My day at the Polls

I got up before dawn on election day and drove a half hour in the dark to a north east suburb of the Twin Cities. I was a DFL "challenger" though the DFL didn't want us challenging anyone (besides, the law says I would have to have personal knowledge that the person couldn't vote, hard to do when you don't live there). Really I was there to be the eyes and ears of the party and to report back any problems.

I sat myself down in a corner and got ready to spend the day people watching. I sat behind the same-day-registration tables and watched people register and reregister to vote. There were two major themes; the problem with the same-day-registration law, and the wonderful people that came and really really wanted to vote.

First, the problem with the current law. I'm not sure when the law was written, or when it was last updated, but there are some obvious problems. To register a voter has to bring a form of photo ID to prove that they are who they say they are, and a bill with their name and current address. Or they can get a voter registered in that precinct to vouch for them, a staff member of a group home will also work.

So the problem is that only specific bills are accepted and some things that logically should work, don't. Signed leases? Nope. Car payment? No. Medicare payment? Try again. Paystubs? Nope. There were even two different people who thought maybe an alcohol citation would work. They didn't. (Quote of the day: "I was in an accident I wasn't aware I was in.")

The other problem I saw could be addressed if a signed lease could be used; there were at least three couples that had moved on the first of the month. All they had were leases, no bills had come yet.

But here is where I start to feel better about democracy. ALL of the people that had moved came back with someone to vouch for them, or a receipt for a new drivers license. One couple was turned away twice and the second time the guy was talking like he wasn't going to come back. But they did, separately, and both voted. Even the woman who was probably 6 months pregnant. A young man that was registered with his wife earlier in the day, was brought back with a friend to vouch for him and they brought another woman with them. More than that, he realized that he lived down the hall from the couple at the other end of the table and could have vouched for them too.

But the most heart warming thing I saw was a older woman, blind and deaf, with an aid who registered and voted. It must have taken the better part of an hour for them to fingerspell the entire registration form, the entire ballot and her vote.

The Age of Oil Must End.

Clearly I've been neglecting this. I've got a steady 9 to 5 at a law firm thats been a steady 8 to 6 as The Big Case got ready to go to trial. But the case is settled into its court room and my part is pretty much over until the case ends in a few weeks. So I'll be back up to posting three or four times a week. Hopefully. Anyway, since I haven't posted in weeks I don't feel bad about not being on my usual topic schedule.

Oil Costs To Offset Stimulus Package

Since Congress and Bush unveiled an economic stimulus package Jan. 24, the price of the OPEC basket of crude oil has jumped by $32.51 a barrel, raising the cost of U.S. oil imports enough to offset the entire stimulus package over the course of the year.

Does this really surprise anyone? The stimulus package was supposed to be a shot in the arm for an economy where most people's ARMs had already exploded. The price of oil will never go down, maybe it will go down a little bit, small daily or weekly fluctuations. But like global climate change, the small day to day changes can't mask the relentless march upward.

"We're engaged in a painful experiment in discovering how high the price [of oil] has to go before it really, really hurts, before it hurts enough to slow demand globally," said Adam Sieminski, chief energy economist for Deutsche Bank.

He's dead on. Something has got to give because we can't go on like this. We've known for some time now that eventually the economics of limited resources would drive the price of oil beyond what is reasonable.

The price of oil will never come down.

No gas tax holiday, no ethanol blend, no hybrid technology, no fuel efficiency standard, no maximum purchase at the pump, no drilling offshore, in oil sands or national wildlife reserves can change that. Even if we could get the cash price down, the climate change cost is, its increasingly obvious, more than we can really afford. The heyday of petrochemicals must end. We have no choice in that. What we can choose is what kind of withdrawal from oil addiction we will have. Are we going to deny that this is killing us until we hit rock bottom, or are we going to come to terms with whats going on here and get help?

