Schizophrenia

by Martí­n Bonfil Olivera
Published in Milenio Diario, May 13, 2009

The relationship between Mexicans and science is schizophrenic. On the one side, we want to trust science, and on the other we deny its credibility.

In the wake of the recent outbreak of influenza, Mexican media demanded precise and fixed figures from day one, when the were impossible to have. Reporters demanded them in part by lack or knowledge about how science works, how it advances slowly and by successive approximations.

But the informative void was filled by another virus: conspiracy theories (mainly through e-mails or by word of mouth).

The majority of these were just simply absurd: the virus is an invention ("influenza my ass", López Obrador dixit); Obama brought the virus to Mexico; it was released as part of an agreement to reactivate world economy, at any cost; the outbreak was part of a strategy to scare Mexicans right before the July elections…

The problema is that in Mexico —and in a lot of other Countries— we lack a scientific culture that, beyond having or not certain knowledge, would allow us to distinguish between anecdotes or suppositions and verified data.

What we do have, certainlly, is an advanced "culture of distrust": when our expectations do not match, we deny the data, we accuse science of authoritarism and we tend to believe in complots.

As the eminent mexican pathologist Ruy Pérez Tamayo writes (La Crónica, May 8) "the handling of the necessary measures to face an epidemic is not only matter of logic and good intentions; it deals with actions based on a lot of accumulated experience through the years, on specific and well documented information, on a wisdom acquired in the books as well as in the field. For an emergency situation such as the one Mexico is going through, it is fundamental to trust authorities, especially when these are real experts with regards to the problem".

Unfortunately, our authorities have not earned that trust. Sadly, also, our culture of distrust makes us prefer conspiracy theories than trustful information.

Poor Mexico: so little science and such a taste for rumors!

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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Virus, science and society

by Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published on Milenio Diario, May 6, 2009

The influenza outbrake that has kept Mexico City - and the whole country - semi-paralyzed since April 24 leaves several points clear.

First, the outbreak was expected. Not necessarily in Mexico, or from viral sub-type H1N1 (the favorite candidate was H5N1 which caused the avian flu outbrake in 2006). But evolution, the nature of these viruses —promiscuity; fragmented genome; human, swine and avian hosts— and the natural history of influenza made it perfectly predictable that sooner or later we would be facing another pandemic.

Second, a problem of this magnitude its not only a scientific or medical matter: it affects the whole of society: economy, politics, diplomacy, daily living (we chilangos, inhabitants of Mexico city, know that well). International organisms (especially the World Health Organization) had the good sense to foresee and prepare measures to contain the inevitable: manuals, international agreements, labs, purchase of anti-viral drugs…

Mexico simply followed these indications —not ideally, but adequately, considering our limitations— when the outbreak data were clear.

Now there's talk of slowness in the response, but one of the bad things about an epidemic outbrake is that it cannot be recognized until it's there. To declare the alert before being sure was too high a risk (there are also those who say that the measures were excessive, but the virus could have been very lethal: H5N1 kills 50% of people infected.)

My usual readers know that I don't support Felipe Calderón, our non-legitimate president. But in this case, the actions of his government, as well as the ones from Marcelo Ebrard's (in Mexico City) were not only appropriate, but successful. The intellectual credit for this is for the international medical community; but the political credit is theirs.

The lessons from this situation are that we have to demand more support for scientific investigation and the reconstruction of a health system that works on prevention and research —not only in health attention. There's also a necessity of a much better communication strategy for authorities. And finally, an urgency to have more well prepared science journalists, to avoid the epidemy of conspiracy theories that only make social reaction much more difficult.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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Influenza and evolution

by Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published on Milenio Diario, April 29, 2009

The problem is that's what viruses are like: promiscuous and addicted to gambling. And that's what evolution is like, taking species trough twisted and unexpected roads. And that's what science is like, unable to advance on its own road, no less random, faster than it can, held up by its method, which demands it makes sure about what it knows up to that moment before taking the next step.

The influenza virus which is currently bothering us (family orthomyxoviridae, type A, the most common ones, that also infect birds, pigs and horses) is, as are all viruses, a protein capsule that contains genetic material; in this case, ribonucleic acid (RNA), the older and less stable cousin of DNA.That's part of the problem: RNA copying is less accurate: sometimes it adds, sometimes it substracts, and thus causes spontaneous mutations inside one species of viruses.

