The zoo/farm is near Bristol and I’ve been kicking around the idea of a field trip for some time – the lack of desire to give them any money being one deterrent.
What is it? It’s a tourist attraction, specialising in school trips, pushing a creationist agenda. It’s the kind of thing I’d expect to see in the Bible Belt of the States but it’s been nestled in South West England for some time now.
You could be forgiven for thinking “that’s a bit harsh” and that they are in fact a decent, educational establishment. The website is fairly innocuous until you reach the far-right tab ‘Evolution and Creation‘, which links to a ‘sister website’, Earth History: A New Approach.
Some gems:
We believe the fossil record does not show one evolutionary tree of life but rather genetically controlled diversification from a number of original forms
As the currently measured value of an element’s decay rate (or half-life) has no theoretical basis, the only way we can test which is true is to compare the results against the primary evidence.
Edit: Righteous Indignation ran a report on the zoo back in August from Dr*T (from around 19:00), in which he explores the whole of the bible passage about Noah & the flood; it’s, um, interesting…
James Gray hits the nail on the head (emphasis mine):
‘This is an appalling decision. It is entirely inappropriate that the Council should support an establishment that advances creationism and seeks to discredit a wide variety of established scientific facts that challenge their religious views, such as radio carbon dating, the fossil record and the speed of light.’
‘Teachers and parents look to the Council for assurance that children will experience high quality educational visits that meet the relevant government guidelines. Awarding this particular zoo a Quality Badge risks exposing hundreds of children to anti-scientific dogma.’
‘This is not a freedom of speech or freedom of religion issue. The question is whether the information displayed by this zoo meets the tests of accuracy and truth that parents, teachers and other educational professionals expect.’
I was first made aware of the Zoo through Facebook as some people from one of the Atheist Bus Campaign/Richard Dawkins groups (I forget which) had visitedand posted their photos, which included T-Rex models in the ark and shots of the merchandise in the gift shop; mostly books about Christianity’s creation myth. Marketed at school trips, remember.
Do have a look at Paul Sims‘ write-up and particularly the photos at the end. You can see the kind of things they put in their ‘educational’ material; why apes aren’t related to man, proof the ark was real and so on.
Welfare Worries
Aside from its religious fundamentalism and anti-scientific propaganda, the zoo has animal welfare issues too. Last year they had their BIAZA membership revoked because of a failure to disclose information about their acquisition of tigers from circuses. The RSPCA also criticised their plans for an elephant enclosure.
There have been (and probably still are) protests there because of alleged animal cruelty. If you look around reviews* of the place, they range from enthusiastic thumbs-up, through it’s-ok-if-you-ignore-the-crazy, all the way to outrage both at the ‘educational’ content and animal welfare.
*…The giraffe had one pole in a field with a empty twig to chew on. One of the tigers looked a little crazy as he just walked around the same route in his little house bashing his head on the glass each time. Most of the animals had cuts on their legs, is this normal?!
They were also accused of killing some of the animals to reduce Winter spending; however, it is difficult to pick out the substantial accusations as there are always plenty brought by ARE groups, which are likely to be full of twisted-truths and exaggerations. There are a few legitimate reasons why this may have happened; to feed the carnivores, to maintain healthy stocks, etc.
Reality Check
This is the 21st century; genetics tells us more every day about our evolutionary past and place in the gigantic web of life on this planet. In an increasingly secular state, why does a place such as this exist? Claiming to be educational yet ignoring much of what we already know.
This is not an alternative theory; it’s ridiculous denialism, likely permitted because religious belief is a handy excuse to push agendas whilst avoiding a lot of the controls placed on non-religiously-motivated activity.
Why is it still open after all this? How much more exposure is necessary?
I recently went to a course run by some ex-BBC journalists, Media Players International, on how to engage with the media regarding your research. They encouraged us to become the Media Tarts of the future, so here I (vaguely…) recall some of Dr Armand Leroi‘s lecture to my fellow postgrads and I from way back in the Summer, which was on that very topic.
I’ve enjoyed Armand’s telly programmes and was fortunate to have a pint and a chat with him at the very first London Skeptics in the Pub I went to (having been apprehensive about knowing no-one beforehand!).
Probably most famous for his science best-seller, Mutants, Armand has a great passion for his subject – evolutionary biology – which I very nearly pursued after university myself (and still sometimes wish I had!).
My Life As A Media Tart
Guest lecture to School of Medicine & Dentistry, Queen Mary University of London, Postgradute Day.
