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When I started writing my blog, my first post in April 29 of 2017 was about the field of immunotherapy, and as an example of its application I selected the treatment of president Jimmy Carter who at the time had stage IV melanoma. President Carter was cured of his cancer, and went on to live several productive years before his health failed, and he was placed on hospice care in February of 2023. Carter has managed to live long enough in hospice to celebrate his 99th birthday. To honor of him, I will repost that first post with which I began my blog. The Cancer of Jimmy Carter and the Emerging Field of Immunotherapy  President Jimmy Carter I admire former president Jimmy Carter. Although by presidential standards his four years as president from 1977 to 1981 are viewed in a negative light, Carter in his post-presidential years has become a model of what it is to be dedicated to the betterment of humanity. Because of this I was sad last year when it was announced that Mr. Carter had the most advanced form of melanoma (stage IV), a skin cancer that had spread to his liver and brain. This cancer is very difficult to treat, so I thought to myself that this was the end of the road for President Carter. You can imagine how happy I was when I learned towards the end of the year that Mr. Carter had been treated and his cancer was in remission. This does not mean he is cancer-free, it just means that in the scans the doctors have performed they are not able to detect the cancer masses that they had previously found or any others. So how did this happen? Mr. Carter had several treatments. He had surgery to remove a cancer in his liver, and he had targeted radiation for the cancer in his brain. But more significantly, Mr. Carter was also administered a new form of therapy that targets the immune system. This therapy is the result of many years of research in many areas of science, and we will take a look today to see how all this came together to generate a new weapon for oncologists in the battle against cancer. Cancer occurs when the cells of the body undergo a transformation and start dividing uncontrollably. This characteristic is exploited by chemotherapeutic agents and radiation treatments. They affect mostly rapidly dividing cells. Unfortunately, our bodies also have many cells that proliferate rapidly in a controlled fashion such as many immune cells and the cells of the lining of the intestine. The same agents that kill the rapidly dividing cancer cells also kill the rapidly dividing healthy cells, and this leads to toxicities that in many cases limits the usefulness of these agents. Our immune system protects us from pathogens that enter our bodies. Early on in cancer research, scientists wondered whether the immune system could attack cancer cells. Initially it was thought that cancer cells were not targeted by the immune system because, unlike very different entities like viruses or bacteria, cancer cells were cells similar to normal cells. However, many cases were documented where the immune system did attack cancerous cells. As it turns out the immune system does detect cancer cells when they arise and eliminates the majority of them. Eventually cancer cells appear that escape destruction. These cancer cells have marginally survived the onslaught of the immune system, and they may be even be kept in check by it. However, the cells eventually divide and generate new cancer cells some of which are a bit more resistant to the attack of the immune system. Then finally, in an evolutionary process that may take years, a crop of cells emerges that has escaped detection by the immune system and goes on to divide out of control and generate full-fledged tumors. So how do cancer cells evade the immune system?  Melanoma The immune system cascade that results in the elimination of pathogens or cancer cells is a highly regulated process. And it has to be. The immune system must be able to differentiate self from non-self (e.g. bacteria from human cells). When this detection mechanism goes wrong we can have what are called autoimmune diseases like Lupus where the immune system attacks healthy cells. Also the body has to prevent the overactivation of the immune system and must thus have a mechanism to turn it off. To prevent the immune system from going rogue, its activation proceeds through a number of checkpoints that are controlled by specific receptors present in immune cells. When these receptors interact with specific ligands (molecules that bind to these receptors), the activation of immune cells is shut off. What successful cancer cells do to survive the immune system is that they express these ligands on their membranes thus preventing immune cells that come in contact with them from triggering the immune response. Therefore, scientists conjectured that this inhibition of the immune system by cancer could maybe be antagonized and permit the immune cells to attack the cancerous cells. But how could this be achieved? The answer was antibodies. Antibodies are proteins produced by cells of the immune system that bind with great specificity to those molecules against which they are made. Certain cells of the immune system regularly make antibodies against foreign bodies to flag them for removal. Scientist had learned to grow these cells and to coax them to make antibodies against specific molecules. So they proceeded to create an antibody against one of the molecules that controls an immune checkpoint called PD-1. This antibody blocks the PD-1 receptor on immune cells and prevents the ligands on the surface of the cancer cells from activating it thus blocking the immune response. One of these antibodies called “pembrolizumab” (marketed under the brand name: Keytruda) was the one administered to Jimmy Carter. Of course, Mr. Carter was given several treatments so we don’t know for sure what part of the effect was due to the antibody. Nevertheless, in clinical trials of patients with advanced melanoma pembrolizumab caused tumors to shrink in 21-33% of patients and reduced the risk of disease progression by 42-43%. In fact the administration of this antibody was much more effective than conventional chemotherapy. There are, however, two things that must be pointed out. The first is that only around a third of patients benefit from this immunotherapy. This is probably related to the fact that there are different checkpoints of the immune cascade that are exploited by cancer to avoid detection and the importance of these checkpoints to the survival of these cancers varies from one cancer to another. Second, as expected from blocking the inhibition of the immune system, there were side effects as a result of overactive immune cells, but it must be borne in mind that advanced melanoma is a lethal disease. Scientists are just now unravelling the immense complexity of immune system checks and balances and how they are exploited by cancer. A number of antibodies have been approved by the FDA or are being tested not only for immune system checkpoints but for other mechanisms that allow cancer to thrive like growth receptors or angiogenesis (the process that allows a cancer to create blood vessels to feed its cells). Researchers are even combining antibodies with conventional chemotherapeutic drugs which allows for targeted delivery with less side effects. The future of immunotherapy looks promising, and I feel optimistic about our chances of beating cancers like melanoma, especially with therapies that combine several approaches. As to President Carter, I hope that he fully recovers from his disease and continues his excellent work in favor of humanity. The images in this post are in the public domain. 2024 Postscript By 2023 the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved eleven immune checkpoint inhibitors for a wide variety of cancers. The FDA also approved six therapies based on chimeric antigen receptor (CAR-T) technology, where the patient’s immune cells are modified to fight cancer, and six therapies based on T-cell engaging bispecific antibodies, where the patient is infused with antibodies that bind cancer cells and flag them for destruction. These therapies have sparked a revolution in cancer treatment, but they have fared best when applied to blood cancers and cancers such as lung cancer or melanoma. However, immune therapies have faced significant challenges when applied as single agents to solid tumors. Because of this, scientists and clinicians are focusing on therapies that combine immunotherapies with other cancer treatments both new and old. With regards to president Carter, he is now the longest living ex-commander in chief, but there is no denying that he is soon approaching the end of his life. Wishing him to get well soon would be an empty gesture, but we can all make a commitment to remember his exceptional life and his example as a great American.
