less well-off financially, or being from Texas, was also removed.

In spite of the fairly small sample, and the possible effects of being single, or less educated, or growing up in Texas, let us say that the conclusion, as given by the title, should be taken at face value. What does that mean? It may mean that Bible-believing Christians aren't really as eager as we say we are to leave this life from the next.

Alternative interpretations are possible. Perhaps strongly religious people have more to live for, or are more loved by their families. I don't know.

I say that I believe that there is a life beyond this one. I say I believe that it will be an infinitely better life. Do I really believe this? I hope so.

Thanks for reading.

Sunspots 260

Things I have recently spotted that may be of interest to someone else:

Humor:
(or something) CNN reports that about 300 chefs in Lebanon constructed the largest plate of hummus in history -- more than 11 tons of it.

Science: 
Wired reports on the ingredients in a particular brand of diaper cream.

Sports: 
Wired reports that a Penn State University graduate student has figured out how to make the home football crowd sound louder, thus hampering the opponents.

Computing:
Wired reports on a new doctor-rating web service. As they say, why should it be easier to find a review of a camera than a cardiologist?

A Wired commentator is really angry (with some reason) at how Facebook deals with privacy issues. And did you know that Facebook may censor some Facebook messages (apparently those that include links to a competitor)?



Image source (public domain)

Five Ways to Look at Death

Eric Cohen, writing in The New Atlantis, describes five ways of looking at death. He relates the five following persons to them: Jacob from the Bible, Socrates, Christ, Benjamin Franklin, and the Sisyphus of Albert Camus.

Jacob, he says, died knowing that he was going to, but accepting it. He didn't ask anyone for an organ transplant, or to clone him and harvest the clone for needed parts. Of course, he couldn't have, those procedures not having been dreamed of yet. Cohen knows this, of course. But he says that Jacob's death looks to the future -- he commanded that he be buried in his homeland, and prophesied about the doings of his sons. He writes: "Our medical machinery makes Jacob’s version of the good human death ever more unlikely." That is, of course, because of the frequency of prolonged poor health, or other incapacitation, at the end, even though we are living longer than we used to.

Cohen describes the suicide/punishment of Socrates, and they says this about the death of Christ: Unlike Socrates and Jacob, Jesus confronts us with the horror of death endured in all its horribleness: not sought as an exit, yet not escaped at the cost of betraying one’s given purpose. In Jesus, we learn what it means to forgo all control and retain all control simultaneously—what it means, passively and actively, to die as an act of surrender.

Franklin, says Cohen, guessed that there might come a future time when death would be postponed by technological means, and wished that he might have lived in such a time.

Cohen is describing the state of medical ethics, both as a profession, and in society's application of it. He says, correctly, that the largest debates over these matters recently have been over death at both ends of life -- the Schiavo case, and the possibility of destroying human embryos as a means of prolonging the lives of others.

A readable and well written essay, on an important subject. I recommend that you read it in the original.

Thanks for reading.

Repairing faces (and other parts), 2

I posted recently on a book on the ethics of surgery. I also read a second book, Surgically shaping children: technology, ethics, and the pursuit of normality, edited by Erik Parens. (Johns Hopkins, 2006) This one dealt with surgery for ambiguous genitalia, surgery to make dwarf children taller, and surgery to repair cleft palates and similar conditions, all in children.

This book had a wider range of contributors than the first one I read. They included persons who had the conditions described, parents of such, as well as ethicists and health providers. Partly for that reason, it would probably appeal more to the general public.

A few things stood out. One of them was suggested by the subtitle. Normality. What is it, and why do we pursue it. A particular dilemma was presented several times. That is this: "If diversity is to be affirmed, why would we expect children with facial 'abnormalities' to undergo surgery?" Why not just let them be, as long as health isn't threatened severely (or at all)? How much of such surgery is done for the sake of the parents, or the rest of us, not for the child?

Another aspect that stood out was that it is important to involve the child in decisions about surgery. This is not to say that, say, a nine-year-old is fully competent, but that a she should have an explanation of what is proposed, and how it will affect her, and have influence on the decision whether or not to operate.

I was surprised to find out that at least some persons who have had surgery to "repair" ambiguous or otherwise abnormal genitalia wish that they hadn't had it. It apparently often destroys sexual feeling. Another reason is that such surgery is usally done without involving the patient in the decision, because it is done on babies. Apparently this is not necessary.

