Those pesky viruses. But is it all bad? 

Viruses are in the news just now; certainly the Ebola virus. Is it my imagination but in the run-up to the US congressional election Republicans seem to be blaming the African American President for the fact that one person – yep one – has died of Ebola in the USA. Americans should move beyond their self-centeredness and care about the thousands dying of Ebola in West Africa. Yes, even one person dying before their time is one too many; but let’s get things in perspective. According to the Centers for Disease Control, about 30,000 Americans die every year from the flu virus. Sadly, too often because they don’t get around to having a flu shot. And what’s the betting that some of those blaming Obama for Ebola in America are the same folk who are against having their children immunized, not only putting their own children at unnecessary risk, but many others as well. 

In the years 1918-1920 the Spanish flu swept around the world killing approximately 50 million people making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history. Throughout the 20^th century alone smallpox killed about half a billion !  Another viral disease is polio which before the Salk vaccine came into use in the 1950s devastated the lives of hundreds of thousands, mostly children, every year. Jonas Salk was asked once why he hadn’t patented his vaccine. “Can you patent the sun?” he replied. He could have been a billionaire but worked until his death at 80 trying to find a vaccine against HIV. If anyone should be canonized it should be Jonas Salk. 

So what are viruses? They’re a relatively short thread of DNA or RNA in a protein coat. Are they alive? On their own – not really; just a very small packet of organic molecules. But let a few of the wrong ones inside you and your dying body can be riddled with trillions of them in a few days. In other words, with your help they come alive, using your cell metabolism to multiply them at a phenomenal rate. I remember in college our professor showed us a test-tube that had so many bacteria in it the water they were in was cloudy like watery milk – hundreds of millions of cells. We then added a small amount of bacteriophage – viruses that specifically attack bacteria. The professor knew the rate these viruses worked so that one virus would infect a bacterium and minutes later the poor bug would explode scattering hundreds of new viruses. The prof predicted the time and sure enough about an hour later the test tube liquid cleared as millions of bacteria exploded. Viruses move fast. They don’t multiply 1-2-4, but 1-100 -10,000; and not in years but in minutes. That’s why a virus infection can take hold so fast. And tricky to tackle:  a) because antibiotics don’t work because the cells they’re operating in are yours; and b) because their mutation rate (which is largely based on generation time) is so fast that they keep changing.

If they think about it, viruses must be quite a challenge for creationists. Did God make them too? Evolutionists, based on the fact that viruses are made of the same basic material – DNA and RNA – that give the rest of us creatures life, believe that in the very early stages of the development of cell life, these stray bits got in the mix. 

Should we say darn, and hope that on some other planet life has had better luck and no viruses are messing things up? The story gets a little more complicated. Most viruses get into a cell’s cytoplasm and then use the cell to make copies of themselves. But there’s a subset of DNA viruses that go one step further and splice themselves into our cell’s own DNA. They’re called retroviruses. They’re difficult to find let alone destroy. One example of a retrovirus is the HIV virus. Here’s the surprise – 8% of our DNA is composed of old no-longer-functioning (endogenous) retroviruses that have been handed down generation after generation for millions of years along with the rest of our DNA. More bad news for creationists. Most of us have heard that humans have a 98.5% overlap of DNA with chimps. Well we also share the same ‘fossilized’ retroviruses in the same locations on our DNA as our close primate relatives.  

If I haven’t given you enough bad news, some retroviruses can cause cancer! They do this by reverse engineering the DNA – RNA mechanism in our cell metabolism, which isn’t supposed to happen.  Before you say –‘There really must be a devil !’, here’s the kicker – we’d still be bird-brained egg-laying creatures but for this cancer causing viral insinuation.  It is believed that about 100 million years ago an early egg-laying mammal (there’s still a few around today) got infected with a retrovirus that caused a cancerous development in the embryo that embedded into the mother’s tissue, enabling an exchange of oxygen and nutrients across a protective membrane. Yep, we now refer to it as a placenta. Because retroviruses are embedded in the host’s DNA it can get handed down the generations, and it was. Put simply – we humans wouldn’t exist but for some viruses. But do get your flu shot.