How the Youth of Today get their news

Finding Political News Online, the Young Pass It On
Not surprisingly, this article about how the young share news online was emailed to me by a good friend. The general issue of the article isn't new to me, but maybe it is to the journalists. Rather than sitting down and watching the nightly news, or reading the entire paper, the young read articles online, especially ones recommended by friends, and then pass links on to others. There are some interesting lines that really capture the idea.

Ms. Buckingham recalled conducting a focus group where one of her subjects, a college student, said, “If the news is that important, it will find me.”

College students don't have the time to sit down and read the NYT or watch the 5 o'clock news. The news has to get to them, and that comes as emails, link shares on Facebook and instant messenger. But even if its delivered straight to our inbox, most people I know are more likely to read something that has been recommended by someone they know. When you use your friends as a filter, you know what kind of a filter you are getting; George likes stories about China and other Asian countries, Ann only sends stories about abortion and birth control, and Crazy Joe sends stories about Ron Paul with mocking comments. Plus, you automatically have someone you can discuss the piece of news with.

In the days after Mr. Obama’s speech on race last week, for example, links to the transcript and the video were the most popular items posted on Facebook. On The New York Times’s Web site, the transcript of the speech ranked consistently higher on the most e-mailed list than the articles written about the speech.

I think the reason is pretty clear; we are aware that punditry is not real information. "Political analyst" is a term thrown about with so little care and tossed on to so many talking heads on the churning 24 hour news that many don't trust that the "analysis" we're getting. We have seen why we need to go to the source document, and its not because the dust of history has clouded meaning, but because the slime and mud of the pundits has obscured the truth of each action and word.

Maybe we should worry that the "real" news isn't getting through, that people of like minds will filter the news so that we only hear things that confirm what we already believe. Will the college student that only cares about football only get news from other friends that care about football? Maybe, but is that really any worse than the local news that feeds us soft stories from the national feed about rescued puppies rather than the violence is Darfur, Burma and Nepal?

I'm a young adult, and my friends are people I respect and like, and what they find interesting in the news is probably interesting to me too. My friends consistently care about what is going on in the wider world. I can't say the same for some media outlets that report international news with the sigh of a child cleaning her room.

Lots of people voted this past week.

Wisconsin Primary results
Obama 646,007
Clinton 452,795
Others 12,483
Total 465,278

McCain 224,226
Huckabee 151,201
Others 31,832
Total 407,259

Whats interesting is that the combined total for McCain and Huckabee is less than Clinton alone got. While the Republicans had only about 58 thousand less people, they had more people voting for someone other than the top two candidates. This has been a running trend, when both parties have their primaries on the same day the Democrats have a larger turnout than the Republicans. There could be many reasons for this. Maybe the Democratic race is inspiring more people to come out, but the Republican race is just as tight. I think its pretty clear that the middle of the political spectrum is not happy with the way the country has been run for the past seven years. And the result is more people showing up for the primaries in general and the Democratic primaries in specific.

But this was hardly the most exciting election that took place in the past week. Pakistan had an election and Musharraf's ruling party was soundly defeated. I can't find a reference right now, but I saw in the paper that the party received about 15% of the vote. Whats amazing to me is that the party has admitted defeat. But as I told my mother the other day, I'll really believe democracy has come to when someone else comes to power. Thats not to downplay what has finally happened in Pakistan, but rather to say that I don't trust Musharraf to not act like so many dictators that have come before and make some bid to hold on to power. I am cautiously optimistic about the democracy in Pakistan.

WaPo picks up PIN

Inhaling Pig Brains May Be Cause of New Illness

Fittingly, the first person to detect a faint signal in all the noise was the interpreter.

The 33-year-old woman who worked for eight years working with Spanish-speaking patients at a medical clinic in southern Minnesota noticed something familiar as she translated the story of a young meatpacker last September.

Earlier last summer, she had heard a version of it from two other workers at the same slaughterhouse, and had told it to their doctors, who were different from her current patient's. When the consultation was over, she pointed this out.

Nothing new in this Washington Post write up on PIN, but its nice to see a bigger paper pick this story up.

