David Dobbs's Public Library

18 Nov 09

Two-sided genetic coin at The Thinking Meat Project

A new article in The Atlantic has rocked my world in a way that articles anywhere seldom do. David Dobbs explains a new hypothesis regarding genes, environment, and behavior, which he dubs the orchid hypothesis. I’ve written before about genes that appear to make a person vulnerable to things like depression or anxiety, but the vulnerability may be only half of the story. A growing amount of evidence indicates that those carrying such genes may not only be at risk of a particular disorder if they are raised in an unfavorable environment, but may also function at an above-average level if raised in a favorable environment. This could explain a lot about how supposedly detrimental genetic variants could have survived in the population.

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orchidreax orchidstory reactions blogosphere orchidgene sources?

A new article in The Atlantic has rocked my world in a way that articles anywhere seldom do. David Dobbs explains a new hypothesis regarding genes, environment, and behavior, which he dubs the orchid hypothesis. I’ve written before about genes that appear to make a person vulnerable to things like depression or anxiety, but the vulnerability may be only half of the story. A growing amount of evidence indicates that those carrying such genes may not only be at risk of a particular disorder if they are raised in an unfavorable environment, but may also function at an above-average level if raised in a favorable environment. This could explain a lot about how supposedly detrimental genetic variants could have survived in the population.

17 Nov 09

Dandelions and orchids « Joanne Jacobs

Some good comments here from parents, some of whom feel they've raised orchids, some v difficult, but that turned out well. One esp, Rebeccat, which see.

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orchidreax parents booksource parenting sources? contact orchidstory orchid children orchidgene

Rather, I am of a mind that our current societal setup is such that we lose a lot more orchids than necessary by raising them under stressed conditions, and we do so because our society is set up to maximize other things: generally the conservative vision of economic competition and the liberal vision of individual choice. At least, that is where my mind goes, as I look at families where I taught the parents and now teach their children, and good brains frequently go to waste in a mush of poor attendance, emotional problems, substance abuse, etc.

Although the article waxes the most enthusiastic about the genetic theorizing, I suspect the most useful observations involve the intervention program detailed in paragraphs 3-5 of the linked article. Society has many deep seated reasons not to change, but mothers of young children may present a more willing audience. It am struck by the following:
recognized my kids in this article. My oldest, in particular, was difficult practically from birth. I think I spent the fist 6 years of his life fending off suggestions from a wide variety of people that there was something wrong with him. “Stubborn is just the other side of determined and overly emotional is just an undisciplined way of being passionate,” I used to say. My philosophy was that my job is to help my kids be who they are (highly emotional, active, stubborn, neurotic, etc) in a way which will work for them in this world we’re living in. My two boys are now 14 and 10 and are actually doing quite well. My 14 year old in particular is shockingly mature for a boy his age. He’s still working some things out, but I do believe that in a few years when it’s time for him to really go out into the world, he’s going to be an amazing person. I also believe that he would have been completely destroyed in an environment with parents who were less able to really work intensively with him to turn his less desirable traits into positives. But, I have to say that raising orchids is HARD work. I wouldn’t really want to go back and start over for much of anything.

12 Nov 09

untitled

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blog

08 Nov 09

ScienceDirect - Biological Psychiatry : The Role of COMT Val158Met in Cognition

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Does the meta-analysis of Barnett et al. (1), “Meta-Analysis of the Cognitive Effects of the Catechol-O-Methyltransferase Gene Val158/108Met Polymorphism,” justify their conclusion that “Despite initial promising results, the COMT Val158/108Met polymorphism appears to have little if any association with cognitive function”? We submit that this statement illustrates the potential shortcomings of a purely statistical evaluation of a domain of inquiry that has penetrated to the deeper level of biological mechanisms

PsycNET - Option to Buy

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orchidgene DRD4 Leiden externalizing

