Can you Catch Cancer from a Cut?

Just because something is rare doesn’t mean that it’s insignificant. At least, not if it comes surrounded by well-attested research from trained professionals. Which is why this intriguing article by Alexa Lardieri of the Mail has really got us thinking.[1]

A man in Germany was operated on for a rare type of tumour. During the process, the poor surgeon cut his hand. It was cleansed and bandaged immediately. Six months later a tumour, which was genetically identical to his patient’s cancer, was found to be growing on the surgeon’s hand. This all happened back in 1996; but the case continues to excite speculation to this day.

Much more can be found in Alexa’s cogent article. Riffing on it, it suggests the following questions

1 How does transmission occur? Is it via nuclear DNA? Is there an epigenetic mechanism? Dare we speculate that a protein might be involved?

2 Alexa reports that the poor surgeon’s immune system may not have been quite as strong as it might have been. So…are we being bombarded with unknown carcinogens all the time, and it’s only our immune systems keeping us safe?

3 What do we mean by “cause” anyway? Does buying cigarettes give you cancer? Or is it smoking them? Or is it something in the smoke, like tar? Or could we even speculate that it is not the tar per se, but the molecular changes it induces in the cells of the victim? Where does cause end, and effect begin?

Yet it is in such cracks in logic that the most fruitful discoveries are to be found. This case, and the questions it raises are one such example. Thanks, Alexa, for bringing it back from 1996. Which was a great year for music too.

[1]https://www.msn.com/en-ae/public-safety-and-emergencies/health-and-safety-alerts/surgeon-catches-cancer-from-patient-in-first-of-its-kind-case/ar-AA1wRLpW?ocid=Bin

cancer #dna #epigenetics #immune system #health #medicine

Are the British ceasing to be their own oppressors?

Teaching English in England was always different. You weren’t just instructing in the language; you were delivering a handy survival guide to our ancient, entrenched class system, and what all those words, pronunciations and signifiers meant in the hierarchy. In this land, small cues in voice, dress, hair, clothing and vocabulary mark harsh and zealously-policed lines of demarcation. Crossing them can mean social exclusion at best or serious physical harm at worst.

It is rooted in our aberrant education system.* Which allows anomalies like the output of the top 9 most expensive schools, representing 0.15% of pupils produce 10% of the entries in Who’s Who, our Establishment’s self- regarding house manual. [1] That people who hold our top jobs are five times as likely to have gone to private schools than state ones.[2] We must leave it to you to surf the waves of links which we have provided, gentle readers. They are but the tip of a mighty iceberg.

No nation can survive at the top for long if it continues to fish for talent in a smaller pool. And Britain’s decline since 1900 has been precipitate. Why then do British people in general and English ones in particular, continue to acquiesce in a system which so stultifies their life chances? Nostalgia for the times of lost dominion? Fantasy wish fulfilment? Money worship? An understandable suspicion of the destructive capacities of many “reforms” proposed by Left wing activists who laughably described themselves as “educationalists”?

None of us who care for the future of our island ever wanted to abolish Private education. But we always knew this quasi-apartheid must end one day. The way to achieve that was to make State schools so good that it would be economic madness for a family to choose any other. Signs that this may at last be happening are found in this intriguing article by Joanna Moorhead. She and her husband were solidly Private: but are entirely satisfied with State for their own offspring. You may read why here.[3] For anyone English, this change is seismic: practical economics has started to trump considerations of status, class and tribe. If this continues, it will be welcome.

* Handy note for foreigners Public school=Private school State School= publicly funded school Gottit?