Finally, there was a discussion about the training of surgeons. Surgeons are generally people who like to get in there and fix things, so are reluctant to hold off on surgery. They are also often not particularly well trained to work with the whole patient.

This book was certainly food for thought.

Repairing faces (and other parts), 1

I have recently read two books dealing with the ethics of certain types of surgery. One of these was Cutting to the Core : Ethics of Contested Surgeries, edited by David Benatar (Rowman and Littlefield, 2006). This book had many contributors. Besides being glad that at least someone is paying attention to the ethics of surgery, I was struck by three aspects of the book.

One aspect was genital surgery on young girls. Some cultures expect young girls to go through a surgery more or less parallel to male circumcision, or worse. The U. S. Congress was understandably horrified by this practice, and it has been outlawed here. So far, so good? Maybe, maybe not. Some recent immigrants are either going to illegal surgeons, or sending their daughters back to the home country to have the surgery, so that the law hasn't stopped the practice, just made it more expensive, more dangerous, or both. Furthermore, in many cases, a small nick, rather than more drastic surgery, would satisfy the claims of the culture, but attempts to allow this have run up against the law, which forbids any such surgery.

Another aspect of this surgery that I hadn't considered was that there is little regulation of male circumcision in the U. S., but lots of regulation of female equivalent surgery. This doesn't seem quite right.

The second aspect that I wish to mention is surgery designed to enhance attractiveness. No contributor spoke out against breast size enhancement, which surprised me. The contributors who wrote on this topic included a plastic surgeon and a feminist scholar. It seems to me that there is something fundamentally wrong with a society where many women feel that they need to have a "boob job," and where they feel more confident, not merely sexually, but generally, as a result. Can't we, whatever our sex, be content with the way we are, at least if it isn't grossly abnormal and/or life-threatening?

The third aspect is related to the second. That is this. More and more people are having surgery just to alter their appearance. Some of this is being done as art, some as cosmetic, and most of it for shock value. If I live very long, I expect to see someone growing feathers, with an extra eye, or with hair on the palms of their hands, for example. Is this right? If not, why not? Good questions.

I expect to post on the related book soon.

Thanks for reading.

Moral Stem Cells

An editorial in the May issue of First Things argues that there is a possibility of producing embryonic stem cells without producing (or, hence, destroying) any human embryos, using a technique known as Altered Nuclear Transfer-Oocyte Assisted Reprogramming (ANT-OAR). The technique, if it can be made to work, would involve transferring the nucleus of a cell from an adult human into an altered unfertilized egg cell which had had its nucleus removed. Additional tinkering would ensure that the biochemistry of the host cytoplasm would not turn the nucleus into a totipotent cell (that is, one that could develop into an embryo, as happens in cloning) but into a pluripotent cell (that is, an embryonic stem cell).

The author, a theologian, argues that this would not be equivalent to murder. (Some people, of course, believe that use of fertilized eggs would not necessarily be equivalent to murder, but ANT-OAR is an attempt to satisfy even the many who believe that it would be.)

Writes the author:
An entity is a human embryo only if the organic material is able to be human—if, in the language of Aristotle, it is apt to receive a substantial human form. Not every collection of organic material, even material that includes an oocyte and a diploid nucleus, can be a human being. We know this because we know that teratomas (naturally occurring tumors)—together with hydatidiform moles (disorganized entities that occur in humans and other animals as a result of certain types of defects in fertilization) and even oocytes themselves—are not human embryos, yet they all have as their starting material an oocyte and a diploid nucleus. [links added]

As I understand it, one of the bills recently passed unanimously by the U. S. Senate could authorize support for research of this type.

Thanks for reading!

C. S. Lewis on faith and surgery

[In one sense, Faith] means simply Belief--accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people--at least it used to puzzle me--is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue. . . . I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so. For example, my reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anaesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. . . . In other words, I lose my faith in anaesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other. . . . Now Faith, in the sense in which I am here using the word, is the art of holding on to things your reason has once accepted, in spite of your changing moods. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity: What One Must Believe to Be a Christian. New York: Macmillan, 1952. pp. 121-123.

I am, of course, well aware that Lewis was writing about Faith, not surgery. I'm also aware that I'm merely having a diagnostic procedure today--a tube run down my throat--not surgery. But I'm to be anesthetized, and I also fear. Who doesn't? God is able to take care of me, whether, as I suppose, I recover normally, or whether I don't re-awaken. God has been good to me.

Postscript, Jan 22, 05: came through OK, thank God.