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10/5/2024 What Can’t You Accomplish When You Have God on Your Side? The Perils of Claiming the Support of the DivinityRead NowThis is not a political or religious blog, but I do deal with reason and related topics. And one such topic is the logic behind a claim often made in human history: God is on our side. So let me tell you what motivated me to write about this. I read what a person posted on X regarding the missile attack that Iran unleashed against Israel on October 1st 2024, which resulted in minimal casualties, because the vast majority were intercepted by Israel’s air defense system. The poster described the different air defense systems Israel employs as a technological wonder with unparalleled sophistication, but then went on to say that the chance that these systems would work in unison flawlessly are nonexistent. He also mentioned that the few missiles that were not intercepted landed in places where they caused minimal damage. This person then states that it is impossible to look at this objectively and not see the hand of God. Interestingly, the poster then acknowledges that some questions may be raised along the lines of where was God in the past when the Jewish people suffered such as during the October 7th 2023 attack by Hamas, which precipitated the current conflict, or the Holocaust. The poster agrees that these are valid questions that require a very serious nuanced conversation, but still he states that the low casualties in this attack is an obvious miracle: an an example of God in all his glory watching over his children (the people of Israel).  Of course, people since time immemorial have claimed that God is with them during a struggle or an enterprise (sometimes out of conviction and sometimes as a propaganda tool). The power behind this claim is that the belief that one has the support of God has a huge effect on the human mind. After all, we are talking about “the creator”, “the big guy up there”, “alpha and omega”, "the one and only", “el numero uno”. What can’t be accomplished if you have the support of God? But notice that this question does not have any moral or ethical parameters associated with it. While the claim of divine support in some cases has allowed the people who make it to be motivated and determined to fight even when there is little hope, in other cases it has allowed the justification of ghastly crimes. For example, the Doctrine of Discovery issued by Pope Alexander VI in 1493 basically claimed that the new lands discovered to the west by Columbus were to be claimed and exploited by Christians and any barbarous nations were to be overthrown and brought to the faith. In the 1800s this doctrine gave rise to the concept of Manifest Destiny which was the belief that God called upon the people of the United States to expand westward, and which was used to justify the uprooting of Native Americans from their lands. Some people, like the poster whom I alluded to, witness a remarkable event, such as the neutralization of the missile attack on Israel, and they jump to the conclusion that God must have been behind it. But drawing this sort of conclusions from such remarkable events is unwarranted. I have written of how, for example, Hitler survived so many assassination attempts that he considered that God was on his side. There are such things as coincidences, even very remarkable ones. If enough people flip ten coins, one of them will get ten heads in a row. One thing that we have learned from history is that it has proven fiendishly difficult to figure out in a rational way what it is exactly that God wants and who he supports. Rather, more often than not, the two sides in a conflict wrap themselves in the mantle of divine support, and the victors then proceed to write their biased version of history. When I read what this poster wrote on X, the first thing that came to my mind is a passage from a book I read a long time ago. The book is entitled “Our Endangered Values: America’s Moral Crisis” written by ex-president Jimmy Carter in 2005. Part of the passage reads as follows: “There is a remarkable trend towards fundamentalism in all religions – including the different denominations of Christianity as well as Hinduism, Judaism, and Islam. Increasingly, true believers are inclined to begin a process of deciding: ‘Since I am aligned with God, I am superior and my beliefs should prevail, and anyone who disagrees with me is inherently wrong,’ and the next step is ‘inherently inferior.’ The ultimate step is ‘subhuman,’ and then their lives are not significant.” In this passage, Carter was talking about the danger of the rise of fundamentalism in religions, but the danger of a person, a group, or a country believing that THEY are favored by God is clearly spelled out. Claiming the support of God may make it easier for people to ignore or soften their adherence to their values resulting in the denigration of others who in their views are not supported by the divinity. Without judging upon matters such as the existence of God or who is right or wrong in the current conflict, it is my opinion that claiming the favoritism of God when it comes to the affairs of humans always complicates moral and ethical evaluations of actions to be taken or of those which have been already taken. This evaluation must be performed based solely on our values. And human rights, including the right to live, should be at the center of this analysis. Some people may even argue that this is what God would want us to do. The photograph of the painting “Benediction of God the Father” by Luca Cambiaso (1527-1585) taken by Daderot is in the public domain. When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and its full impact was experienced worldwide in terms of loss of lives and livelihoods, I had a naïve expectation. I reasoned that now that the American people got to see the sorry state of the world as a result of the absence of ONE vaccine, they would fully realize the lunacy of the antivaxxer movement that wants a world with NO vaccines. And when the COVID-19 vaccines were produced in record time and became available, I fully expected the American people to flock in droves to get vaccinated and protect their lives and those of their loved ones and friends. Alas, although a majority of Americans received the vaccine and the boosters, a substantial number refused. Not only that, but the antivaccination movement had a resurgence and effectively spread alarmist misinformation and conspiracies about the vaccines far and wide promoting vaccine hesitancy, which hurt and killed many people.  