How I became one and how you can too!
The OMIM database* shows that we are all mutants. This gives us information on development.
[*I love OMIM; Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man, and have done since it was introduced to us at university. You can search any gene you can think of and see if it's been linked to a heritable disease in people, with links to the original papers, follow-up studies, details of other-organism models, big clinical studies, drugs and so on. Very useful & interesting.]
Armand recalled dealings with the “innocent of knowledge” TV people in Soho(!) when Channel 4 had commissioned a series of programmes that should cover science in the form of:
He showed us a timeline of the deadlines set (and missed!) during the writing of Mutants, and its movement to TV serialisation.
Filming is wonderful! But draining.
Having worked on the flatworm C. elegans (one of biology’s favourite genetic models) for many years, Armand noted how human compassion affected the projects – studying mutants can mean ‘treating real people as flies’, with respect to their genes;
I was comfortable with worms!
We scientists are sometimes resistant to being taken out of our comfort zones!
TV is a crass medium
Apparently the BBC even has a ‘walking & talking’ school! They’ll teach you how to move and talk at the same time. Amazing.
Is it worth it?
A common question with regard to any sort of science communication endeavour, especially ones such as writing and presenting that can take a lot of time and effort. Armand replies:
There is a need for science. Lots of TV science!
The situation isn’t quite as dire as many of us tend to think. SciComms is flourishing in many ways; this is the first time in my life, at least, that it’s been cool to be nerdy! Perhaps I’ve just restricted my social bubble so much that that’s inevitable, who knows.
We need scientist-driven content.
Rather than producer-driven; otherwise you fall into the sensationalist traps, don’t actually inform anyone of anything and maintain useless stereotypes.
Prof. Kathy Sykes and notable others have started to take on alternative medicine (close to the skeptics’ hearts of course) and pseudo-skepticism such as the ‘global warming swindle’ (see below).
Science Matters.
There has been a war of sorts, going for >2300 years; if one is going to be overly-dramatic about it, involving (un)truth, light/dark and (un)reason. Perhaps embodied by Aristotle’s movement away from his teacher, Plato, saying
Plato is my friend, but the truth is more my friend.
Something with which I identify very much, in fact.
The value of Scientists in engagement
It needs to be about more than just saying “trust me, I’m a scientist”
TV is run by humanities graduates!
That may well be so, in which case the narrative tends to rank above substance.
It is of course important that you have a good narrative, though, otherwise people will get bored and wander off! So I wouldn’t be too quick to dismiss their skills or be particularly mean (have loads of humanities grad friends and they’re no less brilliant for it – am a firm believer in the importance of diversity. Hey, all the geneticists should agree with that!) – but it’s probably worth trying to give some input, to steer things in a more fact-based direction.
The example given was of a Channel 4 ‘documentary’ called The Great Global Warming Swindle. It was investigated by Steve Connor who said it:
was based on graphs that were distorted, mislabelled, or just plain wrong…
To which the producer Martin Durkin replied:
The original NASA data was very wiggly and we wanted the simplest line we could find
Given the audience and subject matter this is hugely irresponsible and, understandably, people made various statements against it.
Prof. Carl Wunsch at MIT, who participated in the documentary, said The Great Global Warming Swindle was ‘grossly distorted’ and ‘as close to pure propaganda as anything since World War Two’.
One of Armand’s comments during correspondence with Durkin, that ended up involving Ben Goldacre and Simon Singh as well, was affectionately dubbed the ‘Leroi Conjecture’
Left to their own devices, TV producers simply cannot be trusted to tell the truth
He finished with some advice:
Editing is unavoidable. Seriously engage and keep control. Say ‘It’s this or I walk’
Don’t be pressured into presenting something you don’t agree with or something that’s wrong. Don’t let your message be twisted.
Going back to the journalists I met on the course; apparently there’s no such thing as ‘off the record’. Get your message clear in your mind before you begin, do your best to stick to it. You can learn to direct questions yourself and maintain the agenda – they’re already skilled at doing it.
Use the Press office of your universities – fortunately at Queen Mary we have a very good one. Don’t forget that they exist.
Mythbusting
I’ve talked of it before as a potentially important role for scientists (and anyone, really) and it seems to be a growing phenomenon – that or I’m just more aware of it. All perhaps catalysed somewhat by Nick Davies.
For example, the lovely Mr Marshall, not a scientist by training, has moved into covering Bad PR (or Bad News, as a more pun-tastic title for SitP talks and wotnot) – that includes opinion polls and general PR screw-ups.
