If you have ever listened to anything I have ever said...

Here is one of the most important lectures you can ever listen to:

Trading Spaces

The last post was lacking commentary... just to let you know I am not slacking, the truth is I am getting ready to trade spaces.

Not ready for prime time (as if this blog is), but I am setting up a much more sophisticated blog space on my own server.

Soon to be a cool site....

www.scientificfoundation.com/blog

Dan Meyer: Math class needs a makeover | Video on TED.com

Dan Meyer: Math class needs a makeover | Video on TED.com

Copy right, or copy wrong – where is digital rights management leading us?

The democratic process which creates laws to regulate technology cannot possibly keep up with the evolution of technology. This could turn out to be one of the greatest challenges to our freedom which we will have to face over the next hundred years.

Books have traditionally been a tangible asset which we could pass on from generation to generation. Copyright has traditionally protected books, and authors, and told us that upon purchasing a book, it was ours to own, read, and pass on as we saw fit. Book burning, or the destruction of books, has become the ultimate symbol of anti-intellectualism. George Orwell’s novel ‘1984’ was published in 1949 and described a world in which the government could re-write history at will, and at their convenience. In 1953 Ray Bradbury published 'Farenheit 451' which described a world where the government could come in and destroy books at will.

The world of audio and digital books has changed the way information is exchanged, and has disempowered us all. If the publishing corporations get their way, upon purchasing these new forms of media we are demoted from an owner of that material to a user of the material. Purchasing an audiobook from i-tunes involves agreeing to a licensing agreement which contains more words than many of the books they sell. Digital rights management software will allow publishers to retract and destroy published information at will, under the guise of copyright protection, without due process. Think Farenheit 451. Think 1984. Think of the implications.

There is a place for copyright. Authors and ideas need protection. Lawyers and large corporations are creating systems which allow for the destruction of books, the retraction of information under the guise of protection. They are endowing themselves with rights not yet bestowed to them by any court by asking us to agree to the terms of large documents that none of us have the time or energy to read.

The state of California has recently made a move to scrape text books for e-books. There are many advantages to the system, but, without proper regulation we are potentially allowing companies the rights to change and retract the information that educates our youth instantaneously.

A concept such as evolution could be removed from the classroom with a push of a button – with no trace or evidence left behind.

The last season of Lost

My roommate has been going through old Lost episodes often displaying more focus and attention than Tiger Woods at a bikini contest. It is part of a concerted effort to finish all 6 seasons in time to watch the final episode in real time.

It has allowed me to refresh my memory of seasons past.

Watching the old episodes of Kate and Sawyer locked in primate cages reminded me of a story I recently heard... a story involving the difficulties of keeping primates locked up, and of the fine lines between non-human primates and humans.

Check this out.....

Follow the link and click on the play button.

Emergence

I have been working with my friend Rabab AbdulAziz Khodary to initiate cross-cultural discussions on brain disorders.

Please click here to read my most recent article.

The other side of the story

I wish all Canadians would take a few minutes to listen to this. Please click on the Thomas King link below. This is a great story teller telling a sad story about the politics and history of our nation. A story that many of us would prefer to ignore.

How quickly we tend to forget history.

Thomas King is a senior fellow of Massey College at the University of Toronto, and a professor of English and native literature at the University of Guelph.

Please click here to hear Thomas King

Is Ethnocide in inevitable result of technological advances ?

We often talk about the death or damage of the biosphere, yet not enough discussion surrounds the systematic destruction of the ethnosphere... I leave it to the experts to discuss further....

click here to hear Wade Davis

Harder than I thought -

So, after making a resolution to have an article posted every Sunday, here it is Monday morning and I am posting my next blog. What could have happened that would have stopped me from keeping to my new schedule?

A long time ago I decided I was going to ride in the 'Ride to Conquer Cancer'. Recently, the reality of that decision has been kicking in. I have been training. Yesterday, the goal was to bike 75 KM.

So, off I headed, to bike 75 KM and then I would come home and do some more work, including finishing my Sunday blog.

I got through 70 KM and came home. My body hurt, this was my longest ride to date and it wasn't just my legs that were sore, it was everything. Back. Wrists. Arms. Abs. Ouch.

So, to make a long story short, I came home, showered, made some food and fell asleep. But, this brings me to my topic for the blog --

How many of us don't know someone who has been afflicted by cancer?