_{thanks to P Seymour}

[1]https://www.asanet.org/news_item/alumni-britains-top-private-schools-are-94-times-more-likely-reach-elite-positions/

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/society/2019/jun/25/britains-top-jobs-still-in-hands-of-private-school-elite-study-finds

[3]https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/parent-private-school-kids-state-school-differences-3454845

#learning #society #public schools #state schools #life chances

Southern States make the same old mistake: pity them in the long run

Pity the poor people of the Southern United States! Because they are making the same mistake as their ancestors did long, long ago. For much the same reasons, we suspect. Have a look at this from Nature Briefings, Southern Scientists Face Political Problems

A survey of faculty members working in US southern states suggests that the political climate is hitting morale among academics and driving a brain drain away from the region. Nearly 3,000 self-selected participants cited diminished academic freedom, restrictions on reproductive healthcare, harassment and the erosion of support for diversity, equity and inclusion programmes. “Multiple faculty members at my institution have been doxxed and harassed, including by elected officials,” wrote one female instructor in Texas. “This makes it difficult for me to do my job or feel safe on campus or at home and honestly just live my life.”Nature | 6 min read

Teaching of certain ideas is to be restricted or banned, The Ten Commandments displayed in every University Classroom……why the fear of words, the loathing of discussion? Because the dominant group (largely white, male and fundamentally Christian) is profoundly insecure. A siege mentality is setting in. The key questions in academe: (“Is this Beautiful?” ” Is this True”) are now too dangerous to ask. There is to be one question only-“does this build up the defences of an ethno-nationalist society?”

The same attitude to learning bedevilled the Old Plantation-and-Slave south before 1861. As Hugh Brogan observes[1]

….a strange barbarous culture grew up which quickly annihilated …Jefferson’s Dream that the University of Virginia, which he founded in 1819, would be a great light of civilisation. The colleges of the South remained jokes until into the twentieth century pp294-295

And now their descendants are playing the same sad game. Why the fear of ideas, the need to snuff out questions?

America is fast becoming an ethno-nationalist society, where different groups jostle for power and status. Now there are good reasons to suspect that this is the natural state of human society. We have argued this before on this blog, citing authors such as Chua and Kaufman(LSS Passim) It may well be understandable, natural even, to defend a state of affairs where your group is the top dog. But happens when someone else has been concentrating on more profitable things, and then comes to get you? The South first learned the answer to that in 1865. Will it have to do so again?

[1] Hugh Brogan The Pelican History of the United States Penguin 1986 see especially ch 14

##ethno-nationalism #slavery #The South #Evangelical #republican

Argentina: Now it’s the Right’s turn to threaten Science

It was quite hard being on the Left in the nineteen seventies. The Right had all the best arguments. It was getting harder and harder to defend collective solutions to anything, while their idea of individual freedom was very attractive indeed. Above all, they said, the free market mechanism required and guaranteed freedom of enquiry. No market can work if you are not allowed to ask honest questions about the price of gold. While the Left’s reputation on free inquiry was appalling(think Lysenko-but it’s still in tatters today in many parts of academe)

Which is why , fifty years on it so strange to see the Right throwing away this advantage. Now it is they who must deny climate change, as it threatens the sacred tenets of free market fundamentalism. They who, for indiscernible libertarian reasons of their own, must oppose vaccines and the hygienic treatment of water supplies. We suppose that desperation makes for bad choices. Perhaps that is why Nature Briefings has opted for this strange, sad story from Argentina, where, perhaps with good intentions, perhaps not, President Milei has embarked on a bizarre programme to try to abolish his country’s future, Researchers Fear end of science in Argentina:

One year into the term of libertarian president Javier Milei, his agenda to slash Argentina’s deficit has meant that, as his administration’s slogan says, “there is no money” for science. The country’s main funder of research projects has been forced to come to a virtual halt, despite most of its money coming from international agencies. Government-funded scientists have seen salaries fall and many have recoiled from Milei’s rejection of climate science. The result is that the country is facing a huge brain drain. “With six more months like this, there will be nothing left” of the scientific community, says Mariano Cantero, the director of an institute in Bariloche.Nature | 6 min read

We could declaim on cliches like cutting of noses to spite faces, right arm with left. or even cría cuervos y te sacarán las ojos.…but instead we’ll end on a personal note. We have always depended on the kindness of Argentinians, both in our professional visits to that distant country, and in personal friendships formed at various times over the years. It was once a very rich, progressive country, and still has a strong middle class yearning to be free. How sad then to witness them in another act of self-harm, burning the seed corn of future meals for the sake of an accounting theory. There is always a reaction in politics, and a Left wing Maduro style regime may prove to be even more terrible than a Millei style rightwing one. We hope that él sentido común may yet prevail.

