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The decisive battles in American culture wars often take place in the armed forces. That was true of racial integration decades ago, and it's true of homosexuality today. Now it's happening to mental health. If psychiatric disorders end up being culturally accepted as medical conditions, with all the attendant insurance coverage and workplace protections, the decisive player in this revolution will probably be the military.
The transition is taking place in three steps. First, mental illness has to be destigmatized. As Yochi Dreazen reports in the Wall Street Journal, this is already underway: Defense Secretary Robert Gates has changed department rules so troops with PTSD can seek counseling without losing their security clearances.
The next step is to treat mental illness like physical illness as an insurance matter. This is harder, because it's expensive. Dreazen reports that legislation in the Senate would take this step by opening Veterans Administration facilities to active-duty troops with psychiatric problems. The bill's architect argues that the expense is worth it because soldiers' mental wounds, like their physical wounds, can be fatal. Specifically, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can lead to suicide.
Now there's talk of a third step: awarding the Purple Heart for psychic wounds. Dreazen notes that earlier this month, Gates called it "an interesting idea" and "clearly something that needs to be looked at."
The argument against expanding eligibility for the Purple Heart is that mental wounds, unlike visible physical wounds, can be faked. Or they can be unrelated to combat, even if the affected service member thinks they are. In response, proponents of the change point out that PTSD is an officially certified disorder and that research has linked it to combat incidents.
The debate won't be settled overnight, any more than integration or homosexuality were. That's because the medicalization of mental health is in part a social issue. Yes, it's medical. But it's also defined and complicated by the problem of invisibility. You can't see psychic wounds the same way you can see physical ones.
Fortunately, science has already encountered and worked through this problem in other contexts. We can't see molecules, but we can measure their effects and correlate their existence with physical conditions. The same should be true of mental illness, even if the variables and data are far more complicated. My guess is that as research progresses, it will satisfy neither side. We'll find that PTSD is as real as any visible wound but that, like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, it's also widely overdiagnosed.
So let's be careful with the Purple Heart. People who want to award it for psychic wounds argue that this will eliminate stigma and encourage counseling. That's the wrong way to look at it. The Purple Heart isn't a policy instrument. It's an honor. In the words of George Washington's original order, it denotes "meritorious action." And honor isn't the first step in a cultural transformation, no matter how worthy that transformation may be. It's the last.
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The genetically engineered humans are here! The genetically engineered humans are here!
I didn't believe it when I heard the report was in the Sunday Times of London. This, after all, is the paper that butchered the gay sheep story and can't find any evidence to back up its disputed paraphrases of James Watson. But the original report, which the Sunday Times neglects to mention, turns out to have been published in a scientific journal, Fertility and Sterility. It's titled, "Genetic modification of preimplantation embryos and embryonic stem cells (ESC) by recombinant lentiviral vectors: efficient and stable method for creating transgenic embryos and ESC."
For those of you who don't have access to the pricey journal, the New York Times boils down the experiment: Scientists "put a gene for a fluorescent protein into the single-celled human embryo," and "after the embryo divided for three days, all the cells in the embryo glowed."
What's new in this experiment isn't genetic modification of humans. We've already done that in limited doses, through the same viral technique. What's new is that because this was a single-celled embryo, every cell it went on to produce, including egg and sperm cells, would (except for the diploid-haploid transition, which gets complicated) carry the same genetic tweak. If the embryo were implanted and grew into an adult, its fluorescent gene would be passed down like any other. This is called germline modification. If you wanted to transform our species or give your offspring an advantage that persists through generations, this is how you'd do it.
Naturally, genetic watchdog groups are freaked out. Human Genetics Alert calls it a prelude to "eugenics" and "designer babies" and demands an "international moratorium on such experiments." The Center for Genetics and Society says it "could push us toward a GATTACA-like world" dominated by "the genetically enhanced."
The scientists, based at Cornell University, offer several responses. First, they used no U.S. federal funds, so no legal restrictions were violated. Second, the gene conveyed no enhancements; it was just a green "marker" to help them see whether it was replicated in subsequent cell divisions. Third, the experiment "was done on an embryo that was never going to be viable," due to pre-existing chromosomal defects. Fourth, they destroyed the embryo after five days, as required by a Cornell review committee.
The watchdog groups are alarmed because Britain's parliament is presently debating legislation to lift restrictions on human embryonic genetic modification. (See yesterday's post about the bill's pregnant-man loophole.) But proponents of the legislation point out that the law would still ban growing such embryos beyond 14 days or transferring them to a womb.
When you line up the points made by scientists and liberalizers, it's easier to understand what's really going on here. It's not that we're plowing unimpeded toward genetic engineering of children. To the contrary, we've drawn lines to prevent that: the 14-day limit and the no-implantation rule. What's going on is that by drawing these lines, we've created a zone where virtually no legal or moral rules apply. Look at the American and British treatment of cloning, and you'll see the same pattern. You can clone embryos, mix species, and engineer all you want, as long as you don't implant the embryos or grow them beyond 14 days.
Maybe this system will allow us to make important scientific discoveries and conquer diseases without crossing the lines we've drawn. On the other hand, maybe it'll turn embryos into a testing ground for techniques that we'll use for people-engineering when we're ready to go there. Or maybe we'll relax the rules a bit at a time, extending our techniques to more advanced embryos as we test and refine them. We'll tell ourselves that we're curing genetic diseases in the womb so that babies and their babies will be born healthy.
The argument for the latter scenario is that, far from being diabolical, the idea of loosening the 14-day rule makes a lot of sense. The Cornell scientists point out that genetically modified embryos "could be used to study how diseases develop" and that "in order to be sure that the new gene had been inserted and the embryo had been genetically modified, scientists would ideally need to grow the embryo and carry out further tests." The longer you grow the embryo, the more you learn.
How long could we grow genetically modified embryos if we lift the 14-day rule? According to the New York Times, "A spokesman for the National Institutes of Health said the Cornell work would not be classified as gene therapy in need of federal review, because a test-tube embryo is not considered a person under the regulations." Roughly speaking, U.S. law confers personhood at viability. That's five months or so. Plenty of time for good work to be done.
I don't mean to make this scenario sound imminent. But as we ease ourselves into the world of genetic engineering, let's notice what we're doing. We're chalking off a zone where the ethics of human manipulation don't apply, on the grounds that the human entities we're manipulating aren't human beings. Seven years ago, scientists and supportive ethicists set up a similar ethics-free zone based on origin: Human embryos produced by fertilization were protected, while those produced by cloning were fair game. Now we've shifted to lines based on age and location.