Those pesky viruses. But is it all bad? 

Viruses are in the news just now; certainly the Ebola virus. Is it my imagination but in the run-up to the US congressional election Republicans seem to be blaming the African American President for the fact that one person – yep one – has died of Ebola in the USA. Americans should move beyond their self-centeredness and care about the thousands dying of Ebola in West Africa. Yes, even one person dying before their time is one too many; but let’s get things in perspective. According to the Centers for Disease Control, about 30,000 Americans die every year from the flu virus. Sadly, too often because they don’t get around to having a flu shot. And what’s the betting that some of those blaming Obama for Ebola in America are the same folk who are against having their children immunized, not only putting their own children at unnecessary risk, but many others as well. 

In the years 1918-1920 the Spanish flu swept around the world killing approximately 50 million people making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.  But throughout the 20^th century alone smallpox killed about half a billion before the Salk vaccine kicked in starting in 1957. Jonas Salk was asked once why he hadn’t patented his vaccine. “Can you patent the sun?” he replied. He could have been a billionaire but worked until his death at 80 trying to find a vaccine against HIV. If anyone should be canonized it should be Jonas Salk.

So what are viruses? They’re a relatively short thread of DNA or RNA in a protein coat. Are they alive? On their own – not really; just a small packet of organic molecules. But let a few of the wrong ones inside you and your body can be riddled with trillions of them in a few days. In other words, with your help they come alive, using your cell metabolism to multiply them at a phenomenal rate. I remember in college our professor showed us a test-tube that had so many bacteria in it the water they were in was cloudy like watery milk – hundreds of millions of cells. We then added a small amount of bacteriophage – viruses that specifically attack bacteria. The professor knew the rate these viruses worked so that one virus would infect a bacterium and minutes later the poor bug would explode scattering hundreds of new viruses. The prof predicted the time and sure enough about an hour later the test tube liquid cleared as millions of bacteria exploded. 

Viruses move fast. They don’t multiply 1-2-4, but more like 1-100 -10,000; and not in years but in minutes. That’s why a virus infection can take hold so fast. And tricky to tackle:  a) because antibiotics don’t work because the cells they’re operating in are yours; and b) because their mutation rate (which is largely based on generation time) is so fast that they keep changing.

If they think about it, viruses must be quite a challenge for creationists. Did God make them too? Evolutionists, based on the fact that viruses are made of the same basic material – DNA and RNA – that give the rest of us creatures life, believe that in the very early stages of the development of cell life on this planet, these stray bits got in the mix.

Should we say darn, and hope that on some other planet life has had better luck and no viruses are messing things up? The story gets a little more complicated. 

Most viruses get into a cell’s cytoplasm and then use the cell to make copies of themselves. But there’s a subset of DNA viruses that go one step further and splice themselves into our cell’s own DNA. They’re called retroviruses. They’re difficult to find let alone destroy. One example of a retrovirus is the HIV virus. Here’s the surprise – 8% of our DNA is composed of old no-longer-functioning (endogenous) retroviruses that have been handed down generation after generation for millions of years along with the rest of our DNA. More bad news for creationists. Most of us have heard that humans have a 98.5% overlap of DNA with chimps. Well we also share the same ‘fossilized’ retroviruses in the same locations on our DNA as our close primate relatives.  

If I haven’t given you enough bad news, some retroviruses can cause cancer! They do this by reverse engineering the DNA – RNA mechanism in our cell metabolism, which isn’t supposed to happen.  Before you say –‘There really must be a devil !’, here’s the kicker – we’d still be bird-brained egg-laying creatures but for one of these cancer causing viral insinuations.  It is believed that about 100 million years ago an early egg-laying mammal (there’s still a few around today) got infected with a retrovirus that caused a cancerous development in the embryo that embedded into the mother’s tissue, enabling an exchange of oxygen and nutrients across a protective membrane. Yep, we now refer to it as a placenta.  