These go along the lines of:
Determine the outcome, and then run the study to find it.
It’s rather like Creation ‘science’, if you like. Here’s the conclusion, now let’s go cherry-pick that evidence.
What doesn’t fit, it’s fine – we’ll ignore it, or we’ll design a study that irons that wrinkle out.
If you venture into comms/outreach, as a media tart or otherwise, you can do your own bit in this ‘war’, if you want to call it that – science would probably appreciate it.
Armand gave us a whirlwind tour of his programmes to date:
Alien Worlds
This 2005 programme was seemingly dismissed as a bit silly; indeed we had a bit of a giggle at a screen-grab of some computer-generated space whales.
What Makes Us Human
Armand in his shades there
The programme examined the differences between the chimp (our closest relative, genetically) and human genomes and the idea of a genomic recipe.
He expanded upon one example of how genetic research has used human examples to glean information about the functions of our genes and why we develop the way we do.
In Gujarat, Pakistan, there are shrines to the Rat People; they have unusually small heads and the mental ability of 2-3 year-old children. The local presumption is that they are cursed (or they believe that beggars or gypsies put pots on their heads to deliberately create a source of income in the family). Infertile people go to the shrine and must ‘donate’ their first child to the shrine, or all their future offspring will be doomed to this fate.
The condition is called microcephaly – a recessive genetic disorder, involving several genes, including microcephalin (involved in brain cell proliferation).
It’s fascinating because when we consider chimps vs. humans, our genes have evolved very fast; one major distinguishing feature being our ‘huge’ brains. One gene important in this feature of ours is clearly microcephalin.
He also recounted attending a very surreal dwarf conference in Reno, US., called Little People of America. Dwarfism is caused by varied bone disorders, achondroplasia being the most common, and there many people come together from all over the world to share their experiences, access support networks, meet up and make friends.
We got an amusing image of the evo bio lab’s shrine to ditto the pig (as a good luck mascot!) – animals with two faces are a striking example of mutants helping our understanding of genes; with this condition being particularly ‘entertaining’, given the gene involved (a favourite amongst us biologist/gamer types) – Sonic Hedgehog (or Shh).
Darwin’s secret notebooks
A National Geographic piece on the formation of Darwin’s thoughts. Tenuous links here being that Darwin was British and bald! They got to go on the National Geographic ship Polaris, I’m insanely jealous of this.
What Darwin Did Not Know
A programme designed to explain the development of evolutionary understanding since the publication of the Origin of Species (in just 90 minutes!! Hardly a simple task).
Armand’s favourite example from this is the Lake Malawi cichlid fish. An absolutely astounding variety of fish species have evolved in that lake and a lot of work is still going on to characterise them.
Aristotle’s Lagoon
Armand’s pet project to date, the title referring to a Lesvos Lagooon visited by “the father of biologists”, Aristotle, who wrote the Historia Animalium as a result – the first in-depth zoological study.
Interesting as the recording of the Infinite Monkey Cage I went to recently involved the question of “Is philosophy dead?” and the seemingly age-old rivalry of scientific vs. philosophical study (not that I separate them that much, personally) – here Aristotle was considered only a philosophical figure, and I thought it was a shame they’d clearly not watched this programme!
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Finally I should probably plug my first foray into the world of scientific telly, brought to you by the excellent Wellcome Trust – have a look at tissue culture in our lab, here!
Yesterday I went to the Dana Centre, attached to the Science Museum, where we were challenged to listen to a series of presentations and decide to whom we would entrust our scientific future. Or something to that effect! Apparently it was to be like speed-dating, without the dating bit, unless you actually got those signals from someone…
The presentation format, called Pecha Kucha, involves 20-slide presentations from each participant and they’re allowed to spend 20 seconds on each slide. This makes for a fast-paced, info-packed session, particularly good for those of us who tend to tune out when talked at for too long.
I loved it and highly recommend future events to everyone.
I’ll go through the presenters’ content a bit as there was some fascinating stuff, some links worth checking out, and lots of funny and important ideas that deserve to go beyond that room.
Should anyone who spoke see something I’ve got entirely wrong/an important link I’ve missed, do let me know. That was a lot of stuff to take in in such a short time!
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1. Andrew Pontzen, Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge
Andrew asked: Is Cosmology Science?
Traditionally ‘science’ means having ideas that lead to experiments, revision of ideas, new experiments and so on.