Pig Brain Mist and PIN

There are two write ups on this one; the secondary source is "Austin pork plant investigation zeroes in on pig brains" and the primary source is "Investigation of Progressive Inflammatory Neuropathy Among Swine Slaughterhouse Workers".

The Minnesota Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control have given an update on the disease down in Austin, Minnesota. The Star Tribune nails down the idea that has been floating in my head since I first heard about this.

Pigs and humans are such biologically similar mammals that researchers are trying to find ways to use pig organs to replace diseased human organs. So it's not surprising that if the immune system creates cells to attack proteins from pig neural tissue, those immune cells might also attack human neural tissue as well, experts said.

If the body is attacking an influx of nervous tissue from pig brains, it isn't much of a leap for that same attack to be wrongly redirected to the body's own nervous tissue. Our bodies are very good at attacking invading infections, but unfortunately when that system turns back on the body things go badly. See lupus, MS and Chrohn's.

I don't think that we evolved to be able to deal with liquefied and aerosolized brains. Touch them, eat them yes; inhale them, no. So it doesn't surprise me that things might go wrong. I wonder who came up with the idea of using air to remove the brain anyhow? Bet they feel pretty bad right now.

The experts have decided upon a name for the cluster of symptoms, progressive inflammatory neuropathy or PIN for short. They looked at other large slaughter plants in the US and found two more that were using pressurized air to blow the brains out.

To date, no cases of PIN have been identified in association with workers at the Nebraska plant. However, several workers at the Indiana plant have been preliminarily identified with neurologic illnesses and similar histories of exposure to head-processing activities at that slaughterhouse. Further assessments of these patients, and additional measures to identify other workers with illness, are being conducted in Indiana. As a result of this investigation, all three plants have stopped using compressed air to extract brain material.

The health officials are also looking to talk to anyone who has worked at the Austin plant since the air pressure system was installed a decade ago. The problem is that the job has a high turn over rate, with many of the workers being immigrants. In December of 2006 a different meat packing plant in another small Minnesota town was raided by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and took away hundreds of workers. So finding everyone that worked at the Austin plant over the past decade is impossible from the start. Which means there is a chance that there is someone out there who might never figure out why their limbs stop working and go weak.

Revere over at Effect Measure has a post about this too. Revere is a public health scientist and credits the medical specialist who was seeing several of the patients. A very good post from a blogger I really like.

Bush and Pepfar

In Global Battle on AIDS, Bush Creates Legacy

Nearly five years later, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — Pepfar, for short — may be the most lasting bipartisan accomplishment of the Bush presidency.

I don't know about that. This god damn war in Iraq had more support from congressional Democrats than any of them are willing to admit. Lets say that it may be the most lasting peaceful accomplishment of the Bush presidency. But even the peaceful things that this president has managed to do have not been unmarred by his illogical ideological roots.

Critics, including Mr. Kerry, are particularly incensed by the requirement that one-third of the prevention funds be spent teaching abstinence, despite a lack of scientific consensus that such programs reduce the spread of H.I.V.

When a Ugandan AIDS activist, Beatrice Were, denounced the abstinence-only approach at an international AIDS conference last year, she received a standing ovation. Paul Zeitz, executive director of the Global AIDS Alliance, an advocacy group here in Washington, says the Bush program has been hamstrung by “ideologically driven policies.”

Think about how much could have been done with that third that had to be spent on abstinence. The abstinence funding is only in there because the Christian right, like so many other fundamentalist groups, is anti-sex. And that Christian right is the base of Bush's popular support. There is no proof that abstinence education helps decrease premarital or extramarital sex, not here in the US among teens or else where to stop the spread of AIDS.

I will, grudgingly give Bush some props for sending money to help AIDS patients around the world. Some money, even money tied to the stupid abstinence programs, is better than none.

It wont make up for the god damn war though. And it wont make up for torture, trashing civil liberties, putting conservative judges on the SCOTUS, letting New Orleans drown and all the other shit he's pulled. Wont even come close.

Obama and Huckabee

Another story I shouldn't have to provide a link for; Obama and Huckabee win their respective primaries in Iowa. I'll do some health stuff tomorrow.