The antivaccination movement, which before the pandemic was mostly a movement among people with left-wing ideology concerned about vaccine safety and effectiveness, expanded during the pandemic into right wing groups rallying around ideas of parental rights and freedom from the imposition of government vaccination, which in turn gained a measure of backing from politicians eager to capitalize on their support. This activism also produced a campaign of harassment of health professionals and scientists promoting and dispensing vaccines. After the pandemic, the antivaccine groups have remained active by organizing and trying to influence vaccination policies such as school vaccination requirements in several states. Regardless of the above, the COVID-19 vaccines performed admirably. The vaccines saved more than 20 million lives worldwide the first year they were introduced, and in the United States they prevented three million deaths. During the height of the pandemic, unvaccinated people were 10 times more likely to be hospitalized and 11 times more likely to die than vaccinated people. As it was during president’s Donald Trump tenure that the Covid-19 vaccines were developed, it is ironic that Republican voters had a higher proportion of deaths than Democratic voters because of their reticence or outright refusal to receive the vaccine. Many notorious vaccine deniers including talk show hosts and social media influencers died as a result of Covid-19. In a move reminiscent of the well-known Darwin Awards, a subreddit forum created the Herman Cain Award, which is bestowed upon people who publicly declare their opposition to the COVID-19 vaccines and then die of the disease. Even though many vaccine scientists have been publicly maligned and harassed, they have soldiered on making our world a better place by producing new vaccines, creating better vaccines or vaccination methods, or molding public policy. The rest of this post is a celebration of their achievements. We start with the COVID-19 vaccines which were made possible by decades of research, during which many problems were identified and solved. The Hungarian-American scientist, Dr. Katalin Karikó, overcame adversity and along with her colleague, American immunologist Drew Wiseman, made key discoveries that allowed mRNA to be stable and not produce an inflammatory response. This in turn made possible the mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines. They both shared the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2023. The American immunologist, Barney S. Graham, experienced a life-changing event when two children died in a respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) vaccine trial in 1967. He spent the rest of his life trying to figure out what happened. Graham discovered that viral proteins change their shape when they interact with the cells they infect, and that the best vaccine is the one that targets the protein in the shape before it interacts with cells. This discovery was instrumental in developing the COVID-19 vaccine, and also allowed the development of effective vaccines against RSV, a disease which can be lethal for infants and older people. Dr. Graham and his collaborators received the 2020 Golden Goose Award, which recognizes federally-funded basic research that leads to discoveries with significant impact on humanity. Now we move on to the remarkable case of the prevention of a cancer by a vaccine! In the 1980s it was discovered that some types of human papilloma virus (HPV) could cause cervical cancer. Several researchers, among them American immunologists Doug Lowy and John Schiller, and Australian Immunologist Ian Frazer, took up the study of the genes and proteins in HPV that were responsible for making human cells cancerous. They discovered that when several copies of an HPV viral protein are mixed together, they assemble into a virus-like-particle that can elicit a strong immune response. This approach was then employed by pharmaceutical companies to produce vaccines that are effective against the virus and which have been found to significantly reduce the risk of cervical cancer in women, anal cancer in men, and genital warts in both sexes. Lowy and Schiller received the prestigious Lasker-DeBakey Clinical Medical Research Award for this achievement, and Frazer received the Prime Minister's Prize for Science in 2008 and was voted a “National Living Treasure” in 2012 by the National Trust of Australia. Finally, there is malaria, which kills more than 500,000 people (80% children under 5) each year, and which is a fiendishly complicated disease to tackle due to the many stages of development that its parasite goes though, and its capacity to evade the human immune system. However, after more than 60 years of research and trials by many scientists and clinicians, the first malaria vaccine was approved for use by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2021 and another vaccine two years later. In clinical trials, the vaccines reduced the number of cases of malaria and mortality, and their evaluation is ongoing. Vaccines are a success story and a tangible example of what science has done for us. Vaccines have decreased infant mortality in the world by 40% in the last 50 years, and the future of vaccines with new technologies to develop more effective vaccines seems promising. In the meantime, antivaxxers are causing real harm by promoting vaccine hesitancy. The obstacle to greatly diminishing the burden of disease on humanity is not lack of tools anymore, but overcoming misinformation. The photo of the COVID-19 vaccine by Lisa Ferdinando (DOD) was taken from the Flickr photostream of the US Secretary of Defense and is used here under an Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) license. During my time on Twitter, I have dealt with quite an assortment of individuals, ranging from COVID-19 and global warming deniers, 2020 election skeptics, and antivaxxers, to proponents of the 911 and chemtrail conspiracies, creationists, Flat Earthers, and QAnon. Apart from these people, I have also had to deal with a group of people whom I had not expected to cross paths with: militant atheists! But here I am not talking about people merely claiming that God does not exist or people pushing for freedom from religion. When I say “militant atheists”, I mean people who claim that a belief in God is incompatible with rational thinking. These people often insult believers calling them stupid or other monikers, while claiming that the belief in God has no place in a mind devoted to rationality and science. I find this claim surprising because the concept of God is beyond the realm of science. It cannot be proven or disproven by science. Viewed from this vantage point, in fact, atheism is not a rigorous intellectual position rationally grounded in evidence and facts, but rather just another belief. In any case, the claim that believers are somehow stupid or irrational is simply not true. For example, when it comes to scientists, some of the greatest scientific minds in the history of science as well as good number of contemporary scientists of renown (including Nobel Prize winners) have been or are believers. Several examples are Nicolaus Copernicus, Blaise Pascal, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler, Rene Descartes, Gottfried Leibniz, Isaac Newton, Leonhard Euler, Antonie van Leeuwenhoek, Antonie Lavoisier, Louis Pasteur, James Clerk Maxwell, Michael Faraday, John Dalton, Max Planck, Robert Millikan, Werner Heisenberg, Arthur Compton, Albert Einstein, John Eccles, Gerty Cori, Joseph Murray, Freeman Dyson, Antony Hewish, and Peter Grunberg.  