Category: Science & Technology

Immunizations And Autism – A Little Research

Marley’s coming up on her 18 month immunizations (well, she’s actually past-due for them now) and someone brought up the topic of the risk of autism with the 18 month immunizations. I checked out a few resources, and wanted to thrown them up here for anyone else interested.

  1. The 18 month scheduled immunizations don’t actually introduce anything new i.e. that Marley hasn’t been exposed to before
  2. The furor about a potential link between autism and vaccination concerned the MMR vaccination, based on a study published in the Lancet in 1998
  3. Dr. Andrew Wakefield authored the study
  4. The MMR vaccine is administered to infants in BC at the ages of 12 and 18 months
  5. Symptoms of autism manifest before the age of 3 years old
  6. Wakefield’s study has been debunked as “nonsense”, and medical professionals today are still battling the FUD he generated
  7. 10 of Wakefield’s 12 collaborators have retracted the Lancet study (2004)
  8. Wakefiled was discovered to have large conflicts of interest

    The doctor was doing paid research for a group of parents of autistic children who were trying to mount a class action suit against the makers of the MMR vaccine. Later it was revealed Wakefield had taken out a patent on a new vaccine while publicly challenging the safety of the existing one.

  9. Another vaccine that caused concern about autism was the Hepatitis B vaccine, due to mercury content (thimerosal)
  10. The dosage administered in Canada is far below the levels in the US (in 2001), and both are below the safe exposure levels
  11. Thimerosal is now only present in influenza vaccines. It was removed due to public perception, not safety concerns (the power of consumerism!)
  12. No connection has been found between thimerosal and autism

As a person with a degree in Microbiology and Immunology, I’ve always been a proponent of vaccines. I’ve had to re-evaluate my stance now that I actually am a parent and have to make decisions for someone other than myself. My position though hasn’t changed – the risks introduced by vaccination are far less than those of not vaccinating against these diseases.

Many people believe that we’ve managed to get these diseases under control, and that vaccinating is no longer necessary and introducing the children to these vaccination risks is now riskier than the chances of actually contracting the disease. Bollocks I say! Today we live in a society that should be considered global – and this means our children will be coming into contact with cultures and societies that do not have these diseases under control.

Take for example Ireland’s response to the MMR-autism scare:

Ireland saw measles soar from 148 cases in 1999 to 1200 cases in 2000 when MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) immunization rates dropped to 76% in response to concerns of a link between MMR and autism. Several children died in this outbreak. When enough people stop immunizing, there is more disease and children may die.

Medical experts believe the magic number is 95%, by the way: 95% of a population must be resistant to a disease before it can be considered under control.

Vaccinations seem to be a fire-and-brimstone topic for parents and microbiologists. There’s a lot of money involved in the industry which naturally leads to people doubting the intentions of the players. One could argue though that this is where Canada’s health care system helps clarify things – making money is not the ultimate purpose of a publicly funded health system.

Medical experts all seem to be agreeing with one another here – vaccinations are the safest bet for our children right now.

Resources:

The Question Remains – Is Prenatal Ultrasound Risky?

Over the last 2 years I’ve been looking over resources to figure out if ultrasound exams are at all dangerous to a fetus (I’ll leave the figuring out of why I’m interested in this as an exercise to the reader). I’ve always read that there is no proven effects on fetal growth when exposed to ultrasound waves during standard prenatal screenings. Note that I said “no proven effects”? Basically there have been some studies that indicate there might be (for example it affects neuronal migration in rats), but no studies conclusively indicating that there is – so it is still unproven.

Well bless Wikipedia, I’ve finally found something that indicates that prenatal ultrasound exams have an effect on fetal brain development.

When ultrasonography was offered more widely (1976 to 1978), the risk of left-handedness was higher among those exposed to ultrasound compared with those unexposed (odds ratio = 1.32, 95% CI = 1.16 to 1.51). We conclude that ultrasound exposure in fetal life increases the risk of left-handedness in men, suggesting that prenatal ultrasound affects the fetal brain.

I don’t think this paper indicates that exposure has a positive or a negative effect (Alisa is left-handed after all and I could never call it a bad thing – not ever) but it does indicate that there is an affect of some sort.

I believe the benefits offered from standard ultrasound scans during pregnancy so far outweight the known risks.  However for those of you considering having ultrasound scans performed for non-diagnostic reasons (including pretty much all types of 3-D ultrasound scans) I’d caution you to consider the real value and potential ramifications of unnecessary ultrasound exposure.

Help From Our Weeding Robotic Friends

Who among us likes to weed? Let’s step outside our suburban homes for a moment and think about the farmers out there – weeding might be a big issue for them. This brings us to the question of spraying herbicides to kill weeds versus manually weeding acres upon acres of vegetable patches. Thus was born the costly organics industry.

“But hold on,” say the Danish “why can’t we just build a robot to weed our farms for us?” And so they did.

Enter Hortibot. An approximate three-foot-by-three-foot, self-propelled, global positioning system, directed, weed-eliminating, automated robot.

Everything looks to be going green for this little ‘bot – it is purportedly cheaper than current methods and better for the environment as it is able to reduce herbicide usage and exposure on foods.

