Accidental Blogger

The Philosophy of Motorcycle Maintenance

A very interesting article in the New York Times about the joys of manual labor. (link via Leiter Reports) The author of the piece has a Ph.D in philosophy. He runs a motorcycle repair shop in Virginia. 

The television show“Deadliest Catch” depicts commercial crab fishermen in the Bering Sea. Another, “Dirty Jobs,” shows all kinds of grueling work; one episode featured a guy who inseminates turkeys for a living. The weird fascination of these shows must lie partly in the fact that such confrontations with material reality have become exotically unfamiliar. Many of us do work that feels more surreal than real. Working in an office, you often find it difficult to see any tangible result from your efforts. What exactly have you accomplished at the end of any given day? Where the chain of cause and effect is opaque and responsibility diffuse, the experience of individual agency can be elusive. “Dilbert,” “The Office” and similar portrayals of cubicle life attest to the dark absurdism with which many Americans have come to view their white-collar jobs.

Is there a more “real” alternative (short of inseminating turkeys)?

High-school shop-class programs were widely dismantled in the 1990s as educators prepared students to become “knowledge workers.” The imperative of the last 20 years to round up every warm body and send it to college, then to the cubicle, was tied to a vision of the future in which we somehow take leave of material reality and glide about in a pure information economy. This has not come to pass. To begin with, such work often feels more enervating than gliding. More fundamentally, now as ever, somebody has to actually do things: fix our cars, unclog our toilets, build our houses.

When we praise people who do work that is straightforwardly useful, the praise often betrays an assumption that they had no other options. We idealize them as the salt of the earth and emphasize the sacrifice for others their work may entail. Such sacrifice does indeed occur — the hazards faced by a lineman restoring power during a storm come to mind. But what if such work answers as well to a basic human need of the one who does it? I take this to be the suggestion of Marge Piercy’s poem “To Be of Use,” which concludes with the lines “the pitcher longs for water to carry/and a person for work that is real.” Beneath our gratitude for the lineman may rest envy.

This seems to be a moment when the useful arts have an especially compelling economic rationale. A car mechanics’ trade association reports that repair shops have seen their business jump significantly in the current recession: people aren’t buying new cars; they are fixing the ones they have. The current downturn is likely to pass eventually. But there are also systemic changes in the economy, arising from information technology, that have the surprising effect of making the manual trades — plumbing, electrical work, car repair — more attractive as careers. The Princeton economist Alan Blinder argues that the crucial distinction in the emerging labor market is not between those with more or less education, but between those whose services can be delivered over a wire and those who must do their work in person or on site. The latter will find their livelihoods more secure against outsourcing to distant countries. As Blinder puts it, “You can’t hammer a nail over the Internet.” Nor can the Indians fix your car. Because they are in India.

The article is six pages long. Do read the whole thing.  Matthew Crawford, Ph.D in philosophy, fascinates with his perspective on work and satisfaction with life. The paradox here of course is that had Crawford not gone through the initial "safe" life trajectory of higher education and cubicle jobs of "ideas," he wouldn't probably have developed such a carefully weighed and regret-free appreciation for manual labor and nor perhaps the facility with words to make his case so succinctly for the cost-benefit of the informed choice he made. 

Crawford begins his piece with a reference to a television show.  That reminded me of another TV show, also to do with jobs. I am not much of a TV watcher. But during our brief stay in Germany in the early eighties, I used to watch a fair amount of TV with my two small children partly out of boredom and partly in order to get a grip on the German language. A game show called "Was bin Ich?" (a spin off of the American game show, What's My Line?) used to air on German TV in those days.  I remember noting with interest that some of the hardest vocations for the hosts to guess were manual jobs, even though one would think that such work would offer up more concrete clues than amorphous intellectual pursuits.  But then as Crawford notes, inseminating turkeys is working with your hands but who would ever guess that someone actually does it?  Similarly, I remember that on "Was bin Ich?" one guy's job completely stumped the hosts and he ended up earning a sizable prize for keeping them in suspense for the entire episode. He turned out to be a "Totenkopf Maler." ( see translation) Evidently, there is a market for painted skulls - at least, there must have been one in Germany!

Where Life Is Good ....

That would be in Japan and the European micro-nation of San Marino, according to a recent WHO report.  The two top the list for the highest life expectancies in the world - Japan for females and San Marino for males.

A girl born in Japan today will likely live to celebrate her 86th birthday, the longest life expectancy anywhere in the world. Men fare best in the tiny European nation of San Marino, where the average boy will live to 81, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

The West African country of Sierra Leone has the shortest life expectancy for men — just 39 — while Afghanistan fares badly for both sexes, with men and women living on average to 41 and 42 years respectively.

The figures in WHO's annual World Health Statistics report are from 2007, the latest year available.

They show that some countries have made remarkable progress in increasing life expectancy since 1990 — partly by ending wars, partly through successful health initiatives.

Eritrea increased its average life expectancy by 33 years to 61 for men, and by 12 years to 65 for women. In Liberia the figure for men jumped 29 years to 54, and rose 13 years to 58 for women. Angola, Bangladesh, Maldives, Niger and East Timor also increased the average life expectancy for men and women by 10 years.

Other countries showed a sharp decline over the same period.

Women's life expectancy in Zimbabwe fell by 19 years to 44; Zimbabwean men live to 45 on average, compared to age 57 in 1990. Lesotho recorded a 16-year drop for both men and women to 43 and 47 respectively. Women in Swaziland live to 49 on average, a drop of 14 years. Men's life expectancy in the southern African country declined by 12 years to 47.

Botswana, Congo, Kenya, South Africa and Zambia also reported significant drops in life expectancy for both sexes.

In the United States, the life expectancy for men rose to 76 from 72 years, and for women to 81 from 79 years.

The most significant indicators for lower life span and higher infant mortality continue to be poverty, war and disease. Cessation or control of any of those circumstances improves the lives of people.  The report also found the following:

Recycling In The Sky : Let's Drink To That

I am sure everyone saw this item in the news yesterday on TV or on the web. There is really nothing chemically or nutritionally  yucky here. I guess one just has to get used to the idea.

At the international space station, it was one small sip for man and a giant gulp of recycled urine for mankind.

Astronauts aboard the space station celebrated a space first on Wednesday by drinking water that had been recycled from their urine, sweat and water that condenses from exhaled air. They said "cheers," clicked drinking bags and toasted NASA workers on the ground who were sipping their own version of recycled drinking water.

"The taste is great," American astronaut Michael Barratt said. Then as Russian Gennady Padalka tried to catch little bubbles of the clear water floating in front of him, Barratt called the taste "worth chasing."

He said the water came with labels that said: "drink this when real water is over 200 miles away."