A Pew Research Center poll of scientists in 2009 found that, while the proportion of scientists that believe in God is lower than that of the general population, about 33% of scientists believe in God while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power. The point is that rational thinking is not necessarily hindered by belief in a God, spirit, or a higher power. Having said that, everything depends, of course, on what you believe, how you believe it, and your circumstances. Take for example the belief in creationism. If you are a scientist who believes that the world is 10,000 years old, you will have problems if you work in fields such as geology or astronomy. If you don’t accept evolution, you will have problems if you work in fields such as biology, genetics, or molecular biology. On the other hand, if you are a scientist in the field of metallurgy, belief in creationism may not affect your work at all. I believe in God (although not the God depicted by traditional religions), and I don’t believe myself to be irrational or stupid. I also I do not find my belief to be in contradiction with science, as I subscribe to the proposal by the late Harvard paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould, that science and religion have “non-overlapping magisteria” (NOMA). This means that science and religion have different areas of expertise, and rather than be in conflict with each other they should complement each other because science lacks what religion has and vice versa. Things such as values, morals, ethics, right and wrong, good and bad are the realm of religion. On the other hand, the behavior of matter and energy in the world around us is the realm of science. Religion and related disciplines should guide us in navigating the tricky maze of moral choices that we make throughout our lives. But science should guide us in choosing which beliefs to accept, modify, or discard when aspects of these beliefs clash with reality. Of course, there are some areas of friction between science and religion, but the goal is to deal with these cases in a way that endeavors to maximize the separation between the areas of competence of the two disciplines. When it comes to the belief in a God, spirit, or a higher power, I distinguish two modalities. The first modality occurs when individuals come to accept the existence of God through a process that involves faith and evidence, facts, and reason. I consider this a healthy belief in God because there is an intellectual element involved in the process. The second modality is one that occurs when the process described in the first modality is deficient or absent. This occurs, for example, when individuals believe in God because they were taught to believe in God, or because they grew up surrounded by people who believed in God. In these cases, the belief in God is just a form of social inertia. Another way of believing in God within this second modality is through a highly emotional event that may have involved a conversion from living a wicked life, or at least a life a person felt bad about, into being a better person. For these people the mere fact that they changed their lives is proof that God exists and made this happen and no further analysis is necessary. This second modality of belief in God is unhealthy, because it is unexamined and therefore prone to the uncritical acceptance of the beliefs of groups or churches that may hold views of the world that are contrary to science and reason. Most scientists who believe in God, a spirit, or a higher power, believe in them in a reasonable way, because they allow their beliefs to be tempered by evidence, facts, and reason. For example, evangelical protestants tend to have creationists views that deny the age of the Earth and evolution while accepting that there was a universal flood (although there are subtleties to this claim). In the Pew Research Center poll mentioned above, while 28% of the general public claimed an evangelical protestant affiliation, only 4% of scientists did. To recap, I don’t consider the belief in God to be anathema to rational thinking, but I do consider that the unexamined belief in God is unhealthy, as it may lead to the denial of the reality around us as discovered by science. Image by Van Ericsen was taken from flickr and is used here under an Attribution 4.0 International Deed. The image was not modified and the licensor does not endorse my use of this image. 8/24/2024 What is a Woman? The Boxing Brouhaha at the Paris Olympics and the Y Chromosome DebateRead NowIn the recent Paris Olympics, two boxers, an Algerian woman, Imane Khelif, and a Taiwanese woman, Lin Yu-ting (who both won gold medals), were accused of being men igniting a worldwide firestorm during which celebrities such as Donnald Trump and JK Rowling weighed in. Of the two boxers, Khelif received the bulk of the vitriol when she defeated Italian boxer Angela Carini in 46 seconds. Carini forfeited the match due to experiencing intense pain in her face and nose. She said she had never been hit with such a powerful punch, and she refused to shake her opponent’s hand (although she apologized later).  Imane Khelif Even though Khelif and Yu-ting had been competing in boxing for years and had been beaten in several bouts by other women, they improved their boxing and competed in the 2023 International Boxing Association (IBA) Championship, where they were disqualified due to test results which have not been officially released. The nature of the tests employed, and their rationale and methodology, remains confusing. For the Paris Olympics, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) suspended the IBA from overseeing Olympic boxing due to governance issues and took over the organization of the Olympic boxing bouts allowing Khelif and Yu-ting to participate.
On social media, people labelled the decision to allow Khelif and Yu-ying to participate as women boxers: inexcusable, shameful, unacceptable, and an injustice. They wrote that men who compete as women are mediocre, and that rewarding them with gold medals for beating up women is an abuse that betrays hatred and discrimination against real women. People shared photos of folds in Khelif’s shorts or videos of Khelif tucking in her shirt to imply she had male genitals. Some individuals claimed that they were transgender, which is not true. Although most critics mentioned the appearance of the boxers and made comments about high testosterone levels being unfair, what most of them seemed to agree on is the notion that that having a Y chromosome made its bearer a man and therefore unqualified to compete as a woman. In order to address this notion, we need to understand what men and women are. Designating members of our species “men” and “women” or of any species “male” and “female” is a classification. Classifications often address aspects of the physical world and, when applicable, its social structures by grouping individuals that are similar in the same categories. Human beings classify things in order to deal with the complexity of our environment and make it more predictable and manageable. But what has to be remembered about classifications, is that most of the time they don’t cover all the individuals being classified. What I mean by this is that, for example, in a binary classification such as male or female, or men or women, there are in between cases. There is a certain number of individuals that share similarities with both groups and do not fit neatly in one group or the other. These individuals are referred to as intersex cases. Now let’s deal with the Y chromosome. During embryonic development, the genes in the Y chromosome trigger a masculinization program through the production of testosterone that results in a fetus developing into a male. But sometimes there are problems where the genes in the Y chromosomes do not function well or get transferred to an X chromosome or when there is resistance by the body to the masculinizing program. All in all, there are about 40 different recognized medical conditions that can produce individuals with anatomical structures from both sexes. Many of these individuals are assigned their sex at birth based on their external genitalia and they grow up with their assigned gender, only to discover years later that they don’t have the “right” chromosomes. A few of these chromosomal males or females have abilities of the other sex. For example, some people born with the XY chromosomal makeup develop into anatomical females with a uterus (Swyer syndrome). Although these individuals lack ovaries, with a donated egg and medical help they can get pregnant and have children. So if you think anyone with a Y chromosome is a man, you have to explain how some of these “men” can get pregnant and have children. What is the point of declaring someone who has a Y chromosome to be a man, if the Y chromosome is not working as it should? Some people born with the XX chromosomal makeup can have high levels of testosterone (hyperandrogenism) due to