Will these lines hold? You can't dismiss the fear that they won't as slippery-slope nonsense from the anti-abortion crowd. Embryo research is fundamentally different from abortion. If you're a woman with an unwanted pregnancy, you have no incentive to prolong it. But if you're a scientist with an embryo modified for research, you have lots of good reasons to keep growing it and studying it. The only things holding you back are your conscience, your review board, and the law.
Here's my prediction: We won't end up extending species-mixing beyond the 14-day line. Nor will we end up deliberately growing embryos past that point for harvestable tissue, as I previously speculated. But we will extend germline genetic engineering all the way through pregnancy and beyond, and our grandchildren will wonder why it was ever controversial.
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Today I've been reading up on the trans-Atlantic news about a genetically modified human embryo. I'll have some thoughts on that shortly. In the meantime, while reading Britain's Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill as part of my research, I noticed what might be a loophole. I'll point it out here, since the bill is being debated by the British parliament right now.
The bill proposes to lift previous restrictions on tinkering with human embryos. To reassure critics and the public, it promises to prevent altered embryos from growing into people. Here's the relevant legislative language:
No person shall place in a woman—
(a) an embryo other than a permitted embryo (as defined by section 3ZA), or
(b) any gametes other than permitted eggs or permitted sperm (as so defined). ...
No person shall place in a woman—
(a) a human admixed embryo,
(b) any other embryo that is not a human embryo, or
(c) any gametes other than human gametes.
Now, here's my question: Is Thomas Beatie a woman? Here's his first-person account, published seven weeks ago in the Advocate:
I am transgender, legally male, and legally married to Nancy. ... Sterilization is not a requirement for sex reassignment, so I decided to have chest reconstruction and testosterone therapy but kept my reproductive rights. ... I always wanted to have children. However, due to severe endometriosis 20 years ago, Nancy had to undergo a hysterectomy and is unable to carry a child. ... [So] I stopped taking my bimonthly testosterone injections. ... My body regulated itself after about four months, and I didn't have to take any exogenous estrogen, progesterone, or fertility drugs to aid my pregnancy.
How did he get pregnant? By using donated sperm, as millions of women have done. He reports:
On successfully getting pregnant a second time, we are proud to announce that this pregnancy is free of complications and our baby girl has a clean bill of health. ... Despite the fact that my belly is growing with a new life inside me, I am stable and confident being the man that I am. In a technical sense I see myself as my own surrogate, though my gender identity as male is constant.
Beatie says his initial attempt at pregnancy produced ectopic triplets, which cost him a fallopian tube and could have killed him. So he has good reasons to do IVF and screen his embryos. Suppose doctors find a genetic flaw in his next embryo and can fix it. That's human germline modification. The British bill says the altered embryo can't be placed in a woman. But under the law, Beatie isn't a woman. He's a man.
I'll let you lawyers sort it out. But it sure looks like a loophole to me.
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If you've been thinking lately about how to dispose of your corpse—and I know I have—there's good news. You may soon have a new option: being dissolved in lye. Well, let's not call it that. Let's call it "alkaline hydrolysis." According to AP reporter Norma Love (what a byline!), the process leaves a "brownish, syrupy residue":
It uses lye, 300-degree heat and 60 pounds of pressure per square inch to destroy bodies in big stainless-steel cylinders that are similar to pressure cookers. ... In addition to the liquid, the process leaves a dry bone residue similar in appearance and volume to cremated remains. It could be returned to the family in an urn or buried in a cemetery. The coffee-colored liquid has the consistency of motor oil and a strong ammonia smell. But proponents say it is sterile and can, in most cases, be safely poured down the drain, provided the operation has the necessary permits.
I know it sounds bad. Lye is what we use to dissolve dead animals, and. over the years, mass-murdering dictators have given it a bad name, using it to torture people and get rid of bodies. But think of the benefits: "Alkaline hydrolysis doesn't take up as much space in cemeteries as burial. And the process could ease concerns about crematorium emissions, including carbon dioxide as well as mercury from silver dental fillings."
Oh, and in case you're worried about ending up in your grandkids' water supply:
George Carlson, an industrial-waste manager for the New Hampshire Department of Environmental Services, said things the public might find more troubling routinely flow into sewage treatment plants in the U.S. all the time. That includes blood and spillover embalming fluid from funeral homes.
Given the alternatives -- incineration, rotting, being eaten by worms—is it really so bad?
No wonder the life-exit industry is so excited. Funeral Service Insider (yes, that's a real publication) calls it a "game-changing technology." Those funeral directors -- what a riot.
But, wait, there's a problem. Opponents in New Hampshire are trying to ban the practice before a local funeral home starts using it. A spokesman for the local Catholic diocese tells Love: "We believe this process, which enables a portion of human remains to be flushed down a drain, to be undignified."
Undignified?
Hey, I'm all for human dignity. When it comes to hand-wringing about messing with the human body, me and Leon Kass are like this (holds two fingers together). (That's a joke for all you liberals, libertarians, and transhumanists.) But, hey, c'mon. We're not talking about live bodies here. We're talking about dead ones.
Let's be serious. The more we learn and think about biology, sentience, and intelligence, the more we're going to have to rethink the relationship between "human" and "dignity." On the one hand, stem cells and other technologies, such as bio-artificial organs, will force us to ask whether human parts deserve the kind of respect we accord to whole human beings. On the other hand, discoveries about animal intelligence will force us to rethink the sharp line we've drawn between our species and others. Does a dead human deserve more respect than a live pig?
I won't even to try to answer that today. But feel free to go at it yourself.
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The war on junk food is forging ahead. New York, Philadelphia, and Boston have banned trans fats. New York is forcing restaurants to post calorie counts. Britain has outlawed junk-food ads during kids' TV shows. South Korea's capital has banned soda from schools. Berkeley and other jurisdictions have prohibited new fast-food restaurants in certain neighborhoods, and last year, Los Angeles considered doing the same.
When I first outlined this crusade, I said it would rely on three arguments: that we should protect kids, that fat people are burdening the rest of us, and that junk food isn't really food. All of those arguments are certainly in play.
But a fourth argument has joined the mix as well: Junk food, like cigarettes, is addictive and should be similarly regulated. Initially, this was just a metaphor. Now it's becoming more than that. Scientists are trying to show that food literally addicts you like drugs.
Two days ago, Alain Dagher and colleagues from the Montreal Neurological Institute published a study in Cell Metabolism on the effects of ghrelin, a hormone associated with appetite. They concluded that "metabolic signals such as ghrelin may favor food consumption by enhancing the hedonic and incentive responses to food-related cues." The word addiction never appears in the journal article, but it's all over the spin and the coverage. Here are excerpts. Keep an eye on the phrases I've bolded.