The urine recycling system is needed for astronaut outposts on the moon and Mars. It also will save NASA money because it won't have to ship up as much water to the station by space shuttle or cargo rockets. It's also crucial as the space station is about to expand from three people living on board to six.

The recycling system had been brought up to the space station last November by space shuttle Endeavour, but it couldn't be used until samples were tested back on Earth and a stuck valve was fixed on Monday.

So when it came time to actually drink up, NASA made a big deal of it.

The three-man crew stood holding their drinks and congratulated engineers in two NASA centers that worked on the system.

"This is something that had been the stuff of science fiction," Barratt said before taking a sip.

NASA deputy space shuttle manager LeRoy Cain called it "a huge milestone."

Good news about the economy. (Joe)

Pig flu is on the march!

Now, if you were recently laid off, and you probably were, unless you're only about to be laid off in which case congratulations for making it this far, you might be wondering how the march of the pig flu is good news. 

Well, it's not.  Obviously.  Even the bird flu was the cause of the Iraq War, and the pig flu is much more terrifying than that because it's new and exciting and the next big pandemic threat to end the world as we know it.  Think about it: are you more afraid of a couple of diseased Chinese chickens, or a global pandemic that could mean the end of the BLT and which has already destroyed Mexico and moved on to terrorizing schools in New York, a city which, as 9/11 conclusively proved, lies at the center of the lives of Real Americans in Texas and Alaska and maybe even Missouri?  Right, you're afraid of the second one, the one that was probably created by those terrorists that Obama insisted on releasing on account of we'd tortured 'em enough.  (Obviously, we hadn't.)

But didn't I just call it "good news"?  The words are right there, in the title!  Nope -- I said that the global pig flu pandemic is good news about the economy.  And it is.  If you're worried that you're going to catch the pig flu and die, or if you're convinced that the world is about to self-destruct, or if you're excited about scapegoating Mexicans, or if you're just easily distracted by whatever is dominating the news, you're definitely not worrying about that other crisis.  See?  You've already forgotten it was ever a concern!  And if that's not good news, I don't know what is!

(Yes, really I just wanted to use the phrase pig flu.  Too heavy-handed?)

Food of good intentions

H₂OM - a blessed beverage, Intentional Chocolate - a snack that is "imbued" with a monk's meditation, Creo Mundi - a protein mix that has been praised loudly.  How much will you pay for these "good feeling" (not just feel good) foods? An article in the latest issue of Time magazine reports that some are shelling out generously for foods which are embedded / infused / imbued with good intentions, on the assumption that nourishing powers of edibles are enhanced by good thoughts.  

Move over, organic, fair trade and free range--the latest in enlightened edibles is here: food with "embedded" positive intentions. While the idea isn't new--cultures like the Navajo have been doing it for centuries--for-profit companies in the U.S. and Canada are catching on, infusing products with good vibes through meditation, prayer and even music. Since 2006, California company H2Om has sold water infused with wishes for "love," "joy" and "perfect health" via the words, symbols and colors on the label (which "create a specific vibratory frequency," according to co-founder Sandy Fox) and the restorative music played at their bottling warehouse. At Creo Mundi, a Canadian maker of protein powder, employees gather around each shipment and state aloud the benefits they hope to imbue it with for their consumers--increased performance, balance and vitality. Intentional Chocolate, founded in 2007 by chocolatier Jim Walsh, uses a special recording device to capture the electromagnetic brain waves of meditating Tibetan monks; Walsh then exposes his confections to the recording for five days per batch.

We hear your eyes rolling. But some claim there's actually something to the idea that humans can alter the physical world with their minds, and they offer research to prove it. Dean Radin, a senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences in Petaluma, Calif., conducted a test in which, he says, subjects who ate Intentional Chocolate improved their mood 67% compared with people who ate regular chocolate. "If the Pope blessed water, everyone wants that water. But does it actually do something?" Radin asks. "The answer is yes, to a small extent."

James Fallon, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at the University of California at Irvine School of Medicine, is skeptical. "So I take a rutabaga and put it close to my head, and it somehow changes the food and improves the mood of the person who ate it?" he asks. "Nah."

Gimmick or not, in this economy any product that promises a spiritual pick-me-up could be in high demand. Since the recession, says Phil Lempert, editor of health-food site Supermarketguru.com "everyone is ready to jump off a bridge." With the right marketing, he says, embedded foods "could be huge."

Still, not everyone is keen on the idea of packaging spirituality. Once the profit motive comes into play, "it's difficult to keep things pure," says George Churinoff, a monk at Deer Park Buddhist Center in Oregon, Wis., who was involved with Intentional Chocolate in its early stages. "Then [the product] may not be blessed in any way with motivation except maybe to make money."

Like the Navajos, I too grew up in a culture where food is routinely imbued with spirituality and blessings, not so much by humans but by gods. (see prasad) I have therefore consumed large quantities of "embedded" foods, mostly from the household shrines of my mother and other relatives. The divine fare was always delicious and I don't know if the goodies imparted any special benefits because of the worthy intentions infused in them. I however remember my mildly observant but  supremely hygienic mother's cautionary words regarding the consumption of blessed foods outside the home : "Eat only the whole fruits, not the sliced ones;  take very small amounts of cooked food and only if it is still warm; stick mostly to dry items; avoid all cold liquids, milk based products and especially the holy water; do not consume anything in a large communal place of worship." I may have ignored her advice a couple of times - once for a delectable helping of suji halwa in a large, crowded Gurudwara and on another occasion, when I ate some pre-sliced coconut in a South Indian temple. Given the frequent cases of food poisoning, hepatitis and other nasty outcomes of eating in public holy places, it was amply clear to me that the blessings of the gods didn't always protect against earthly maladies.

The foods described in the Time magazine article of course pose few such disease causing threats. What is suspect is their ability to transmit the good intentions and peaceful vibes via the gastrointestinal pathway. If a controlled study can be done to prove their efficacy, perhaps such fare can be of greater use than just soothing the nerves of antsy individuals. How about India and Pakistan sharing "laddus" of peace?  Israelis and Palestinians feasting on falafel of harmony? The whole world exchanging grains of accord and amity? The placebo effect alone may be worth the trouble.

The Torment of Solitude

The US has one of the highest incarceration rates in the world. One recent report puts the number of people behind bars at slightly higher than 2 million (including local jails). That translates to nearly one out of one hundred American adults. Of these, many are in Supermax penitentiaries where prisoners are kept under lock-down 23 hours a day . Inmates who are deemed especially dangerous are kept in solitary confinement where there is no interaction whatsoever with another human being.  The living conditions in the SHU (Security Housing Units), the prison cells designed to create complete isolation, have raised the concern of human rights groups. A UN task force investigating torture argued that the punishment meted out in the SHU is "inhumane and degrading."  Dr. Atul Gawande, the excellent writer of medical matters in the popular media, agrees. In an article in the New Yorker he calls such prison cells "hellholes" and argues that prolonged and forced solitude may be tantamount to torture.

