Back to to the Future--2012

Image courtesy of NASA.

The movie 2010 opens today in theaters across America. For the impressive trailer click here. For a scathing review from a scientific perspective, click here.

I like the trailer, I like John Cusack, I like disaster movies in general so I'm hopeful I'll enjoy this one. I don't expect a whole lot of scientific accuracy however. And why should I? It's a movie. Sure, I will poke fun at the technical impossibilities and the scientific improbabilities just like anyone else with a science background. I will also drive my children crazy, pointing out every continuity error in a movie because that's the kind of thing I notice. I hope there is a good story with a long build-up to death and destruction; there is nothing worse than a too-soon disaster in a disaster movie. I like to see normal life going on with subtle hints of problems that we would normally explain away. Like the cold tap water being slightly warmer than usual, or the occasional clock stopping due to blips in the magnetic field for example. I like to see some people dismiss these initial signs with a genuine head-in-the-sand mentality, while others see dreadful portents in the slightest (and ideally insignificant in a red herring sort of way) happenings. Still others, recognize there is something unusual going on, and quietly prepare themselves for the unknown. In other words, a disaster movie for me, is not about the accuracy of the science (although, the more accurate, the better), but rather about the portrayal of the human reactions. 2010 in itself is hardly based on science. I just picked up a book that I that I can't wait to dig into: The 2010 Story: The Myths, Fallacies, and Truth behind the Most Intriguing Date in History. I'll report back on what I find in a later blog.

Healthcare hysteria in the USA

I'm in the middle of it and it's ugly. Obama is doing the rounds with his naughty national healthcare talk (well, almost), and folks are going quite batty with fear. First there is the ceremonial euthanasia, remisicent of Logan's Run, except the talk is that they will let us live until we are 75 rather than knock us off at 30. Second is the notion that we will be forced to see second rate doctors, and never, ever, ever, get to see our favorite family physician again (this might be true, but for different reasons; most family docs are having a hard time making it because of outrageous overheads caused by the inefficiencies in the current hopeless system. With national healthcare, we might see more of that family doc..), third is the notion that we have to wait for years to get treatment and when we finally get there, they only give us generics that don't work (partly true; the UK goes for good of the many versus good of the few, a notion worth serious contemplation as there are solid arguments for and against), fourth is simply that well, if you get really sick, then you will just be left to die (Sarah Lyall, in the New York Times last Sunday pointed out that someone had said Stephan Hawking himself would never have survived so long had he been imprisoned in the UK National Health Service. Stephan Hawking responded that, as he actually lives in the UK, the protraction of his life under such challenging circumstances was indeed due, in large part, to the UK National Health Service). A fifth topic of hysteria is the idea that once we have a National Health System (if we ever do), then we will all be forced to use it. Massachusetts didn't do us any favors here with its compulsory healthcare plan punishable by a fine if you don't buy in and get insured. In the UK, the NHS is the default. You can get any care at no cost save for the small amount of 'National Insurance' you pay each month into the big Health Care Kitty. Its taken automatically as part of taxes so no-one misses it and probably half the population don't even know they pay it. For those so inclined, there is always a private option. Most companies offer private insurance and most employees take advantage of it if only as a back up to the NHS when the waiting line is too long.
Of all the aspects of the UK that I miss the most, the NHS is probably the thing I took most for granted and now wish I had. I know people who skip physicals because they can't afford the co-pay, I know people who have lost their houses to pay for the medical expense of a serious illness. Others I know will be in debt for the rest of their lives because after a nasty car accident the insurance ran out after the first year of re-hab. There is good medicine practiced here, and there are pockets of goodness on the system, but overall, give me the NHS anyday, long waits and all.

CP Snow and such

What a to do recently in the science mags about the 50th anniversary of CP Snow's lecture on the "Two Cultures" in 1957 at the University of Cambridge in the UK. With the the advantage of hindsight we can critique his brave stance while agreeing or not with his contention that the failure of art and science to communicate was disastrous for society. I like to think his lecture pointed more to a lack of appreciation of the connection between the two, rather than the explicit lack of shared understanding of the complexities of each. In Nature (vol 459, 7th May 09) there are a couple of essays celebrating the anniversary and offering up the equivalent challenges of the current day. Martin Kemp believes specialization in all disciplines to be the primary hinderance to undestanding between the humanities and science (I happen to agree with him-strongly), while Georgina Ferry asserts it is the push and pull between the optimists and the pessimists that stands in the way of some common ground. My view is that true pessimism is relatively rare where either science or literature is concerned, and that science and literature are inescapably joined at the hip on account of the arguable absence of absolute truth in either. At best, all we have are beliefs at a moment in time. If we kid ourselves for one moment that we have the answers, then science has failed. The true division in this day and age, in my opinion, is the one between those that believe they know it, and those who recognize that they don't. The pessimists may be re-christened skeptics in this scenario. In our information-heavy environment it is easy to think scientists have all the answers; there is so much out there to be found. However, what we lack is a clear consensus on what the real questions should be these days. As we become more specialized we can find more solutions to those may parts that make up the whole. But is the whole any better off? How would we ever know? Our specialized systems don't allow us to easily address the question about the health of the whole. We look to the skeptics to force us to reconsider our assumptions and re-shape the terrain of scientific inquiry.