And if several different viruses infect one same cell, they can recombine, taking with them pieces of genetic information from the others. The virus that concerns us has genes from other influenza viruses that infect humans, pigs and birds. And it can continue changing. What's alarming is the fact that it has learned to jump from human to human (as was feared from bird flue in 2006).

Its last name H1N1 refers to two proteins of its surface: haemaglutinin (of which there are 15 variants; this is number 1), which the virus uses to bind to the cell it's going to infect, and neuraminidase (9 variants) which allow the new viral particles to come out of the infected cell without being stuck to it.

Oseltamivir (Tamiflu -do not self medicate!), one of the drugs that work against the current influenza virus, inhibits this enzyme, and prevents that the new viruses form disseminating.

Science, as evolution, is unpredictable. I can seem slow and expensive, but if James Watson and Francis Crick hadn’t discovered, 56 years ago, the DNA double helix, today we wouldn't have the molecular biology tools that allow us to study and fight this virus.

And if we do not widely invest in scientific investigation —as Barack Obama said, immediately backing his words by increasing his country's investing in science by 3 percent of USA's gross domestic product— we won't be able to fight future crises -whether they be health crises or any other type of crises.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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Bloody cataract

by Martín Bonfil Olivera

Published in Milenio Diario
April 22, 2009

The mistery started on 1922: Australian explorer Thomas Griffith Taylor discovered on Victoria's land, Antarctica, a blood-colored waterfall that emerged from below Taylor's glacier (named in his honor).

Initially it was thought that the color was caused by algae, but today we know that it's due to iron oxides. What produces them?

The current sprouts at certain times of the year from a sub-glacier water deposit: a little buried lake 1,300 feet under the ice. The glacier, an ice river that flows with geological slowness, covered the lake of sea water, encapsulating it two million years ago. In its inside, today hiper-salty, there is no oxygen nor light.

Although it's not possible to enter the lake, by analyzing the water that flows in the waterfall Jill Mikucki and her team of researchers from the Land and Planetary Science at Harvard University (Science, April 17) have found, with support from NASA, genetic evidence of different types of bacteria ("a bacterial consortium") that use sulfur compounds to oxidize iron present on the rock under the glacier as medium to survive in a cold environment that lacks light and oxygen.

We are accustomed to think that life only exists if there is oxygen, but this is only true for modern organisms. Microbes like bacteria and their cousins the archaea are much more ancient, and have more versatile metabolisms.

Plants use solar energy to manufacture food from carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (then we, the other living beings, oxidize this food, combining it with oxygen, to obtain the energy stored in them). But there are other ways to survive. Antarctic bacteria obtain energy through sulfur compounds and in the process they produce iron oxides.

What's fascinating is that the same thing could have happened 700 million years ago, when the seas were covered in ice. And the same thing could be happening in other worlds, like Jupiter's moon Europa, under whose cold surface there may be a sea housing microbial life.

The moral of this story is: you never know what can be discovered when investigating a bloody mistery.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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Me, myself and I

by Martín Bonfil Olivera

Published on Milenio Diario, April 15, 2009

Wisely, when many philosophies seem to seek its disappearance, my fellow columnist on Milenio Diario newspaper Braulio Peralta says, last Monday "Hurray for the self"!, since, whatever his followers say, "Buda could be nothing but his own self".

"With a self", Braulio says, corruption, for example, can be fought. If we deny it, it becomes impossible to defend "honesty, ethics, human rights".

The question of the self has fascinating facets also from the scientific point of view. How can a brain made of cells, in turn made of molecules, originate the subjective sensation that allows Descartes, and all of us ith him, to say "I think, therefore I am"? How can a material mass of tissue generate consciousness, a sensation of self, a soul?

The easiest answer is the dualist one: to suppose that something external, a soul or spirit, "enters" the brain and animates it. The brain is only the vehicle; the soul is immaterial and, since we're at it, immortal. Sounds nice.

The alternative, known as materialism, monism or naturalism, is more sensible, but has problems. One can explain how sensory stimuli are processed in a very complex way, in parallel, by different brain systems. But the problem really starts when explaining to whom the result of all of this processing is presented, giving us our subjective experience of the reality that surround us.

