Category: Follies of the Human Condition

Hey Ladies!

Image courtesy of the National Cancer Institute
Image courtesy of the National Cancer Institute

Why are women turning down opportunities to present their scientific work at international meetings? A study in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology uncovered a lower representation of female scientists at the annual European Society for Evolutionary Biology meeting in 2011. The numbers of women were lower in the category of all presenters (48%)(including posters) and regular oral presentations (41%). However, only 25% of plenary speakers were women. But this disparity isn’t because women weren’t asked to present. Continue reading “Hey Ladies!”

Sunday Science Poem: Cloning and other ways of taking adaptive matters into our own hands

Sally Van Doren’s ‘Adaptive’

VanDorenPOSSESSIVE_covfront_sized-300x450With the latest improvements in the technology for creating cloned human embryos, the science fiction idea of human clones is no longer quite so speculative. (Cloning livestock is not only not speculative, it’s almost routine.) In the near future we will have the ability to create, with the technologies of genome editing and cloning, upgraded versions of ourselves – in other words, taking our adaptation to our environment into our own hands, rather than simply accepting what we’ve been handed by evolution.1

Changing the meaning of our DNA to make a new version of ourselves parallels the much less ethically dubious process of reading a poem by deliberately adapting its meaning to our needs and interests as readers. Continue reading “Sunday Science Poem: Cloning and other ways of taking adaptive matters into our own hands”

Better stem cell tech, more controversy

Over at Pacific Standard, I offer brief layman’s guide to the latest pluripotent stem cell technologies, and I argue that better stem cell technology will not make the ethical controversy go away. (In last week’s Nature, Martin Pera & Alan Trounson make a similar point.)

To understand where I’m coming from, let’s take a step back a few years, in the aftermath of the Bush Administration’s controversial decision to limit NIH-funded research on human embryonic stem cell (ESC) lines. Back then, much of the debate was over the merits and ethics of ESC’s versus lineage-restricted adult stem cells: ESCs were for the most part derived from leftover IVF embryos or aborted fetuses (and thus didn’t carry the genome of a patient). Adult stem cells could be taken from patients, but were much more restricted in their potential applications. Dolly the sheep was old news at that point, but the technology to create Dolly (and thus also create embryonic stem cells with the genome of a living adult) did not actually work with human cells. Continue reading “Better stem cell tech, more controversy”

When immune cells attack…

A neuron wrapped in many layers of myelin
An electron microscopy image of a neuron wrapped in many layers of myelin

…it’s usually a good thing! Immune cells normally protect our bodies from foreign objects or marauding bacteria. Sometimes, this finely tuned protective machinery can go haywire. An example of this is the disease Multiple Sclerosis.

Multiple Sclerosis (MS) is thought to be caused by confusion of a person’s immune system. Their immune cells mistakenly attack the protective coating of their nerves (myelin) and progressively strip it away leaving the nerves vulnerable and exposed. When someone has MS they often come to their doctor with symptoms of neurological dysfunction that can vary widely depending on what nerves have been damaged. They could have trouble walking or have a tingling pins and needles feeling in their arm. Unfortunately, there is currently no cure and most remedies are not effective in alleviating the progression of the disease. A new phase one clinical trial may provide some hope. Continue reading “When immune cells attack…”

Linkonomicon: Science, Democracy, and Plato’s Revenge

Some decisions clearly require expert knowledge, but democracy is a commitment to letting consequential decisions be resolved by a group of people who are clearly not experts on every important issue, i.e. all of us. And so we have a problem.

My favorite philosopher of science, Philip Kitcher, says Plato would think we’re crazy:

If the public does not think a particular issue should be addressed, then it is entirely right that nothing should be done about it. Plato saw this as a fundamental commitment of democracy, and, because he understood that people may be massively deceived – or misled – about what is in their interests, he drew the conclusion that democracy is a political disaster.

But Kitcher doesn’t think Plato should have the last word. Go check out his ideas about the role of experts in democracy in “Plato’s Revenge: An Undemocratic Report from an Overheated Planet”, via the journal Logos