First, the press release from Cell Metabolism:
The reward centers linked to ghrelin in the new study are also those involved in drug addiction. "That shows it's reasonable to think of high-calorie food as having addictive potential," Dagher said. If so, he suggests that the results could provide the basis for new policies aimed at treating fast food more like cigarettes—for instance, banning its sale in school cafeterias.
Here's the press release from MNI:
The study supports the view that obesity must be understood as a brain disease and that hunger should also be looked at as a kind of food addiction. Obese individuals may eat too much largely due to excess hunger. Dr. Dagher and colleagues found that ghrelin worked on regions of the brain known to be involved with reward and motivation, the same regions implicated in drug addiction. ... "These areas work together to assign incentive value to objects in the world and to actions, and exert very powerful control over our behavior. They are all targets of addictive drugs (like cocaine and nicotine), and are also targets of feeding signals like ghrelin," explains Dr. Dagher. ... This research may also inform public policy. If food is thought of as potentially "addictive," this would support action to limit or ban fast food from schools and junk food advertisements geared toward children, in the same way that results proving nicotine to be addictive spurred the current public policy toward nicotine.
In the Telegraph of London, Dagher links tobacco, cocaine, and chocolate:
Interestingly, the brain response to smoking pictures (in smokers) is very similar to the brain response to food pictures. In a previous study from our research unit, the brain response to eating chocolate was similar to the response to cocaine (in cocaine addicts). Finally, the evidence that high calorie foods are, in a way, addictive (something soft drink and fast food merchants have known for years) provides a justification for public policy.
In fact, Dagher suggests that food addiction may be the basis for drug addiction, rather than the other way around. Here's his interview with LiveScience:
"One theory is that addictive drugs act on brain systems designed to control food intake," Dagher said. "Our brains didn't evolve to make us vulnerable to addictive drugs." Neuroscientist and psychologist Dana Small at the John B. Pierce Laboratory affiliated with Yale University, who did not participate in this study, said these findings suggest it might make sense "to use what we know about drug addiction to understand and treat obesity." It may be reasonable to think "of high-calorie food as having addictive potential," he added. "If food can be thought of as 'addictive,' this supports doing things like banning fast food shops from schools, or advertising junk food to children. Note that public policy aimed at tobacco was really spurred by the science showing that nicotine was addictive."
In a HealthDay wire story, Dagher combines the addiction and harm arguments to make a direct case for regulating food like tobacco:
[I]t makes sense to think of appetite as a kind of addiction. So, if we want to address the fact that obesity is now the number one killer in the world, we're going to have to tackle the problem in the same way that we tackle cigarette smoking.
Scientifically, the evidence for food addiction isn't nearly this simple. Endocrinologist Barbara Kahn points out:
Overeating and drug addiction may converge on some of the same neurons. But other pathways are also involved. And from a biochemical point of view, the two are not the same thing. Drug addictions are much stronger. So to suggest that they are the same makes people feel that they can't do anything about overeating. That it's out of their control. So, I don't really buy that parallel. There may be aspects of overeating that may be related to aspects of addiction. But overeating is not just another addiction.
As a scientific matter, I suspect that Kahn is right and that Dagher is overselling the data. But as a media matter, simplicity beats complexity, and a good metaphor wins every time. Just look at the headline on New Scientist‘s report: "Stomach hormone turns hungry people into junkies."
As neuroscientists focus their attention on obesity, you can expect to see more studies comparing food cravings to drug addiction. As these studies accumulate, you can expect to hear them cited in campaigns to regulate junk food. But the people pushing this analogy had better hope the science is exaggerated. Because if we really do crave junk food the way addicts crave drugs, good luck prying those cheeseburgers from our hands.
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If I had a nickel for every time I've read the word "robot" in a headline about new technology, I'd ... well, given the current price of metals, I'd melt down all those nickels, sell the ingredients, and become a very rich man. Journalists and PR people use the word "robot" to mean anything from HAL to a remote-controlled toy car. Actually, robots come in various degrees. The revolution we're seeing in mechanization isn't so much in the proliferation of robots as in their increasing autonomy.
Case in point: Two stories from this morning's news batch.
First we have an AP story about a "Bum Bot" designed to disperse vagrants from an iffy neighborhood in Atlanta. It belongs to Rufus Terrill, a local bar owner and ex-Marine. The story says Terrill used to patrol the area on foot, but "guns were stuck in his face several times. His wife suggested he patrol a safer way - using a robot." In the AP photo, the robot looks like a small tank, about half as tall as Terrill. It weighs 300 pounds and has a camera and water cannon. (Terrill says he's never used the cannon.) The robot's exterior has been "nicked by rocks, bricks and other objects people Terrill was rousting have thrown at it."
The point of the robot, it seems, is to take the physical risks formerly taken by its human owner. Any guns that might previously have been stuck in his face now have to be pointed at his tank instead, which doesn't have quite the same effect. There's no report of the tank having been shot, but, as the story says, it has taken its share of rocks and bricks. That's fine. It's part of the plan. Sticks and stones may break my drones, but they can't hurt me.
In this way, the Bum Bot is a lot like the thousands of drones currently deployed by the U.S. military. The enemy can't kill American soldiers who patrol war zones from a safe distance via remotely-operated unmanned vehicles.
The tricky thing about drones, as I've noted before, is that they can desensitize you to the battlefield. I mean literally desensitize you: Your physical senses have no direct contact with what you're looking or shooting at. Can the same thing happen to civilians who use private security drones at home? Apparently so. "It's just like a video game," says Terrill, describing how he operates the Bum Bot. The Atlanta police warn that he might be prosecuted if he uses the water cannon. But there's no such constraint on the use of drones in Afghanistan, Pakistan, or Iraq.
The chief constraint on the Bum Bot isn't legal or moral. It's technological. The Bum Bot isn't really a robot. It's controlled entirely by the handheld remote, and it has no voice other than Terrill's, which he projects through an integrated walkie-talkie. Without constant human direction, the machine does nothing.
If you want to get closer to the cutting edge of robotics, so to speak, you're better off looking at a technology that's already well-commercialized: robotic lawn mowers. Today's New York Times salutes a new product, the Kyodo LawnBott LB3500, which mows your lawn by itself. Here's the manufacturer's description:
It operates automatically, and autonomously by means of its intelligent computer and a perimeter cable. It can move freely within an enclosed area, detecting the faint signal transmitted by the perimeter cable located on the ground, defining the areas to be mowed; it can also work without a perimeter cable as working area is enclosed by a fence or small border at least 4 inches tall. ... [I]t leaves its docking station and starts mowing your yard in a random direction. It will mow in a straight line until it bumps into an obstacle, such as a tree or flower pot, or until it runs over its perimeter cable, then it stops, backs up, turns and takes off again.