I have to admit that I didn't really have a preference among the top three Democrats. Clinton, Edwards and Obama all seemed like good choices. Sure there were differences, but in my mind those different strengths and weaknesses seemed to equal out. The results in Iowa are terribly close between Edwards and Clinton, with 744 and 737 state delegates respectively. As for the number of delegates that will be chosen to go on to Denver, Obama gets 16, Edwards gets 14 and Clinton gets 15. Every where I see is reporting that, but I don't see an explanation for the 14 v 15 numbers.

Huckabee's win is a bit more interesting. The demographics of the win show that much of his support was evangelicals. So the obvious question is how well is that going to work for him in New Hampshire? I don't really know, but the lack of passion for any of their candidates that the Republican voters are showing is probably not a bad thing for the Dems. Besides, Huckabee is kinda nuts. Its like going to the other party's primary and voting for the crazy you know your party can beat, except they did it themselves.

But keeping in mind the post earlier this week questioning how representative the Iowa caucuses and straw poll are, we have to remind ourselves that this is Iowa. While the people there take very seriously their role in the election cycle, it really isn't a very representative sample. No one state can be.

Sit tight, this is just getting good.

PS: I'm still giggling at Wonkette's Merry Fifth Place to Ron Paul.

Maybe not CIDP, but still bad

Pork-plant ailment a mystery again

The Department of Health has backed off from the initial diagnosis of CIDP. That said they do have another case, bringing the total up to 12 people.

Key to differentiating the condition from CIDP is a characteristic of CIDP involving an interruption or blockage of the electrical signaling in and between nerves, Lachance said. Tests now show that none of the 11 workers has that problem, he said.

They do have damage to the nerve system caused by their immune systems, he said. But at this point it can be categorized generically only as an inflammatory response that is damaging the nerve sheaths, he said.

What I said before about the myelin sheath and Schwann cells being the target of the immune reaction is still true. My speculation about a connection to the Guillain-Barre syndrome and the 1976 swine flu vaccine is out the window though.

There is no doubt in my mind that this still has something to do with the fact that they were literally blowing the pigs brains out. What I would call aerosolized biological tissue, Norwegianity is calling "Brain Mist."

When solids are aerosolized they are able to get into places they normally wouldn't, such as the lungs. From there they can get into the blood stream and then strange things can happen.

Scratchtasia

Not exactly accurate, but good at getting one point across; some things should not be aerosolized.

Homeopathy, dilution is not the solution

Since I did science on Friday, I'm going to do some health today to make up for it. These two articles appeared in the Guardian only a few days apart. Homeopathy is "Western Medicine" in that it was invented by an Englishman, but it is not modern nor is it scientifically supported. Its a much bigger deal in England than it is here in the US. The first article is by Jeanette Winterson and is appropriately titled In defence of homeopathy. She starts, as many do, with an anecdote.

Picture this. I am staying in a remote cottage in Cornwall without a car. I have a temperature of 102, spots on my throat, delirium, and a book to finish writing. My desperate publisher suggests I call Hilary Fairclough, a homeopath who has practices in London and Penzance. She sends round a remedy called Lachesis, made from snake venom. Four hours later I have no symptoms whatsoever.

Interesting sure, but as the quote says "The plural of anecdote is not data." So lets get down to where Winterson starts talking about the real criticisms of homeopathy, mainly its use of absurdly diluted substances to treat illness.

Objections to homeopathy begin with what are viewed as the impossible dilutions of the remedies, so that only nano amounts of the original active substance remain, and in some cases are only an imprint, or memory. Yet our recent discoveries in the world of the very small point to a whole new set of rules for the behaviour of nano-quantities. Thundering around in our Gulliver world, we were first shocked to find that splitting the atom allowed inconceivable amounts of energy to be released. Now, we are discovering that the properties of materials change as their size reaches the nano-scale. Bulk material should have constant physical properties, regardless of its size, but at the nano-scale this is not the case. In a solvent, such as water, nano particles can remain suspended, neither floating nor sinking, but permeating the solution. Such particles are also able to pass through cell walls, and they can cause biochemical change.