several genetic conditions. Should these high-testosterone XX women be allowed to compete without any restrictions? After all they don’t have a Y chromosome. Clearly whether a person should be included in the category “women” goes beyond merely not having a Y chromosome. These intersex cases are human beings that deserve to be respected and not bullied or discriminated against. Just consider the crucible that South African athlete Caster Semenya went though back in 2009 when she won a medal at the Berlin Olympics, and her status as a woman was questioned. She endured invasive and humiliating tests and the results were leaked to the press. Everyone chimed in with an opinion about her body. She had to go into hiding and endure trauma counseling. After an 11-month investigation (during which she was banned from competition) she was cleared to compete again and her record allowed to stand. Now Khelif and Yu-ting are being subjected to the same ordeal. Considering all athletic differences, women’s records are on the average 9 to 12% lower than men. Thus we have decided that men and women’s sports should be separate because men have what we perceive to be an unfair advantage over women. As a large part of this advantage is due to the effects of testosterone on the tissues related to athletic performance (bones, muscles, lungs, etc.), many people advocate lowering testosterone levels in women with high testosterone levels (regardless of chromosomal makeup) to “even” the playing field. But not all differences in athletic performance are due to motivation, discipline, and hard work within the background of an even playing field. Among the population of men and women athletes, there are individuals whose genetics give them an advantage over their peers in areas such as height, strength, oxygenation capacity, etc. So, is it OK for these people with a genetic advantage over their same sex peers to compete, but not women who have naturally high testosterone levels? Which genetic advantages are acceptable and which aren’t? Science won’t give us the answer to this question because a decision one way or the other depends on our beliefs, values, and notions of what is or isn’t fair play. But what is not fair is to insult, denigrate, and humiliate women who have been assigned this gender since birth and who have lived their lives as such. The image of Imane Khelif by the Algeria Press Service is used under an Attribution 3.0 Unported license. I read some quotes about propaganda from a book. The quotes were translated to English from the original language in which the book was published. Below are some of these quotes: “The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus for the first time placed within their field of vision. The whole art consists in doing this so skillfully that everyone will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct, etc. But since propaganda is not and cannot be the necessity in itself, since its function. . . consists in attracting the attention of the crowd, and not in educating those who are already educated or who are striving after education and knowledge, its effect for the most part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited degree at the so-called intellect. . . The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out. The function of propaganda is . . . not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth…and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.”  I read these lines, and I felt a chill running through my body. I was shocked by the blatant disregard for the truth in these words, and the Machiavellian approach the writer has towards people (the masses) which the writer feels can be manipulated like sheep by appealing to their emotions and not their intellect. And this was not some sort of “secret manual” circulated within the confines of a shadowy cabal of individuals. This was a book that was available publicly and became a bestseller in its time. Now, granted, the quotes I presented are specifically about war propaganda, but the writer of the book used its precepts to gain a lot of popularity and rise to a position of preeminence in society. Some people reading this would probably say, “Well, duh, it’s propaganda, what do you expect?” Propaganda is the sort of thing associated with a country, state, organization, or group. However, I find some disquieting parallels between what is written in these quotes and the dynamics regarding the spread of information in our society at the level of the individual. I have seen social media accounts from QAnon proponents, antivaxxers, climate change deniers, and others that seem to have incorporated several of the precepts espoused in these quotes into their strategies. The individuals behind these accounts manipulate the emotions of others pressing all the right buttons. For example, Q Anon proponents post about child abuse (a very emotional subject) and then combine this with far-fetched conspiracy theories. Antivaxxers post about healthy people they claim to have been hurt by vaccines (another emotional subject) and then mix this with exaggeration, innuendo, and lies about vaccines. Climate change deniers will turn any initiative to curb greenhouse emissions into a conspiracy to restrict personal freedom and control people, which is, again, a highly emotional issue. They all do this ignoring valid and at times obvious criticisms. In fact, the majority of these accounts do not engage in debates. Their goal is not to “weigh and ponder” or “educate”. They use their platforms to promote, as the author of the quoted text wrote, their “own right, always and unflinchingly”. And it works. Many of these social media accounts have hundreds of thousands of followers. This is an audience that spreads their message, buys their merchandise, and generates them income. It is my opinion that applying the maxims embodied in the quotes I presented at the beginning of this post cannot be healthy for society. When large groups of people with the capacity to vote, petition their government, and make a difference are manipulated to become disengaged from reality by accepting innuendo, exaggerations, lies, and conspiracies as truth, we face the real danger that their fictions will end up being imposed on others at the county, state, or even national level. As I stated at the beginning of this post, I felt a chill running through my body when I read the quotes from the book. Of course, the fact that I find parallels between what the quoted author states and what people on social media are doing is bad enough. But the real reason I felt the chill was because I knew the identity of the author of the quotes. The book from which these quotes are taken and translated was published in Germany in 1925. Its tittle was Mein Kampf (My Struggle), and its author was Adolf Hitler. It is not my intention to imply that the individuals doing what Hitler suggested have read his book and are knowingly applying his propaganda methods. I just think that Hitler’s ideas have permeated the broader cultural landscape of our societies where they have been applied and perpetuated over time by various entities. The methods used to manipulate people by one of the most successful tyrants and mass murderers in the history of humanity are alive and well with us today. The image from Deviant Art by peterock72 is used here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives Works 3.0 License.  It’s time to lighten up my blog, so I again present you with a selection of bad science jokes and puns along with an explanation of why they are funny. Q: What type of fish is made up of two sodium atoms? A: 2Na The chemical symbol for sodium is “Na” (its Latin name is “natrium”). The joke is a play on words on how the first two letters of the name for the fish, tuna, (“tu”) sounds like the word “two”, and is followed by the chemical symbol of sodium. If you feel irrelevant, remember, YOU MATTER! Unless, of course, you are accelerated to the square of the speed of light, in which case, YOU ENERGY! The joke makes a reference to Einstein’s famous equation which states that energy is equal to mass times the square of the speed of light, and exploits the ambiguity in the meaning of the word matter as in “that which occupies space” vs “someone being significant”. A psychologist shows a patient several inkblots, and the patient replies that they all look like a couple making love. The psychologist tells the patient, “Based on the results of the test, I conclude that you seem to be obsessed with sex.” The patient retorts, “What do you mean I’m obsessed with sex? You are the one who is showing me all the dirty pictures!”