Well, at least it needs a human to recharge its batteries, right?
Wrong. The company explains:
When the batteries start running low, or at the end of its cutting cycle, the mower will search out the perimeter cable and follow it back to its docking station to recharge. After charging, it heads back out on its own! ... With the new LawnBott, you have One Less Thing to Worry About.
Well, yes. But you also have one more thing to worry about: Your lawnmower running amok while you're at the office. No human hassle means no human control.
Kyodo says the LB3500 comes with enhanced safety features: "a higher sensitivity, free-floating, 360° bumper shell, blade stop proximity sensor, and an on-board alarm system should an unauthorized user pick up the Lawnbott." Still, we're talking about a slicing machine that runs around by itself and can't even be stopped by power depletion. LawnBotts.com points out that "robotic lawnmowers are many times safer than its manual counterparts just because you eliminate the human needing to be around it while it's operating." This is the same sense in which military drones are safer than manned vehicles and weapons: They protect their owners. But if you're not the owner, look out.
In the AP story about Terrill's bar, some of the locals complain that the Bum Bot is "intimidating." They have no idea what's coming.
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I'm digging out after returning from a Pew Forum conference. I'll try to give you some highlights of it later. For now, I'll just pass along my favorite quote, from Penn Prof. Andy Newberg, on his terror of doing brain scans on people speaking in tongues: "Part of the problem is that I have to know when to give these people this injection of radioactive material."
See? Neuroscientists are just normal folks like us.
Just giving Andy a hard time. His work on meditation, religion, and the brain is really cool. Plus, he was fun to hang out with. Plus, he has this awesome prom photo.
I'm thinking of instituting a quick daily post that at least highlights some of what's most worth noting from the morning news batch. In this case, I've led with two items about food addiction and regulation. We have a study that compares the brain effects of food to the brain effects of addictive drugs, and we have a report on the first citations issued to restaurants for violating New York City's new law that requires posting of calorie counts for menu items. The important trend to notice is that scientists are moving to substantiate the case for regulating junk food like drugs. The comparison is no longer just metaphorical. It's becoming literal.
We also have a couple of surveys designed to show that other kinds of addiction are uncomfortably widespread: hookah use among college students, and gambling among young people. You can see how the idea of addiction is spreading from substances to behavior.
But -- oops -- we also have a study that shows the limits of controlling drug use through culture, since early use, at least in the case of alcohol, is influenced by genes.
We'd better figure out how to rationally classify which substances are drugs and which aren't, and which drugs are worse than others, since differential enforcement for different drugs in different neighborhoods is raising questions about official racism.
Shifting gears to neurotech: A report on Medtronic, a leading maker of implanted medical devices, illustrates that the brain is increasingly being treated as just another organ that's sometimes in need of electrical intervention.
Today's Catch-22: If you've got mental illness in your family, beware. It can double the risk of autism in your biological children. But if you're thinking of adopting instead, beware again: Adoption can double a child's risk of disruptive behavior disorder. In medicine, the grim joke is that everything gives you cancer. In psychology, I'm starting to get the weary feeling that everything gives you mental illness.
Also, keep your eye on stem-cell technology that mimics the human body. This was the theme of a series I wrote three years ago: To make tissues grow as they do in the human body, you need to supply living environments that resemble the body. The twist is that this work becomes increasingly creepy as we replicate in the lab more and more of what we previously regarded as living creatures.
Finally, don't miss today's study of pregnancy discrimination. Looks to me like classic meaningless soft science, simultaneously complaining that women who looked pregnant suffered "hostility" in some cases and "overfriendliness" in others.
I realize this kind of quick roundup can't substitute for a more thorough post or piece, but I hope it at least sheds some light on the news of the day, which otherwise might go unremarked. It's an experiment. Let me know if you'd like to see it instituted as a regular thing, or not.
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A week ago, I crunched some data and concluded that suicide bombing, despite its brutal rationality as a weapon, had not increased in recent years outside of Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Many of you pointed out that this was one heck of a caveat. The number of attacks inside those countries is appalling and has been increasing.
Now there's a new twist to the trend in Iraq: Many of the people blowing themselves up are women. According to Farhana Ali, a former U.S. adviser who presented data at a Washington conference yesterday, women executed 12 suicide attacks in Iraq during the first four months of this year. That's already more than the number of such attacks executed by women in Iraq over the previous five years.
In an interview with Agence France Presse, Ali blames this trend on male violence and the invasion, which she says has widowed many women and "marginalized" others. But then the AFP story gets to the really interesting point:
Ali warned that U.S. soldiers face a cultural barrier in detecting women bombers. "A marine officer coming back from Fallujah said to me: 'How are we supposed to detect these women if we are taught before we are deployed to not even look at them?'" she explained.
And here's Ali's solution: "If you want to gain entrance into female jihadi organisations, you need female case officers. You need female police officers. You need women in Iraqi law enforcement."
Suicide bombing has always exploited common disbelief about what people will do: You don't expect somebody to walk into a market and blow himself up. Nor do you expect him to take 20 or 30 civilians with him for no apparent reason. Why shouldn't this tactical exploitation of disbelief extend to sexism? You certainly don't expect somebody to blow herself up, much less kill a bunch of innocents.
This is one of the lessons terrorism will gradually teach us: Stereotyping is an exploitable security weakness. To overcome it, we'll have to overcome our sexism about women in the military and in law enforcement, as well as our sexism about women in crime and terrorism. If the moral faults of such stereotypes aren't enough to make you push them aside, do it for your country.
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Housekeeping note: If you haven't bookmarked the Human Nature home page, I recommend it. It always has the best and freshest news from around the Web in easy-to-click format. Everything I discuss here, plus the stuff I can't get to, is posted there first. So are links to all the latest Human Nature essays and blog items. If you don't have it bookmarked, and the Slate URL is too hard to remember, just type humannature.us.com.
Here's one story you'll find there and in this morning's news batch: U.S. surgeons have begun the long process of repairing a 15-year-old Filipino girl, Jingle Luis, whose feet are so clubbed that they've twisted upside down and backward. The AP story explains:
Jingle's case is more severe than those usually seen by doctors in industrialized countries. "Generally speaking, with modern technology, it doesn't get to this point," said Dr. Terry Amaral, a pediatric orthopedic surgeon who performed the surgery. ... Clubfoot is a relatively common deformity, occurring in about one in 1,000 births. Children are usually treated in infancy with casts or braces that gradually bring the feet into correct alignment. The condition becomes harder to treat if it is not corrected early on.
