Deaths Attributed to H1N1 Virus: 4735, Deaths Attribed to H1N1 Vaccine: 0

We're in the middle of an influenza pandemic and it's really not pretty. The virus itself is doing what it does naturally, infects and replicates, infects and replicates, over and over again. But what really isn't pretty (and even dangerous) is that people have decided to believe some really untrue things:

The H1N1 virus is just a mild flu. Sure it is [sarcasm here]. Have you spoken to anyone who has recovered from a case of H1N1? This is not a mild flu. Yes, the vast majority of people who come down with it do recover, but there are a few days during the recovery where the symptoms are so bad, that people are not sure how to manage it. Everyone I've talked to has said it was the "worst flu they'd ever experienced." Flu is not a cold (they are caused by different viruses) -- flu can (and has been repeatedly) deadly.

The H1N1 vaccine is untested and unsafe. This pops into my email inbox occasionally and it speaks to the public relations disaster about H1N1 influenza these days. People have decided to mistrust government health officials (I point people to flu.gov but are they interested? No.). Not only is the H1N1 vaccine made in the same way that the seasonal flu vaccine is made, it has been tested in tens of thousands of people for safety and efficacy. Here is a quote from flu.gov on the H1N1 vaccine, "Clinical trials conducted by the National Institutes of Health and the vaccine manufacturers have shown that the new H1N1 vaccine is both safe and effective.  The FDA has licensed it.  There have been no safety shortcuts."

H1N1 Vaccine contains a nano-implant so the government can track our movements. Sorry, but the X-Files story lines all belong to Chris Carter. Move along.

Consider reading some scientific facts about H1N1 Influenza:

Flu.gov Information on H1N1 Pandemic Flu
World Health Organization H1N1 Update
Center for Disease Control 2009 H1N1 Flu

Interestingly, the Washington Post religion blog discusses whether or not getting the H1N1 vaccine is a moral obligation to society. One wonders why individual choice is now so much preferred and heralded than the community's public health. In a pandemic, it's not hard to see how one person's selfishness can endanger the health of those nearby. I think it is a moral issue, but unfortunately anti-vaccine advocates will never see it that way. So here is my unbridled opinion about it (and you knew this was coming, right?):

If you decide that you will not get the H1N1 flu vaccine and you won't vaccinate your kids, I think you should warn everyone you know, everyone you work with, and all the adminstrators at your children's schools. Let people know that you are unwilling to do something to protect public health. Let people know that you may be an unsymptomatic carrier, perhaps just in the first few days of your infection.

If you refuse to get vaccinated, become infected with H1N1, then infect someone else with the virus that that other person succumbs to the disease, you are responsible for that person's death. Perhaps not legally responsible. However, you are morally responsible.

I suggest you wear a face mask when you go out in public.  Also, don't shake anyone's hand. Don't hug or kiss them. Don't sneeze, cough, laugh, or wheeze in anyone's vicinity.

I hear you say you will just take your chances with the H1N1 flu virus. It's a shame that you are willing to risk other people's lives. I however, am not, and will get the H1N1 vaccine as soon as it's my turn. I want to protect myself, sure, but I also want to protect my family, my co-workers, my friends, and the people I come in contact with every day. Reasonably, so should you.

Ardi! Ardi! Ardi! Ardipithecus ramidus finally revealed

You would have to be away from all electronic and print sources of news to miss the furor about Ardipithecus ramidus this week. The press releases and conferences hit the news cycle on Thursday followed by the publication of eleven (!) Ar. ramidus related papers in the weekly journal Science.

So what's the deal with Ardi? She is a partial skeleton of a hominid species ancestral to us and older than Lucy, the famous Australopithecus afarensis partial skeleton by a over a million years. Tim White and his team discovered "Ardi" in 1992, finding a molar and a lower jaw, which they published in 1994. Working on this find and the area where the partial skeleton was found in Aramis, Ethiopia, it took 15 years to complete. Instead of publishing a stream of papers as discoveries were made, White made the decision to hold off until a complete story could be told.

The wait has been worth it, considering the amount of information that the extended international team has been able to provide. Several ideas about human evolution will have to be reconsidered based on this species' attributes.

Ardipithecus ramidus lived in the trees but was also "intermediately" bipedal, based on analysis of pelvis, spine, legs, and feet. For the first time, a hominid species was found with a large opposable big toe, allowing for tree limb grasping. A theory about the development of bipedialism describes the needed walking trait in an African savannah environment, but Ardi walked even though she was also arboreal, living in a woodland environment.

Yet, Ardipithecus ramidus did not knuckle-walk, like chimpanzees or gorillas, the wrist and hand bone structure is not strong enough to support that kind of movement. "Ardi" is not chimpanzee-like, which is how most theorists described our earliest hominid ancestor. 

This is the find of a generation and I'm sure there will be much more analysis and commentary in the years to come.

• Great interactive site for general audiences can be found over at the Discovery Channel, which is a companion to the TV special.
  

• Science has the scientific papers and news articles available with a free registration -- I recommend doing this because you can read the original papers yourself. There is also a good 10-minute video interviewing Tim White and explaining some of the significant features of "Ardi." I also highly recommend science-writer Ann Gibbons' NewsFocus article here entitled "A New Kind of Ancestor: Ardipithecus Unveiled."

I have one complaint about Science's handling of the general interest articles -- the introductory article prefacing the eleven scientific articles is entitled "Light on the Origin of Man" written by Brooks Hanson. The use of such sexist language in a major science journal in the year 2009 (and introducing such a major scientific discovery) is unbelievably crass. The language choice may have been unconscious, but how stupid, how shameful. I expect stupid headlines like the ones from the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times and we got them ("New Discovery Turns Evolution on its Head") at first, and then they were changed soon after. But Science? Ironically, the partial skeleton described (like "Lucy" before her) is female.

