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What George Lucas originally envisioned for Star Wars.

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Extinction Crisis Escalates in New Report

Great apes hardest hit in conservation crisis.


Bonobos are one of the critically endangered great apes with fewer than
10,000 estimated to live in the wild. (Photo by Vanessa Woods)

The World Conservation Union has just released its 2007 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The report states that of the 41,415 species now on their Red List, 16,306 are threatened with extinction (up from 16,118 last year). Currently one in four mammals, one in eight birds and 70% of the world’s assessed plants that appear on the List are in jeopardy.

The great apes are the most critically endangered:

A reassessment of our closest relatives, the great apes, has revealed a grim picture. The Western Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla) has moved from Endangered to Critically Endangered, after the discovery that the main subspecies, the Western Lowland Gorilla (Gorilla gorilla gorilla), has been decimated by the commercial bushmeat trade and the Ebola virus. Their population has declined by more than 60% over the last 20-25 years, with about one third of the total population found in protected areas killed by the Ebola virus over the last 15 years.

The Sumatran Orangutan (Pongo abelii) remains in the Critically Endangered category and the Bornean Orangutan (Pongo pygmaeus) in the Endangered category. Both are threatened by habitat loss due to illegal and legal logging and forest clearance for palm oil plantations. In Borneo, the area planted with oil palms increased from 2,000 km2 to 27,000 km2 between 1984 and 2003, leaving just 86,000 km2 of habitat available to the species throughout the island.

“Our lives are inextricably linked with biodiversity and ultimately its protection is essential for our very survival. As the world begins to respond to the current crisis of biodiversity loss, the information from the IUCN Red List is needed to design and implement effective conservation strategies – for the benefit of people and nature.”

- Jane Smart, Head of IUCN's Species Programme

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The Anthropologists are Coming!

Four Stone Hearth, the anthropology blog carnival, is up at John Hawks' Weblog.



Some terrific posts this time include:

Pure Pedantry has a thought provoking post entitled Why Pairing Science and Atheism is High-Brow. My own two-cents are that there are plenty of good reasons not to believe in God without invoking science (for example see the following) and in most cases there is no connection between religious belief and scientific research because science is a tool and theism is a philosophy. But when dealing with evolutionary biology (and particularly human evolution) the tools of science fundamentally conflict with the philosophy of theism and unless you ignore the science, ignore the religion or paint yourself into a logical corner there is no way to reconcile the two.

Two of the high profile "New Atheists" are scientists (Dawkins and Harris, who is in a grad program in neuroscience) but the other two are not (Hitchens and Dennett). However, when religious believers continue to invoke their "infallible authority" to prohibit genuine science from appearing in government policy and public classrooms I think it's important to poke holes in their foundation with the tools of science. This is an ongoing debate and has no easy answer. Perhaps multiple strategies, including E.O. Wilson's book The Creation appealing to Christian environmentalists along with Dawkins and PZ Myers (his book is coming out someday I'm sure), is the best approach rather than everyone following a single set of talking points. But enough of that, there were some other fascinating posts.

Laura at Savage Minds has an excellent post on Some General Thoughts About Anthropology, Interrogation, and Torture.

Archaeozoology has a wonderful post on endocannibalism entitled Eating the Dead which is sure to wet your appetite for lunch.

There were many others that are worth your attention, so make sure to check them out (then you can remove the nasal bone and get back to watching Oprah).

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Primate Experimentation Under the Microscope

Europe moves towards banning experiments on non-human primates.

Macaque used for invasive brain experimentation.Image: Unattributed
As I wrote in my post The Dangers of Technological Adolescence, the history of experimentation on unwilling human subjects has a long and despicable record. However, the use of invasive experiments with primates on everything from cosmetics testing to HIV infection studies is ongoing. There have been numerous recent court cases on the rights of primates in the legal system (for example see Trapped Between People and Property). The evidence of advanced primate cognition and emotional richness raises important questions about what are appropriate scientific ethical norms for necessary, and potentially life saving, research.

Ghandi said, “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.” Currently, the United States has the most lenient policy on primate experimentation in the Western world (see Nature 417, 684-687 – subscription required). According to a resolution to end primate experiments passed by The Humane Society and endorsed by Jane Goodall, as of 2004 there were 54,998 primates in some 200 facilities used for invasive biomedical research (this figure doesn’t include laboratory primates used for breeding). Between 1,300 and 1,400 of these individuals were chimpanzees, the only great ape used in biomedical labs and who share between 98.6% and 99.4% of their DNA with humans.

As reported today in New Scientist Europe is on track to make the United States unique in our permissive research policies by banning all experiments on great apes and other non-human primates. Last week 433 of 626 members of the European Parliament signed a non-binding document that:

“Urges the Commission to propose an end to all non-human primate experiments . . . in scientific procedures, specifically: to prohibit chimpanzee experiments and the use of wild-caught primates in the EU and phase out all non-human primate experiments in the EU over the next six years;”

Later this year the European Commission is scheduled to redraft the regulations on animal experimentation. This written declaration provides a strong indication of the direction these regulations will take and may well overturn the 21-year policy allowing experiments on non-human primates. The written declaration exceeds those currently in place in Britain that bans great ape experimentation and is very close to what the Primate Freedom Project has been advocating in the United States.