02 Nov 09

untitled

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blog

An Italian court has cut the sentence given to a convicted murderer by a year because he has genes linked to violent behaviour — the first time that behavioural genetics has affected a sentence passed by a European court. But researchers contacted by Nature have questioned whether the decision was based on sound science.
During the trial, Bayout's lawyer, Tania Cattarossi, asked the court to take into account that her client may have been mentally ill at the time of the murder. After considering three psychiatric reports, the judge, Paolo Alessio Vernì, partially agreed that Bayout's psychiatric illness was a mitigating factor and sentenced him to 9 years and 2 months in prison — around three years less than Bayout would have received had he been deemed to be of sound mind
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- For the new report, Pietro Pietrini, a molecular neuroscientist at Italy's University of Pisa, and Giuseppe Sartori, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Padova, conducted a series of tests and found abnormalities in brain-imaging scans and in five genes that have been linked to violent behaviour — including the gene encoding the neurotransmitter-metabolizing enzyme monoamine oxidase A (MAOA). A 2002 study led by Terrie Moffitt, a geneticist at the Institute of Psychiatry, King's College, London, had found low levels of MAOA expression to be associated with aggressiveness and criminal conduct of young boys raised in abusive environments.
- In the report, Pietrini and Sartori concluded that Bayout's genes would make him more prone to behaving violently if provoked. "There's increasing evidence that some genes together with a particular environmental insult may predispose people to certain behaviour," says Pietrini.
  On the basis of the genetic tests, Judge Reinotti docked a further year off the defendant's sentence, arguing that the defendant's genes "would make him particularly aggressive in stressful situations". Giving his verdict, Reinotti said he had found the MAOA evidence particularly compelling.
- "We don't know how the whole genome functions and the [possible] protective effects of other genes," says Giuseppe Novelli, a forensic scientist and geneticist at the University Tor Vergata in Rome. Tests for single genes such as MAOA are "useless and expensive", he adds.
  One problem is that the effects of the MAOA gene are known to vary between different ethnic groups, Moffit says. A 2006 study in the United States found that former victims of child abuse with high levels of MAOA were less likely to commit violent crimes — but only if they were white. The effect was not evident in non-white children.
- Pietrini and Sartori, however, did not test Bayout for his ethnicity. "The ethnicity of the defendant is irrelevant" in this case, Pietrini told Nature. He argues that the defendent does not belong to any of the non-white ethnic groups considered in the 2006 study. "Besides, MAOA is just one of the candidate genes we analysed," he added
- Other genes, such as those that encode the serotonin transporter, have also been linked to different reactions to stress. But these also show a large degree of dependence on environmental factors. "The point is that behavioural genetics is not there yet, we cannot explain individual behaviour, only large population statistics," says Nita Farahany of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who specializes in the legal and ethical issues arising from behavioural genetics and neuroscience.
- Since the 1994 Stephen Mobley case in the United States — the first case in the world in which the defence asked to have their client tested for MAOA deficiency — lawyers have increasingly been trying to bring MAOA deficits and similar genetic evidence into courtrooms worldwide. According to Farahany, who updates a personal database on sentences passed in the United States, in the past five years there have been at least 200 cases where lawyers have attempted to use genetic evidence to support the idea their clients' were predisposed to violent behaviour, depression or drug or alcohol abuse. In Britain, there have been at least 20 such cases in the past five years.
- Up to now most such efforts have been unsuccessful in court — although a few have influenced sentencing in the United States. Judges have tended to reject the idea that a person has no control over their choices because of their genes, says Farahany.
- "90% of all murders are committed by people with a Y chromosome — males. Should we always give males a shorter sentence?" says Steve Jones, a geneticist at University College London. "I have low MAOA activity but I don't go around attacking people."

