Saturday, January 31, 2009

Coffee: is there anything it can't do?


I just caught the author of this book on a Science Friday podcast, and am dying to read it; it sounds like a paradise of intellectual nerd-dom. The book tells the story not only of Joseph Priestley's discovery of oxygen, but also of his role as enlightenment leader (which was controversial enough to get him expelled from England) and his relationships with the American founding fathers.

As a side note, the author offered this:

"It's not an accident that the age of reason accompanies the rise of caffeinated beverages." Apparently, before coffee came to Europe from Africa (it originated in Ethiopia!), the drink of choice for those who could afford it was alcohol. Once coffee became popular, there was no stopping enlightenment leaders, who, wired on caffeine, went on to lay down the foundations for modern science and government.

You can listen to the author here -- or just go to the coffee shop and fuel your own personal enlightenment.

Sunday, January 25, 2009

Inked by science


I really want to get a tattoo, so today I started doing web searches for ideas and tips on what might work well. (I do know what I want to get, but not yet sure where or what the design will look like.) I found this website of scientific tattoos, which is good for at least 3 hours of time wasting. They all fall somewhere on a range of super-dorky to... well, super dorky but also really awesome.
I particularly like the one above, a picture of the phylogenetic family tree of HIV. On the back of a researcher looking into the origins of the virus. It reminds me of my work with rotavirus phylogenies, and a particularly zealous phylogeneticist. There were a lot of days when I'd come in, check my email, and find that this guy had poured hundreds of virus strains into a similar family tree -- because he thought it would be interesting. When he started color-coding, I considered blowing up the tree pictures and wallpapering my room with rotavirus. I never considered painting my skin with them, though.

Wednesday, January 21, 2009

The Vanishing Point


I started reading my grandfather's published papers a few weeks ago, while on at my parents' house on vacation. I never met my grandfather, who died of cancer before I was born. All I knew of him was a portrait, a sparsely-lit photograph, that hung in the hallway of what was once his and my grandmother's apartment. He stood at an angle to the camera, holding a lit cigarette in a cigarette holder, hands gloved; he exuded a cosmopolitan, European elegance.

My grandparents had come to the US just after the Nazi Anschluss -- a close call. Both of my grandparents had been trained as psychiatrists, and my grandfather began practicing as a Freudian psychoanalyst at some point after his arrival in the States. I knew little of his work, but enough about Freudian thought to prepare myself for deep disagreements between my grandfather's ideas and my own. I figured I could place him within historical context and treat the experience as an intellectural curiosity.

I wasn't prepared for two things. One: that not only would the papers he authored about female sexuality (see, for example, this) be outdated and mysogynistic, but that they would carry such bizarre, visually graphic descriptions of female sexuality that I would have to stop reading for fear of never enjoying sex or romance again. It makes for an interesting aside, however, to note the dedications on each of the papers. My grandfather had gathered together copies of all his published work into a boxed collection to give to my grandmother. And each graphic, mysogynistic paper was inscribed affectionately in dainty script to the love of his life. Apparently he was able to separate his love for his wife into one compartment, and his biopsychosocial reading of female sexuality into another.

The other thing I wasn't prepared for: I really liked the paper he wrote about Van Gogh's last works. In it, he discusses the impending suicide of the painter as it is foretold through his paintings. The one shown above, Wheat Field with Crows, is one of his last paintings, if not the last (whatever, Wikipedia). The picture is not only dark in color, but also composition: it is done in reverse perspective, drawing the viewer's gaze in to the foreground instead of out to the horizon. As my grandfather wrote, this means that the vanishing point, where in a normal painting the land disintegrates into the horizon and disappears, is here the painter. With this painting, in my grandfather's Freudian psychoanalytic viewpoint, Van Gogh painted a "visual suicide note."

Wow.

Saturday, January 17, 2009

What it means to be a biology nerd


"I just decided, screw it, you know, I'm gonna let it come out and make the best of it and enjoy it as much as I could and marvel at it. I mean, when you really think about it, it is amazing that an animal can take in your flesh and turn it, using its own genes, into a fly"

-- Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, narrating his experience of having a botfly larva living in his scalp. Go here to listen.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Truth and its delivery


Photo: Gary Hershorn/Reuters


Two stories from today, which tie together nicely:

1.
I ate dim sum with two friends of my parents. One, a pediatrician, told me of an early experience she had giving bad news to the family of a child who had died of leukemia. The family, she said, had come to the hospital the day after the child's death, asking to see the child. My lunch companion called over the doctor who had been working with the child and family, asking what on earth was happening. It seems that the doctor had explained everything to the family, offering her condolences. But the family's shock produced such a disbelief that the words of the doctor had been completely erased from memory.

My friend went on to talk about other doctors who knew how to relate to families as they gave bad news, one even crying sometimes as he talked with patients' families. Crying was appropriate in these situations, although textbooks from previous generations might say differently, simply because the emotional cues from the doctor provide a way for family members to wrap their heads around what has happened. Simple words without an appropriate response may not allow family members to really understand what is being said. Denial is a powerful thing.

2.
After lunch, I went to the Art of Participation Exhibit at the SF MOMA, which documents artists' attempts, over the last 5 decades, at involving their audience in their art. We walked by one piece, an inkjet printer with a long trail of paper and words. It sprung into action as we walked, printing a story about a commercial plane crashing into the Hudson River. A commercial plane crashing into the Hudson River?? This had to be some sort of trick, a play on the news and our responses to it, a fabricated and ridiculous story. But no; the NYtimes.com reports that it's true. Coming from a printer sitting on a table in an exhibit in the MOMA, I wouldn't believe it.

It's all in the delivery.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Check me out

Watch this. I'm the one in the white coat, holding a sign. :)

How does SB840 cut costs? In a few ways. Probably most significantly, it puts everyone into the same "risk pool", eliminating the need for the intense actuarial assessments that are currently done to decide who will be denied care. Also, it allows Californians to access preventive care, thus preventing the need for costly ER services during the final months of people's lives. (As we watched a trauma patient come into the Highland ER a few months ago, my preceptor commented that just being wheeled through the doorway means a bill of $7,000. The team assembled to meet the patient included an ER attending, three ER residents, three nurses, a surgeon, and, I think, an anasthesiologist.)

Finally, from the 1978 Alma-Ata Declaration, which has little to do with SB840 but much to do with why I'm involved in the single payer movement:

"...Health, which is a state of complete physical, mental and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity, is a fundamental human right...."

The battle might be a long one, but I think the US will, maybe in the next 10 or so years, join every other developed country in providing health care to its citizens.