30% of new cancer cases and 60% of deaths due to cancer occur in middle aged adults (30-59 years old).

Cancer incidence is rising in young women aged 20-39.


More cancer statistics here.

It isn't going to be easy, but I am going to try to ride 100 km a day for two days. I am also trying to raise $2500 for cancer. Help out if you can, it is a good cause.

Click here to see the site and make a donation:

My Ride to conquer cancer site

Falling off of the blog wagon

Well, this has been an interesting year for me and there has been a lot of transition to go through. Through that transition came changes and challenges. Through that transition came the creation of this blog, and through that transition came that last nearly month of silence.

My goal is to fix that last month of silence, and to re-implement my blog writing habits. I will aim to have a new post here every Sunday. For those that have read this so far, thank you very much for your attention. It is a learning process for me, and I hope to evolve this into something that is informative and at the same time not too dry.

Hopefully I will be seeing a lot more of you over the next period of what I am sure will be rampant blog productivity.

Cheers,
Dave.

Life in Henry's wake

“...there is no such thing as objective journalism. The phrase itself is a pompous contradiction of terms.” – Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

Whether we admit it or not all journalism is fraught with opinion. A friend recently forwarded an article from the Post which she thought might make good material for the blog. She was right, it was a really interesting stuff – the kind of stuff I should have been able to sink my teeth into. Should have, but couldn’t. I was unsure of my opinion, I couldn’t find my stand. It turns out that without some sort of subjective stance I have no article to write, therefore proving Dr. Thompson’s quote, which I used to open this blog, particularly relevant.

Rather than allowing the dilatory pace of my own ethical compass to delay sharing the article any longer I decided I would just post it. These are complicated issues that we as a society are going to have to deal with. They are not going away. Read about it. Think about it. Talk about it.

Life in Henry's wake

The vaccine question

Imagine if a cure was discovered that would prevent all HIV related deaths. How much impact do you think that would have?

Let’s think even bigger: Imagine if a treatment was discovered which could prevent all deaths from stroke. According to the World Health Organization approximately 5.5 million people die from stroke every year (550 million deaths every one hundred years).

The estimated death count from smallpox in the 20th century ranges between 300-500 million people (1 out of every 7 children in Russia). Since the world population was smaller at the time, smallpox was a bigger killer in the 20th century than stroke is in our current generation. Three hundred million people - roughly the current population of the United States, about 10 times more people than have died from AIDS, 10 times more than died during world war 1 and about 100,000 times as many deaths as attributed to the 911 attack. Only about 1 in 4 are people who contract small pox die from the disease, so the 300–500 million estimate does not include the many survivors were scarred or blinded by the disease. What happened to small pox?

In 1798 Edward Jenner demonstrated that inoculation with cowpox could protect against smallpox initiating the use of vaccination. By the 1950s it was estimated that the infection had decreased to about 50 million cases of smallpox world-wide per year and intense vaccination efforts led to eradication of the disease with the last natural case of small pox documented in Somalia in 1977.

This is probably one of the greatest achievements of medical science to date.

Since the 1930’s Thiomersal, which is a mercury-containing compound, has been used in some vaccines to prevent bacterial and fungal growth. Questions have arisen as to whether the mercury contained in the vaccine preservative could cause health problems, particularly whether it is associated with an increase in autism.

The Lancet, a leading medical journal, published an article written in 1998 by a Dr. Andrew Wakefield suggesting that autism was linked to children receiving mercury containing measles-mumps-rubella vaccine. Despite this study being based on only 12 children (11 males and 1 female) and scientific evidence to the contrary, Britain's child vaccination rates consequently fell by 20% after the study came out and the UK and America has had waves of measles outbreaks. In 1998, the year the study came out, England and Wales had 56 cases of measles; by 2008 the number was 1,370. In 2007, a large outbreak of mumps was set off in Canada after the virus was purportedly imported from the United Kingdom.

It has been discovered that Dr. Wakefield had been paid to conduct his study on children who were clients of a lawyer preparing to initiate a lawsuit. The General Medical Council recently concluded, after a lengthy investigation into Wakefield’s study, that it was fraught with financial and scientific conflicts of interest. The medical community, including 10 of the 13 authors of the original paper, have rejected the validity of the findings years ago. Little to no scientific evidence supports the study’s findings, and subsequent studies have refuted its claims. In February of this year the Lancet officially retracted the paper, something it doesn’t do lightly and an act which officially invalidates the study.