#argentina #science #maduro #milei #science #research #r&d

Larry Elliott’s balanced view on immigration. A Must-read

Nothing releases passion like the subject of immigration. Nor is anything so certain to unleash binary thinking, with defenders and attackers of this essentially economic phenomenon dividing into mutually hostile camps, high on their own anger and righteousness. It’s time for some balanced nuanced thinking. As ever, Larry Elliott of the Guardian is here to provide it, [1] In an article titled It’s not bigotry to worry about immigration

We won’t steal his thunder. You should read it. No, really, this time. it applies to your country too. But we will dare to adduce the two essential points

1 Immigration isn’t all bad-it has serious economic advantages

2 Immigration isn’t all good- it has serious economic disadvantages

Our thoughts? Those who call themselves leftists should be passionately against immigration, as it’s a classic example of a free market mechanism disrupting society. Those who call themselves rightists should be passionately in favour of immigration as it’s a classic example of a free market mechanism disrupts society, which is always the price for economic efficiency. Can we go back to some science now?

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/dec/11/migration-figures-britain-economy-keir-starmer

#economics #immigration #migration #poverty #economic development

Pandemic and Storms: Two bad news stories suggest our escape window just got smaller

“It’ll be alright.” Somehow, we still cannot admit the the enormity of what we have brought upon ourselves. That clever scientists will still find a way to save us from the mass pandemics and climate change caused by our endless greed for stuff-cheap food, bright shiny junk, empty experiences-that most people persist with, like drunks dancing blindfold on the edge of a precipice. Well here are two stories which indicate that salvation may already be too late.

Winds wreck renewable energy plant. Two things we have always known. That renewable energies offer the only practicable salvation from runaway climate change. And that extreme weather events, caused by all the global warming we’ve already had, are growing worse. So where’s the way out, if those self-same hurricanes and things start tearing down the solar farms which might save us? Proof that this is already happening comes from this article by Richard Marsden of the Daily Mail. Apparently the Porth Wen solar Farm at Llanbadrig in Wales has been ripped apart by the recent Storm Darragh. Wind turbines were torn down too. It’s one plant in one location-so far. But to us it feels like being in a car where the act of going faster weakens the brakes. How scary is that?

Next Pandemic waiting in the wings. The desire for cheap greasy chicken has led to the mass incarceration of birds in crowded unhealthy conditions which make ideal breeding grounds for new viruses. We’ve warned before about the dangers of the H₅N₁virus on these pages (LSS 25 11 24. 25 4 24) Now a new study, reported by Kai Kupfer in Science suggests the virus is frighteningly close to jumping the barrier into our species Get this:

If the world finds itself amid a flu pandemic in a few months, it won’t be a big surprise. Birds have been spreading a new clade of the H5N1 avian influenza virus, 2.3.4.4b, around the world since 2021. That virus spilled over to cattle in Texas about a year ago and spread to hundreds of farms across the United States since. There have been dozens of human infections in North America. And in some of those cases the virus has shown exactly the kinds of mutations known to make it better suited to infect human cells and replicate in them.

There’s more, much more. It’s a fantastic article, we’d recommend it to anyone who wants to learn a bit of basic virology. But the writing is not just in the articles. It’s now very clearly on the wall.

[1]https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14175033/Storm-Darragh-UKs-Biggest-solar-farm-pieces.html

[2] https://www.science.org/content/article/why-hasn-t-bird-flu-pandemic-started?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=8caf16c576-nature-briefing-daily-20241209&utm_mediu link via Nature Briefings

#pandemic #virology #global warming #extreme weather events #renewables

Tariffs: Like it or not, Trump has captured the spirit of our times

President Trump Postlaunch Remarks (NHQ202005300037) by NASA HQ PHOTO is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0

“Tear down your wall!” This was the gauntlet which US President Ronald Reagan threw down to the Communist bloc in the 1980s. It was a harbinger of times to come. Reagan was the leader of the Neoliberal programme, by which he meant that trade: the free flow of goods, services, capital and people would bring undreamed-of levels of prosperity and confine the memory of the restricted economies of Socialism to the dusty bookshelves of the History Faculty. Remember the 1990s and all those endless negotiations on GATT and the World Trade Organisation, as the good times rolled? The world was to follow the principle of Comparative Advantage, as advocated by David Ricardo, with each nation specialising in what it did best.