27 Oct 09

Does the Vaccine Matter? - The Atlantic (November 2009)

Whether this season’s swine flu turns out to be deadly or mild, most experts agree that it’s only a matter of time before we’re hit by a truly devastating flu pandemic—one that might kill more people worldwide than have died of the plague and aids combined. In the U.S., the main lines of defense are pharmaceutical—vaccines and antiviral drugs to limit the spread of flu and prevent people from dying from it. Yet now some flu experts are challenging the medical orthodoxy and arguing that for those most in need of protection, flu shots and antiviral drugs may provide little to none. So where does that leave us if a bad pandemic strikes?

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vaccines Brownlee Lenzer

Flu comes and goes with the seasons, and often it does not kill people directly, but rather contributes to death by making the body more susceptible to secondary infections like pneumonia or bronchitis. For this reason, researchers studying the impact of flu vaccination typically look at deaths from all causes during flu season, and compare the vaccinated and unvaccinated populations.
Such comparisons have shown a dramatic difference in mortality between these two groups: study after study has found that people who get a flu shot in the fall are about half as likely to die that winter—from any cause—as people who do not. Get your flu shot each year, the literature suggests, and you will dramatically reduce your chance of dying during flu season
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- When researchers from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases included all deaths from illnesses that flu aggravates, like lung disease or chronic heart failure, they found that flu accounts for, at most, 10 percent of winter deaths among the elderly. So how could flu vaccine possibly reduce total deaths by half? Tom
- The estimate of 50 percent mortality reduction is based on “cohort studies,” which compare death rates in large groups, or cohorts, of people who choose to be vaccinated, against death rates in groups who don’t. But people who choose to be vaccinated may differ in many important respects from people who go unvaccinated—and those differences can influence the chance of death during flu season
- When Lisa Jackson, a physician and senior investigator with the Group Health Research Center, in Seattle, began wondering aloud to colleagues if maybe something was amiss with the estimate of 50 percent mortality reduction for people who get flu vaccine, the response she got sounded more like doctrine than science. “People told me, ‘No good can come of [asking] this,’” she says. “‘Potentially a lot of bad could happen’ for me professionally by raising any criticism that might dissuade people from getting vaccinated, because of course, ‘We know that vaccine works.’ This was the prevailing wisdom.
- Nonetheless, in 2004, Jackson and three colleagues set out to determine whether the mortality difference between the vaccinated and the unvaccinated might be caused by a phenomenon known as the “healthy user effect.” They hypothesized that on average, people who get vaccinated are simply healthier than those who don’t, and thus less liable to die over the short term. People who don’t get vaccinated may be bedridden or otherwise too sick to go get a shot. They may also be more likely to succumb to flu or any other illness, because they are generally older and sicker. To test their thesis, Jackson and her colleagues combed through eight years of medical data on more than 72,000 people 65 and older. They looked at who got flu shots and who didn’t. Then they examined which group’s members were more likely to die of any cause when it was not flu season
- Jackson’s findings showed that outside of flu season, the baseline risk of death among people who did not get vaccinated was approximately 60 percent higher than among those who did, lending support to the hypothesis that on average, healthy people chose to get the vaccine, while the “frail elderly” didn’t or couldn’t. In fact, the healthy-user effect explained the entire benefit that other researchers were attributing to flu vaccine, suggesting that the vaccine itself might not reduce mortality at all. Jackson’s papers “are beautiful,” says Lone Simonsen, who is a professor of global health at George Washington University, in Washington, D.C., and an internationally recognized expert in influenza and vaccine epidemiology. “They are classic studies in epidemiology, they are so carefully done.”
  
  The results were also so unexpected that many experts simply refused to believe them. Jackson’s papers were turned down for publication in the top-ranked medical journals. One flu expert who reviewed her studies for the Journal of the American Medical Association wrote, “To accept these results would be to say that the earth is flat!” When the papers were finally published in 2006, in the less prominent International Journal of Epidemiology, they were largely ignored by doctors and public-health officials. “The answer I got,” says Jackson, “was not the right answer.”