While biomedical research has undeniable benefits for us, I think we should carefully consider what costs we would be willing to inflict on others to reap them. As Europe joins the chorus of voices urging scientists to cease their invasive experimentation on primates, perhaps it's time for us to reexamine our position.

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Tangled Bank #88

Tangled Bank, the best and longest running science blog carnival, is up at Behavioral Ecology Blog.



Be sure to check out:

Laelaps has a wonderful post on Convergence or Parallel Evolution.

Evolgen writes a post entitled I'M IN UR GENOME, ADAPTING UR HOST-SYMBIONT RELATIONSHIP.

Andre at Biocurious rounds out my triad with his post Life: What, when, how?

Enjoy!

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us…. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

- Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859)

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The Dangers of Technological Adolescence

A brief history of scientific "progress" in human experimentation.

A diorama showing Japanese researchers testing biological weapons on villagers
in Ping Fan, China during the 1930s.
*This post has also been picked up by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Join the debate at their blog or in the comments below.

Perhaps it’s because today is overcast or perhaps it’s due to the generalized sense of self-reflection I feel on this morose day. But as we champion “economic progress” beyond all other concerns (including the integrity of our ecosystem) it’s only appropriate that I take a good, long look in the mirror at the ugly history behind “scientific progress”. The legacy of cruel experimentation on primates is well documented and ongoing. But the history of scientific experimentation on unwilling human subjects should warn all wide-eyed science enthusiasts about the costs of placing progress above all other concerns.

Recently the abused orphans of the University of Iowa “Monster Study” were granted a $925,000 payment from the state. In an experiment by a psychology graduate student, six otherwise normal children were subjected to psychological cruelty in order to find out if stuttering could be induced. All of them experienced lifelong emotional distress and social anxiety, and none of them became a stutterer.

This is an issue that is as old as experimental science, and has frequently ended much worse for the, usually poor, victims. In the 1570s a battle was being waged between the Paracelsians and the Galenists about which theorist had the best understanding of medicine. German born alchemist and anatomist Paracelsus outraged many of his 16th century contemporaries by criticizing the, then, 1,700 year-old writings of the Greek physician Galen. His followers were adamant to prove their master’s techniques and sought a test for their “chemical medicines” derived from lethal poisons. As Allen G. Debus writes in Man and Nature in the Renaissance:

“In the mid-seventeenth century it was suggested that several hundred sick poor people be taken from the hospitals and the military camps. They were to be divided into two groups, one to be treated by the Galenists, the other by the chemists. The number of funerals would determine whether the chemical or the traditional medicine had triumphed.” (p. 31).

In the early period of American medicine doctors would perform experiments on their socially “less valuable” patients. As Susan Lederer writes in Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America Before the Second World War:

“Before the discovery that monkeys could be infected with syphili and gonorrhea, the search for microbes of venereal disease prompted more than forty reports of experiments in which individuals were inoculated with the suspected germs of gonorrhea and syphilis. In 1895 New York pediatrician Henry Heiman . . . described the successful gonorrheal infection of a 4-year-old boy (“an idiot with chronic epilepsy”), a 16-year-old boy (an “idiot”) and a 26-year-old man in the final stages of tuberculosis.”

Even after the atrocities of Dr. Mengele and the Nazi experimenters were exposed (and human experimentation was condemned as part of the Nuremburg Tribunal) patients continued to be subject to life threatening experiments without their consent. In Eileen Welsome's book, The Plutonium Files, it documents how human radiation experiments were performed between 1951 and 1962 by injecting various concentrations of plutonium into unknowing patients in the United States:

“Physcians performed experiments on healthy people and sick patients without informing them of what was going on or getting their consent. Sick patients were preyed on most frequently. They were convenient, plentiful, and vulnerable, since nontherapeutic procedures could be administered easily under the guise of medical treatment. . . Terminally ill patients were perhaps the most vulnerable group of all. . . Women, children, unborn fetuses, minorities, the mentally retarded, schizophrenics, prisoners, alcoholics, and poor people of all ages and ethnic groups were targets.” (p. 214-215).

The 1994 Rockefeller Senate Report Examining Biological Experimentation on U.S. Military found that for fifty years the Department of Defense had intentionally exposed military personnel to dangerous substances without their knowledge or consent including mustard gas, radiation, and hallucinogenic drugs.

I shudder to think what has gone on today under the unprecedented secrecy of the current administration. But if our leaders are willing to use illegal chemical and experimental weapons on civilians in Iraq, I wouldn’t remain optimistic.

“It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity,” stated Albert Einstein at the tipping point of the nuclear age. We have much progress to achieve if we wish to close the gap before this imbalance teeters out of control. As I began this morning's post with a quote from one of this generation's greatest advocates for both science and humanity (as well as one of my personal heroes), I see it as only fitting that I should close tonight's in the same fashion.