It sounds like Jingle wasn't treated as a baby because the Philippines lacked the necessary technology. But that's not what happened. Read further:
Amaral said Jingle's case was complicated by the fact that her clubfoot was associated with spina bifida. ... He said doctors who saw Jingle as a baby thought that her spina bifida would shorten her life span and prevent her from walking, so they did not treat the clubfoot. "They felt it wasn't worth managing because of the life expectancy, so they decided to leave it alone," Amaral said.
This is a major factor in treatment decisions around the world. Often, the problem isn't that doctors in less-developed countries can't fix you. It's that resources are limited and that in this context, life-expectancy projections come into play.
In Jingle's case, doctors misjudged the severity of her spina bifida. If she'd been born in the U.S., it's likely that her doctors would have recognized that the defect wasn't so bad. But it's also likely that they would have calculated her prospects differently altogether. That's because life expectancies differ significantly between rich and poor countries, and life expectancies for infants with significant health problems differ even more. Life expectancy isn't a purely biological calculation. It's a socioeconomic calculation.
The interplay of economic progress, life expectancy, and treatment decisions doesn't end in childhood, or with the case of one disabled girl. In fact, it's going to be one of the most powerful forces driving the world in this century and beyond. Thanks to economic and technological progress, life expectancies are rising around the world. Some of this is due to reductions in child mortality. But a lot of it, if not most, is due to increases in the length of old age. As we conquer diseases and improve public health, people in India, China, and elsewhere can expect to live many years longer. That, in turn, is transforming calculations about which conditions are worth treating. If the average woman in Shanghai is probably going to make it to 75 instead of 65, a disease that strikes her at 60 and would take five years to kill her becomes, in utilitarian terms, a disease worth treating.
What's happening, in short, is an increase not just in our technological ability, but in our moral expectations. It's a wonderful thing. But it's going to be incredibly expensive.
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How do you feel about mass-producing and selling human tissue in machine form? I hope you like the idea. Because it's on the way.
A few days ago, the University of Michigan trumpeted a study validating the efficacy of its "bioartificial kidneys." In a clinical trial involving people with acute renal injury and failure, the kidney boosters cut the usual death rate (compared to patients using conventional "continuous renal replacement therapy") from two in three patients to one in three.
Pretty amazing. But just what is a "bioartificial" kidney? Here's U-M's description:
The bioartificial kidney includes a cartridge that filters the blood as in traditional kidney dialysis. That cartridge is connected to a renal tubule assist device [RAD], which is made of hollow fibers lined with a type of kidney cell called renal proximal tubule cells. These cells are intended to reclaim vital electrolytes, salt, glucose and water, as well as control production of immune system molecules called cytokines, which the body needs to fight infection. Conventional kidney dialysis machines remove these important components of blood plasma, along with toxic waste products, and cannot provide the immune regulation function of living cells. Initial testing in animals ... found the cells in the RAD perform the metabolic and hormonal functions lost in acute renal failure.
This is the point I've made in recent posts about biological pacemakers and limb regeneration. Prosthetics are nice, but flesh is better. That's why the U.S. Army is now funding tissue regeneration. Instead of trying to reengineer everything in biology, we're learning to borrow, cultivate, and replicate it. Let Mother Nature do the work: She already knows how to filter toxins while keeping what your body needs and regulating your systems.
David Humes, the professor behind the U-M study, is also the scientific founder of the company that's preparing to commercialize the RAD. He envisions the new paradigm this way:
[T]he nature of our new approach -- using living cells as therapeutic agents -- argues for the feasibility of developing whole classes of new cell-based and tissue engineered therapies. The ability to harness vital processes of cells, to target their living molecular machinery on restoring critical substances which have become disordered by disease, has vast implications for the future of medicine. The apparently successful use of living cells in this way validates our approach and should encourage others to investigate cell therapies for a range of disorders.
Technologically, this is a sensible and powerful idea. It will save lives. But as an inflection point in our thinking about human flesh, it's, well, pretty RAD. What we're getting into is not just the commercialization but the mass-production of body parts. It's a bit like PETA's campaign to commercialize lab-grown meat -- except that in this case, the meat will be human.
Where do we get the cells in the cartridge from? According to the American Society of Nephrology, they're "grown from donor kidneys." So we're starting with somebody's donated organ. Instead of transplanting it to one person, we're growing cells from it, which can then be farmed out to multiple patients. We're not just distributing the cells; we're incorporating them into what U-M calls a "living cell cartridge." It's bio -- it's artificial -- it's bio-artificial.
Like lab-grown meat, the living tissue in the cartridge may run into spoilage problems. U-M notes that its researchers are still working on the "challenges of mass producing, storing and shipping a living-cell device." But the goal, according to the nephrology society, is definitely "mass production." And the next step will be to repackage it as a "wearable kidney that performs natural functions unachievable through man-made technology alone." Real flesh, grown from somebody else, mass-produced, packaged into a cartridge, and worn on your body. Good luck sorting the bio from the artificial.
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I'm working on a post about bio-artificial organs for later this afternoon. In the meantime, I want to call your attention to a related item in this morning's news batch: a report in New Scientist about plastic red blood cells.
First of all, can I just say: I love New Scientist. It's one of the coolest things you could spend your time reading. They do just about the world's best job of keeping tabs on the latest far-flung developments in science. Believe me, I've been trying to do this for a month, and it's incredibly hard. It's not like politics, where everybody agrees on central characters and a narrative, like Hillary's latest photo op or what Obama ate for breakfast. You really have to scan the horizon and stay on your toes.
In this case, NS reporter Justin Mullins has flagged a patent application for plastic blood cells. If you get malaria or sickle-cell anemia, your red blood cells lose the agility to pass through small blood vessels. Wouldn't it be great if we could give you artificial blood cells to do the job? The patent application proposes exactly this: tiny "sacks" made of a chemical that's biologically harmless and binds easily so it can carry oxygen or carbon dioxide. Experiments in mice look OK so far.
The idea of having little plastic sacks pumped into your bloodstream sounds pretty freaky. We're talking about filling you with petroleum products in a way that challenges the meaning of "flesh and blood." For all I know, further animal or human testing may find unforeseen health risks from this kind of mixture, particularly at such a small scale and with such pervasion of the body. But if the technology turns out to be safe, it'll go a long way toward loosening our concept of ourselves as biological creatures.