I have two questions:

  1. Why does it not use solar power?
  2. Does it do residential gardens?

Reversing The Effects Of Fragile X Syndrome

Researchers at MIT have been able to not only understand how Fragile X Syndrome manifests within the mouse brain structure, but also have found an inhibitor protein that actually reverses the physical abnormalities seen in Fragile X mice. The inhibitor actually works therapeutically, meaning it reverses/treats the abnormalities after they have already formed in the brain.

Fragile X Syndrome in humans is associated with symptoms ranging from mild learning disabilities to severe autism. Their hope is that this drug works in a similar manner in humans, providing a means of treating children and people with some types of learning disabilities. Imagine if autism became a mostly treatable state – where the brain is able to return to a normal structure through protein inhibition. This isn’t some kind of doping or reduction of functionality. This is blocking protein action to allow normal development.

If this works in humans in a similar manner this could be a major breakthrough. That’s a big if though – not everything in the mouse model works identically in the human model.

I’m Not Forgetful – I’m Just Indecisive

The New York Times reports on a journal article in Nature on how memory works in a neurobiological sense – the brain suppresses or forgets memories in order to enable a person to remember more interesting or important things.  So as the article says:

Blocking out a distracting memory is something like ignoring an old (and perhaps distracting) acquaintance, experts say: it makes it that much harder to reconnect the next time around. But recent studies suggest that the brain plays favourites with memories in exactly this way, snubbing some to better capture others. A lightning memory, in short, is not so much a matter of capacity as it is of ruthless pruning — and the new study catches the trace of this process at it happens.

So once again it seems all my problems stem from my inability to make fast decisions.  I’m forgetting inappropriate things not because I’m going senile but rather because my poor overloaded brain can’t decide which memories to suppress.   I just think everything is equally important, so I forget to feed the pets but remember that Peter Murphy’s album “Dust” was presaged by the song Huuvola on his album “Cascade”.

That brain thing sure is tricky

Privacy In A Public Space

Imagine, if you will …

It is a dark, blustery day downtown and you’re rushing through the mist trying to stay as dry as possible. The chilly air frosts your ragged breath with each puff as you race to your destination down the block. You pause a moment to catch your breathe beside a pink and purple neon sign – the only real source of light you can see. Maybe it really is time to invest in a watch with a back light.

Your eyes are drawn to the end of the street, where a set of dim lights suddenly rounds the corner. A nondescript van stares back at you sullenly, waiting for you to move, or speak, or breathe. What is it waiting for? Now the van starts to inch its way down the road. A series of clicks and whirs echo down the street as it moves languidly towards you.

You instinctively pull back a bit towards the neon and take a closer look at the unremarkable van – well, almost unremarkable. Now that you’re looking closely at it you notice that the roof of the van seems to bulge upwards a little bit. There seems to be some kind of turret or attachment on top of the van. Slivers of pink and purple neon wink on and off of a reflective surface of some kind on top of the van – is it glass or metallic? The van slows down on the road beside you and seems to pause. You freeze, daring only to breathe shallowly – for some reason you’re feeling like prey and it isn’t a good feeling. Something shifts and winks from the turret on top of the van – a click, a whir, and the van inches off further down the road.

“What just happened?” you wonder as you sneak off into the mist behind the van. Who was that and what did they want?

You get home and take a quick glance over your new emails – one strikes you as peculiar so you read it. It’s from your friend, warning you about an organization that is sending vans out into the street to photograph the people, places, and buildings. Images of “Big Brother” immediately come to mind, and then you remember that van. That whirring and clicking – it must have been taking pictures of you – but for what reason? Who is behind these vans and why do they want pictures of your neighbourhood? With a chill you realize that the pink and purple neon lights you so cleverly hid in front of were from the strip joint around the corner – and now someone has a picture of you looking suspicious outside a strip joint. Aren’t there laws against this kind of thing – invasion of your privacy or something like that? Who knows where that picture will show up now ….

Actually, the picture will now show up on Google searches. Google has introduced a new feature to their mapping software – Google Street View. A van coasts along and takes pictures of the area to allow reconstruction of a 3-D view of the area for people who choose to view it when using Google’s mapping service.

Nothing sinister (though some may try to convince you otherwise) – but what happens when this van captures the private lives of people’s homes? How about illegal activity or pseudo pornography? What expectations can one honestly have when walking in public? Is there a difference between an expectation of privacy and an expectation that your picture won’t be distributed across the world without your permission, no matter where you are?

The feature is bringing up all sorts of interesting discussions around privacy in public spaces.

A Little Snack – The Machine is Us/ing Us

I’m sure some of you may have seen a video floating around the Internet called “Web 2.0 – The Machine is Us/ing Us – yes? It’s a little video put together by Michael Wesch – an assistant professor of cultural anthropology at Kansas State University.

It’s a cute 5 minute dissertation on how he sees the evolution of the Internet over the past decade or so to this thing we hear about a lot today: Web 2.0. What does that mean? He walks us through, in a very neat manner, how we got to where we are in terms of the Internet today, and where we may be going.