The argument that water somehow remembers the chemical activity of a substance that was is absurd. If water remembered and acted like all the chemicals it had come into contact with you could be bathing in water that is going to act like Queen Victoria's stomach acid. I don't even know what the argument for their pills is. Winterson's use of the "nano" is an appeal to the authority of buzzwords that most people don't understand.

So, three days later Ben Goldacre asks if its A kind of magic? He discusses the placebo effect and regression to the mean as the real reasons that the anecdotes support homeopathy. He goes on to talk about how supporters of homeopathy react to this type of criticisms.

With alternative therapists, when you point out a problem with the evidence, people don't engage with you about it, or read and reference your work. They get into a huff. They refuse to answer calls or email queries. They wave their hands and mutter sciencey words such as "quantum" and "nano". They accuse you of being a paid plant from some big pharma conspiracy. They threaten to sue you. They shout, "What about thalidomide, science boy?", they cry, they call you names, they hold lectures at their trade fairs about how you are a dangerous doctor, they contact and harass your employer, they try to dig up dirt from your personal life, or they actually threaten you with violence (this has all happened to me, and I'm compiling a great collection of stories for a nice documentary, so do keep it coming).

They don't take it well. People don't tend to act rationally when defending something that isn't rational. Thats the nature of the beast, so I'm not surprised to find that he has been threatened. But the irrationality of the homeopaths is not the main point of his essay. The point is that homeopaths, like AIDS/HIV, evolution and global warming denialists, hurt science understanding of the general population.

By pushing their product relentlessly with this scientific flim-flam, homeopaths undermine the public understanding of what it means to have an evidence base for a treatment. Worst of all, they do this at the very time when academics are working harder than ever to engage the public in a genuine collective ownership and understanding of clinical research, and when most good doctors are trying to educate and involve their patients in the selection of difficult treatment options. This is not a nerdy point. This is vital.

There are many points on which I am willing to concede that science doesn't or can't know everything. But this is not one of them. A logical look at the dilutions says that homeopathy doesn't work the way it claims. Yet the idea persists. Part of me can understand the need to believe that something simple can cure us, but the logical part of me balks. And I can't ignore that no matter how I try.

When does a species cease to exist?

Off Endangered List, but What Animal Is It Now?

The historic Great Lakes wolf is an enigma, with scientists debating whether it is a subspecies of gray wolf or a distinct species. The Fish and Wildlife Service officially considers the western Great Lakes wolf a “distinct population segment” of the gray wolf, found in a discrete geographic area.

That population today is made up largely of hybrids between the gray wolf and coyote, but some 31 percent of the animals carry genetic material from the native wolf, which appears to no longer exist in pure form. The researchers analyzed mitochondrial DNA, inherited through the mother and often used to distinguish lineages in humans and animals, from 17 early-20th century wolves and 68 contemporary wolves.

I must admit I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, saving species from extinction resulting from human actions is a noble goal and one that we need to work harder on. On the other hand, there is a point at which a distinct species ceases to exist in a pure form. When that happens, in order for any part of the genome to survive, hybridization happens. There is a point at which it is too late to save a species, and if that species is so lucky as to have a near relative with whom to interbred, its better than going totally extinct.

So should the Great Lakes grey wolf, be taken off the endangered species list? I don't think so. The pure species is still endangered and very possibly totally extinct. The hybrids are not the same species, even if their genome is similar. Just because some animals out there are similar doesn't mean that the animal is safe. This isn't just about the loss of a set genome, its about the loss of an ecosystem and everyone in it. The existence of the hybrids does not change the ideals of the endangered species act.

There is something bigger here that I could talk about, either the political (This administration and their utter disregard for this sort of thing) or more philosophical about the change in populations over time as they interact with other species ( H. sapiens in this case). However an accident here at home has me a bit wiped out so we'll just have to live with the implication that I do in fact think deeper about these things.