Yet the Neoliberal model contained the seeds of its own downfall, as we have noted before on these pages. The profound existential crisis it endured after 2008 has never ended. And now everyone, both ruled and rulers, has learned to turn away from its nostrums and the many problems which unrestricted movement has brought

Chief among these of course is immigration, which has incited a visceral fear of identity crisis among the native populations of countries where it runs high. Immigration was never a socialist thing, but a capitalist one. Donald Trump has recognised this, by using trade tariffs explicitly to control immigration(and the supply of stupefying drugs, (which similarly obeys the rules of a free market) As this Guardian article notes, he is simply the most powerful exponent of the spirit of our times. Free markets are out. Red Tape is in. What could be more Red Tape than immigration control? [1]

Of course everyone will follow suit. The first will be nations and trading blocs, retaliating against their American tormentor. Perhaps everyone will be poorer, but they may well live in more stable societies. However, once you throw over the market principle and prize stability above prosperity, you open the door to other innovations. Like higher taxes, which are also advocated to promote social good.. To restrictions on the buying and selling of second homes, lest they damage the fabric of local communities. To ever tighter restrictions on the use of cars, cigarettes and alcohol. Access to the internet and other sources of information. Trump and his supporters may not yest realise it fully, but they have already sold the pass.

[1]://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/26/the-guardian-view-on-donald-trump-tariffs-protectionism-is-no-longer-taboo-in-politics

#WTO #socialism #donald trump #immigration #ricardo #regulations #autarky

Avian Flu: A pandemic to make COVID look innocuous, may be about to happen

Imagine the COVID pandemic all over again. Hospitals full of dying people. Their overworked staff burnt out to the point of exhaustion. The masked survivors walking though haunted empry streets. The economies of the world in freefall. Only try to imagine that the pathogen is ten times more lethal than the COVID-19 virus. And you begin to get some idea of what the H₅N₁ virus will do.

So far the virus has been confined to birds Large scale factory farming of poultry is a sur- fire incubator of pandemic organisms. But, if you think you and your family are safe, read this from Nature Briefings Teenage Bird Flu rings alarm Bells

A teenager in Canada is in critical condition after being infected with a version of the H5N1 avian influenza virus that has researchers on high alert. Viral genome sequences suggest that this is a mutated form of H5N1 — which is related to the one infecting US dairy cattle but might be better at infecting the human airway. If true, it could mean that the virus can rapidly evolve to make the jump from birds to humans. “There is reason to be concerned,” says immunologist Scott Hensley. “But not reason to totally freak out.”Nature | 6 min read [1]

Obviously scientists and doctors will try to calm us down, it’s part of their job. But one chilling, ineluctable fact screams out from between the lines of these reports. The virus has jumped the barrier between species, Now only one last stage remains: to find a way to perfect human to human transmission. Every disease-ebola fever, smallpox, Bubonic plague, whatever- must pass these two tests. If it does so, it can kill at leisure-in enormous numbers. Remember the Spanish influenza panic of 1918? That was a similar virus(H₁N₁) and it carried off at least 50 million people from a world population of 1.8 billion. If we scale up to today’s population, the deaths will easily top 227 million. And that’s before we take into account the much faster communication and transport systems we now have, which will spread the virus so much more quickly.

So, while you are busy wondering the on line shopping malls, wondering whether Blagdon United will beat Nowhere City or trying to find a group of different people to hate, your nemesis may already be waiting in the wings. Question: does it serve you right?