There are very few actual experiments you can do in terms of cosmology, the LHC being an obvious example.
But the kind of energy levels cosmologists are thinking about, during the time directly after the big bang called inflation, are far higher than those experimentally studied with the LHC; by a factor of 1 x 10^12 (or a thousand billion: 1,000,000,000,000!).
He walks among us, unseen...
The only evidence we have for this kind of energy is in the cosmic background radiation and cosmologists can predict only the likelihood of these patterns relative to others, rather than abolute predictions about their (non-)existence.
Inflation cannot be disproved; a bit like Russell’s teapot, as I understand it. Or, as Andrew theorised – the concept of a magical hedgehog creating the universe! I’ll refer to it as ‘magic hedgehog theory’ or MHT.
Recently a legal ruling in the US established that creationism is not science for this very reason; you cannot disprove it. Can evolution be disproved? Fairly sure most evolutionary biologists would say yes; the discovery of an organism that simply didn’t fit, for example. I should look into this more, but feel free to leave a comment, my more evolutionarily-literate friends.
Is there another way to think of such theories?
Laws and phenomena. MHT has no ‘rules’ associated with it; it’s just a case of going around and saying this and that was created by the great Magic Hedgehog himself (here I think of Eddie…) – based on nothing but the fact that they exist, so it’s not scientific.
Is science just taking big ideas and squashing them down into smaller bite-sized chunks, based on these laws and rules that hold true for everything, as far as we know? The question here is then:
Tania’s presentation was fantastic, but not one I can relay here; she’s a writer, inspired by science and scientific news. Her short story involved a physicist meeting with a painter and they discussed abstract ideas around colour and the nature of facts. I recommend checking out her stuff!
3. Jon Butterworth, University College London / Atlas experiment, CERN
Jon did his best to squeeze in a lot of technical details on the current aims of the largest collider in existence and what kind of machines we might see in the future.
Anyone with an interest in racing, skating etc. knows that whenever you bring corners into play, speed is lost. We’re always coming up with ways of getting around that, whether it’s in the tyres, working on your cross-overs or any other speed-conserving tactic. With this in mind, would it be sensible to make a linear collider to stop particles losing energy as they round corners (the LHC being composed of giant circles)?
Not really, as that would be horrifically expensive.
Going back to the racing analogy (Mario Kart Wii/NASCAR fans take note!), there’s drafting; like the reason geese fly in their V-formation. You can also make use of that effect in these kinds of experiments, by firing particles through a plasma (super-heated gas). I won’t pretend to understand any more about how that would work, but I hope you get the general idea.
Perhaps we could also go for a Muon collider, plans for which are in place in Chicago. Muons are heavier than electrons, so considering E=mc^2, you can achieve higher energies with them. The upshot of this is you produce lots of neutrinos so can study those too.
Is the future of science bigger colliders, particles going faster, looking at greater and greater energy levels? The LHC won’t make a black hole, (apart from possibly really tiny ones that only exist for a teeny fraction of a second and won’t destroy anything!) but perhaps we will at some point… ?
4. Chris Binny and Sara
This was a pleasant surprise for me as I used to work with Chris and didn’t know he’d be presenting!
For the non-biologists in the audience, Chris explained the central dogma. DNA makes RNA makes proteins and the proteins do all the work in life, they’re (arguably, says my inner geneticist!) the most interesting molecules.
Cloning technology (that’s making copies of bits of DNA, not people!) has come on leaps and bounds since we discovered DNA; it’s relatively simple to do now and companies have made affordable, effective kits to help us out in the lab.
Now there is the phenomenon of hobbyist labs – news to me – and there are even some in London. People getting together for DIY science.
Chris’ co-presenter Sara described how DIY Bio is making biology accessible to people; you can buy equipment on ebay and there are some entrepeneurial ventures that provide it.
We are so much more familiar with our planet now; we’re used to seeing it from space whether as satellite images, weather maps or simulations. We recognise it as our home and have come to think of this as our solar system.
What if we discovered other life? Scientists may be emotionally prepared for this, but are we?
This is not science fiction. Alien ‘bugs’ are a real possibility. Probability, even.
We’re discovering planets around other stars – it made sense that there would be many but until recently we had no proof. Now we do, and there are loads of them.
Perhaps we even think of this galaxy as our Milky Way – but is it? Are we alone? I’m inclined (and excited) to say probably not.
