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Preparing for the Next Pandemic |
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| Topic: Science |
8:42 am EDT, May 29, 2005 |
What should the industrialized world be doing to prepare for the next pandemic? The simple answer: far more. No one can truly be isolated from a pandemic. What if the pandemic begins tonight? Preparing for the Next Pandemic |
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Devolution, or, Why Intelligent Design Isn't |
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| Topic: Science |
7:42 am EDT, May 29, 2005 |
If you are in ninth grade and live in Dover, Pennsylvania, you are learning things in your biology class that differ considerably from what your peers just a few miles away are learning. In particular, you are learning that Darwins theory of evolution provides just one possible explanation of life, and that another is provided by something called intelligent design. You are being taught this not because of a recent breakthrough in some scientists laboratory but because the Dover Area School Districts board mandates it. In October, 2004, the board decreed that students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwins theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design. Biologists arent alarmed by intelligent designs arrival in Dover and elsewhere because they have all sworn allegiance to atheistic materialism; theyre alarmed because intelligent design is junk science. Meanwhile, more than eighty per cent of Americans say that God either created human beings in their present form or guided their development. As a succession of intelligent-design proponents appeared before the Kansas State Board of Education earlier this month, it was possible to wonder whether the movements scientific coherence was beside the point. Intelligent design has come this far by faith. Devolution, or, Why Intelligent Design Isn't |
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The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation |
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| Topic: Science |
9:01 am EDT, May 24, 2005 |
Zoologist and science writer Matt Ridley explains how cooperation evolved in the generally selfish world of humankind. The result is a fascinating tale incorporating studies in theoretical and evolutionary biology, ecology, economics, ethology, sociology, and anthropology. The material will captivate a wide audience, including scholars who appreciate the original literature cited. Highly recommended. The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation |
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A Surprising Leap on Cloning |
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| Topic: Science |
12:30 pm EDT, May 22, 2005 |
Leadership in "therapeutic cloning" has shifted abroad while American scientists, hamstrung by political and religious opposition, make do with private or state funds in the absence of federal support. Hrm. In the context of this op-ed, and the recent story in Science, Nicholas Kristof's latest column seems timed for effect. A Surprising Leap on Cloning |
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Decoding Health Insurance |
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| Topic: Science |
12:24 pm EDT, May 22, 2005 |
The public's general indifference to one of science's landmark achievements has persisted even as the science and technology involved have yielded some remarkable discoveries. Of course, people can perhaps be forgiven for not wanting to recognize that they don't have many more genes than round worms or fruit flies. In this dawning era of genomic medicine, the concept of private health insurance, which is based on actuarially pooling risk within specified, fragmented groups, will become obsolete. Decoding Health Insurance |
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| Topic: Science |
9:17 am EDT, May 18, 2005 |
One can choose to view chance selection as obvious evidence that there is no God, as Dr. Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist and uncompromising atheist, might argue, or to conclude instead that God chooses to work through natural means. In the latter case, the overwhelming evidence that natural selection has determined the evolution of life on earth would simply imply that God is "the cause of causes," as Cardinal Ratzinger's document describes it. The very fact that two such diametrically opposed views can be applied to the same scientific theory demonstrates that the fact of evolution need not dictate theology. In other words, the apparently contentious questions are not scientific ones. It is possible for profoundly atheist evolutionary biologists like Dr. Dawkins and deeply spiritual ones like Dr. Kenneth Miller of Brown University, who writes extensively on evolution, to be in complete agreement about the scientific mechanism governing biological evolution, and the fact that life has evolved via natural selection. State school board science standards would do better to include a statement like this: While well-tested theories like evolution and the Big Bang have provided remarkable new insights and predictions about nature, questions of purpose that may underlie these discoveries are outside the scope of science, and scientists themselves have many different views in this regard. What Controversy? |
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The Evolution of Creationism |
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| Topic: Science |
9:40 am EDT, May 17, 2005 |
The latest struggle over the teaching of evolution in the public schools of Kansas provides striking evidence that evolution is occurring right before our eyes. Every time the critics of Darwinism lose a battle over reshaping the teaching of biology, they evolve into a new form, armed with arguments that sound progressively more benign, while remaining as dangerous as ever. The Evolution of Creationism |
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Steven Pinker: Sniffing Out the Gay Gene |
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| Topic: Science |
9:39 am EDT, May 17, 2005 |
It sounds like something out of the satirical journal Annals of Improbable Research: a team of Swedish neuroscientists scanned people's brains as they smelled a testosterone derivative found in men's sweat and an estrogen-like compound found in women's urine. In heterosexual men, a part of the hypothalamus (the seat of physical drives) responded to the female compound but not the male one; in heterosexual women and homosexual men, it was the other way around. But the discovery is more than just a shoo-in for that journal's annual Ig Nobel Prize - it raises provocative questions about the science and ethics of human sexuality. Steven Pinker: Sniffing Out the Gay Gene |
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Some Thoughts on Seeing the Polymerized Remains of Human Cadavers |
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| Topic: Science |
8:49 am EDT, Apr 6, 2005 |
Southern California has been enthralled by this exhibition. The exhibitions are the creation of Dr. Gunther von Hagens, a German who developed "plastination," a means of removing fluids and fats from bodies and replacing them with polymers. Some body parts on display -- a coal miner's lung, a metastasized liver -- look essentially like plastic models. But what drew more than 900,000 visitors to the California Science Center were dissected corpses posed in lifelike attitudes: skateboarding, ski-jumping, dancing, roping. Some Thoughts on Seeing the Polymerized Remains of Human Cadavers |
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In Battling Cancer, a Genome Project Is Proposed |
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| Topic: Science |
9:15 am EST, Mar 28, 2005 |
It's the 21st century version of "guns or butter?" The project would determine the sequence of the DNA in at least 12,500 tumor samples, 250 samples from each of 50 major types of cancer. By comparing the order of the letters of the genetic code in the tumor samples with one another and with sequences in healthy tissue, it should be possible to pinpoint mutations responsible for cancer. But the proposition is extremely daunting. In general, each tumor cell holds a full panoply of human DNA, a string of three billion letters of the genetic code. So determining the full sequence of all the tumors would be the equivalent of 12,500 human genome projects. At a cost of many millions of dollars for one genome, the full project would be out of the question for now. So the cancer proposal for now is to sequence only the active genes in tumors, which make up 1 percent to 2 percent of the DNA. Even that would require at least 100 times as much sequencing as the Human Genome Project. In Battling Cancer, a Genome Project Is Proposed |
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