[1]https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03805-4?utm_source=Live+Audience&utm_campaign=f0d788c2d2-nature-briefing-daily-20241122&utm_medium=emai

[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_flu

#avian flu #pandemic #disease #health #medicine

Fake news and misinformation: two hopeful suggestions

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio on Pexels.com

Hayek once observed that, as the amount of information in the world grows exponentially, each one of us becomes proportionally more ignorant. And into this vast hollow of ignorance flows a torrent of malevolencies, lies, falsehoods, facts, opinions, theories, half-truths and wholly well meaning attempts. How to sort out the good from the bad,? The wheat from the chaff? The (that’s enough bucolic metaphors-ed) It’s a question of vital importance, especially on a day when a democracy as mighty as the United States of America goes to the polls. Well, we have two possible ways forward for you today, both of which we think lie on the well-meaning attempts part of the spectrum

First up is Professor Clodagh Harrington of the Conversation. [1]She expands upon on the work of a film maker called Friedrich Moser. In a film called How to Build a Truth Engine, he discourses broadly on an eclectic range of psychology, neurology, journalism and history, asking and re-asking the question “how do we know what we know?” We haven’t seen the film, we confess, but the article is erudite, honest and provocative. Above all, we valued this killer quote, which just about sums up the deadly danger we are all in

……truth is often diluted, polluted or drowned out completely in our daily communication torrents. This, combined with the nefarious agendas of bad actors means that individuals, communities and our way of life are under significant threat.

Nature Briefings treats the whole thing as a medical problem. No surprise there. In a piece called Can we Inoculate against Fake News?, they report:

Psychologist Sander van der Linden believes that there’s a dangerous infection spreading globally — misinformation. He also has a way to combat it: ‘inoculating’ people against misinformation to stop them from believing and spreading it, in an approach analogous to vaccinating against viral infections. The concept of ‘prebunking’ involves first warning people that they might be intentionally misled, then showing them a mild form of misinformation. There is evidence that the approach can lessen the persuasiveness of falsities, but critics argue that the method places the onus on the individual and absolves social media companies that might profit from spreading lies.Science | 10 min read

Well-how do we know what we know? It’s a question at least as old as Descartes. His generation had the luxury of knowing they wouldn’t blow up the world if they couldn’t answer this question. We are not so fortunate. Right now the lies seem to have an enormous cabal of dictators, tycoons and hucksters behind them. A few lonely academics and one hit journalists are pitifully small in comparison. But unless we keep trying, as these brave people do, this time we are surely lost.

[1]https://theconversation.com/how-to-build-a-truth-engine-documentary-makes-for-sober-but-crucial-viewing-in-our-age-of-disinformation-242554?utm_medi

#fake news #misinformation #internet #algorithm #lies #descartes #democracy

If Keir Starmer wants to grow the UK economy, he needs to play the Research

Keir Starmer’s Labour Party came to power on a pledge to clear up Britain’s economic mess and, above all other things, create growth. But how to do it? It is a question that has bedevilled British Governments since the country first began to fall behind in the late Victorian era. And no amount of reforming government has ever halted the inexorable decline, which feels supporting like a football team slowly slipping down the leagues. Remember Manchester United?

Yet how did Britain first rise to inordinate wealth and power in the Georgian period.?(let’s leave the constitution for another day) The answer is that, by luck or design, Britain took full advantage of the scientific and intellectual advances of the Enlightenment, more so than any other country. [1]The result was the Industrial Revolution, which provided an absolute step change in human productive capacity. Sadly for Britain, other countries quickly learned the lesson, better and more thoroughly than the British pioneers. And here we are today.

Yet there may be a way out of this trap. We have long tried to sing the praises of research and development as the real drivers of economic growth. But candidly admit-we’ve struggled. Now a most erudite yet readable article from the Guardian by Andre Gein and Nancy Rothwell makes the case with levels of data back up we could never match [2] Get this for a killer quote:

It is recognised as having a much higher rate of return than average for capital investment across government spending lines (every £1 of Higher Education Innovation Fund investment at research intensive universities delivers £12 to the economy).

Starmer and Reeves should ignore the groans of the terminally old and selfish. Real patriotism would embrace tax rises, if these are then invested in the long term future of our universities, And the network of schools that feed them of course. It’s time to play a big card, and this is a gambit that will work.

[1]Enlightenment Roy Porter Allen Lane 2000

[2]https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/oct/26/scientific-research-needs-robust-government-backing-not-treasury-penny-pinching

#universities #research and development #economics #industrial revolution #britain #enlightenment