The Atlantic article: sur rebuttal : Effect Measure

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they apparently can't separate their role as journalists from the role of Dr. Jefferson as the person we accused of methodolatry
It attempted to persuade people there is a real question about the usefulness of influenza vaccine during a pandemic, a time when the public is trying to understand what to do. It confused pretty much everyone who read it on that scor
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- We’re simply saying that the nation’s seasonal flu strategy, which is to vaccinate the elderly and other vulnerable populations, may not be working as well as has been claimed. If we rely on vaccine during a major, deadly pandemic (which thus far this one does not appear to be, but things could change), the public may not be as well protected as we might hope or believe. We don’t say flu vaccine is worthless, we simply say nobody really knows how much protection it might offer. Better studies would help define what vaccine can and can’t do - and help us prepare for the really nasty pandemic that many experts believe is only a matter of time
- Go to the KSJ Tracker site and take a look at the cover of The Atlantic: Swine flu: Does the vaccine really work? That's not about seasonal flu strategy. And that's the nub of the issue
- Numbers 1 to 6 are just a rehash of the seasonal flu controversy
- We didn't discuss the whole controversy in our response but we did provide links to the places we discussed them in the past several years. That's the beauty of the web versus their magazine.

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » The Atlantic on flu vaccines: Responses.

ksjtracker.mit.edu/...ntic-on-flu-vaccines-responses - Preview

We’re simply saying that the nation’s seasonal flu strategy, which is to vaccinate the elderly and other vulnerable populations, may not be working as well as has been claimed. If we rely on vaccine during a major, deadly pandemic (which thus far this one does not appear to be, but things could change), the public may not be as well protected as we might hope or believe. We don’t say flu vaccine is worthless, we simply say nobody really knows how much protection it might offer. Better studies would help define what vaccine can and can’t do – and help us prepare for the really nasty pandemic that many experts believe is only a matter of time.

22 Oct 09

Viewing Feed

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Almost 15% of adults under 65 lack insurance, and many, many more are uninsured
We may be rising in the national rankings. But we’re worse off now than we were 5 years ago.
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- And while coverage of children is good, at 93.4%, that’s down from 95% three years eariier — an alarming trend
- The percentage of Vermonters who saw their doctors for routine physicals in the last 2 years also dropped, from 87 to 84.4%. And 10 percent of Vermonters didn’t make doctor visits they needed to at some point in the past year because they couldn’t afford it.
- Adults 50+ receiving recommended screening and preventive care: 49.3% Adults diabetics getting recommended preventive care: 55.3% Children 19-35 months getting recommended vaccines: 79.8% Children getting both a med & a dental visit in past year: 79.4% Children who received mental-health treatment they needed: 79.4%
- Our premiums for enrolled employees, meanwhile are $4,900 — 4th highest in the land, though our incomes rank in the middle
- — the #1 concern of businesses in the state is rising health costs.

Goodbye HuffPost, Hello ScienceBlogs: Science as a Religion that Worships Truth as its God : Evolution for Everyone

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The second major issue that requires scientific reform is group selection, a theory that explains how groups can become well adapted to their environments in the same sense that individuals do. The theory of group selection began with Darwin and involves a simple set of issues that anyone can understand. Yet, it remains endlessly controversial. Next year marks the 35th anniversary of my first publication on group selection and I'm confident that the controversy will continue for decades more unless something is done. That "something" is a truth and reconciliation process, similar to the resolution of political conflicts that otherwise might continue forever. The idea that a scientific controversy might require a truth and reconciliation process similar to a political controversy speaks volumes about science as a fallible and culturally influenced process.