[I]t is possible to avoid the dangers of the period of technological adolescence we are now passing through. There are some who look on our global problems here on Earth - at our vast national antagonisms, our nuclear arsenals, our growing populations, the disparity between the poor and the affluent, shortages of food and resources, and our inadvertent alterations of the natural environment of our planet - and conclude that we live in a system which has suddenly become unstable, a system which is destined soon to collapse. There are others who believe that our problems are soluble, that humanity is still in its childhood, that one day soon we will grow up.

- Carl Sagan, The Quest for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (1978)

References:

Debus, Allen G. (1978). Man and Nature in the Renaissance. Cambridge University Press, London.

Lederer, Susan. (1997). Subjected to Science: Human Experimentation in America Before the Second World War. John Hopkins University Press, Maryland.

Welsome, Eileen (2000). The Plutonium Files: America’s Secret Medical Experiments in the Cold War. Delta, New York.

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Twin Towers on a Pale Blue Dot

Reflections on 9-11 amidst a world gone mad.


Earth photographed from the edge of our solar system, 3.7 billion miles away.

“It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than the distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”

- Carl Sagan, commencement address delivered May 11, 1996

If we continue along our present course future generations may well look back on our time (if they look back) and condemn us for our monumental stupidity. What did we do with the natural resources while there was still an abundance? Where were our priorities when there was still time to avert climate calamity? When a great crime was committed that exposed the seething anger from other lands did we recognize our role in their rage and avert a crisis? 3,000 murdered and the mothers of Fallujah understand how we feel. Their grief mingles with our grief, like smoke rising from crushed towers or the burning corpse of a mosque.

Research in evolutionary biology offers the comfort of vast expanses of time. 250 million years ago and 96% of all marine species were dead. But then the Triassic announced its arrival with great fanfare and a new era of life’s flourishing diversity. Come the Cretaceous-Paleogene and half of all life vanished in a geologic instant, now captured in glorious Technicolor quality limestone snapshots from 65 million years ago. Then there was the Holocene extinction. Up to 140,000 species went extinct every year. Towards the end a third of all species on land, sea and air vanished within just one generation of the species that caused their demise. Half of all life was expected to disappear in their lifetimes and the Dow reached a high of 13,000.

“What is this quintessence of dust? Life delights not me,” the Danish prince might well have said and we are proof of Hamlet’s lament. Our tinpot despot with his costumed and wigged flatterers of the court rattle their ceremonial sabers and offer their sacrifice on the altars of commerce. While in Chile this morning mothers cry for their disappeared children and Henry Kissinger ignores his extradition for a few extra minutes of slumber. And somewhere in a cave, or is it a studio in Karachi, the bearded boogeyman frightens the children in their sleep. Both use each other to prop up a waning authority: the behemoth and the phantom, ensnared in their own fairy tale of good versus evil while the rest of us sit in the audience as collateral damage.

If evolution teaches one thing it is that species adapt or they perish. We are no different. If we are to survive this nightmare it will not be thanks to Obama or Giuliani. They are the products of a world that brought us to where we are. A river alters its course not with a single stone but with a great multitude. Thousands of infants will take their first breath this morning. They can continue where we leave off.

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The Primate Diaries appears in the Chronicle of Higher Education

Issues over Young Earth Creationism being promoted at university website.



As I posted earlier, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill computer science professor David A. Plaisted has been using his department website to promote Young Earth Creationism in the public schools. Join the debate at their blog.

According to William Allan Kritsonis, PhD:

CREATIONISM has always caused much debate. We should encourage discussion on both sides of the issue.

What a marvelous idea! Let's make that standard policy across the sciences. What would that look like I wonder?

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His Brain is Gone!

Encephelon #31 is up at Dr. Deborah Serani's Blogspot. Some terrific cognitive and molecular neuroscience reading that is sure to be good brain food.


The Star Trek episode "Spock's Brain" was my first
exposure to the fascinating world of neuroscience.

Be sure to check out:

Neurophilosophy - the neuropsychology of synaesthesia

Cognitive Daily - A new statistic begins to appear in journals: What the heck is a p-rep? (OK, statistics aren't everyone's bag, but since I'm struggling with the subject at the moment I found this to be excellent).

Fitbuff.com - Out of Body Experiences: Medical Mysteries or Scientific Explanation?

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DNA - Could It Happen To You?

Mendel's Garden, the genetics blog carnival is up at Balancing Life. There are some excellent articles posted that you should check out. A few of my favorites are:

Evolgen's Promoting Intelligence - about rapidly evolving promoters near genes involved in neural development and function.

Living the Scientific Life's Pretty Boys Have All the Chicks - digs into the sordid nightlife of so-called "monogamous" birds.

VWXYNot? posts Evolutionary Solutions to the Hairy Back Problem - about microevolutionary changes to a novel morphology in the larvae of a Drosophila species.



Cartoon from the Science Creative Quarterly

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