Human beings are social creatures. We are social not just in the trivial sense that we like company, and not just in the obvious sense that we each depend on others. We are social in a more elemental way: simply to exist as a normal human being requires interaction with other people.

Children provide the clearest demonstration of this fact, although it was slow to be accepted. Well into the nineteen-fifties, psychologists were encouraging parents to give children less attention and affection, in order to encourage independence. Then Harry Harlow, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, produced a series of influential studies involving baby rhesus monkeys. .....

We have been hesitant to apply these lessons to adults. Adults, after all, are fully formed, independent beings, with internal strengths and knowledge to draw upon. We wouldn’t have anything like a child’s dependence on other people, right? Yet it seems that we do. We don’t have a lot of monkey experiments to call upon here. But mankind has produced tens of thousands of human ones, including in our prison system. And the picture that has emerged is profoundly unsettling.

Among our most benign experiments are those with people who voluntarily isolate themselves for extended periods. Long-distance solo sailors, for instance, commit themselves to months at sea. They face all manner of physical terrors: thrashing storms, fifty-foot waves, leaks, illness. Yet, for many, the single most overwhelming difficulty they report is the “soul-destroying loneliness,” as one sailor called it. Astronauts have to be screened for their ability to tolerate long stretches in tightly confined isolation, and they come to depend on radio and video communications for social contact.

The problem of isolation goes beyond ordinary loneliness, however. Consider what we’ve learned from hostages who have been held in solitary confinement—from the journalist Terry Anderson, for example, whose extraordinary memoir, “Den of Lions,” recounts his seven years as a hostage of Hezbollah in Lebanon......

......On December 4, 1991, Terry Anderson was released from captivity. He had been the last and the longest-held American hostage in Lebanon. I spoke to Keron Fletcher, a former British military psychiatrist who had been on the receiving team for Anderson and many other hostages, and followed them for years afterward. Initially, Fletcher said, everyone experiences the pure elation of being able to see and talk to people again, especially family and friends. They can’t get enough of other people, and talk almost non-stop for hours. They are optimistic and hopeful. But, afterward, normal sleeping and eating patterns prove difficult to reëstablish. Some have lost their sense of time. For weeks, they have trouble managing the sensations and emotional complexities of their freedom.

For the first few months after his release, Anderson said when I reached him by phone recently, “it was just kind of a fog.” He had done many television interviews at the time. “And if you look at me in the pictures? Look at my eyes. You can tell. I look drugged.”

Most hostages survived their ordeal, Fletcher said, although relationships, marriages, and careers were often lost. Some found, as John McCain did, that the experience even strengthened them. Yet none saw solitary confinement as anything less than torture. This presents us with an awkward question: If prolonged isolation is—as research and experience have confirmed for decades—so objectively horrifying, so intrinsically cruel, how did we end up with a prison system that may subject more of our own citizens to it than any other country in history has?

The long article is worth reading.

Lust For Life

The Journal of the American Medical Association reports that terminal cancer patients with religious faith are more likely to resort to heroic measures to prolong life than their secular counterparts. (see the NIH publication, Medicine Plus) 

TUESDAY, March 17 (HealthDay News) -- People with advanced cancer who turn to their religion to help them cope are more likely to use aggressive measures to prolong their lives at the end, new research shows.

Published in the March 18 issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association, the study found that those who turn to their faith for comfort during their illness are significantly more likely to use intensive lifesaving measures, such as mechanical ventilation.

"In a large study of terminally ill cancer patients, we found that patients that rely more heavily on religion to cope are about three times as likely to get aggressive medical care in the last week of life," said study author Dr. Andrea C. Phelps, a senior medical resident at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston.

Phelps said the study wasn't able to address the question of why people who rely heavily on their religion might be more apt to use any lifesaving measure available, but there are several possible theories. One is that, "they may be more optimistic because they have faith in God, and their religious faith may provide them hope near death," Phelps said. Another possibility is that those who lean on their religion "may want all measures to extend the length of their life because they believe in the sanctity of life." (emphasis mine)

Almost nine in 10 cancer patients involved in a recent multi-center study said that religion and spirituality were important to them in handling their diagnosis, according to background information in the study.

Intensive life-prolonging care was defined as the use of mechanical ventilation or cardiopulmonary resuscitation during the last week of life.

Those who reported a high level of religious coping were much more likely to use intensive life-prolonging measures than those with low levels of reliance on religion for coping -- 13.6 percent vs. 4.2 percent. Just over 11 percent of those with high levels of religious coping were placed on mechanical ventilation compared to 3.6 percent of those with low levels. The rate of resuscitation for those with high levels of religious coping was 7.4 percent compared to 1.8 percent of those with low levels of religious coping.

"Many people, within the framework of their belief system, want to make sure we're giving God every opportunity to see if something can change in the course of care," said the Rev. Percy McCray Jr., director of pastoral care and social services at Cancer Treatment Centers of America's Midwestern Regional Medical Center in Zion, Ill.

"People who are religious or faith-based don't want to prematurely give in to the idea of cancer. They want to know that they did everything they could do; they want the sense of having fought," he said. (emphasis mine)

Phelps said this study shows physicians how important religion can be to their patients. "Doctors need to recognize that religion is central in how many people make their decisions, and we need to be really sensitive to this and open to talking about it," she said. At the same time, she said, patients need to let their doctors know that faith is important to them and that it's playing a role in how they adjust to a terminal illness.

Interesting. One would have thought that a strong religious faith would in fact equip a devout person with greater strength and equanimity to face death than those with secular materialistic beliefs. So, why would the religious be more willing to prolong life? (Remember Terri Schiavo) The report speculates on some possibilities. I would like to add a few more.

• Religious people are more satisfied with their earthly lives and therefore more reluctant to let go.
• Afraid of death, many hold fast to the idea of eternal life but when faced with the impending end, begin to waver in their faith.
• Having internalized the concept of heaven and hell, perhaps some are just afraid that the neighborhood where their life after death will be spent lies on the wrong side of the celestial tracks.

More than the cup you crave

A small news item in today's local paper caught my eye. In these hard economic times, a coffee shop in Maine has won the battle with the local city council to employ topless wait persons to boost sales. (The G-rated video here)

VASSALBORO, Maine  — Cup size has more than one meaning at a new central Maine coffeehouse.

Servers are topless at the Grand View Topless Coffee Shop, which opened its doors Monday on a busy road in Vassalboro. A sign outside says, “Over 18 only.” Another says, “No cameras, no touching, cash only.”

On Tuesday, two men sipped coffee at a booth while three topless waitresses and a bare-chested waiter stood nearby. Topless waitress Susie Wiley said men, women and couples have stopped by.