Controversy on both sides of the debate

Shortly after the Lancet’s retraction a scandal was brought to light form the other side of the table. Poul Thorsen, a researcher who was on two important publications discrediting the link between mercury containing preservatives and autism, is allegedly being investigated for potentially forging documents in order to misappropriate 2 million dollars of grant funding.

Dr. Thorsen was not the lead author or involved in collecting the data and the coauthors of the two studies maintain validity of the research. Federal authorities are investigating.

This has not prevented writers from attacking any scientific work connected to Dr. Thorsen, particularly Robert Kennedy Jr, an active spokesperson for the autism-Thiomersal link .

There is reason for concern and our attention

Dr. Arnold Relman, editor of the New England Journal of Medicine from 1977 to 1991 claims that, “The commercialization of medicine poses the greatest threat to U.S. health care,” and that “From my experience and perspective, it’s clear that fraudulent, unethical behavior is a more common problem than it used to be.”

Can vaccines be made thiomersal free?

So to summarize, vaccination is scientifically proven improve our bodies immune response and increase our chances of immunity. Yet, the problem is the use of questionable preservatives in the vaccine, and whether they are harmful. Can the vaccines be produced without Thiomersal?

The short answer is yes. Thiomersal use as a preservative was phased out of Canadian vaccines. It is sometimes used in the production of the vaccine, but is later filtered out. The degree to which some trace elements are left in the vaccine is still a point of contention, and it is possible to make the vaccines without the use of Thiomersal at all.

Mercury free MMR vaccines are available and are produced, but have an increased cost of administration, which limits their availability in the developing nations where cost is a factor. Even though the link has been officially discredited, most of the remaining Thiomersal vaccines are now headed for poorer developing nations.

Relevant Links:

http://www.avert.org/worldstats.htm
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/chicago/news.aspx?id=156969
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704022804575041544115791952.html
http://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/topics/thiomersal/questions/en/index.html
http://www.who.int/cardiovascular_diseases/resources/atlas/en/
http://www.who.int/cardiovascular_diseases/en/cvd_atlas_14_deathHD.pdf
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/02/02/autism-mmr-lancet-Wakefield.html#ixzz0ioueLfic
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/article972665.ece

unaggressive inarticulation

Did I speak with enough conviction?

The placebo effect

Scholars don't agree on how it is pronounced, or how it works - but for those who look into it, most agree that it is amazing.
One of my favorite podcasts does a much better job of discussing the placebo than I could do,
check it out here:

Antidepressants: Myth or Miracle

I lost a close relative to suicide at the end of 2009. This was a very personal reminder of the importance of treating depression. Clinical depression can be a fatal.

I recently came down pretty hard on the lack of evidence for homeopathy treatments. To be fair we need to apply a similar sort of rigor to the question of antidepressant therapy. A recent article in Scientific American is entitled “Antidepressants: Do They 'Work' or Don't They?” highlights some important points.

In January the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a paper which questioned the usefulness of antidepressants in patients with mild or moderate depression. Importantly, it did confirm that, “For patients with very severe depression, the benefit of medications over placebo is substantial.”

Lets me be clear about the issues at hand.

Unlike homeopathy treatments, anti-depressants must pass through a rigorous (and expensive) set of tests to demonstrate that they display ‘efficacy’. This means that clinical trials (or experiments) are performed where patients are assigned to receive either drug or a ‘sugar pill’ without either the doctor or the patient knowing which is being administered. After the results of treatment are recorded researchers go back and examine the effects produced by the drug relative to the sugar pill. Anti-depressants which make it to market must perform better than the sugar pill (the placebo).

The difference between treatment and sugar pill can be very small at times - but even a small difference can translate into a strong change for the patient since the effect of the placebo itself is very strong. Patients taking just a sugar pill improve about 75% as much as patients taking actual antidepressents (on average). This is why treatments like homeopathy, that haven’t passed rigorous testing, can appear to work – the patient simply believing it will work can have an extremely powerful effect.

To sell treatments that have no real medicinal value while treatments that do have actual medical value exist is unethical at best, and can distract patients from seeking legitimate treatment. Medicine has come a long way from the days where charlatans could make a living selling tonics to treat sickness with no proof that they work. We need to embrace this progress, not fight it.