6. Rachael Pearson, University College London
Rachael talked about blindness; whether it’s hereditary (retinitis pigmentosa) or age-related (macular degeneration; AMD), it affects many people and it has long been a goal of medical science to reverse it.
Photoreceptors (the cells in the retina at the back of the eye that detect light) and/or their supporting cells die during retinal degeneration.
Newts and frogs have the ability to regenerate the eye (we can’t, having lost the ability during evolution as our genes have changed from those of our common ancestor with amphibians) so clearly through studying them we hope to understand how they do it and hopefully develop therapies using that knowledge.
Lovely newts
One strategy is transplantation; can these photoreceptor cells be transplanted successfully? So far, in mouse models we’ve seen that the transplanted cells can move into the retina and seem to take hold. But do they work? The pupil reflex was restored so that’s encouraging; but this was only using rod cells, the ones we use to see in low light.
What about cones? The cells we use to see colours in good light. These were also successfully transplanted but we don’t yet know if they work; it’s just a mouse model so far but definitely a promising one.
There is one particularly important consideration; the time at which the donor cells are harvested. They must be at just the right stage of differentiation; a path of cell development from when a cell can ‘decide’ to do any function out of approximately 200 available in the body (pluripotency), through committing to becoming one particular cell type until finally it is fully differentiated and has only that one function.
The stage at which these eye cells are ready to be transplanted occurs in embryos. Obviously this is not ideal due to the controversial nature of embryonic stem cell research (ESCR, as I’ve written about before) and possibility of rejection due to the cells coming from a foreign body (a risk with any such transplant procedure).
So can we make use of adult stem cell (ASC) technology here? Can we de-differentiate already committed cells, make them go backwards in their development, restore their potential to become many other types of cells, and force them down the path to becoming an eye cell?
Personally I’d advocate for the ESC approach at present, but if it’s a possibility that ASCs could be used in this case, it’s certainly worth pursuing.
Jenny wanted to convince the audience that science needs our help; the way it is perceived by the public and, probably more importantly, politicians, must improve if we’re going to see a future worth having.
Looking back to the thousands of bodies lined up in 1918, the fatalities of that year’s flu pandemic, compared to the ability to walk into our GPs and get a vaccination now – who would not be impressed by the power of science to change the way we live our lives?
It’s taken less than 100 years to reach that point. What about climate change, feeding our growing population (which we’re currently failing at spectacularly),
all the other problems we face, which scientific research could help us with?
Fund the blue-sky research too!
Jenny argues that the creativity of scientists should not be stifled. This is what policy-makers seem to want to do, though, by wishing to fund only “commercially-useful” science. What is that? This kind of attitude does not work.
Tim Berners-Lee did not set out to invent the internet when he was tinkering with ideas to make life easier for himself and his colleagues at CERN. But now look at what we have.
Consider from the time when antibodies were discovered to the present, when many therapies use antibodies, including one close to my own work; Avastin (or bevacizumab), an anti-blood-vessel drug used to treat cancer (and other diseases).
You never know when, from who or where the next breakthrough will come – it’s impossible to know. Often it takes decades to realise the potential and significance of discoveries. Science does not work the way politicians would like and they must realise this or our scientific future will remain bleak.
Paul Nurse is a fantastic scientist with an impressive career, but he’s wrong in his desire to focus funding on ‘excellent individuals’ – who are these people, how are they identified exactly? Looking at his own initial publications, you’d not single him out as a future Nobel laureate. You can’t tell who’s going to be the next big thing; the whole idea is inherently flawed.
Jenny started the Science is Vital campaign, which seems to have had a huge impact on our politicians’ views already – from threatened 25% funding cuts we’ve been promoted to a freeze (still a cut in real-terms, but it’s far better than we thought it was going to be).
Still, considering other countries are increasing science funding, because they know how important it is for the economy and their ability to compete in the global market, we should be ashamed of this. Our science is world-class, despite our tiny budget.
Think what the future of British science would be if we could convince the government to give it the support it needs and deserves.
8. Sophie Scott, Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience
MRI scans have revolutionised our ability to the study the brain.
Sophie explained how our brains are ‘plastic’ with respect to sound; for example, every time we hear a new person speak, we adjust to their particular voice and apply what we know about language to their sounds in order to understand them.
Cochlear implants have been used since the 70s to improve people’s sense of hearing, to varying degrees.
The changes in the brain associated with adult hearing loss and stroke are very different from those in children born deaf. We don’t yet fully understand how the brain works in these various cases, but work is ongoing to do so so that effective hearing restoration therapy can be developed.