The coffee shop raised the ire of dozens of residents when it went before the town planning board last month. Town officials said the coffee shop met the letter of the law.

Capitalizing on the female anatomy to sell consumer items from cars to cruises is not remarkable. Topless women serving food and beverages to attract hungry men are not uncommon either. What drew my attention to this little story is the presence of the bare chested male waiter. Is that a selling point too?  Does the sight of well sculpted manly pectorals act as an appetite enhancer - for women and gay men, for example? Or is the man shirtless only to prove gender equality so that the cafe is not accused of exploiting female sexuality?  It looks like the latter to me. If the man were also a sexual selling point on an equal footing with the women, why does the sanitized video show the female employee covered up for the cameras while the young man at the coffee machine is blithely bare?  

Valentine's Day Love Guide: Think International Relations

Forget chocolates, roses, baubles and bears. Don't fret over the perfect ambience for the candlelight dinner. Ignore Mars-Venus interpretations of the world. What you really need to pay attention to in a romantic alliance is diplomacy, negotiation and balance of power. So says Stephen M. Walt, professor of International Relations at Harvard. Believe me, as a long married person who has had to negotiate and re-negotiate terms of endearment over the years, Walt's perspective is closer to the truth than all feel-good psycho babble out there.  (via 3 Quarks Daily)

To begin with, any romantic partnership is essentially an alliance, and alliances are a core concept on international relations. Alliances bring many benefits to the members (or else why would we form them?) but as we also know, they sometimes reflect irrational passions and inevitably limit each member's autonomy. Many IR theorists believe that institutionalizing an alliance makes it more effective and enduring, but that’s also why making a relationship more formal is a significant step that needs to be carefully considered.

Of course, IR theorists have also warned that allies face the twin dangers of abandonment and entrapment: the more we fear that our partners might leave us in the lurch (abandonment), the more likely we are to let them drag us into obligations that we didn't originally foresee (entrapment). When you find yourself gamely attending your partner’s high school reunion or traveling to your in-laws for Thanksgiving dinner every single year, you’ll know what I mean.

Realists have long argued that bipolar systems are the most stable. So if any of you lovers out there are thinking of adding more major actors to the system, please reconsider. As most of us eventually learn, trying to juggle romantic relationships in a multi-polar setting usually leads to crises, and sometimes to open warfare. It's certainly not good for alliance stability.

IR theory also warns us that shifts in the balance of power are dangerous. There's an obvious warning here: relationships are more likely to have trouble if one partner's status or power changes rapidly. So that big promotion that you both celebrated may be a good thing overall, but it's likely to alter expectations and force you and your partner to make serious adjustments. The same is true if one of you gets laid off. Bottom line: it can take a lot of patience and love to work through a major shift in the balance of power within a relationship.

Buying Happiness (Joe)

Turns out, it's not a question of whether money can buy happiness (at least not directly); it's a question of what you should buy to maximize the amount of happiness purchased.  You'll buy more happiness, or maybe longer-lasting happiness, with a ski trip or concert tickets than a new big-screen TV.

It's NOT cheaper by the dozen... or Goodman and Good Sense # 7

As a concession to the grumbling GOP members of the Congress, President Obama dropped the provision for family planning and contraception for low income families from his economic stimulus package. Not that it did much to garner bipartisan support - no Republican voted for the bill.  The conservatives had argued that family planning is not a means of stimulating the economy. As usual, they are wrong. Helping low income families have fewer children may not be a direct way to boost the economy in terms of creating jobs but indirectly it is indeed a way to create prosperity by reducing costs in social services. As Speaker Nancy Pelosi points out in the article, savings too are good for the economy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi-D-Calif., appeared to sidestep the question when she was pressed over the weekend to explain how family-planning money would boost the economy or create jobs.

"Well, the family-planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost," she said on ABC.

"The states are in terrible fiscal budget crisis now, and part of it, what we do for children's health, education and some of those elements, are to help the states meet their financial needs," she said. "One of those, one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception ... will reduce cost to the state and to the federal government."

Unfortunately, in the minds of conservatives any discussion of contraception and family planning here and around the world, is inextricably linked to just one thing - abortion. Every time the matter of limiting birth rate comes up, the specter of abortion becomes front and center. In their zeal to abolish abortion, the right wing often ends up opposing funding and education for any form of birth control.  There is much to be settled in the abortion debate. However, family planning is NOT abortion. If anything, proper contraception is a deterrent to abortion, making it unnecessary.

I was born in a country where overpopulation is the single most identifiable cause of poverty, infant death, poor maternal health and malnourishment of the young. Far be it for me to dictate who should have a baby and who should not. But it doesn't take much deductive power to figure out why large numbers of children around the world are condemned to a life of need and unrealized potential. Most of them are poor and often born in families with too many mouths to feed and too many minds to nurture.  One image of a perfect (or near perfect) world that I envisage is where most, if not all babies are born to responsible and willing parents who can provide them with the basic minimums of health, nourishment, emotional support and education. That of course, is an idealistic dream. Meanwhile, responsible governments everywhere should have that very goal in mind for their citizens as far as is practical. I am not for eugenics, communist China style punitive measures of limiting family size nor the coercive attempts at population control  that Indira Gandhi attempted in India in the 1970s for which she was rightly voted out of office. But what about common sense?  What is not desirable about educating people that given the limited global resources, small families are good for parents, children and the world at large and then aiding those who like the idea?

Of course, the right wingers who are perpetually on a warpath against abortion in particular and contraception in general to a large degree, hardly ever raise their voices at irresponsible child bearing. (How else can they maintain a steady pool of man power to do cheap labor and fight the wars? ) More often than not, we hear from them that "children are gifts from god." God or not, most children born to poor mothers without access to contraceptives, especially in underdeveloped countries indeed are born the old fashioned way. But that doesn't hold true for wealthier, developed societies. Medical science now plays a vital role in making childbirth possible for parents who otherwise would remain childless. Fertility drugs, in-vitro births, surrogate pregnancies etc. are now thriving businesses of birthing. The alarming case of Nadya Suleman, the 33 year old single, unemployed mother of six who gave birth to an additional set of octupulets recently, has focused the public's attention on the physical, social and ethical aspects of unbridled fecundity. When does someone else's personal choices become our business? What ethical guidelines are there in place for the fertility industry? What are the penalties for non-compliance?  Ellen Goodman explains with her usual aplomb.

"They bent down and listened to my heart,"

We have recently focused a lot on the greed and self absorption (here, here and here) of the wealthy and the powerful who even with plenty to spare, don't stop to think of others less fortunate than themselves. Here now for a refreshing change is the story of ordinary people who thought of the need of others even in a time of extraordinary grief. 