Put simply – we humans wouldn’t exist but for some viruses. But do get your flu shot.

Why do scientists keep changing their minds?

I highly recommend an article in the current (October 23^rd, 2014) issue of the New York Review of Books entitled “What Scientists Really Do” by Priyamvada Natarajan. Science is a communal effort to continually and systematically acquire more knowledge about the world and the universe we find ourselves in. What some people find difficult to understand about this process, or, as Natarajan points out, others quickly use as an excuse to calm their religious doubts or to continue making money to the disadvantage of society, is that scientific knowledge is provisional. We know a lot more about things now than we did a hundred years ago, but there’s still a lot more we don’t know and which our grandchildren will wonder how we missed. I find it a glorious, ongoing story of wonderment.

Therefore, at any point in a particular knowledge development, the current knowledge is considered provisional, recognizing humbly that others will take it further. And that’s why we scientists tend to use the word ‘theory’ to describe a particular current system of understanding. But then sadly, non-scientists, either through a lack of understanding of this process, or through deliberate malfeasance, then say: ‘Well, if it’s just a theory, you have no absolute proof, then I don’t have to believe it.’

Perhaps we scientists make trouble for ourselves by being a bit too honest, too precise. ‘Provisional’ implies that the understanding of a particular system could be reversed. Yes, possible, but very rare. Isaac Newton gave us his theory of gravity. It was a theory, but anyone who hasn’t taken that very mysterious force seriously has learned the hard way, even before Einstein showed that Newton hadn’t gotten it quite right and brought in some refinements. Nowadays Einstein is held up as the quintessential genius. But it wasn’t always like that. When he first proposed his theory of relativity there were many doubters. The term ‘relativity’ didn’t play well with those concerned with the loosening of moral behavior in the ‘roaring twenties’, and one Columbia University professor said it sounded like Bolshevism. Nevertheless, whatever our political or religious views many Americans today take for granted the use of their cellphones and the GPS guidance systems in their cars that only work if Einstein’s theories are correct, or shall we say more refined than Newton’s. Will there be further refinements in our understanding in this realm? Probably. In recent years a few brave physicists have been working to try and use gravity to transmit information. Silly? Probably, but remember that our present understanding remains provisional. And, in seeking to harness gravity in this way they may fail in that, but meanwhile discover something else. Arthur Koestler entitled his book on the history of man’s quest to understand the cosmos “The Sleepwalkers”, describing the zig-zag lurching of man’s understanding of the puzzle. 

Science proceeds for a variety of interconnecting reasons.  Ambition – the striving of younger scientists to make their name and prove the old codgers wrong.  The interchange of new technology, so that computers have revolutionized the ability to analyze across every scientific discipline. Advances in genetics, in particular DNA analysis, have led to major advances in recent decades from medicine to paleoanthropology to botany. 

Ever since Linneaus in the 18^th century botanists thought that aster flowers in Eurasia and North America were in the same genus – Aster. Then in 1994 it was discovered that Eurasian asters had larger, more symmetrical chromosomes. This was bad news for American botanists as they had to come up with a new name for the approximately 180 aster species in North America. Taking the opportunity, or precaution, for more detailed study of these delightful flowers a team of American botanists not only chose the difficult-to-spell new generic name of Symphyotrichum as the main generic name replacing Aster, but broke other species off into several other smaller genera including Sericocarpus, Eurybia and Oclemena. Most species kept their old specific names. However, Symphyotrichum has the neuter gender in Latin whereas Aster is masculine, so that the ending of the specific name also had to be changed in many cases. So that Aster puniceus became Symphyotrichum puniceum. This led one frustrated botanist in Missouri to write a paper entitled “How faster to master the Aster disaster”. 

What I’m trying to show here is that advances in science (whether in physics, astronomy or botany) can be messy, run into opposition, and make the subject more complicated, but in the end do lead steadily towards greater refinement and more detailed understanding of the subject, bringing that provisionality up the asymptotic curve of knowledge, while also giving an advantage to the younger, fresher minds, which is at it should be.