The joke is based on an actual test called the Rorschach Test, which uses inkblots. It is used by psychologists to test for thought disorders such as schizophrenia and, more controversially, to evaluate a person’s personality. Q: Why is it dangerous to make fun of a paleontologist? A: Because you will get Jurasskicked. It’s a play on words on the time period called “Jurassic”, corresponding to 200 to 150 million years ago (when dinosaurs roamed the Earth), and the slang term for being attacked and getting severely injured. A few time travel jokes. “One beer please.” A time traveler walks into a bar. I would tell you a time-travel joke, but you didn’t get it. The seminar on Time Travel will be held two weeks ago. The best thing about time travel jokes is that they never get old! A philosophy horse enters a bar and orders a beer. The bartender serves him, but notices that the horse seems sad, so he asks, “Hey, are you depressed or something?” The horse says, “I don’t think I am.” and disappears! This joke is based on the famous statement by the French philosopher, Rene Descartes, “I think, therefore I am” (in Latin: cogito, ergo sum). I should have probably mentioned this at the beginning of the joke, but I felt that would have been like putting Descartes in front of the horse. The joke is based on the play on words with the phrase “putting the cart in front of the horse” (note: Descartes is pronounced: “daykaart”). Q: What do you call places in your house that accumulate a lot of dirt and dust? A: LaGrunge Points. A play on words on “Lagrange Points”, which are areas in space around the Sun-Earth system where gravitational forces are balanced, and objects tend to remain stationary with respect to the Sun and the Earth. These points tend to accumulate a lot of space dust. A black hole is the tunnel at the end of the light. Math puns are the first sine of madness. “Sine” is a mathematical function used here as a pun for “sign”. Today in math we learned that 10 is smaller than 5! There is a mathematical function called a “factorial” which is the product of the multiplication of all the integers of a positive number. The factorial sign is denoted by the symbol “!” So the factorial of 5 (5!) is 5x4x3x2x1 which equals 120. Note: the period at the end of the sentence of the joke was left out on purpose for comic effect. Scientists have been studying the effect of cannabis on sea birds. They’ve left no tern unstoned. A play of words on “no stone unturned” and “tern” the seabird. Stoned, of course, is the slang term for being under the influence of drugs. The naïve student registered for the computer programing class using Python and Java because he thought he would look cool drinking coffee with a snake wrapped around his body. Python and Java are computer programing languages. My friend the geologist saw that I was depressed, so she said she would cheer me up with ten geology puns. She asked, “Are you having a gneiss day?”. I closed my eyes and groaned. My friend stated, “Well, anyone can have a bad day - schist happens.” I placed my hands on my head and said, “Aaaahhh.” She continued, “Come on, cheer up, let’s watch a movie. We can see Pyrites of the Caribbean.” I rolled my eyes, and said, “Look, I don’t particularly like geology.” My friend replied, “Of quartz you like geology. It’s just that you don’t take it for granite.” I shook my head and buried my face in my hands. My friend said, “I could also just cook a meal for you. Or have you lost your apatite?” I said, “Please stop it.” She added, “Or I could take you shopping for one of those marble-ous pendants made out of volcanic rock. They are guaranteed to cheer you up you know, because igneous is bliss, and they are on shale.” “Look.” I yelled raising my hands. “This is not working.” She retorted, “Oh, so if my puns are not working, what then? Do you expect me to gravel at your feet?”. I said, “I appreciate your effort to try to cheer me up with your ten geology puns but…” My friend interrupted me and said, “You mean no pun in ten did?” Me: Ha, ha, ha… To my knowledge these jokes and puns are not copyrighted. If you hold the copyright to any of these jokes or puns, please let me know and I will acknowledge it. Image by Perlenmuschel from Pixabay is free for commercial use and was modified. I have dealt with antivaxxers several times in my blog, and I have made my position clear. All the evidence we have indicates that vaccines work and have saved many lives, including the COVID-19 vaccines. I consider that by promoting vaccine hesitancy or avoidance, antivaxxers are harming and even killing people who delay or forfeit potentially life-saving vaccines. Some of the antivaxxers I’ve butted heads with in social media seem to be individuals that, no matter how misguided, are convinced of their position. These individuals respond to my criticism and engage in debates. However, others are nothing but opportunists who are not interested in countering rebuttals of their position. These characters just traffic in likes and shares of what they post, and in the number of comments they receive regardless of their nature. They don’t necessarily believe in antivaxxer arguments, they just use them to grow their accounts, which have tens to hundreds of thousands of followers. In between these two types of antivaxxers is a third kind who is halfway between the previous two. The accounts of these characters have a few hundreds to thousands of followers, and they are very active posting, liking, and sharing vaccine misinformation. They will occasionally respond to criticism, but they will seldom carry on an argument for more than one or two posts. Most importantly, I’ve noticed that they coordinate to like and share each other’s posts, and what they write at times seems to have an odd grammatical structure and choice of words, as though their first language were not English. I have been told that these accounts belong to foreign operatives who are promoting antivaxxer sentiment in the United States and other things to disrupt our society. The concept is not so farfetched as we know for a fact that Russian operatives posted on social media to influence our elections and create chaos. But without specific proof, this is just another conspiracy theory. As many of those who follow my posts know, I have also criticized those who spread conspiracy theories, but what is often lost in the heat of the arguments is that I am talking about unfounded conspiracy theories. I accept the fact that there have been conspiracies promoted by the government or other organizations, and I accept that there may be such activities currently going on, but I have always stressed that you need to have evidence to correctly identify them as such before claiming that there is a conspiracy. Acting otherwise is irresponsible. It is with this in mind that I was surprised to learn about a conspiracy by the US government to spread antivaxxer messages!  