So much for artificial technology replacing biology. Next, we'll talk about the reverse.
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I'm sitting here with four passports on my desk. They all have photos. The subject of one looks like a 9/11 hijacker. Another looks like a high-school boy delivering pizza. Another looks like a washed-out ex-kid TV star who's been busted for drugs. Another looks like a Latin American child who needs a liver transplant.
The people in the photos are, respectively, me, my wife, my son, and my daughter.
I'm sharing this embarrassing information with you for two reasons. One, because it's already in the possession of the U.S. government and every government that coordinates with ours. And two, because today's news file brings us a story from the Guardian about British plans to scan passengers at airport gates using face-recognition software. The idea is to "improve security and ease congestion."
The scans certainly will improve security. But that's because of a human decision as to how the machines will be programmed. And that decision, in turn, might exacerbate, rather than ease, congestion. To make this kind of technology work, we have to understand that it requires human management and human assistance.
Face-recognition software looks for a match between the passenger at the gate and a stored photo. There are two kinds of photos you can ask the computer to match. One is a collection of bad guys whose pictures the government has stored in a database. The other is the photo stored by the government as the face that goes with the chip in your passport. Let's call the first kind a suspect scan and the second an ID scan.
If we set up the scanner to look for suspect matches and it can't match you to any of the bad guys in the database, you go through. But if we set up the scanner to look for an ID match and it can't match you to your passport photo, you have a problem. The suspect scan puts the burden of matching on the computer. The ID scan puts the burden of matching on you.
My passport photo was taken nine years ago. I had a lot more hair. I wasn't wearing glasses. I looked tanner and stronger. Last month, when I went through airport security, the officer took a good, long look at both me and my passport. She had to look past the changes of nine years and evaluate both images for subtle similarities.
If she'd been a computer, I probably would have flunked that test. Remember, the whole point of using computers to relieve congestion is that they'll scan us and render their decisions more quickly than humans do. My wife might have flunked, too. And even though my kids' photos were taken just a month ago, I can see how the sheer weirdness of staged photography and the randomness of how they looked that day could cause them to be bounced as well.
This is the problem with the British plan. According to Guardian reporter Owen Bowcott, "Unmanned clearance gates will be phased in to scan passengers' faces and match the image to the record on the computer chip in their biometric passports." In other words, it's an ID scan. If the computer can't match you to your ID, you flunk. And there's nobody at the gate to follow up. You have to get in some other line or go through "additional checks."
It's not clear what "additional checks" means. Here's what it should mean: If the computer flunks you, a human being is on hand to give you and your photo a visual scan. Experts point out to Bowcott that current face-recognition software errs strongly on the side of not finding matches. That's fine: The decision to insist on ID matches is a human decision, and it does enhance security. But if you want to ease congestion at the same time, the computer's failure to match you to your photo can't be treated as a conclusion. It has to be treated as an initial sorting process that directs you to old-fashioned human scanners.
"There is concern that passengers will react badly to being rejected by an automated gate," Bowcott reports. I'll say. I'm a fan of high-tech security scans, even when they see through your clothes. But technology alone is never enough. The buck still stops with us.
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Wow. Chastity belts.
Here's the report from Indonesia, courtesy of Paul Watson in Sunday's L.A. Times:
In a bid to prevent any hanky-panky between masseuses and their clients, several massage parlors ... are insisting that the women wear padlocks across the zippers of their work pants. ... [The instigating parlor owner] settled on black pants that zip up at the side, where a padlock is slipped through two cloth loops and snapped shut each time a masseuse meets a client. ... He stores the padlocks and keys in a special box at the cashier's counter. When a customer arrives for a massage, given in a private room behind a curtain, the "cashier calls one masseuse, asks her to prepare things and locks her pants," ... [and] "when the client is done, the masseuse comes to the cashier, and the cashier opens the padlock."
Several other parlor owners have supposedly decided to adopt similar locks. A local official says, "We expect this policy to be enacted as city legislation."
Any time somebody tries to take society back a few centuries, I like to know why. The instigating owner, Franky Setiawan, says he resorted to the belts because men "bombarded" his masseuses with sexual demands, and he wanted the women to feel safe. He says he and other owners have been looking for ways "to handle some naughty guests."
Ah. The old feminine-protection rationale.
The idea isn't crazy. To say that men often behave like pigs is to insult pigs. Boorishness, harassment, and sexual coercion are real problems. But let's think this through.
To begin with, there's the small problem of excretion. What the man thinks of as his—or some other guy's—way into the woman happens to be, rather more importantly, her way out. That's why, as Setiawan mentions, the masseuse "usually pees" before the cashier locks her pants. So, we're starting with a glaring engineering mistake: inconveniencing the victim more than the perpetrator.
Next, there's the political context. "In recent years, conservative Islamic values have gained influence" in Indonesia, Watson reports. "Last month, Indonesia's parliament passed a bill that makes it a crime to look at violent or pornographic material on the Internet. The penalty is up to three years in prison." So when Setiawan talks about how the chastity outfits will improve his industry's public image, you can see how workplace protection serves as a fig leaf for his awkward mix of puritanism and financial self-interest.
Finally, there's the telltale language of sexual paternalism. The problem with the some of the industry's male clients, according to Setiawan, is that "they try over and over and over again, persuading our workers with their dangerously sweet words."
Persuasion? Sweet words? This is the crisis? Words are intolerably coercive, but chastity belts aren't?
You can see how easy it is, as a paternalist, to talk yourself into absurdity. Once you get it into your head that motive is more important than method, you and your excellent motives are on the way to dystopia.
Before you deride the Indonesians, look at what's happening in the United States. Legislatures are passing laws right and left to mandate provision of ultrasound images to women seeking abortions. I support the idea of viewing an ultrasound before you make the decision. But when legislators add doctor scripts, patient viewing mandates, waiting periods, and other heavy-handed paternalist garbage, count me out.
Now comes a ballot initiative in Missouri that would hold doctors liable for "medical negligence" unless, prior to any abortion, they administer a formal psychological evaluation to ascertain whether the woman has been pressured into it. The measure's sponsors propose that women be asked: "Is someone else encouraging you to have this abortion? Do you want this abortion to satisfy your own needs or are you looking to do this to please someone else?" These questions are necessary because, as all paternalists know, women don't really want what they came to the clinic for. "The sad reality is that many abortion providers simply do abortions on request, no questions asked," the measure's sponsors lament. By failing to second-guess their patients, these providers fail "to help women in the ways they want and deserve."