Interesting observed phenomena can give us clues to the causes and effects of neural damage and how these affect hearing. There are visible differences between the brains of people who perceive sounds very precisely, for example, such as those who have exceptional ability to recognise and reproduce accents.
Sophie left us with a very intriguing final thought; considering we are social primates, with others in our order using social grooming to bond and communicate and we no longer really do so – have we replaced grooming with language?
All science is either physics or stamp collecting.
- Ernest Rutherford
Stamp-collecting in science is important!
Anders asks, will the scientists of the future be cyborgs? Not necessarily in terms of implants, but the tools we use. I’d be inclined to say that it’s already the case; we can’t do much of what we do without our beloved machines!
Papers and patents are not the only factors; we are a collective.
Locutus of Borg
(Are we the borg?!)
We make great use of non-scientists too now; I notice, for example, how many wiki pages I’m linking to in this (a record number, I think!) to give quick and easy access to some background where needed.
Marvellous projects such as Galaxy Zoo and Polymaths were mentioned. Computers are indispensable to us.
Artificial Intelligence may not necessarily journey into the philosophy of life, but it is developing nonetheless.
Better artificial brains could improve our own brains! Or, I wonder, will we end up with that most loved/hated of sci-fi concepts; our Butlerian Jihad, Rise of the Machines, a Matrix? I’ll opt for probably not at the moment.
Anders finished with a great quotation, perfect as an end to the evening – and this post:
At first I begin to despair that my work (and general) tea times would no longer be as pleasant as they were.
Typical Detto(x/l) advert style; trouble in the toilet brush
Then I notice one’s a Daily Mail article, have a read of that and then the press release and decide it’s just the latest in the crusade against the eeeevil microbes.
“Germs”
I hate this word.
It’s in all the adverts. They’re illustrated with little green monsters that have no basis in reality I can fathom, except those weird little rubber gremlin finger puppets I remember from childhood, like mini boglins (does anyone remember boglins?!).
I bloody loved my boglin!
So these representations of microbes, the relevant ones mainly being bacteria (I assume, anyway), as evil little nasties going around with the intention of making your children sick and being generally filthy are just silly.
First, of course, single-celled organisms do not have brains and therefore are incapable of mischievous and/or malicious scheming.
Secondly, you’re covered in the things. We’re basically walking incubators; toasty, inviting niches all over the place. But don’t jump into a bath of bleach!! This has always been the case.
Bacteria have been around for a much longer time than any of the more complicated forms of life so whatever has sprung up in this world has had to live with them and we are certainly no exception.
We’re pretty well-suited to playing host to bugs, inside and out. Lots of them are quite useful (though the good/bad bacteria obsession of the yoghurt/milk drink industry is another topic altogether) and we’d be at a loose end without them.
Many just aren’t a problem. They don’t do anything for us but also won’t make us sick.
Then there are a few that are to be avoided where possible, but even if we do get sick, most of the time it’s not life-threatening (especially thanks to modern medicine!) and being ill is perfectly normal, especially when we’re growing up!
Practice Makes Perfect
Our immune systems need to develop. In order to build up a good range of circulating antibodies we need to be exposed to a range of antigens to trigger their manufacture. Antigens come on the surface of bacteria and viruses, for example.
In the case of some viruses, we deliberately put some antigens (but not the whole, active virus) into the blood to fool the immune system into thinking there’s an infection and generating the relevant antibodies, which then allow us to resist or effectively fight the real infection later on. That’s your vaccinations.
Anyway, point being, it’s quite an important part of healthy immune system development to come into contact with a range of bugs.
I won’t review the studies on how parents keeping their kids in a sanitised bubble has caused them to develop asthma and severe allergies to a whole host of normally harmless stuff. Others have.
I grew up with pets and scrambling in woods/muddy places (one of my favourite games was making little mud cities for toys and collected insects in the garden, much to mum’s dismay as she tries to make a nice rockery). I’m occasionally allergic to mosquito bites (because I getso many) but other than that not a lot. Oh and hayfever severity varies depending on where I’m living.
Still, personal anecdote doesn’t count for much; a family friend has apparently admitted that her obsessively clean house has probably contributed to her son’s multitude of allergies. Which is good I suppose, but a little late for him.
It’s a balancing act of course. Exposure to allergens does sensitise us to them and can cause allergies, so dust and animal fur, mold spores etc. can be harmful. Everything in moderation as the old adage goes.