So what the recent JAMA article concluded makes a lot of sense – the effect of antidepressants is strongest on people who have the most severe depression. Currently the best method we have for quantifying depression is Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression, but as we improve technologies, such as genetic testing and medical imaging, we may provide more accurate methods for both assessing depression and predicting which drug will work best for which patient. The application of personalized medicine will likely improve the treatment of complex syndromes such as depression.

So in the end do anti-depressants work? The answer is sometimes. Do we fully understand how they work or how to predict when they will work? No.

Much more work is needed, but we must remember that in cases of severe depression no treatment, or ineffective treatment can be fatal. We should be proud of the people who have the courage to tackle this problem with the scientific rigor that is required and discourage those who are looking to make money by selling false hopes and unproven therapies.

Scientists - we agree to disagree

If you can't say it better yourself then refer to the original source. I encourage you to read this...

Homeopathy dismissed

In the UK’s House of Commons Science and Technology Committee's report on Homeopathy, Dr Ben Goldacre reports ‘There have now been around 200 trials of homeopathy against placebo sugar pills and, taken collectively, they show that there is no evidence that homeopathy pills are any better than a placebo.’

The UK is finally doing the right thing, recommending the termination of licenses to over-the-counter homeopathic medications which have not demonstrated effectiveness in randomized controlled trials. To date no homeopathic medications have passed such standard criteria; criteria which must be rigorously proven for all pharmaceuticals.

There is however strong evidence that the British Homeopathic Association has been using suspect, and in some cases seemingly malicious, manipulation of data to support their claims of efficacy.

Although there do not seem to be outwardly adverse reactions to the homeopathic treatments, they do serve as a distraction for patients who could be pursuing more beneficial avenues and use up valuable resources. If, after 200 years of use, there is no unambiguous evidence for positive outcomes above the placebo effect I believe it is time to put the nail in the coffin for homeopathic interventions.

Alternative sources:
House of Commons Science and Technology committee report

This little piggy hasn’t gone to market

As of February 2010 the global population is estimated at 6.8 billion. Nine billion people are expected to inhabit the Earth by 2050. As the population grows, the amount of available cropland, fresh water and other key resources is quickly shrinking. The number of undernourished people already exceeds one billion—how do we feed the world without exacerbating environmental problems and simultaneously cope with climate change?

We need new and innovative solutions, and we need them fast.
Researchers at the University of Guelph have developed transgenic pigs which digest a form of phosphorus they would normally excrete, resulting in manure 30-65% lower in phosphorus pollution, and therefore less harmful to groundwater.

The pigs have had a mouse gene inserted into their DNA resulting in a chemical being released in their saliva which allows them to digest cereal grain phosphorus and eliminating the need to supplement with mineral phosphate.

It has been reported that Environment Canada has determined that the transgenic Yorkshire pigs are not toxic to the environment under the Canadian Environmental Protection Act. The official announcement is expected on Saturday. This is the first regulatory hurdle in the process to get these little piggies to market.

We need to be careful, but we also need to act swift. The decisions we make need to be made on the data, and not slowed down by irrational fears.

Alternative sources:

University of Guelph

Calgary Harold

Media monsters

Is media hindering federal incentives to promote science education?

A strong deficit in science education and scientific literacy has been identified. President Obama’s proposed budget aims to aggressively increase funding for science education.

The number of news publications with science sections is rapidly shrinking; very few Americans can name a living scientist. Is it possible that media portrayal of science (or lack there of) might explain the decreased interest in science among students? This is a question I have asked before.


“A Previous Death at the Hand of Alabama Suspect” published in the New York Times on Feb. 13th, reported on the tragic shootings at the University of Alabama. It included the statement “... others who knew Dr. Bishop described her as a normal person, perhaps a little quirky but no more so than most scientists.” Should the media promote the stereotype that all scientists are quirky? Would such sweeping statements based on race or gender be tolerated? Is it necessary to attack all members of the scientific community?

Could such statements partially explain why extra funding is required to interest our children in science education?

Perhaps we should be careful about the monsters we create.

Frustration drives competition

Frustration drives competition – at least in America. Canada and the US are notoriously underdeveloped in terms of broadband capacity. A study released at the end of 2009 by Harvard University demonstrated that out of 30 countries Canada ranked 22nd for broadband access, the States 13th, while Japan, Sweden and South Korea were ranked highest.