So Dale, when are you going to put together something similar to help us neanderthals understand the current state of the world fisheries, hmmm?

Starting The Year Off In The Wrong Way

After reading this article I simply had to vent a little – not the nicest way to start the year off but a sharp contrast with the warm fuzzies of the holiday posts.

Wake up people! Evil abounds in the world, even in such non-Evil states as Oregon. Yes, Oregon. There, nestled in the humble towns of Portland and Corvallis, tucked away at the Oregon State University and the Oregon Health and Science University, “scientists” are attempting to find a cure for homosexuality. Not content with the wishy-washy realm of psychology and its “Reparative Therapy“, these researchers are concentrating on finding a chemical cure.

The scientists have been able to pinpoint the mechanisms influencing the desires of “male-oriented” rams by studying their brains. The animals’ skulls are cut open and electronic sensors are attached to their brains.

By varying the hormone levels, mainly by injecting hormones into the brain, they have had “considerable success” in altering the rams’ sexuality, with some previously gay animals becoming attracted to ewes.

Success! Let’s all discuss visions of providing said cure via means of a patch, like the nicotine patch. They’ll be curing those homosexuals while they work and play! Think of the Utopia! Oh, oh, and then they mention the idea of providing pre-natal testing … followed (dare we hope) by in utero hormone treatment. We can cure them before they’re even born! Hallelujah!

This just makes me mad, mad, mad. Say it with me – “Sometimes I just shake my head”.

The good doctor mentions that little research is done on sexuality because it is such a touchy topic – true enough. My question to the good doctor would be “why?” What do you hope to accomplish through this research? Increase ram mating ratios? Bollocks. What happened to social responsibility — think about how your research could be used by our (often times short-sighted) culture. Good lord, even Martina Navratilova has spoken out against this research …. Why is our society so quick to dismiss the contributions homosexuals can make to our world? Why do we see homosexuality as something that needs to be cured, fixed, taboo?

Predictably the researcher doesn’t want to take any personal responsibility for his work, shrugging his shoulders because

it is up to policy makers to legislate on questions of ethics

As a final note, I think this Wikipedia entry on animal sexuality is, to say the least, very interesting. Homosexuality in penguins, fetishistic behaviour, faking orgasms, sex for pleasure – it’s all there. But it makes me wonder what happened to the argument against homosexuality that humans are the only ones with that “sickness” – that it simply isn’t natural? What? Oh? That argument changed to say that homosexuality displays a lack of evolution, of higher brain function? You get to argue both ways? How convenient, er, hypocritical.

Well, welcome to 2007 people!

I’ve Never Met A Blacklist I’ve Completely Agreed With

I’m a paid Shaw subscriber – they give me my daily Internet smack and so far I’ve been very happy with their services — except for their Internet phone service, but that’s another story. I was surprised to read an article the other day about how Shaw will now be blocking access to a list of sites without letting me know they’re doing it, why, or which sites.

This is, quite simply, censorship – and it is certainly for a good cause. They will be using a blacklist of sites provided by a government-funded operation called Cybertip.ca. They are aiming to reduce (eliminate?) child exploitation on the Internet, and I am 100% behind their goal. Child porn and pornography in general are not aspects of the Internet that should be ignored until they go away – they need to be addressed as the real problems they are.

But this initiative makes me a little uneasy, frankly. I have a few questions that I can’t find answers to:

  1. Was Shaw intending on telling me about this initiative? I’m paying them for access to the Internet and now, unannounced, they’ll be silently blocking parts of it
  2. What sites are on this blacklist? As a person affected by it I feel uncomfortable not being able to see what sites are included on it. My experience with blacklists is that inevitably some site ends up blacklisted that shouldn’t have been. How is the site operator to know why their traffic dropped overnight? Email blacklists like this exist in an attempt to stem the flow of Spam emails in the world – another initiative I can get behind. However they are publicly searchable for this very reason – people are put on it accidentally and as a website operator I need to be able to find out if I am listed on any of those lists to take corrective action.
  3. Who works for Cybertips, and what qualifications are required to become a person who decides whether or not my site is available to 80% of Canadian Internet visitors?
  4. Since Cybertips can only do this because it is explicitly against the law to consume this trash, what can we expect from the future? What is stopping politicians from deciding to enforce other laws in Canada this way? For example politicians are not known to stand up to powerful lobbying bodies like the Copyright Cartel in Canada (CRIA). This is giving the government a certain degree of control over what sites I can visit on the Internet – where is the guarantee that this will not become a standard practice for enforcing any other laws, whether or not I agree with them?
  5. Why is the user not given some kind of message as to why the site is not available? It sounds like anyone who tries to access a blacklisted site will simply be pushed off into some kind of DNS dead-end. No special webpage explaining the situation, or giving the person resources to report a problem or miscategorized site. Is this really the best way to handle the problem?

These are just some questions I haven’t been able to find answers to. It’s a frightening article frankly because it feels like the tip of the proverbial iceberg – we’re giving the government of Canada a new level of control over the Canadian experience of the Internet and I don’t think it is being done the right way, assuming it should be done at all.