At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, China engaged in the spreading of propaganda claiming that the COVID-19 virus came from the United States. Then, in order to increase their influence in other countries, China supplied the COVID-19 vaccine they developed and other things to the Philippines and nations in central Asia and the Middle East that still did not have access to the vaccines made in the United States (a move known as “vaccine diplomacy”). To retaliate for this and counter Chinese influence, the Trump administration authorized a clandestine psychological operation to be carried out by the military in which, using hundreds of fake social media accounts that ended up accumulating altogether tens of thousands of followers, they fanned antivaxxer sentiment in those countries and spread misinformation about the Chinese vaccine. The accounts posted suggestive things such as that the virus came from China and the vaccine too, that the vaccine from China was fake, that it might be a rat killer, and that it contained pork gelatin (this was targeted to Muslim countries). This was at the time that tens of thousands of people were dying each day as a result of COVID-19. After the Biden administration came into power, this particular disinformation program was shut down. The above is not an unfounded conspiracy. We know it is true because the news organization Reuters which broke the story conducted interviews with contractors working for the US army, retired and active US officials, academic researchers and social media analysts, and reviewed data regarding fake social media accounts used by the U.S. military. I have been actively countering antivaxxers and promoting vaccines for years, so I am appalled that our own government participated in spreading these messages. Now, let me make it clear that I am not ignorant about the cutthroat environment of international politics. China is a dictatorship where there is no freedom of the press. People in China who try to investigate any alleged foreign psychological operations carried out by Chinese military operatives will end up in jail. The reason why Reuters was able to discover what the U.S. military was doing, and the reason we learned about it, is because of the freedoms we enjoy in this country. I could not have written this post if it were not for those freedoms. Therefore, I understand that the United States has to fight against governments such as the Chinese in several fronts, including the psychological realm, to counter its influence. However, I don’t think the way to do it is to spread antivaxxer messages or misinformation about a vaccine. And in thinking like this I am not alone. Top U.S. diplomats in Southeast Asia strongly objected to the anti-vax campaign, but they were overruled. Reuters quotes one American military official saying, “We weren’t looking at this from a public health perspective. We were looking at how we could drag China through the mud.” In the end, China’s vaccine diplomacy was not as successful as they expected, although probably not due to the psychological operation carried out by the U.S. government, but rather due to hard power tactics that China employed in many countries where they came across as an aggressor. Whether the U.S. caused damage due to its antivaxxer campaign is difficult to discern. The evidence we have indicates that the Chinese vaccine worked reasonably well against the initial variants of the COVID-19 virus. In places where only the Chinese vaccine was available, it saved lives. Therefore, anyone foregoing receiving the Chinese vaccine could have placed themselves in danger. I am not a military operative specialized in conducting psychological operations. But I would venture that any way of countering the influence of China or other countries or organizations has to take into account the well-being of foreign nationals. Instead of conducting this antivaxxer campaign, the US government could have, for example, been more proactive in sharing the COVID-19 vaccines developed in the United States with other countries from the beginning to build up goodwill towards the United States. That’s just my two cents. The unmodified image by Christian Emmer is used under an Attribution Noncomercial 4.0 international Deed (CC BY-NC 4.0). In a hearing about the coronavirus pandemic, congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene hounded (no pun intended) Dr. Fauci about experiments conducted with beagles which were approved by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during his tenure as its director. She called these experiments disgusting and evil, stated that Americans don’t pay their taxes for animals to be tortured like this, and she refused to call Dr. Fauci a doctor. This hearing was about the coronavirus pandemic, so at one-point Fauci asked puzzled, “What do dogs have to do with anything we are talking about today?”. To be fair, some of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s other questions did address matters related to the coronavirus issue, although she did not give Fauci a chance to answer them, at one point even saying “Nah, I don’t need your answer”. Nevertheless, what I want to address in this post is the issue of the beagle experiments (which has been termed “Beaglegate”) because it often receives a superficial treatment every time it is brought up.  The experiments in question involved beagle dogs which were anesthetized and then placed in contact with sand flies carrying a protozoan parasite called leishmania. There are about 700 thousand to one million cases of leishmania infection worldwide each year, and in many countries where this happens, dogs are the main animal reservoir for the parasite in urban areas. How severe a leishmania infection is depends on the strain of the parasite. The most common variety of the parasite will produce a cutaneous form of the disease, which will just produce scarring at the site of infection. However, more pathogenic varieties of the parasite can produce visceral leishmaniasis, which can be lethal if left untreated in 90% of the cases among children under 5 years of age, adults over 50 years of age, or people with comorbidities or compromised immune systems. While leishmaniasis is a disease associated with developing countries, it has already made its way to Texas. Therefore, this disease if of interest to scientists and medical doctors from a public health perspective, and because dogs are often involved in the transmission of the parasite in urban environments, they have been used extensively as experimental models to study the disease (for example click on these links: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5). So yes, dogs are used in experiments where they have to be infected with the parasite by various means, and yes, the dogs will face a certain amount of discomfort and pain, and yes, they will be euthanized at the end to obtain biological samples and to evaluate the changes the disease produces to their bodies. My question then is: what is the problem? Here many people get emotional. They would say, “The poor dogs were being “eaten” by sandflies in these experiments! This is torture! This is cruel! This is immoral! This is…etc.”. These, of course, are value judgements. As a society, we have to decide what our values are with respect to issues involving dogs. For example, in some countries it is legal to breed dogs commercially to eat them, but in the United States the Dog and Cat Meat Trade Prohibition Law of 2018 ended commercial dog meat businesses. So, if people want to ban experimentation with dogs, they should petition their elected representatives. However, as of now, it is perfectly legal to conduct experiments with dogs. Between 2007 and 2019, more than 8,000 publications in scientific journals have involved dogs, and of these, more than 5,000 have involved beagles. Experimentation with dogs has led to many discoveries and medical treatments. Dogs were employed in the experiments that led to the discovery of insulin. Research on dogs in the field of cardiology led to the first electrical defibrillator. Dogs were also used in the development of artificial heart valves. Because dogs can be bred to develop muscular dystrophy like humans, they have been used for researching this condition leading to a better genetic tests and treatments. Dogs were used in the first demonstration that cigarette smoke causes cancer, and to show that second hand smoke causes cancer too. A lot of what we know about the effects of radiation on health comes from experiments with dogs. Many