http://www.thephysicsforum.com/trash-can/121-ctmu-b-s-brilliant.html
This is a thread on a grand theory of reality by Chris Langan, purported IQ 180+, which Langan claims is based on pure logic. Yet, I rather suspect some lapses in logic. Plus, it's deliberately written in a manner contrived to exhaust the reader. Nevertheless, the last post on the thread above quite annoys me: a debate on science is here ended because it is not based on "current scientific understanding." Does the moderator not realize that this understanding is always evolving when it is not revolutionizing? Science that stands still is dead. Also, the thread contains no substantive criticisms of the grand theory--that is, no indication that the theory is even out of the bound of current understanding. But, it's not PC--he claims to prove God's existence, and the big no-no that tends to follow, intelligent design. Also, he favors eugenics.
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Showing posts with label science. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 3, 2013
Thursday, September 12, 2013
Known and Unknown Possibilities
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2010/07/assortative-mating-regression-and-all.html
Note that the .5-.7 estimate is based on how much assortative mating has occurred among each parent's ancestors (more past assortative reproduction raises the estimate).
In the distance, thunderings and flashings of the overman:
http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2012/06/plenty-of-room-at-top.html
Average person=1000 deleterious mutations affecting IQ. Top hundredth of a percent IQ=900 such deleterious mutations.
And if we did a few dozen rounds of in vitro eugenic breeding (iterated embryo selection, IES), how much might this number be reduced? Of course, other genetic goals would receive some priority as well (eg, girls should be blessed with Marilyn Monroe's physical attributes). The principle limit on this technology may well be lack of knowledge of the phenotypic effects of various genes and gene-gene interactions. Some mathematical problems cannot be solved--experiments become necessary. Extrapolating the recent rate of progress, I suspect IES will be feasible within 10 years, though it will be suboptimal at least with respect to the gaps in our knowledge of which genes do what. And on the non-linearity problem, Hsu said, "Most of the genetic variation in intelligence is additive...fortunately for us linear effects still dominate the population variation* of quantitative traits. As any engineer or physicist can attest, linearity is our best friend :-)" Inescapable non-linearity, tragically, renders climate predictions invalid.
One problem with Hsu's analogy of this process with plant breeding: the ethical environment is completely different. Blind alleys in plant breeding are merely a waste of resources; in humans, they may entail great suffering.
But, the potential effects, as derived from such analogies, are spectacular: 32 SD increase in corn oil production per plant (an effort still making progress), an increase in flying speed of certain flies from 2.2 to 170 cm/sec in 100 generations of directed breeding without significant downsides on other characteristics.
There is a prevalent sense among neurologists that human intelligence has already undergone intense evolutionary selection and that it is subject to certain physical limits. These points are relevant to neuro-eugenic prospects. Hsu in the comments responds to this: "the results imply lots of extant variation to work with. Just imagine flipping all the (-)'s to (+) in a particular person. You get a lot more than +5 SDs." Hsu in the comments: "One important aspect of the toy model I discuss in the talk is that if it is correct, then any couple has the potential of producing a nearly max IQ child, because there will be little overlap between the locations of their (-) alleles." Aha! The path around reproductively negligent female geniuses.
A finely compacted interview of Hsu on his genetics work:
http://intelligence.org/2013/08/31/stephen-hsu-on-cognitive-genomics/
Note that China is financing a major attempt to take the lead in practical human eugenics.
His recent intelligence and heritability presentation (less compacted):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgCSkGeBUNg&t=5m2s
In sum, this strikes me most forcefully--I had been unaware of the nearness of eugenic capacities--also unaware of their probable potential in the neurological realm. To paraphrase Boswell, my thoughts upon this awful change are in general full of wild apprehensions. This presages a Turn in human affairs, like to surpass all that came before. The implications are all-encompassing.
