The human body is, to some extent, just a luxury cruise liner for microbes.
Science writer Carl Zimmer has a post at Discover’s science blogs about the increasing understanding among scientists about the symbiosis of the human organism and its assorted microscopic passengers. Indeed, there is a growing belief that the symbiosis might actually be under the control of the micro-organisms rather than ourselves. This Scientific American article reviews some of the same research as Zimmer’s piece and includes a variety of additional links to plumb through.
On a slightly different, but related, topic: this article in Slate considers whether or not hand sanitizers like Purell have any real effect in preventing the spread of diseases like colds and flu, then goes on to consider the weightier question of whether it’s really a good idea at all to be trying to de-germify every surface in sight.
The Awl offers a list of the 32 known possible side effects of the drug Chantix, prescribed to help people quit smoking. True story: a few years ago, my mother, who quit smoking once and returned to it after my father died, started taking Chantix on the advice of her physician. It gave her heart palpitations so severe, she thought she was having a heart attack. And that’s not even listed as one of the known side effects.
In 2009, the FDA issued an advisory to physicians to tell patients to discontinue taking Chantix immediately if they experienced any of the behavioral/mood change side effects, because recent studies have shown that such problems can persist even after discontinuing medication. The FDA claimed there were 98 suicides and 188 suicide attempts since the drug’s public launch in 2006, although a U.K. study published later last year found no cases of suicide or attempted suicide in that country during roughly the same time period.
Frankly, I find this a little disturbing: Eight percent of the human genome comes from the insertion of genetic material from a virus. A kind of RNA virus called a bornavirus has the ability to replicate in the nuclei of cells, causing its DNA to be incorporated into the DNA of the cells of the host organism, and thus passed along from generation to generation, eventually evolving into part of the “normal” genome. The researchers who have been studying this think that the resulting genetic mutations might be at the core of psychiatric disorders like schizophrenia and Republicanism.
For a couple of years now I have been a daily consumer of various omega fatty acid supplements; not just the usual omega-3, which usually comes in the form of fish oil, but omega-6 and omega-9 as well, which come from flaxseed oil and borage oil. The whole range of the omega fatty acids have a variety of health benefits, though most people are probably just aware of the omega-3 effects on cardiac health. I originally started taking the fish oil for that purpose, but someone recommended adding the flax and borage, and I do believe that the combination of the three has been beneficial for me overall — a couple of chronic problems I’d had for years simply went away after taking the fish-flax-borage combo for a while.
However, I have to admit to being completely ignorant of the issues regarding the production of fish oil products. This NYT article from December is a guest op-ed from Paul Greenberg, a writer who has a book coming out later this year about fish and the fishing industries. in the article, he explains that most fish oil comes from a species of fish called menhaden (also known as the alewife). Menhaden are a critical link in the Atlantic ecosystem, because they the link in the food chain between plankton and large fish: the menhaden eat plankton, but practically every other fish in the sea eats menhaden. While menhaden have always been useful in industrial fisheries as the source of fish meal, it has been the boom in consumption of fish oil that has resulted in dangerous overfishing of the species. Greenberg points out that one company is responsible for 90% of the menhaden catch in the U.S., and their overfishing has resulted in their operations being banned up and down the East Coast except in two states. While the menhaden population is believed to be large and stable and not in immediate peril, Greenberg correctly argues that the time to lock in some protections against widespread overfishing is NOW, before the loss of an adequate supply of the fish causes problems not just for humans but for the entire ecosystem of the Atlantic ocean.
This TIME.com article picks up on the concerns Greenberg expresses but also mentions a possible alternative to menhaden-based fish oil supplements: algae oil. All that omega-3 fatty acid in the menhaden comes from the algae that they eat, and apparently it’s possible to get the omega-3 directly from processing the algae without involving the fish at all. And algae can be grown in processing vats rather than relying on harvesting from the sea. It’s possible to buy algae oil supplements now: this particular product came up with just a little Googling, and it looks like you might want to use “vegan” as a search term. The next time I run out of fish oil capsules, I think I will be giving it a try myself.
One of the very first things I ever posted about on this very blog, all the way back in The Year 2000, was a story about how a group of scientists were trying to help save an endangered species of bovine called the gaur by using modern-day cattle as surrogates for clones. That post has long since been shelved in the dusty attic of offline archives, but here’s a reprint of the original news story from 2000 that talks about the attempt, and here, sadly, is the follow-up from 2001 that reports that the gaur they bred only lived for a couple of days.
There are no further reports of any more attempts to breed gaurs via cloning, but now, according to this London Telegraph article, a group of Italian scientists are trying to resurrect another ancient bovine, the auroch, by a process they term “back-breeding”. Aurouchs were wild elephant-sized bovines that were indigenous to Europe, Africa and Western Asia and survived as a species until the 1600s in Europe. A domestic version of the auroch, called Heck cattle, still exist and are being used along with other related animals to try to recreate a distinct auroch breed. The scientists say that have been able to map the genome of the auroch and they believe that their breeding program can come up with an animal that has the same genetic makeup as the ancient animal. Critics argue that all they’ll get is a simulacrum. A huge, dangerous simulacrum with a pair of horns that’ll rip your guts out:
Didjaever shoo a fly away from your food or your face or whatever, only to have the multi-eyed little bastard buzz back all the more? And it’s not just flies — mosquitoes, yellowjackets, Republicans — whatever sort of pest it is gets more persistent the more you chase it away. Well, it’s not your imagination, it’s SCIENCE!
Scientists at Caltech studied how flies and other insects can be antagonized by being chased away from something they want. In fact, they discovered that just puffing air at flies was enough to jazz them up into a Hulk-like raging fury, and they believe that humans behave in the same way. The whole thing relates to the production of dopamine in the brain and the disruption of neurotransmitters causing hyperstimulation and ultimately aggressive behavior.
Personally, I have stopped just shooing flies away and have moved on to the electric fly swatter, which may not rile them up but sure does burn their ass if I hit them! What do you mean that’s a little aggro?
Dear Harvey, Pete, Barry, Kevin, and every other weathermonkey on Boston-area TV: Enough is enough. The fucking blizzard was THIRTY-TWO YEARS AGO. It’s time to stop trotting out the same blurry videotape of cars stuck on Rt. 128 that is older than some of the people who are actually on your broadcast, [...]
It’s going to be a long two months waiting for the iPad to actually ship so that all the tech bloggers and their hangers-on will stop writing so much speculative bullshit about iT and turn their attention iNstead to some other thing that’s going to Change Life As We Know iT.
Since you cannot click a [...]
Please, please, PUH-LEEZE stop talking about “What do we call the last decade?” Nobody could come up with an acceptable choice ten years ago, and nobody’s going to come up with one now. “Aughties” and “Naughties” are contrived and stupid, and so is the very idea that anything wraps up all nice and [...]
