US science cuts pay for war – and we all suffer
Osama bin Laden may be dead, but the horrendous cost of pursuing the "war on terror" may give his followers cause for celebration
WHEN Osama bin Laden was killed earlier this year, many commentators saw it as a turning point in the war on terror. However, a host of measures suggest that bin Laden's goal - to strike a long-lasting blow to the system of government of the US and to the health and well-being of its citizens - may have been achieved.
Last month, the Eisenhower Research Project at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, released a report entitled "Costs of War", which estimates the cumulative cost of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to be up to $4 trillion.
What has this vast amount of money achieved? Both Iraq and Afghanistan continue to rank low in political freedom, warlords continue to control much of Afghanistan, and gender and ethnic segregation in Iraq are now worse than they were before 2001.
At the same time, the US economy is in trouble. Unless the country's debt ceiling is raised by 2 August, the US will default on several of its major financial commitments. Many of the key programmes that contribute to the quality of life of most Americans are under threat.
From a scientific perspective, the appropriations bills now before Congress suggest that the US's dire fiscal straits will inflict long-term damage to its technical leadership.
The House of Representative's Committee on Science, Space and Technology has recommended cancelling the James Webb Space Telescope, the successor to the fabulously successful Hubble Space Telescope, because of a cost overrun of $1.6 billion. If this project is cancelled, once Hubble reaches the end of its working life in 2014 we will lose our chance to witness the first moment in cosmic history when the sky lit up with stars, less than a billion years after the big bang.
Beyond the direct loss to science, we need to ask what the next generation of bright minds will lose. The remarkable images captured by Hubble have inspired a generation of people to dream about the universe and its myriad possibilities, and have doubtless inspired youngsters to consider a career in science.
For those of a more practical bent, funding for energy efficiency and renewables could be cut by a whopping 27.3 per cent. It is hard to imagine an applied research programme that is more relevant and important to the health and security of our society.
Cutting that funding is likely to have economic consequences too. In this highly competitive world, the country that leads the research and development in these areas will gain a huge advantage. One only has to consider the fraction of the US's gross domestic product that resulted from R&D a generation or two ago into technologies ranging from the transistor to the microchip.
If, as a consequence of a decade of unprecedented military spending, we are prepared to give up our grandest intellectual dreams while at the same time cutting efforts to solve the chief technological challenges we face, have we not lost far more than we may have we won?
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Anti-addiction drugs face more than medical issues
Should drug addicts be vaccinated to help them recover? Some authorities, such as bioethicist Arthur Caplan of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, have suggested coercing addicts into taking drugs like naltrexone, which curb the highs they crave.
The recent death of singer Amy Winehouse, who had well-documented problems with drugs and alcohol, and the publication last week of research on a heroin vaccine and an anti-cocaine drug, have again raised the question.
Kim Janda of the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, and his colleagues have created a vaccine cocktail that consists of a heroin-like hapten – a molecule that provokes the immune system – bound to a carrier protein and mixed with alum, an adjuvant that further stimulates the immune system.
The vaccine trains the immune system to swarm heroin molecules with antibodies, as though the drug were an invasive organism, thereby sequestering the drug in the bloodstream before it can reach the brain.
Craving curbed
Janda's team fitted rats with catheters that delivered a dose of heroin straight into the bloodstream whenever the rodents pushed a lever. All the unvaccinated rats pushed the heroin lever frequently and eagerly, whereas only three of the seven vaccinated rats dosed themselves like addicts (Journal of Medicinal Chemistry, DOI: 10.1021/jm200461m).
Zheng-Xiong Xi of the National Institute on Drug Abuse in Baltimore, Maryland, and his colleagues studied mice that, like the rats, were implanted with a catheter that delivered cocaine when they pushed a lever. Xi gave the rodent addicts a drug that binds the CB-2 cannabinoid receptors in the brain, inhibiting dopamine activity and thereby blunting the cocaine high.