According to Ferry's article, the literary giant (and one of my favorite authors), Ian McKewan says you can't be curious and depressed. It's hard to argue with that, but the exptrapolation of optimism to hope in the essay is troubling to me. I don't see hope having much of a place is science. In the arts, yes. At the bedside, for sure. But in science, isn't hope the one aspect we systematically try to keep out of the picture? Hope is passive, surely. Science requires that we move beyond hope, and beyond current belief, to a future where something is different. Science suggest forward motion, that replaces hope with meaurable outcomes that we can believe in. At least for a while...

At the heart of CP Snow's teachings is the notion of keeping an open mind and being relevant and responsible in scienc. With the Internet, global warming, corporate greed, and the tremendous gulf between the rich and the poor, I wonder what he would think of our world today?

The relevance of genomic information

I don't know about you but I am overwhelmed and energized by the recent explosion in interest in the relevance of gene knowledge to human difference. For several years we have been sequencing and profiling genes looking for aberrant genes and SNPs in the hope of identifying critical variants that explain disease risk, behavior, physical looks and so on. Only recently have we reached the point of understanding where can begin to realize the enormity of the task ahead in personalized meedicine. Recent papers in Nature have told us that the one-gene one-product hypothesis is only true for about 6% of our 20,000 or so genes. This is comforting given that our absolute gene number seems to equate with a mere nematode worm. The worm's genes can't seem to multi-task as well as ours do so it seems we are more evolved after all. Phew. This multi-tasking nature of most of our genes arises because a particular gene is separated along the DNA by areas of non-relevant DNA (to that gene at least) which means the gene can be read in a number of ways depending on the physical configuration of the DNA and possibly according to the influence of regulatory genes. This leads to 'alternative splicing' which results in different proteins being produced by a given gene. This finding is fascinating. No wonder SNP research has yielded so little in terms of identifying disease causing genes. The SNP is such a minoscule part of the altnertive splicing universe. Every issue of Science and Nature lately seems to have a plethora of articles and editorials on gene findings and their relevance to humans. I sense we are on the verge of a tipping point that will lead to novel hypotheses about the degree of determinisim we can reasonably expect from our genes. I'm excited about what we will come up with but hesitant because I know how long it can take to shift a paradigm. I hope we do not continue with more of the same and hope for some different conclusions. The alternative splicing effect should give us pause for thought; a reason to step back and question our assumptions about the role of genes and what we can expect from personalized medicine research in the future. What a fortunate time to be a biologist after all those years of sequencing and collecting the data--we can now begin to really look for the story our genes seem ready to tell.

Google Genes

"Analysts said they did not believe that the news about Mr. Brin would have a negative impact on Google’s shares", from the New York Time this morning after the co-founder of Google revealed he has a gene that may predispose him to Parkinson's Disease. This in itself, is not particularly alarming, since most people who have the gene do not develop the disease, as far as we know. Phenotypic expression of most genes require other factors such as other genes, or environmental triggers to ever see the light of day. What is rather alarming, in my opinion, is that last sentence in the NYT piece about even a hint of effect of this revelation on the company's shares. Why should it affect shares of the company? He is very young, and even if he is to get the disease eventually, it won't be for 20 years or more. The larger question is this- if the CEO or any other highly influentional person in a business decides to get his genes profiled for disease risk, should it be public knowledge? And if it does become public knowledge, how should the public think about it in terms of their investments? It's one thing to consider company value when the CEO is actually sick, as has been the case with the media and Steve Jobs of Apple, but to even speculate that the stock would respond to the news of a company's co-founder having a gene that may or may not result in a disease in 20-30 years time, is a bit over the top in my opinion. I say, leave genes out of it, at least until we know more about the real risks that they confer. If we have to consider the genetypes of CEOs with all that's going on in the Market at the moment, then our heads will all implode and we may well all end up being swallowed by the resulting black hole.