CLIFTON, N.J. — James O'Hea was told privately his failing heart gave him little more than a month to live. Terence Begley's diabetes meant more years of dialysis and deteriorating kidneys.  That was before a tragic event — the shooting of three people in a church last November — turned life-affirming through the quick response of one victim's family.

O'Hea, Begley and three other people received organs from 25-year-old Dennis John Malloosseril (mahl-LOO'-sir-ihl). He was shot and killed Nov. 23 as he tried to break up an argument between a fellow church member and her estranged husband, according to police and witnesses.

O'Hea, Begley and the other recipients — Malta Hameed, 40, of Clifton; Migdalia Torres, 52, of Cleveland, Ohio, and John Muscarella, 22, of East Newark — attended a memorial service for Malloosseril on Sunday at the St. Thomas Syrian Orthodox Knanaya (kah-nahn-NIGH'-ya) Church, where the shooting happened. Before the service, the recipients had an emotional meeting with Mallossseril's parents.

"They bent down and listened to my heart," O'Hea said. "I had tears rolling down my cheeks."

Torres, who has suffered for 25 years from lupus that has affected her kidneys, recalled jumping out of bed at 6 a.m. on the morning after the shooting when she received a call that an organ match had been found. Like the others, she admitted having mixed feelings about the events that led to her transplant.

151 Contributors, 107,000 Words (Dean)

That's the tally as I skim the responses to the 2009 Edge Annual Question: "What will change everything?"—or, more prosaically, "What game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?"

The respondents tend to represent the science crowd (of the hard, social, and popular varieties), with lots of neuro-this and that-ologists. There is a token coterie of artsy folks. Consequently, the responses largely sound like failed pitches for science fiction movies. Lots of AI, some ET, cloning, and the like.

The writers and artists don't fare much better, although their responses are more likely to be quirky. One calls for "a different kind of male subjectivity" (I'm all for that, you jerk.), another (a male, I gather) for "no more reality." To the credit of physicists everywhere, one brilliantly anticipates nothing more than "a very very good battery."

Some of the entries surprise me. I expect mostly drivel from Brian Eno, but I appreciate his sense that the "what" destined to change everything won't be a thought, but a feeling, namely, that we're screwed (my paraphrase). And a television producer(!) envisions "a farewell to harm."

Anyway, were I invited to contribute, I'd suggest, modestly, a very good poem. That will change everything more capably than, say, "superintelligence" (Nick Bostrom) or a "web empowered revolution in teaching" (Chris Anderson). There is one poem among the contributions, but it's not very good. (All credit to Ron Silliman, whose daily posts are replete with this sort of stuff.)

A Melamine Anniversary Post (Sujatha)

(In which we look again at the prevalence of melamine in various food chains, now confirmed to include human babies of practically all countries that use infant formulas from multinational companies like Nestle and Bristol-Meyers Squibb.)

Genius and Success: Inspiration or Perspiration?

According to Malcom Gladwell, it is mostly the latter. In fact he believes that to be really good at "anything," ten years of practice are a minimum. Also, the inspiration and the perspiration must come not just from the prospective genius' own brain and pores but from his/ her family, friends, school and community. In other words, it does take a village to jump start a genius. For example, Gladwell takes great umbrage at the Bush brothers, George W. and Jeb, born to wealth and privilege (sons and grandsons a senator and a president) blithely identifying as "self made" men.

While they are the essential ingredients for success, according to Gladwell, talent, hard work and dedication are not quite enough. Going by the reviews and Gladwell's own interviews about his new book, Outliers (which I have not read), the author argues that who among the talented set becomes a successful genius, depends also to a large extent on luck. No matter how good one is at one's true calling or how hard and long the labor of love, nothing succeeds like "luck" and that Gladwell points out, is often determined by the time of one's birth. No, not in the astrological sense, but whether civilization is ready for a certain type of genius at a particular point in history. Like everything else that Gladwell has written, this premise too sounds interesting and compelling for the most part mainly because the author fits the figures with his theory. There is little to argue about as long as one picks examples that follow Gladwell's pattern and packaging of the lucky genius. Jerry Adler, the Newsweek reviewer wonders however about geniuses like Einstein and Shakespeare whose name and fame cannot easily be explained by their being perfect fits with the prevailing zeitgeist of their times. Actually, human thinking would be a stagnant, slow moving pool if all conspicuous works of genius were mere reinforcements (or minor tweakings) of prior knowledge and existing cultural mores. Otherwise we would never have heard of Darwin, Copernicus (Galileo), Lincoln, Marx, Jesus or Buddha. They too were outliers, perhaps the more notable ones.

Life is unfair, as even the bible acknowledges ("Unto every one that hath shall be given … "). We can't all hit a baseball like DiMaggio or sing like the Beatles. But how much do we understand about those who can? Not enough, says Malcolm Gladwell, in his new book, "Outliers: The Story of Success." We attribute the Beatles' fabulous success to being, well, the Beatles, four cute boys who happened to possess amazing musical talents. Gladwell has a different explanation. The Beatles, he says, lucked into a gig at a strip club in Germany where they had to play as long as eight hours a night, in styles ranging from bubblegum pop to hard-driving blues—making them possibly the best-rehearsed band in the world when they answered the call of the Ed Sullivan show. We can't all be like the Beatles, but neither could John, Paul, George and Ringo, if their experiences had been different. As a determinant of success, talent is overrated, compared to, among other things, luck.....

"Outliers" opens with a typically Gladwellian puzzle: why are so many professional hockey players born early in the year? It turns out that Canadian youth leagues group players by age, based on a calendar year, so a player born in January will be the oldest on his team, enjoying a big difference in size and maturity. The early birds get more playing time and coaching, advantages that become self-reinforcing, spelling the difference between an NHL career and a job as a high-school coach. Life is unfair.

The Long and Short of Cancer Therapy

Could dwarfs hold the key to cancer therapy?  Sounds promising.

What's in your water?(Sujatha)

Every few months, along with the water bill, I receive a little brochure from the water company that assures me that the level of coliform and fecal bacteria in the water that flows through the taps has been tested at well below required levels. Ditto for the amounts of lead and other heavy metals and nitrates. One important missing category, however, is the residues of pharmaceuticals which have been dumped or excreted into the water sources.
This article gives an indication of the effects of these pharmaceuticals making it into the water supply:

Pharmaceuticals have since been found in treated sewage effluents, surface waters, soil, and tap water, though at very low levels (parts per trillion, ppt). These levels are unable to induce acute effects in humans, i.e., they're far below the recommended prescription dose, but have been found to affect aquatic ecosystems. To date, most attention has been focused on hormone disruption in fish due to pharmaceutical estrogens present in the environment, and the rise of bacterial pathogens resistant to conventional antibiotic treatment due, in part, to their exposure to sub-lethal levels of antibiotics in their environment. Antibiotics and estrogens are only two of many pharmaceuticals suspected of persisting in the environment either due to their inability to naturally biodegrade or continued prevalence as a result of continuous release. Other studies have shown antidepressants to trigger premature spawning in shellfish while drugs designed to treat heart ailments block the ability of fish to repair damaged fins.   