Mice who received the anti-cocaine drug pushed the cocaine lever less frequently and did not scurry around as much as their high peers (Nature Neuroscience, DOI: 10.1038/nn.2874).
Partial success
If they were successfully adapted for people, both treatments would be very useful for addicts in therapy, to prevent slip-ups from becoming full-blown relapses. The vaccines against cocaine and nicotine that have been tested in clinical trials so far have failed to match the success of animal studies, only generating sufficient antibody levels in about one-third of the recipients.
But researchers remain invested in anti-addiction vaccines because unlike pharmaceuticals that act on the central nervous system, vaccines should produce fewer side effects and longer-lasting benefits.
One serious concern is that addicts will overdose in an attempt to overcome the blunting effect, or turn to other dangerous drugs. In one study, some cocaine addicts that received an experimental vaccine wound up with 10 times as much cocaine in their blood than usual in an attempt to get high. Such compensation is especially likely if the vaccine is implemented through legal coercion, which gives an addict the choice between jail or vaccine therapy.
"Before any vaccine is put on the market we need to get these ethical considerations worked out," says Kathleen Kantak of Boston University. "It should always be the individual's choice to be immunised. The treatments will only be successful if the individual is motivated to quit, otherwise they will find ways to get around it."
Wayne Hall at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, raises several ethical concerns about vaccines and pharmaceuticals aimed at addictive drugs. Although the antibodies that vaccines generate dwindle a few months after an injection, they never disappear completely. Potential employers could unfairly discriminate against past addicts if they detect such antibodies in a blood test.
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Read all about it: Why we have an appetite for gossip
Our disingenuity towards celebrity tittle-tattle is part of our evolutionary legacy
THERE are very few universal truths, but two relating to human behaviour are that farting is considered funny in all societies and that gossip occurs but is ostensibly always disapproved of. The evolutionary reason for the former is not clear, but the evolutionary reason for the latter becomes clear when one considers what is gossiped about.
Stripped down, gossip is largely about who is sleeping with who, who would like to sleep with who, and what the local pecking order is in terms of power and influence - which, of course, influences who is sleeping with who.
This explains the purpose of gossip and also the reason for its semi-secrecy and disapproval. In a society where there is competition for mates, it is clearly desirable to know who is available and who is not, who has power and who does not. It is also important not to convey your engagement in the process of assessing these factors since this would alert rivals to your interest. Deniability of interest is therefore part of the process.
Gossip is probably a large part of the reason for the evolution of our large cerebral cortex. In our evolutionary past, reproductive success depended in large part on our ability to navigate the complexities of tribal life. Those who were best at identifying mates without unnecessary conflict would have had a considerable advantage in reproduction.
Gossip evolved in a village society where everybody knew everybody else and successful navigation of local political complexities had a direct impact on reproductive success. In our global village, this need is now satisfied in part by the tabloid press. Our interest in the peccadilloes and misbehaviour of celebrities and politicians, and our purchase, sometimes surreptitiously, of tabloid newspapers and gossip magazines is an evolutionary hangover from a time when knowing who was sleeping with who in our village was important.
We might be ashamed of it, but our brains were designed to lap it up. In buying tabloid newspapers and celebrity magazines, we are satisfying a primal evolutionary need.
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Could 'Caylee's law' on reporting child death work?
Parents should go to jail if they fail to report the death of their child within 2 hours. That is the proposal gaining support in the US after Casey Anthony, a mother charged with murdering her 2-year-old daughter Caylee, was found not guilty two weeks ago.
Yet scientists approached by New Scientist say such a law could not be feasibly upheld.
Much public outrage hinges on the fact that Anthony did not report her child missing for a month. This would become a felony under the proposed law.
But is it possible to estimate time of death accurately enough soon after a death? "It's very unrealistic," says Ralph BouHaidar, a forensic pathologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK. "We tend to be good at determining time of death in the first 24 to 48 hours, but even then we estimate it plus or minus a couple of hours," he says.
What's more, this estimation is based on research on adults, making it less reliable for children. The proposed law is now under review in over 30 states.