Milk discrimination

Recently I was having breakfast with a friend in Friendly’s, a restaurant chain of 380 restaurants in the north east of the USA that is especially proud of its 22 ice-cream flavors. I asked the waitress if I could please have lactose-free milk for my coffee. She looked surprised and said they didn’t have any. I said that a lot of Americans needed lactose-free milk and that therefore this might affect business.

Lactose is a dimer sugar; composed of two parts – glucose and galactose, stuck together to form this sugar unique to milk. Table sugar, sucrose, is a dimer of glucose and fructose. A specific enzyme is needed to break up these dimers so that the component sugars can then be absorbed and metabolized. For some reason, as early mammals developed mammary glands secreting milk to feed their babies, the sugar in the milk was lactose. An enzyme, lactase, had to have co-evolved to break up this unique dimer sugar. In wild creatures, energy conservation is of primary importance. So once the baby mammal is weaned it will no longer need the lactase enzyme and so the gene to make it is switched off.  Many thousands of years ago when all humans lived by hunting and gathering, babies were breast fed until about age three. They would then not encounter milk again and the lactase gene would have been switched off. 

Starting about eight thousand years ago, humans in some parts of the world domesticated cows or goats and developed dairy farming which often included drinking milk as adults. Once a dimer sugar is broken into the smaller components they can be quickly absorbed into the blood stream giving us our source of energy. But the dimer is too big to be absorbed and then as it carries down into the intestine it feeds excessive bacterial growth which leads to bloating, discomfort and in some cases more serious intestinal problems.

Mutations, that is changes in a gene, occur randomly and would also have occurred in the lactase gene. Only following adult consumption of milk would that mutation have been selected for, i.e. expand in the population.

For Europeans, this mutation for lactase persistence has been traced to 7,500 years ago, spreading amongst European milk drinkers ever since. A major study has been carried out around the world which found that lactose persistence correlates with people who originate from areas of a dairy tradition, e.g. Europe, the Middle East, India and East Africa. So called lactose intolerance correlates with people from areas of the world with no long history of dairy culture, e.g. West Africa, China and the Americas. 

The United States is a melting-pot of the world. It should not be a surprise therefore that recent estimates reckon that at least 30% of Americans are lactose intolerant. That’s about 90 million people. Grocery stores are waking up to this fact and lactose-free milk is now commonly available. I’ve often watched African Americans reaching for it on the supermarket shelf. In addition to the many Americans who originate from non-dairy cultures, the lactase gene can also switch off with advancing age as in my case. 

Back to the Friendly’s restaurant. I was settling into my black coffee when I looked up to find John Maguire the CEO of the entire Friendly’s chain, who I recognized from the company’s TV ads, standing in front of me. By extraordinary coincidence he just happened to be visiting this particular restaurant at that time and he wanted to understand my problem. I gave him a quickie version of what I’ve written above and we parted amicably. It wasn’t long before a jug of lactose-free milk was brought to the table, followed by the restaurant manager. He said that he wanted to understand it for himself. Explaining that I had done my PhD studying sugar metabolism and the switching on and off the genes involved, I told him of the different ethnicities that might well be lactose-intolerant. The manager’s face was a picture. He said that Friendly’s had recently concluded a major survey and could not understand why so few African Americans bought their ice-cream. I said : “Now you know”. 

 It is time that the majority white population of America became more understanding and sensitive on this issue. Leaving aside the simple idea of caring for the other, it could be financially important for restaurants, grocery stores, supermarkets and the makers and purveyors of ice-cream. Remember, you white Americans who are more often than not in decision-making positions: you are the mutants.

       

   

The Bible Belt

Is it that important that we accept evolution? Surely we’re free to believe what we choose.  Yes, but what if those beliefs then lead to deleterious effects on society (as well as being demonstratively untrue)? 

In the United States the acceptance and teaching of evolution has often been opposed in the former slave states, the region which interestingly is also the most Christian region of America as measured by church attendance. One church in Houston, Texas claims a weekly attendance of 43,000, and several have their own radio and or TV station. Years ago this led the writer H. L. Mencken to coin the phrase the ‘Bible Belt’ - an area basically synonymous with the former slave states. 