Google is responding and potentially revealing a radical shift in their business strategy. They are launching experimental fibre broadband network in select U.S. cities. Google has been acquiring an unknown amount of fibre for years and will be offering connection speeds of up to one gigabit per second (more than 100 times faster than what most Americans currently have access to).
The company is interested in operating 'open access' networks, allowing the choice of multiple service providers.

Google will be prevented from moving this model into Canada despite owning fiber resources here; current legal restrictions require infrastructure-owning telecom service providers to be majority Canadian owned and controlled.

Cable companies have a vested interest in slowing down the progress of high-speed internet, as it will change their business model allowing instantaneous high-definition streaming, but the stakes are much higher than this. It would also allow such things as streaming of 3-D medical imaging over the web for consults with international experts, and global collaborations in education. A country such as Canada which has its population spread out over a vast geography has an intense need for such technology. Graham Bell, who spent so much time here, would be sorely disappointed in us.

So, as Google works to move American service further in-line with global standards, it appears Canada will remain near the bottom of list for access to information.

Alternative sources :
CBC
CBC
Google

Making Contact

Please forgive the lack of science content in the next post:

Today, as I was riding in the elevator performing the mental gymnastics required to plan out my day, I took a minute to pause. I decided to make small talk with the woman with whom I was sharing the elevator. After some insignificant comment I made, which to be honest I don’t even remember, she replied, “I am on my way to the cancer center, I need courage today”.

We talked more as the floors passed on our descent to the parking deck, and I then we separated; a little less strangers than we were two minutes before. I am not going to delude myself with the thought that anything that I actually said could have made her feel more at ease, but I do feel that the fact that we shared a very human, very real conversation, regardless of what was said, was somewhat of a distraction. Just for a moment.

In a world where we are all so busy, our lives are all so complicated, sometimes just making contact with a stranger can have an impact. She had an impact on me, my crazy busy day with all my important things to do somehow seemed a little less crazy, a little less busy, and a lot less important. Perhaps if we all took a few seconds out of our day to give a stranger a little gesture of support, even a passing smile, our worlds would seem just that much more manageable.

Out of Africa

Studies have suggested that Southern African populations contain an amazing degree of genetic diversity. A recent study, published Feb. 18th in Nature, compares the genomes of male Namibian hunter-gatherers, including Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The study did find a stunning array of diversity between the subjects, reporting 1.3 million novel DNA differences genome-wide. Prior to this study, about nine million variants had been discovered, thus these 5 individuals have produced an increase of more than 10% of all the existing data prior to the study.

While it is true that this genetic information could be used to tailor drugs and diagnostic tools to the southern African population, a group which has been shown to have atypical responses to drugs for HIV and other disorders, I can’t help but wonder about the reality of this. The market which can afford to pay for newly developed drugs is predominately American and European. A study like this may only prove that developing the next blockbuster drug should not be focused on trials on African populations - as the results may not translate well onto other global populations.

None of the companies or researchers who participated in the study plan to take out patents based on the data.

Alternate sources on this story:
sciencenews.org
Time

Get to know a scientist

Is it possible that how the media portrays (or does not portray) science might be part of the reason for decreased interest in science and math among students?

How many grade 7-12 children have talked to working scientists about their research?

Check out our web site for more information about a project we are proposing to introduce Canadian high school children to international scientists. Click here.

Stem Cell Mis-information

In a recent article published in the Telegraph, it was reported that "Embryonic stem cells have the power to develop into any of the 220 cell types that make up the different tissues of the human body, but they are mired in controversy because they must be extracted from aborted foetuses."


Embryonic stem cells are in fact derived from pre-implantation blastocysts, about 3 days after fertilization. At this point they consist of about 150 cells and are smaller than the period at the end of a sentence. Foetal-derived stem cells, which often come from aborted feotuses, are typically derived 8 weeks post-fertilization.


Embryonic stem cells can be sucessfully created from blastocysts selected at invitro fertilization clinics after they have been deemed non-viable for life, meaning that they would never develop into a human foetus if implanted.


Embryonic stem cells are far less controversial than tissue derived from aborted foetuses, yet we continously seem to equate them to the same thing.

Note: Due to the UK origin of the quote that inspired this post the English spelling, foetus, was used. The American spelling is fetus.