Recent monitoring studies fail to address one question: Are the levels of pharmaceuticals in the environment significant? At first glance, one would say 'no' since levels found in the environment are six to seven orders of magnitude lower than therapeutic doses in spite of the fact up to 90 percent of an oral drug can be excreted in human waste. Low and consistent exposures wouldn't likely produce acute, notable effects but rather subtle impacts such as behavioral or reproductive effects that could very well go unnoticed. The good news is any threat to human health is probably not imminent but rather long-term.

So it's not merely the direct route from adulteration of food products such as melamine in pet food and now, Chinese infant formula and milk, or the long-term effect of Bisphenol A used in polycarbonate plastics that is associated with an increase in heart disease and diabetes, apart from phytoestrogenic effects.

Wonder chemicals and drugs are the double-edged sword of modern life. There is probably little we can do to reduce our exposure to these, no matter how hard we might try to avoid it by going 'green', switching to bottled water (bisphenol exposure, anyone?) or switching to organic/hormone free food only.

Jesus is my health care (Joe)

I feel like it's almost irresponsible of CNN to publish this article. 

   A new study finds that many Americans have that same kind of faith. In the study, 57 percent of randomly surveyed adults said God's intervention could save a deathly ill family member even if physicians said treatment would be futile.

However, just under 20 percent of doctors and other medical workers said God could reverse a helpless outcome.

The study was published last month in Archives of Surgery and is one of many to show a "faith gap" between doctors and patients.

"Patients are scared to death to talk to their doctors about this issue," said Dr. Harold Koenig, co-director of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke University.

Given this gap, how can you discuss God with your physician? We asked advice from Koenig and two other physicians who study faith and medicine.

1. It's OK to ask for a doctor who also has strong religious convictions

Koenig suggests this approach when talking to a physician: "I would say: 'My religious beliefs are very important to me and influence my medical decisions and the way I cope with illness, and I want a doctor who has those same convictions. If you don't come from that perspective, do you know a doctor you can refer me to?' "

   If you're a Christian, you might find a like-minded doctor through the ZIP code search at the Christian Medical and Dental Associations.

It sure reads as if CNN is advocating that patients make medical decisions influenced by religious belief.  First, isn't that a contradiction in terms?  That is, if a treatment (or nontreatment) decision is guided by religion, it is necessarily not a "medical decision."  But second, here's why I think this is irresponsible.  Yes, people have a right to their religious beliefs, but a so-called "news" source shouldn't be encouraging them to go to hospitals, only to discount science and medicine in favor of faith.  "Are you a Christian?  Here's how you can get a Christian doctor!"  "Are you Tom Cruise?  Here's how you can find a doctor who also won't believe in or treat your psychiatric disorders!"

And on a slight tangent, why do 20 percent of "doctors and other medical workers" believe that God will intervene with miracles in medically hopeless cases?  I hope that most of that 20 percent is comprised of janitors working in hospitals and telephone receptionists, and not the physicians who actually treat patients!  And given that so many people do die and have horrible things happen to them, why are only some patients getting miracles?  I wonder how these people answer that.  "Well, if you pray really, really hard..."?

Republican "Family Problems"

After hurricane Gustav's glancing blow derailed the Republican convention for a day, the news media and tabloids are all over hurricane Bristol, the real storm which is at the center of this year's GOP festivities that threatens to expose the hypocrisy of the party's "Family Values" bigots. Of course, the sanctimonious right wing morality brigade is spinning like Dervishes to put a holier than thou gloss over Sarah Palin's messy personal story. John McCain is resolute in his claim that Palin was thoroughly vetted but nobody is buying. The public too sees the irony of the events that have unfolded at the cost of one 17 year old whose ambitious parents spared little thought before pushing her into the national limelight at a vulnerable time in her young life. Many are asking now, "What about other young pregnant teens, especially poor ones, who may or may not have the financial or family support that Bristol Palin apparently does? Will the Republican Party show the same understanding and sympathy for them?"

Here is a sample of letters to the editor in today's Houston Chronicle; only one letter asks everyone to butt out of Sarah Palin's personal life.  And a cartoon by Chronicle's Nick Anderson.  (Anderson should have added, "...and I am a Democrat" to the young woman's statement."

The Purity of Pursuit

Here is one topic on which most people have a strong opinion. My own take on the matter is a bit mixed and the older and more cynical I grow, I seem to be leaning away from what I once fervently believed as a youthful sports fan. I have had some heated debates with others who hold a position on this matter more purist than mine. Now that the 2008 Olympics are in full swing, and we are  dreaming of "Citius, Altius, Fortius" the issue is once again on many minds.

The world of sports may be the last bastion of perceived purity where we expect to see miracles of human ability, unaided by external tools or stimuli.  While we tolerate smoke and mirrors in most other pursuits, we don't like our modern gladiators to "cheat." I mean, we live in a world of widespread  physical and psychological enhancements and tinkering. Ordinary folks as well as beautiful celebrities are often surgically altered for the sake of vanity and show biz; capitalists and so-called worshipers of the free market such as big corporations and hedge funders fix and manipulate markets to line their own pockets and rob ordinary working folks of jobs and pension funds; nations go to war under false pretenses and citizens support the aggression for the sake of patriotism; concert musicians take beta-blockers so their hands won't waver during performances due to irregular heart beats; in-vitro fertilization and rented wombs produce "genetic" descendants for infertile couples.  Medical interventions are available for numerous human appetites and disorders.

We have come a long way from the hypocrisy of "amateur" sports when talented but often poor young men and women were supposed to push the limits of physical achievement in the sporting arena and play by the rules set by aristocratic men of leisure. That silly notion of "purity" robbed many atheletes of a dignified life after they were past their physical prime. For example, all round outstanding sportsman Jim Thorpe was stripped of his Olympic medals and lived in abject poverty for not being "amateur" enough.  Jesse Owens, the winner of four gold medals in the 1936 Berlin Olympics spent his later years racing circus horses because he couldn't get paid as a sportsman. Two times Grand Slam winner Rod Laver languished outside the glamorous "amateur" tennis circuit until the advent of the Open Era when  "professionals" were at last permitted to compete in the major championships. We have forever abandoned the obsession with "unpaid" athletes. The world of sports is now one of the most lucrative for those who excel. But we still cling to the fond belief of "naturalness" in athletic endeavor and any suspicion of performance enhancement by artificial means throws a shadow over sporting achievements. So what exactly is "natural" in sports when we constantly seek massive technical and technological advances that mostly favor athletes from wealthier nations ?  While mechanical enhancement through space age equipment and gear is kosher, the one area where we cannot bring ourselves to accept outside tinkering, is the body of the athlete. Use of chemical agents to enhance performance is cause for heavy fines and dismissal in most sports, especially in the Olympics. Is it time to shed this last taboo which is often skirted by athletes who know which drugs to use and how to evade detection? If atheltes are fully informed about the ill effects of performance enhancing drugs and decide to use them despite the risk, should we penalize them? What is wrong with "doping" in sports? In a provocative article in the New York Times, columnist John Tierney says, "Let the games be doped." What do you think?