My

20 Oct 09

Technology Review: Flu Vaccines Hit a Wall

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Perhaps the most exciting but challenging prospect for a universal vaccine lies in DNA-based vaccines--sequences of DNA that, when taken up by cells and expressed as proteins, prompt an immune response. DNA vaccines can be made and modified quickly, are cheap to produce, and have a long shelf life

17 Oct 09

This Is Your Wake-up Call: 12 Steps to Better Book Publishing - 4/20/2009 - Publishers Weekly

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Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin's Three Cups of Tea, for example, has been sustained by a dynamic author and a multi-year speaking tour, and the hit Twilight series has greatly benefited from Stephenie Meyer's extensive online promotional efforts

10 Oct 09

Paying More, Getting Less | Dollars & Sense

www.dollarsandsense.org/...0508harrison.html - Preview

For insurance premiums: in 2007, the average annual premiums for health insurance policies offered through employers were $4,479 for individuals and $12,106 for families, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s annual survey of health benefits.
Either way, however, the full premium cost represents a bite taken out of the worker’s total “wage packet”—the cost of wages plus benefits

09 Oct 09

Policy Integrity

Steve Kappel, healthcare economist.

policyintegrity.com/reports.html - Preview

vtcare SteveKappel economics

02 Oct 09

Crucial role for the Nalp3 inflammasome in the immunostimulatory properties of aluminium adjuvants : Abstract : Nature

Another paper proposing a mechanismi for alum.

www.nature.com/...nature06939.html - Preview

vaccines adjuvants alum

29 Sep 09

The Lie Machine : Rolling Stone

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healthcarereform hcr

Kang 2009 (review): Influenza vaccines based on virus-like particles

Good review. says viable, some things to be worked out, esp trials in humans.

www.sciencedirect.com/science - Preview

VLP

28 Sep 09

The Tyee — A Soldier Martyr, Faked and True. Review 'Where Men Find GLory"

Journalist Jon Krakauer is obsessed with people who make unfathomable choices, from a young man wandering in the wilderness in Into the Wild to climbers attempting Everest in Into Thin Air to polygamists hearing a call to violence in Under the Banner of Heaven. The subject of Krakauer's new book, Where Men Win Glory: The Odyssey of Pat Tillman, is one of these. As we all know, Pat Tillman left the NFL in 2002 to enlist in the army, inspired to do his part in the service of a president he distrusted and later, a war he doubted. When Tillman was killed by friendly fire, the army and government engaged in a cover-up to turn him into a martyred hero. In this book, Krakauer exposes each step of the deception with persistent detail.

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books krakauer Tilman

16 Sep 09

NCHC | Facts About Healthcare - Health Insurance Coverage

Good list of basic stats and facts (national) on healthcare coverage (and lack thereof)

www.nchc.org/coverage.shtml - Preview

vtcare healthcarereform #hcr Healthcare

Studies estimate that the number of excess deaths among uninsured adults age 25-64 is in the range of 22,000 a year. This mortality figure is more than the number of deaths from diabetes (17,500) within the same age group.8

David Dobbs's Public Library

Two-sided genetic coin at The Thinking Meat Project

Dandelions and orchids « Joanne Jacobs

untitled

ScienceDirect - Biological Psychiatry : The Role of COMT Val158Met in Cognition

PsycNET - Option to Buy

untitled

Does the Vaccine Matter? - The Atlantic (November 2009)

The Atlantic article: sur rebuttal : Effect Measure

Knight Science Journalism Tracker » Blog Archive » The Atlantic on flu vaccines: Responses.

Viewing Feed

Goodbye HuffPost, Hello ScienceBlogs: Science as a Religion that Worships Truth as its God : Evolution for Everyone

Technology Review: Flu Vaccines Hit a Wall

This Is Your Wake-up Call: 12 Steps to Better Book Publishing - 4/20/2009 - Publishers Weekly

Paying More, Getting Less | Dollars & Sense

Policy Integrity

Crucial role for the Nalp3 inflammasome in the immunostimulatory properties of aluminium adjuvants : Abstract : Nature

The Lie Machine : Rolling Stone

Kang 2009 (review): Influenza vaccines based on virus-like particles

The Tyee — A Soldier Martyr, Faked and True. Review 'Where Men Find GLory"

NCHC | Facts About Healthcare - Health Insurance Coverage

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