I'm not saying coerced abortions never happen. There's clear evidence that they sometimes do. But you can see from the Missouri initiative how easily the notion of feminine vulnerability leads to interference dressed up as protection. And this is the crucial lesson of chastity belts, abortion regulation, and most other paternalist measures: The pressure from which you set out to protect women, bad as it may be, is seldom as ugly or coercive as the pressure your intervention imposes.
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In Sunday's Washington Post, Rick Weiss detailed an important and underreported trend: the increasing role of genetics in legal disputes. His reporting illustrates how the march of science and the evolution of law are changing the way we think of ourselves. In South Carolina, the state's highest court overturned a murder conviction based on evidence that the killer acted out of genetically based depression. In Tennessee, a murder defendant blamed his conduct on inherited mental illness. In Georgia, lawyers in a murder case sought tests to determine whether their client had a gene associated with violence. In Arizona, a convicted killer argued on appeal that his attorney should have told the court about a similar gene-based propensity.
How did we get here? Weiss's research suggests a confluence of two trends. One is the habituation of courts to DNA. The growing familiarity of this kind of evidence masks the evolving purposes to which it has been put. First came DNA as identification, basic CSI stuff. Then came DNA as evidence of harm: Plaintiffs sued companies over toxic damage, but their DNA failed to show the toxin's expected effects. Then there's DNA as a cause of disease: In pollution and malpractice cases, courts have tested plaintiffs' DNA to check out the argument that genes, not products or procedures, sickened them. And if DNA explains the past, why not use it to predict the future? HIV tests have already been court-ordered to project victims' longevity and thereby calculate lifelong damages. Genetic longevity tests will be next. In a custody case, one parent successfully demanded that the other be tested for the deadly Huntington's gene. Apparently, the point was to challenge the second parent's fitness.
So, we're already in the business of testing for genes to predict fitness. That brings us to the second trend: the increasing use of biology to assess criminal responsibility. U.S. case law has traditionally discounted perpetrators' culpability in the event of sleepwalking, epileptic seizures, insanity, retardation, or "diminished capacity." Three years ago, the Supreme Court struck down death sentences for teenagers, citing evidence of their "underdeveloped sense of responsibility." Every month, scientists find new correlations between genes and traits such as aggression or mental illness. Just two weeks ago, the Human Nature News roundup flagged a study showing a genetic correlate of ruthlessness. As the cost of genetic testing declines, the temptation to test defendants increases. The persuasiveness of some genes increases as well: The allele cited in the Georgia murder case has subsequently been connected to violence in additional studies.
Put the two trends together, and you're looking at a gradual invasion of personal responsibility by genetic determinism. It's a conceptual shift from thinking of people as subjects to thinking of them as objects. The shift helps defense lawyers who need excuses for their clients' behavior. But it comes at a price: If your client is an object, why should we treat him like a subject?
As Weiss points out, courts already use unscientific evidence of "future dangerousness" to decide which killers should be executed. Genes could hardly do worse at predicting such risks. Weiss cites an Idaho case in which the defendant's genetic "propensity to commit murder" became a justification for executing him. A judge in the Arizona murder case drew the same conclusion about the appellant's "alleged genetic predisposition for violence." If your client's genes made him kill, they'll do it again. So don't expect us to let him live.
Nor should you expect us to protect his DNA from scrutiny under the Fourth or Fifth Amendment. If he's the product of his genes, as opposed to their manager, why should we treat them as his possession? He's their possession. Ditto for self-incrimination: If mental states are products of genes, we don't need his testimony; we just need his DNA. We can't make him open his mouth to testify, but we can make him open it for a swab, which could tell us plenty about his mind.
Are we more than our programming? Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I leave that question in your hands.
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Another good story from this morning's batch: Ivan Oransky of the Wall Street Journal writes about the development of a "biological pacemaker." He focuses on the work of researchers Ira Cohen and Michael Rosen:
By inserting genes into rat heart cells growing in a dish, they were able to create a beating pattern that was faster and more regular than had been seen before. ... [Their first step was] to load up a common cold virus with a pacemaker gene, and then used the virus to successfully infect heart cells in a dish. The infected cells ended up with the gene and began making a pacing current they had lacked. Next the scientists tried the technique in dogs with slow hearts. The gene transfer worked. Parts of the dogs' hearts that had been beating 25 to 40 times per minute were restored to a normal 60 beats per minute. ... [Later] they stitched pacemaker genes into adult stem cells, using a technique that doesn't require viruses, and then injected the altered cells into the heart. ... [W]hen the researchers tested the pacemaker stem cells in dogs for six weeks, the cells behaved just as they hoped. As a precaution, the researchers showed that they could turn off a cellular pacemaker if it becomes hyperactive with a drug ...
This is a great illustration of the point I was trying to make two weeks ago about the superiority of flesh-based technology. First we had flesh but no pacemakers. If your heart lost it rhythm, you had no backup. Now we have electronic pacemakers. They solve the problem of unreliable flesh, but they introduce the problems of electronics. Inserting them requires surgery. Their batteries are finite, and, as we learned from the Medtronic fiasco, their wires can fail. Worse, like other electronic devices, they can be hacked -- in this case, with potentially lethal results.
The long-term solution is flesh. Unlike electronics, flesh can be grown inside your body, avoiding the need for surgery. It's self-correcting, self-repairing, and self-renewing in a way that electronics aren't. And there isn't an easy way to hack somebody else's genes -- at least, not yet. For the same reason, we do need a way to remotely reset your biological pacemaker if it runs out of control. That's where the aforementioned drug comes in. But if you're in the pacemaker market, you had that problem already.
Oransky ends with a wonderful quote from Cohen: "Just like Lasik is a better solution than eyeglasses, a biological pacemaker would be a better solution than an electronic one." Having written about Lasik before, I like the analogy. At the time, I saw Lasik as a potential enhancement of human powers, with athletes boosting their vision beyond 20/20. But as Cohen points out, you can also look at it the other way: Instead of outfitting you with gizmos we've come to think of as normal -- glasses or contacts -- we just fix your flesh. Sometimes the most effective technology is also the most natural.
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This morning's news brings a face-slapping AFP story from the land of the mullahs: Iran is setting up vending machines to sell condoms and syringes. The country's drug czar tells its state news service that the machines will be in shelters for addicts: "Condoms, syringes, bandages and plasters will be easily accessible just by inserting a coin. This protects addicts from acquiring AIDS and hepatitis." Cost per item: about 5 cents.