Once upon a time, the lords of the Olympic Games believed that the only true champion was an amateur, a gentleman hobbyist untainted by commerce. Today they enforce a different ideal. The winners of the gold medals are supposed to be natural athletes, untainted by technology. After enough “scandals,” the amateur myth eventually died of its own absurdity. The natural myth is still alive in Beijing, but it’s becoming so far-fetched — and potentially dangerous — that some scientists and ethicists would like to abandon it, too.

What if we let athletes do whatever they wanted to excel?

Before you dismiss this notion, consider what we’re stuck with today. The system is ostensibly designed to create a level playing field, protect athletes’ health and set an example for children, but it fails on all counts.

The journal Nature, in an editorial in the current issue, complains that “antidoping authorities have fostered a sporting culture of suspicion, secrecy and fear” by relying on unscientifically calibrated tests, like the unreliable test for synthetic testosterone that cost Floyd Landis his 2006 Tour de France victory. Even if the authorities manage to correct their tests, they can’t possibly keep up with the accelerating advances in biology. Some athletes are already considering new drugs like Aicar and GW1516, which made news recently when researchers at the Salk Institute used them to quickly turn couch-potato mice into treadmill champions with new, strong muscles.

“There’s a possibility that athletes in this Olympics will be using these drugs,” said Ronald Evans, the leader of the team at Salk, who has been fending off inquiries from athletes about these drugs. He has advised the antidoping authorities on how to detect these drugs, but whether they’ll be able do it competently this Olympics is far from clear.

If athletes didn’t have to cheat to win, they and society would be better off, says Bengt Kayser, the director of a sports medicine institute at the University of Geneva. In a 2005 article in The Lancet, he and two bioethicists argued that legalizing doping would “encourage more sensible, informed use of drugs in amateur sport, leading to an overall decline in the rate of health problems associated with doping.”

Timing is key

Some time ago I had posted an article on the possible correlation between paternal age and increased risk of autism among the progeny. In the comments section readers brought up other disorders which too some suspect, are related to the age of the father.  Reader Leslie has requested that I bring this topic to the front of the blog once more. She sent me the link to another more recent article from the Irish Times which makes similar claims regarding older fathers.

FERTILITY EXPERTS have warned there is a growing body of evidence showing that the man's age is a significant factor affecting the chances of a couple conceiving and of having a healthy child.

A new study presented last week at the annual meeting of the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology in Barcelona found that miscarriage rates increased significantly when the man was older than 35, and that pregnancy rates dropped when the man was older than 40. The study was based on more than 12,000 couples attending a fertility clinic in Paris.

Professor of reproductive medicine at Queen's University Belfast, Sheena Lewis, who also presented a paper at the conference, said the Paris study "provided more data to add to an emerging picture" relating to the significance of the age of the father.

She said people needed to realise that they are taking a risk by waiting until they were 35 years or older to have children - as an increasing number of women and men are. "You cannot assume that it will happen, that it will not be a problem," she said.

Prof Lewis, who is a scientist at the Regional Fertility Centre at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast, said there was a growing trend of people leaving it later to have children when their careers were established, and of people trying to start second families later in life. She said the clinic was seeing an increasing number of men in their 40s and 50s who wanted to have children, often in a second relationship.....

She said there were now quite a number of studies showing that as a man ages, the likelihood of his sperm being damaged increases. "A sperm is a very specialised little cell - it is just DNA with a tail and it has one single function, to get the DNA to the egg to fertilise it. In order to do that, the cell gets rid of everything but DNA, so it gets rid of repair mechanisms that you find in other cells. So if it gets damaged it can't repair itself."

HIV Research News From Houston

Depending on the topic at hand, our writings frequently reflect our personal feelings, opinions and experience to varying degrees. But that does not necessarily make all our stories "personal." In my inaugural post I had promised readers that Accidental Blogger would serve mostly as a conversational tool between its author [there was only one author at the time] and readers. The personal anxieties, complaints and triumphs of AB bloggers are not meant for the most part, to become the central point of the conversations. To that end, I think the A.B. authors have done a commendable job of keeping this blog impersonal yet engaging for our readers. However, I also decided at the very outset that newsworthy stories involving our authors, their friends or family which might also be of interest to our readers will occasionally be featured here. ("Interesting news of a personal nature can be shared by readers and the author", I wrote.)  As far as I can remember there have been just a few stories on our blog which may qualify as such and each contained a broader general interest angle. Amidst the long list of my own posts, I can think of just a few - the announcement of Anna and Andrew's wedding, my daughter's  unhappy encounter with the LAPD and fellow blogger Matt's kind sharing of the experience of living with Asperger's Syndrome (via his blog).

Now I am bringing another story to the attention of our readers which perhaps qualifies as "personal" but is in fact a public interest report. It has already appeared in several media outlets in the US and abroad and it involves my husband, Sudhir Paul's scientific research. [The full report in Science Daily:]

ScienceDaily (July 16, 2008) — Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) researchers at The University of Texas Medical School at Houston believe they have uncovered the Achilles heel in the armor of the virus that continues to kill millions.

The weak spot is hidden in the HIV envelope protein gp120. This protein is essential for HIV attachment to host cells, which initiate infection and eventually lead to Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome or AIDS.  Normally the body’s immune defenses can ward off viruses by making proteins called antibodies that bind the virus. However, HIV is a constantly changing and mutating virus, and the antibodies produced after infection do not control disease progression to AIDS. For the same reason, no HIV preventative vaccine that stimulates production of protective antibodies is available. 

The Achilles heel, a tiny stretch of amino acids numbered 421-433 on gp120, is now under study as a target for therapeutic intervention. Sudhir Paul, Ph.D., pathology professor in the UT Medical School, said, “Unlike the changeable regions of its envelope, HIV needs at least one region that must remain constant to attach to cells. If this region changes, HIV cannot infect cells. Equally important, HIV does not want this constant region to provoke the body’s defense system. So, HIV uses the same constant cellular attachment site to silence B lymphocytes - the antibody producing cells. The result is that the body is fooled into making abundant antibodies to the changeable regions of HIV but not to its cellular attachment site. Immunologists call such regions superantigens. HIV’s cleverness is unmatched. No other virus uses this trick to evade the body’s defenses.”