To postulate a "homunculus" that lives inside the brain is a return to dualism. Philosopher Daniel Dennett - whom I have mentioned a lot lately - proposes a stimulanting explanation in his book Consciousness explained: consciousness, the self, is a virtual phenomenon. It is not material, nor spiritual: it’s a consequence of the working of the brain that emerges in a superior level of organization. (Life is another example of an emerging phenomenon: it only exist in and above the cell level, not in atoms).

In some level of this processing, the brain starts to perceive itself, and that gives rise to the - virtual - sensation of conscience.

Sounds complex, but trying to understand the self, as difficult it may seen, will always be better - and more useful - that to deny it or to renounce to explain it. "Long live the self; and long live the naturalized soul!

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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The paradox of species

by Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published on Milenio Diario, April 8, 2009

The human brain tends to simplify. We like to understand things in terms of black and white, good or bad… And we also like to think that things can be defined with clarity: that they have an essence.

A problem when understanding Darwin's theory is the definition of biological species. Although Darwin himself avoided defining it ("…I look at the term species as one arbitrarily given, for the sake of convenience, to a set of individuals closely resembling each other, and that ...does not essentially differ from the term variety"', he wrote in The origin…), he didn't deny the existence of species. Nobody confuses dogs with horses, after all.

The usual criteria to define a species is "reproductive isolation": if two animals or plants cannot mate, or they produce sterile descendants, they belong to different species. But if, however, no matter how different they look, they can mate (like dog breeds), they belong to the same species.

But the reproductive criteria is not infallible (there are canine breeds that don't mate just due to reasons of size), and does not always apply: there are many asexual organisms; bacteria, for instance. Besides, as mentioned here in last week's post a lot of these organisms exchange genes "laterally" (not from parents to progeny, but by a mechanism similar to a "contagion"), so even a more modern criterion, such as gene analysis, does not always allow a clear distinction among species.

On the other hand, saying that "species evolve" is confusing: if a species changes, it turns into another one. So, do species change, or do they just disappear to leave room to other species?

The problem, philosopher Daniel Dennett explains in his revealing book Darwin's dangerous idea, is that what characterizes a species is not the presence of a certain essence that defines it, but the absence of the intermediate forms between one species and the other.

Species are not collections of identical organisms: they are more like clouds of individuals with almost identical genomes, but with little variations. We say that there are two distinct species when between two of these genome clouds there is an empty space; in the opposite case, we talk of varieties. As always, in science things are not as simple they are said to be.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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Darwin's little tree

by Martín Bonfil Olivera
Published in Milenio Diario, April 1, 2009

In 1837, returning from his five-year travel on board of theHMS Beagle, and starting the two decades he would spend thinking about the "transmutation of species", Charles Darwin wrote in his notebook the phrase "I think", and then he drew a little branched outline: the first evolutionary tree.

In 1859 he published The origin of species, and the only illustration he included was a more elaborate tree. Since then, the tree is evolution's dominant metaphor: a ramified process in which new species appear from pre-existent ones.

But attacking Darwin is a hobby few can resist, from fanatics that try to banish it to restless biologists that pretend to jump into fame by proving that some of his ideas are wrong.

And of course, there are a lot of aspects in which Darwin was wrong (his theory of heredity, for example, was way out of line). With time, the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection has been corrected, completed and fine tuned. Still, it remains as the backbone of modern evolutionary thinking.

Recently, New Scientist magazine published an article that caused an upstir, because it declared that the discovery of "horizontal gene transfer" (not from parents to descendants, but like that which occurs when two bacteria exchange antibiotic resistance genes, or when a virus injects genes from another species into us, as has happened lots of times in human evolution) is the downfall of the image of evolution as a tree.

But gene evolution is not the same as species evolution. Of course, evolution is not as simple as Darwin thought, and in some aspects it looks more like a confusing web than a tidy tree. There are branches that are weirdly connected one with another (like when some bacteria entered old cells to become our mitochondria and chloroplasts). Maybe the tree has more than one root (there is evidence for several "origins of life" that later became connected).

Maybe the tree metaphor will change, or will be substituted by a web. But from that to proclaiming "the end of Darwin" or biology's next great revolution, there's a long way to go.

(translated by Adrián Robles Benavides)

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