new drugs are also tested on dogs before beginning clinical trials with humans. And research on dogs has also benefited dogs. Vaccines against rabies, parvovirus, and canine hepatitis were developed using dogs in the research. Research on dogs has also led to canine improved nutritional guidelines and medicines to treat dogs. Insofar as science is concerned, scientists working with dogs and other animals as experimental subjects are required to follow guidelines to ensure good animal welfare both by the institutions where they work and by the institutions which provide their funding. If they don’t, they should be sanctioned, but nobody is arguing that the experimental guidelines were not followed in the Beaglegate experiments. As to Dr. Fauci, he did not specifically and individually approve the grants for the beagle experiments. The grant review process first involves a review by a group called the Scientific Review Group made up primarily of non-federal scientists with expertise in the relevant areas of research. The grants are then reviewed by another group called the Advisory Council, which is made up of scientific and public representatives chosen for their expertise, interest, and activity in areas of public health. The only grant applications funded are those recommended by both groups. At the end of this process, Dr. Fauci, as director of the institute, formally approved bundles of thousands of grants at a time, which he did not read or review on an individual basis. My opinion on this whole matter is that the outrage over “Beaglegate” is just another way that Fauci haters have tried to slander him. Dr. Fauci has saved or improved the lives of tens of millions of people with his research and his public service. After not being able to tarnish his impeccable reputation, they have resorted to exploiting the fondness of people for cute animals to smear Dr. Fauci over perfectly legal experiments that are critical for public health. The image, designed by Wannapik, is used under a non-commercial license. Today I will address a question/meme that has been around for decades, and resurfaces every now and then to create controversy.  So the question/meme is: if an airplane is on top of a conveyor belt as wide and long as a runway, with such belt being designed to match the speed of the wheels of the airplane moving in the opposite direction, will it be able to take off? This question has generated multiple debates in the communities of both science and laypeople for many years. The question even inspired an attempt to test it in the television program series Mythbusters where its hosts, Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, found that the airplane was able to take off from a tarp that was being pulled by a vehicle in the opposite direction. However, many people claimed that this was a bogus test because the vehicle pulling the tarp did not precisely match the speed of the wheels of the airplane moving in the opposite direction. As to the original question, initially I thought the airplane would not be able to take off. I reasoned that if the conveyor belt can exactly match the speed of the wheels, the airplane would not be able to move forward to generate the wind speed necessary for the air flowing around the wings to generate lift. However, I realized that I was thinking about the wheels of an airplane much in the same way I think about the wheels of a car, and this is a mistake. Let’s compare a car vs. an airplane on a conveyor belt that moves in the direction opposite to the movement of the car/airplane matching the speed of the wheels. In order to advance, the car needs friction between the tires and the ground (traction). A car on a very slippery surface will just spin its wheels hopelessly. So by moving in the opposite direction, you can imagine that the conveyor belt essentially nullifies traction for the car. In the case of the airplane, friction between the wheels and the ground is not needed for the airplane to advance. This is why airplanes on skis can take off on runaways made out of ice and snow. The motor of the car pushes against the ground via the wheels. Its forward movement depends on the wheels and their friction with the ground. On the other hand, the engines of the airplane push against the surrounding air. Its forward movement does not depend on the wheels. The airplane’s wheels are passive – they spin freely. The conveyor belt will not slow down the plane. Although this made sense to me, I still had problems visualizing the situation, because in my mind every turn of the wheel is matched by the conveyor belt moving in the opposite direction, so how can the airplane possibly move forward? Then I realized that the conveyor belt will also make the wheels of the airplane spin due to the friction between the wheels and the belt. In which direction does the conveyor belt make the airplane’s wheels spin? If you look at the airplane from the side, say with the nose facing your left and the tail your right (wheels down, of course), the airplane will be trying to move from right to left, the conveyor belt surface will be moving from left to right, and the wheels will be spinning…counterclockwise. In other words, in the direction of the airplane’s movement! But here is the problem: when the airplane moves forward, it will also make the wheels spin in that direction. Therefore, the speed of the wheels will be a result of that caused by the airplane plus that caused by the conveyor belt. This creates a problem in the basic premise of the problem. For example, if the airplane accelerates, making the wheels spin forward at say 100 revolutions per minute (rpm), and the conveyor belt accelerates in the opposite direction to match the spin of the wheels at 100 rpm, then the combined (total) forward spin of the wheels will be 200 rpm (100 + 100). And if the conveyor belt accelerates to match that total speed (200 rpm), then the final speed of the wheels will be 300 rpm (200 + 100). So we have an impossibility. Even if the conveyor belt accelerates to infinity, it will never be able to match the total speed of the wheels because it will always add an extra amount of spin to them! Of course, if the conveyor belt moves instead in the direction of the airplane’s movement, which will make the wheels spin backwards (against the movement of the plane), it will be able to counter the spin of the wheels, which will remain stationary. But then the conveyor belt will just keep accelerating and dragging the airplane along until it takes off. Finally, if you are curious about applying my reasoning above to the case of the car, consider that the car’s wheels are not freely moving. Only the motor of the car can move the wheels. The conveyor belt moving in the opposite direction will not make the car’s wheels spin forward. It will not add an additional spin to the wheels. So in the case of the car, the conveyor belt can match the speed of the wheels. Of course, if you put the car in neutral (disengaging the wheels from the motor) and attach a jet engine to its roof, you will end up with a situation similar to that of the airplane. Although thinking this way made sense to me, I went online and found that communities of scientists had tackled this question before and conducted computer simulations. The long and short of it is that, yes, the airplane indeed will take off. Nevertheless, there would be insurmountable problems in trying to test the question in a real-world situation where a conveyor belt tries to exactly match the speed of the wheels. The conveyor belt and the wheels of the airplane would accelerate to speeds so great that it would destroy them, and the conveyor belt would move so fast that it would begin to generate a wind current against the airplane that could provide a certain amount of lift. This concludes my foray into the Airplane on a Conveyor Belt conundrum. What do you think? The drawing of the plane on the conveyor belt belongs to the author and can only be used with permission. |
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