Milestones: Dissertation completed and accepted by my committee

After 2 years of continuous researching and writing, I'm happy to say that I've submitted my dissertation to my committee and it has been accepted by all of them. The end process happened rather quickly; I submitted my final version on Friday, Sept 11th, and by the following Friday, I had all of the approved forms signed. Whew!

Next (and final) milestone: my dissertation defense. It's scheduled for Wed. Dec. 9th at 5PM at the Ladera campus of Pacifica Graduate Institute. Information for attending and an abstract will be posted here later.

Lev Grossman's "The Magician's" mini-review

Just finished Lev Grossman's absorbing new novel The Magicians. I don't want to be too revealing about the storyline, but I found the story to be an homage to a number of well-known fantasy stories: the Narnia and Harry Potter series are the most obvious. But I detect some LOTR motifs and a few from the Arthurian legends. Quests abound, but this is not a kid's story; it's rather adult (yes I've read the HP books and know how dark they get as they progress). But dark is different from adult content.

The characters are young adults with all the issues that the age group experiences, but add some very intense magic, angst about love and sex, battling an odd assortment of creatures, and a really big theme of loss -- I found it an intense read. Not a light story but rather melancholy throughout, with a protagonist who is sometimes very hard to relate to or like. I need to re-read it again at a later date, but at the moment I'm not convinced by the ending, which seemed both too pat and improbable given the previous set of events in the story.

For readers who enjoy contemporary mythological fiction, particularly the works of Charles deLint, the story will resonate. deLint has written a number of works centering on managing tremendous loss, set in a mythologically-active, magical landscape. But I wonder if people will be distracted by the obvious HP and Narnia motifs in The Magicians. Read it and ping me about your observations.

Apollo 11 Anniversary -- 40 years since first Moon walk

I was 11 years old when the Apollo 11 mission headed towards the Moon. I recall that the night of July 20, 1969 was warm in Los Angeles when my Dad called us in from outside (we were allowed to stay outside later than normal during the summer -- plus, it was hot and we had no air-conditioning in the house) to watch the TV broadcast from the Moon. I couldn't quite make out what I was seeing on the TV screen -- the contrast on the image was high. So, it took me a little while to recognize the outline of Neil Armstrong's suited body carrying the boxy EVA pack on his back.

People were on the Moon. Walking on the Moon. Not just taking pictures of it, actually walking on the Moon. This was so exciting to me and the event is one of those signposts that stand out in my memory. I often try to reconstruct my path to becoming a scientist and watching the first Moon walk is one of those moments, one of those points along the way. Mythologist Joseph Campbell wrote extensively about the space program, in particular the Apollo 8 mission, when sent back the first photos of the Earth hanging in space (the Big Blue Marble). Campbell felt that "Earthrise" was the beginning of a new myth.

Commenting on the 10th anniversary of the first Moon walk, Campbell reflects, "Men stood on the moon and looked back -- and by television we were able to look back with them -- to see earthrise. That is the symbol that enabled us to feel the truth of the discovery Copernicus made four and a quarter centuries ago."

(1979 interview with the NY Times, a copy of which is available here).

Campbell wrote quite a bit about the mythology of space exploration. Here is one more example: "The knowledge of space is the knowledge of our lives. We're born from space. It was from space that the Big Bang came that sent forth galaxies, and out of the galaxies, solar systems. The planet we are on is a little pebble in one of these things, and we have grown out of the earth of this pebble. This is the fantastic mythology that's waiting for somebody to write poems about." (Myths of Light xix).

You can watch a "replay" of the Apollo 11 mission on Twitter @ReliveApollo11. Nasa has paid to have TV images from the Moon restored (the original tapes were erased and reused, so the only images are from contemporary TV broadcasts, which varied greatly in quality. You can watch the restored footage here. Explore the surface of the Moon on Google.

I don't quite feel 11 again, mostly because I think the original sense of awe is difficult to revisit, especially 40 years later. But, I feel some measure of that wonder when I think about the fact that humans once walked, jumped, skipped, golfed, and drove on the lunar surface. Perhaps it will happen again and perhaps it will be as a waystation on the way to the next planet in the series, Mars. Then the footstep below would be in red Martian regolith.

That would be amazing.

Rita Levi Montalcini Turns 100 April 22

I saw this news blip on Yahoo news and had to post it. Levi Montalcini's accomplishments began under the restrictions of Mussolini's ideology. As a Jew, Levi Montalcini could not practice medicine (she had just graduated from medical school) or work at the university. Undaunted, she created a home laboratory and continued her work in basic neurobiology. She moved to the United States after the war, and there she discovered what is now known as nerve growth factor (NGF), a small protein that stimulates the growth of nerve cells.

Nature has this extended profile "One Hundred Years of Rita" and describes her as the first Nobel Prize scientist to reach this life milestone. Great article.

The Nobel Prize site has a number of Levi Montalcini resources, including an autobiography, her Nobel lecture, and the original press release in 1986 announcing her prize, which was shared with Stanley Cohen, the discoverer of epidermal growth factor (EGF).

Photo from Nobel Prize site (1986).

(AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca) 2009

In the Dissertation Zone

The Dissertation Zone: where those of us trying to finish sometimes get lost. That's where I am right now. Not lost, really, but not doing a lot other than working on my dissertation. Posting is necessarily sparse during this time. Perhaps later, when I emerge.....

In the meantime, here are a few things to keep you occupied:

Cloning animals is still popular -- 1st camel cloned reported here.

Want to peruse publications from the Human Genome Project?

All of Darwin's works are being made available online. I really like reading his correspondence.

Consider the International Genetically Engineered Machines competition.

Listen to some of Todd Barton's genomic music. I like "antibody" and trypsin."