Playing on Fear
The aforementioned Dettox and other brands really take advantage of parental fears over hygiene and preventing childhood illnesses by marketing lots of products with such outlandish claims as
KILLS 99.9% OF ALL BACTERIA INCLUDING E. COLI
The result of the hysteria over ‘germs’ can often be that people keep things too clean. The thing with bacteria, as anyone who’s had anything to do with hospital hygiene and/or evolution knows, is that when you wipe out a whole bunch of them, the ones that are left are generally the best at surviving.
You’ve just done them a massive favour. The competition is gone! Now they’ve got more resources and space for them to grow and as they grow, they get even better at it, then next time the cleaner comes around, maybe they won’t care at all.
The same can happen in the home.
Breathe Easy
It’s great to keep the kitchen clean; I generally do (but it’s a student flat so it gets pretty disgusting at times) and knowing how to properly prepare and store meat/fish is essential if you don’t want to give yourself and guests food poisoning. Also rinse out cloths/sponges and let them dry; moisture is what the bugs like and if you use a wet old cloth you’re just spreading them around.
But people have taken it too far, sterilising everything to excess. My mum and I discussed the other day after seeing yet another advert for things to make your baby’s high chair so clean they can eat off it; surely spraying all the cleaning products around can’t be good for kids either?
Seems Michael Gough had the same thought and his comment was published in New Scientist (in 2003!) though it seems people are more concerned about the house being sparkling and smelling weird (don’t get me started on air fresheners) than what their kids breathe in.
Dubious Gadget
Mother and I spotted this ozone thing whilst browsing in TK Maxx (on sale for around £10 if I recall) and I felt I had to document it.
Hello, what’s this we’ve found in TK Maxx? Let’s have a closer look…
A look at their website shows their endorsed by Ainsley Harriot (or at least, he sells stuff there and they link to him). Tsk.
Brought to us by Home-tek International Limited, Roe Head House, Far Common Road, Mirfield, West Yorkshire, WF14 0DQ – C.E.O. Jamie Lennox.
This little light-up mini-toilet-like dooda apparently generates ozone in a tub of water so that you can stick all sorts of stuff in it to magically ‘KILL‘ all kinds of microbes; bacteria, viruses and fungi.
I had a look in the instructions to see how they justified selling this or if they explain how it worked at all.
Sadly not. Have a look – it’s kind of hilarious. As far as I can see it just lights up and (going by the picture) makes bubbles; I’d be interested to see if it does actually ‘work’.
The most ridiculous claim is that it kills microbes because they have ‘ozone receptors’ on their outer membranes, which conveniently absorb ozone, leading to their destruction! Yes, ozone is toxic but not because of receptors; it’s a very powerful oxidant (being comprised of oxygen and all).
Most water treatments to condition but not sterilise water with ozone operate on contact times of 1 –2 minutes. Sterilisation with ozone may require contact times of up to 10 minutes and even 30 minutes for effective treatment of some viruses. Contact times can be reduced by applying higher concentrations of ozone to the process water.
Somewhat at odds with the product’s 15 second operation time and “only a few seconds are required” statement. However since they give no actual figures re: output, one cannot calculate supposed effectiveness.
It bothers me that if you google ‘ozone gas safety’, for example, the top sites that come up tend to be ozone machine-peddling companies saying it’s all fine.
Ozone is classified under COSHH (control of substances hazardous to health) regulations, which anyone with experience in biology/chemistry will be familiar with, yet no mention of possible dangers were in the instruction booklet, that I saw.
A glance at wiki (or common sense) does point out that it’s also toxic to people.
Due to the strongly oxidizing properties of ozone, ozone is a primary irritant, affecting especially the eyes and respiratory systems and can be hazardous at even low concentrations. The Canadian Center for Occupation Safety and Health reports that:
“Even very low concentrations of ozone can be harmful to the upper respiratory tract and the lungs. The severity of injury depends on both by the concentration of ozone and the duration of exposure. Severe and permanent lung injury or death could result from even a very short-term exposure to relatively low concentrations.”
in over 100 years of use, there has been never been a fatal accident.
So it’s ok, everything’s completely safe unless someone’s died!!
This site seems to summarise the risks better. Lots of companies seem to offer equipment for air purification or disinfection services, while others (the more reputable-seeming ones, generally) warn against its use and cite risks of respiratory damage.
Anyway, it seems ozone is a widely-used substance in the world of woo. Might keep an eye on it.