Recently I finally got up the courage to see the movie “Twelve Years a Slave”. Not easy viewing. What was particularly appalling was seeing the slave owners justifying their beating of the people they ‘owned’ with quotes from the Bible.  Lynching – the mob murder of African Americans continued up into the 1960s! One of the major denominations in the Bible Belt are the Southern Baptists who strongly defended slavery as Biblical, and are today thoroughly anti-evolutionist. You see, if like this ‘science’ teacher in Louisiana, you believe that the Almighty created the entire universe six thousand years ago, (as Sam Harris says - about 1,500 years after the Babylonians started brewing beer J), then he could well have made white people to rule the earth and then ‘some lesser creatures’ to serve them. Sounds good eh? 

In earlier decades the teaching of evolution was banned by law in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas. Most of you will be familiar with the famous Skopes Trial in Dayton, TN when in 1925 a teacher was found guilty of teaching evolution.  But in Louisiana last year a sixth grader complained to his parents that his science teacher, in a public school, had told the class that evolution was a “stupid theory that stupid people made up because they don’t want to believe in God.”  The parents are suing. 

Besides the wrongness of this Louisiana teacher telling kids untruths, there are further disturbing comings together in the former slave states Bible Belt that should be faced up to. Here, before I say more, I must underline that much needs to change in the northern states as well. Slavery in America officially ended in 1865, almost 150 years ago. And yet, a recent study shows that in those same states there is still less social and economic mobility amongst African Americans compared with other parts of America.  And just last month in Ferguson, Missouri, a young African American, carrying no weapon, was shot to death by a white policeman. The nation learned that in this predominantly black suburb of St Louis the police force is almost all white. Sadly, similar stories abound. 

That’s not all. Because the Southern Baptist church and other similar churches, mostly in the Bible Belt, believe in biblical inerrancy, the preachers – all men of course by church law – point out that Adam was created before Eve, and then it was Eve’s fault that they got expelled from Paradise.  Women therefore should be subservient to men and kept an eye on in case they get up to something they shouldn’t again :-) One leading Southern Baptist commenting about the Equal Rights Amendment said: “Satan’s fib about women’s lib”; and on another occasion: “This unisex movement has been belched out of hell.” 

In most other parts of the world people with such views would be totally marginalized. Exceptions are conservative Muslim countries like Saudi Arabia where women aren't allowed to drive cars. And heavens knows what horrors are being perpetrated against women in areas controlled by these ISIS maniacs. But in the rest of America it is mostly assumed that such men could not reach positions of political influence. Not so fast. Ronald Reagan spoke at the Southern Baptist Convention when he was running for president praising them to the hilt. Jimmy Carter was a Southern Baptist when president but has since left the church in protest. Good for him, but it took him a while. Texas Governor Rick Perry was a contender last time around and is clearly gearing up for another run.  

 It’s not as simple as whether you like chimps or not.

Whose labor is it? A few thoughts on Labor Day

In 1950 there was a parliamentary election in Britain. This ten year old boy asked his parents over supper who was winning. My Dad answered first by saying that 'we' were losing. My mother then gave an impish grin and said 'No we're not' She, as the daughter of a union organizer, had voted for the incoming Labour Party. Nevertheless, it was not until about fifteen years later after the famous Dagenham workers strike, when women struck for equal pay in the Ford Motor plant and the strike spread, that a Labour government passed the equal pay legislation in Britain. 

It is difficult for me to believe that fifty further years later this simple point is not the law in every civilized country. But not here folks in the land of the free and the brave. How is it that someone doing the same job of work is paid more money simply because he has a penis? I know - testosterone tends to create stronger muscles, but we're not talking about sledge-hammer jobs. And seventy years ago Rosie the riveter showed that women could do a lot of what were previously considered a man's job.

We have a Congressional election this November. It's simple: ask your candidate if he or she is for equal pay for equal work. If not, don't vote for him.