Yes, you read that right: The country that brought you fundamentalist theocracy, Middle East proxy wars, presidential Holocaust denial, an implacable nuclear weapons program, and hundreds of days of Americans held hostage is practically throwing needles and rubbers at junkies.
Why? First, because living under a fundamentalist theocracy evidently doesn't make you any less likely to get hooked on drugs. Iran estimates that some two million of its 71 million people are regular users. We're talking pot, heroin, morphine, and opium. The country consumes some 700 tons of drugs from Afghanistan alone.
Second, because even a fundamentalist theocracy has to deal with reality. According to the AFP report:
Condoms are freely available in Iranian pharmacies. The Islamic republic in the 1990s started actively promoting contraception as it encouraged families to have just two children to prevent the country's population growth increasing further. Iran has tried to change its approach to drug addicts by treating users as "people who need help" rather than throwing them into already overcrowded jails.
How do you like that? On drugs and HIV, the United States has been out-liberalized and out-pragmatized by the right wing of the Axis of Evil.
No moral equivalence intended, but ... speaking of holocaust denial ...
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Six years ago, I wrote about the science and ethics of incest ("The Love That Dare Not Speak Its Surname"). At the time, a study showed that having a child with your first cousin raised the risk of a significant birth defect from about 3-to-4 percent to about 4-to-7 percent. The authors concluded that this difference wasn't enough to justify genetic testing of cousin couples, much less bans on cousin marriage.
Now the incest taboo has taken another hit. Ecologists Kelly Zamudio and Chris Chandler have published a study in Molecular Ecology on sexual selection among spotted salamanders. From this and other research, Science News reporter Ewen Callaway has teased out a fascinating theme: Incest, apparently for sound Darwinian reasons, is surprisingly common in nature.
Through interviews with biologists and ecologists, Callaway looks at several cases. Among spotted salamanders, DNA analysis shows inbreeding "at the level of first cousins, on average. Despite having hundreds of possible mates to choose from, females tended to fertilize their eggs with sperm from related males." Another study found that "Japanese quail prefer first cousins over brothers and sisters and over less-related birds." Among ambrosia beetles: "Brothers and sisters tend to mate." A comparison over two generations of mating found that "inbred beetles fared no worse than outbred insects, and the eggs produced by brother-sister pairs were likelier to hatch than the eggs of unrelated pairs."
At least one fish species similarly prefers brother-sister mating. Scientists "found that fathers from brother-sister couples spent more time, on average, defending their caves and that both parents tended to pay more attention to their kids than unrelated couples." This makes obvious sense. The ecologist who supervised the study reports, "Couples which are full siblings are more cooperative in brood care. ... [T]he males and females stay with the offspring for several weeks and guard them—they defend them—and there's less aggression between full siblings."
These aren't the only rationales for inbreeding. Paraphrasing a Cambridge biologist, Callaway notes, "Many organisms might have slight genetic tweaks or adaptations tuned to their local habitats, and too much genetic mixing with outsiders can dilute these adaptations." Among ambrosia beetles, the practice "may cement the slight genetic differences between the insects," thereby helping to "create new species."
Nor is inbreeding universally taboo among humans. A study in Pakistan found that "three out of five marriages were between first cousins." Another in India that found "one-fifth of marriages occurred between uncles and nieces and a third between first cousins." And before you dismiss this as Eastern barbarism, read up on Charles Darwin and Rudy Giuliani.
The incest taboo does have a firm biological basis. As Callaway explains, "Inbreeding ups the chances that a child will inherit two versions of a disease-causing gene." Data show higher mortality among infants born from first-cousin pairs. But beyond that range, there's evidence that breeding within the family has advantages. Two months ago, a study in Science reported "a significant positive association between kinship and fertility," with a likely "biological basis." The study found "the greatest reproductive success" among "couples related at the level of third and fourth cousins." On average, these cousins produced more kids than less related—and more related—pairs did.
The upshot seems to be that there are advantages and disadvantages to breeding with a relative, and as far as nature is concerned, the ideal course is to strike a balance. You're free to argue that incest is wrong, of course. But be careful what you call unnatural.
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One thing I hope to do more of, now that I've got this network of Web pages, is to integrate reader comments into the blog. Here's a good thread in response to yesterday's post on dog meat. Lid writes,
I like pigs just fine but dogs share a place with people like no other animal. Without dogs man could not have herded goats and sheep. Man would not have settled the Arctic before modern technology. Dogs are largely responsible for our ability to sucessfully hunt game and establish populations in arid climates. Without dogs civilization would have evolved much differently, its dispersion limited and its progress stunted.
To which Sevumar adds,
Very few people relish the idea of eating an animal they've developed a personal bond with. Because dogs are so common as pets in our culture, it's understandable that many would be squeamish about eating them. These attitudes are the result of the culture we've been born into or raised in and they vary widely from place to place. In Peru, it's common for residents of the highlands to eat guinea pigs. Many African and Asian cultures use a variety of insects in their cuisine. In many East Asian cultures, the keeping of dogs as pets is a relatively recent phenomenon, so eating them was not considered taboo. Nomads of steppe cultures regularly ate horse meat. Typically, cultures learned to make use of whatever sources of protein were available to them.
It's an interesting conversation. If you start with the logic of the first post -- that the dog's moral priority stems from its role in our history -- then the second post seems correct in pegging this as a kind of relativism. So if you come from a population that didn't rely on dogs as other populations did, you have no obligation to treat dogs as pets rather than as food.
Still, I have to agree with the first post that there's something icky about relying on dogs as our teammates and then eating them when it suits us. In fact, I'd push the point further. We didn't just team up with dogs. As a study in Science explained several years ago, we fed them, bred them, and spread them. My take on this is that through relentless genetic selection and breeding, we essentially invented the dog. We derived dogs from wolves by selecting those that excelled at interpreting our behavior and executing our assignments. To borrow the Biblical metaphor: We made a species in our image.
Objectively, going by intelligence alone, it still strikes me as irrational that we think it's more wrong to eat dogs than to eat pigs. Our compunction is purely subjective, based on our current or past relationships with dogs. But maybe this is one of those cases that suggests we should respect subjectivity (or, more precisely, intersubjectivity -- somebody stop me before I start quoting Habermas) as a basis for ethics. Not only is our relationship with dogs deeply enmeshed in history - arguably the most objective thing there is among people - but that history includes our creation of dogs. The nature of dogs is that we made them to suit ourselves; so if our aversion to eating them arises from the same basis, then it's based -- objectively, you might say -- on their nature.
All this philosophy has my head spinning. I'm gonna go find a simpler topic for my next post. Somebody else carry the ball from here.