Craig Venter is at it again. To be clear, he’s been researching the idea of the ‘minimal genome‘ for years. It’s something lots of geneticists and microbiologists (along with many others, I’m sure) have been interested in since we started to understand DNA.
The minimal genome
So what is this? It’s the absolute smallest amount of DNA you need to make a cell that works. An organism. The ‘simplest’ (though I don’t like to call them that, really) organisms we see are bacteria and of these, Mycoplasmas have the least DNA.
So it ain't the size, it's what ya do with it that counts.
The bacterial genus with the tiniest genomes are the Mycoplasmas (when it comes to single-celled organisms, the idea of species doesn’t hold up too well but we can run with it). They’re really small. M. genitalium has only 582,970 As, Cs, Ts and Gs (the DNA building block molecules, base pairs, that make up the genome), which corresponds to only 521 genes and 482 proteins; the molecules that make up the majority of the cell and perform functions. Compare that with mankind’s approx. 23,000 protein-coding genes, made up of >4 billion base pairs.
Indeed, Venter’s lab filed patents for a minimal genome (that of Mycoplasma laboratorium!) back in 2006 – another contentious subject.
It was interesting when the M. genitalia genome was fully characterised because for the first time, we saw what was necessary to make the smallest known cells work. However, it’s still not the full answer, because maybe even this tiny bactierum still has genes and ‘junk DNA’ left over from a time when it was a bit more worldly…
Advantages of being a bug of the world
Mycobacterium leprae
Now I wish I had some slide images from my university microbiology course. To digress a little, a fascinating thing about bacterial evolution is that there seems to be a kind of progression they take – from living somewhere in the open (a diverse range of environments requiring loads of genes to utilise various food sources, evade many predators etc.) to living in a really specific niche.
For example Mycobacterium leprae is another teeny genome possessor, which lives only inside cells and has long been held up as an example of the most difficult thing to study (only possible to culture in armadillo footpads for some time, but I don’t know if this has changed). This one causes leprosy, if you didn’t guess from the name.
So when a bacterium ends up living only in one place, a very specific, isolated place at that – many of its genes become redundant over the generations, its genome shrinks as useless information is lost and also it doesn’t meet any other bacteria any more.
I saw an erroneous comment fearing that ‘synthetic bacteria might mate with natural bacteria’ – well, that’s not how they reproduce, but bacterial sex does exist; it’s just exchanging genetic information, rather than procreating.
Lust for Life
So when bacteria are cut off from the rest of the universe, inside the host organism deep within cells, they fester away – no new information coming in, very slowly dying off. Leprosy hopefully won’t be with us for much longer, it seems to be on its way out.
So the point of that digression; the Mycobacteria have been helping us understand what kind of genes are absolutely necessary for life because as their genome shrinks over time, only the most basic genes are passed on, the unnecessary extras disappearing in a kind of evolutionary fall-out.
Venter’s work has been in this vein; let’s see which genes we can slap together to get a functional cell out at the end.
Despite media shouting about the creation of synthetic life!!!, that’s not really what’s happened here. Venter has looked at a little bacterial genome, got some machines to make a copy of it and stuck it into a cell ‘shell’ that’s had all the genetic information taken out of it; the manufactured genome has then taken over control of the cell and this is their new ‘synthetic’ bacterium.
Talbot on BBC HYS put it quite nicely:
What Dr Ventner [sic] has done is the biological equivalent of typing the words from a book into a word-processor and printing it out again – then calling it a new book..!
It is an important advance, it is fascinating and it will lead to cool, useful things, but it isn’t the beginning of the apocalypse like many commenters would have us believe.
Do read Gimpy on some of the implications and mad press speculation and listen to Sir Paul Nurse on the subject on Radio 4.
Edit: via one of my colleagues, here’s a Skype interview with Craig Venter himself, explaining the findings.
He showed us a timeline of the deadlines set (and missed!) during the writing of Mutants, and its movement to TV serialisation.
Going back to the racing analogy (Mario Kart Wii/NASCAR fans take note!), there’s 
For the non-biologists in the audience, Chris explained the 
We are so much more familiar with our planet now; we’re used to seeing it from space whether as satellite images, weather maps or simulations. We recognise it as our home and have come to think of this as our solar system.
This little light-up mini-toilet-like dooda apparently generates ozone in a tub of water so that you can stick all sorts of stuff in it to magically ‘KILL‘ all kinds of microbes; bacteria, viruses and fungi.