A good summary, although my husband is an immunologist and not a pathologist. The press release above from the University of Texas Health Sciences Center conservatively characterizes the results as a "theory." But in fact it is the conclusion reached at via lengthy experimental research, now many years in the making and it is currently in a fairly advanced stage of progress. The success in neutralizing the HIV virus by this particular approach has been confirmed in other laboratories outside the University of Texas. We have to wait and see what happens next. One can be cautiously optimistic that the favorable publicity will facilitate the work to move into the next step involving animal and human testing to determine the efficacy of the antibodies in a vaccine and palliative drug formulations. In most immunotherapeutic approach to cure and disease control, there is many a slip between the cup and the lip. Let us hope that the promise that has been seen in the test tube will successfully translate to the human body's own immune system.

My husband and his research collaborators are very excited at the prospect of a vaccine against HIV, as are those who are affected by the ravages of AIDs either directly as patients or indirectly as caregivers. The implications of the findings are therefore of interest in countries where the spread of AIDS is a public health concern, the financial world which takes note of medical innovations and the gay community where AIDS awareness and anti- HIV drug development are of acute concern.

On on-line science forums, the response to the report has been very positive. A few readers have complained that in the press release, the UT researchers have "anthropomorphized" the virus with statements like "HIV's cleverness is unmatched."  I asked Sudhir about it.  He said that it is hard to explain to non-scientists or even to non-immunologists the mechanisms of an Abzyme mediated vaccine unless they tell a simple, somewhat anthropomorphized story.  And in any case, he said, he probably couldn't have mustered the doggedness to keep working on this difficult project for such a lengthy period of time unless at some level he hadn't begun to look at the problem as a "Man vs the wily virus" challenge.

Contagious Art

Before there was television or the Internet, in the days of pamphleteering, public health announcements were often made available through posters. Dangers of malaria, dog bite, bad dental hygiene, poor sanitation and STDs were advertised through eye catching imagery and pithy messages. Some of these posters are now on display at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington D.C.  The title of the exhibit is "An Iconography of Contagion."

More about the exhibition in Newsweek here. Also check out the photo gallery.

It is art. It is medicine. It is politics and history, too. Born in the world of commercial advertising, health posters like this one emerged in the 20th century as a powerful new way to educate the public about infectious disease. Dramatic images incited fear; headlines alerted the public that coughing, mosquitoes and sex could spread tuberculosis, malaria and VD. Now 22 of these posters from the United States and abroad appear in "An Iconography of Contagion," a new exhibit at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. Curator Michael Sappol, who culled the finalists from hundreds of posters housed at the National Library of Medicine, says the exhibit reflects a time when people believed that the creation of visually compelling images was going to be "the scientific and modern way to conquer disease and build a better society."

Even the liveliest posters contain symbols of danger and death. Dark shadows appear routinely. In a 1951 British poster, "Tomorrow's Citizen," a small boy casts an adult-size shadow against a blue backdrop. "He must not be handicapped by venereal disease passed on by parents," the text reads. Skulls appear in other designs. And the anonymous crowd—representing both urbanization and the impact of disease on mass populations—is a familiar sight. A poster produced by the National Tuberculosis Association, a pioneer in health propaganda, shows a father reading the newspaper, surrounded by his family. The backdrop: a mob of "unknown spreaders."

Public-health art exploded during World War II, when the government started pouring money into awareness campaigns, lambasting the enemy and the dreaded contagion at once. STD posters exonerated the soldiers they targeted, blaming the spread of syphilis and gonorrhea on loose women, like the lady with the red beret. The tagline of one poster, produced by the U.S. Public Health Service in the 1940s, reads: "You can't beat the Axis if you get VD."

Bellyaching in the Bayou City

Last Wednesday, the front page story in the Houston Chronicle was about the high levels of pollution in the waters off the Gulf of Mexico and Galveston Bay. This is not entirely a new story. Alarms and warnings are sounded every summer regarding the quality of fish, oysters and other edible sea creatures harvested from the contaminated bay.  The report caused considerable furore among some Chronicle readers - not about the fish story but because of the picture accompanying the report which showed a very pregnant young woman in a bikini fishing in Galveston Bay. (She said that she does not eat the fish but releases her catch) Many Houstonians it seems, were appalled, ashamed and some lost their appetite at the breakfast table at the sight of the woman's protruding belly. The Chronicle offices were reportedly inundated with emails and phone calls of protest from outraged readers.  The following day the Chronicle published an article by Nicki Britton explaining why there is no need to be queasy at the sight of a naked pregnant belly.

The story also, if unintentionally, included a lesson about how uncomfortable some people feel at the sight of a naked pregnant tummy. And as a mother, I'd like folks to quit their bellyaching.

The piece's accompanying photograph — of a visibly pregnant woman dressed in a bikini and fishing in the waters home to the troublesome fish — generated dozens of e-mails and phone calls to the Chronicle's reader representative.

The photo caption noted that the woman would be following her doctor's advice and releasing the fish instead of eating them during her pregnancy. But to several people, apparently, the "Danger in the bay" referenced in the headline wasn't a potentially carcinogenic fish but rather the ghastly possibility of seeing a pregnant woman wearing something other than a muumuu.

One e-mailer thought the newspaper was "scraping the bottom of the barrel" with the "naked pregnant abdomen." Another complained that the image of "a semi-nude, extremely pregnant woman ... ruined my appetite for breakfast this morning."

One caller was "highly offended;" another "appalled." Someone likened the photo to what you'd find in a tabloid and called it "the most tasteless thing" he'd ever seen in a newspaper. Others called the picture "gross," "inappropriate" and "very tacky."

I read the piece that morning and didn't give it another thought until I saw the daily report sent out by Steve Jetton, the paper's reader representative. Jetton takes calls and e-mails (angry and otherwise) from readers. And he writes About.Chron, the blog addressing readers' concerns about the paper.

These readers are entitled to their opinions, of course, and encouraged to provide feedback.

Still ... appalled? Ruined breakfast?

It's a picture of pregnant lady, swollen belly showing. It's not obscene. Not suggestive. Not even immodest. The woman was photographed in profile — her arms are covering her bikini top, her bathing suit bottom is only visible from the side and her face is turned away from the camera. Additionally, she was shot from a distance; the details of her figure are barely visible.

Britton's article in turn elicited more letters from readers expressing both anger and approval for the choice of the photo.  One annoyed reader had this to say:

Dr. Michael DeBakey: 1908 - 2008

World famous heart surgeon Dr. Michael DeBakey died on Friday night in Houston. I had a short post on DeBakey a few months ago when he was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.  More details of his life and work here in the Houston Chronicle.