Tuesday, June 18, 2013
Vigorous Intertwinings
Even the purest abstractions cannot escape the contingencies of reality, math and physics as co-dependents:
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
How to Proselytize
HBD means human biological diversity, that is, different races are...uh...different, including genetically.
Basically, to achieve persuasion, he's saying Don't Be An Autist: people respond to emotional manipulation, not logical manipulation. He is right. Political Correctness is a religion. Religions are built on faith. And faith founds itself on emotion. Transform their emotional relation to the topic and they become converts. Expose them to logical fallacies and they retreat into emotional denial. The fact that logic and science happen to be on our side ought not to be a disadvantage--though, in the wonderful world of propaganda it's often irrelevant.
Sunday, August 5, 2012
Whispers of Fathomable Potencies
The author, Greg Cochran, a physicist
by training who transitioned into genetics and anthropology, is one of our most
innovative scientific thinkers. The main insight here is that much is already
possible in this direction, and other elements are probably close. China has
major research efforts into human intelligence currently underway. Another
blogger I read, Steve Hsu, a physics professor at Oregon, http://infoproc.blogspot.com/, is
involved in consulting on one of their projects. After seeking samples
worldwide, they are now sequencing the genomes of people with 145+ IQs (top
tenth of a percent). That's a 1480 on the old SAT (Harvard's average was 1350).
If we continue to play our petty social status games, for example political
correctness, we will not only be outcompeted--"we will sleep with the
Neanderthals."
Tuesday, November 1, 2011
This is the Way the World Ends
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/magazine/how-ready-are-we-for-bioterrorism.html?pagewanted=1&ref=magazine&adxnnlx=1320145648-K5idnXUdyKqBqlIIQsGvhw
The Bio-Defense establishment’s official position seems to be that a smallpox outbreak would be the worst case scenario bioattack. The article mentions a simulation of such an attack done a few years ago, which concluded that a million Americans would die. Calling this the “worst case” might be right if the simulation were modified to “a genetically engineered smallpox outbreak”—the toll would be higher. No one knows by how much!
Diseases can be “improved” for virulence or communicability or survivability or vaccine resistance or treatment resistance—or, theoretically, any other imaginable traits—by means of genetic manipulations. This has been possible since the 70s. And, today, it’s not even difficult to modify diseases. It is difficult, however, to achieve genetic modifications that will produce desired results. That is, transposing genes within an organism’s DNA, as a mechanical operation, is cheap and easy. Finding out which modifications will “improve” the beast remains difficult and expensive because so many non-linear variables come into play, and precise calculation of their interactions is impossible—the Soviets had to do extensive animal testing to determine what effects various modifications would have when exposed to animal immune systems and the natural environment. So, the worst case might involve a more virulent, more communicable disease not susceptible to conventional treatment, a disease that might kill far more than a million Americans. Even back in the 60s, per the article, before genetic engineering was possible, America had achieved weaponized tularemia (presumably by means of rapid, selective, experimentally-guided evolution) to the point that 50 pounds of it, properly disseminated, would wipe out 60% of a megacity.
Protection against crude attacks with unmodified agents may well provide a high probability of effective defense for a couple more decades (though something more than a black swan risk is present already). The Muslim world is unlikely to muster anything but amateur-hour efforts within this time frame. Attacks from other quarters are improbable. But, back to the lingering black swans. The thing is, there are multiple black swan risks out there. A sample of contingencies: an accidental release of a bio-agent from a government lab (dozens of governments work on dangerous pathogens, offensively or defensively, and America alone has dozens of such labs), a pathogen developed in an “entrepreneur’s” garage and released, a deliberate release into the environment that escapes intended limits (eg, a controlled test of pathogen characteristics), a government employee deliberately steals, then sells or releases a bio-agent.
The article discusses the dilemma of whether to focus resources on vaccine defenses or therapeutic defenses. Yet it fails to mention one of the prime determinants of the relative efficacy of these two approaches: the impact of the threat of genetically modified disease agents. Do vaccines against the variola major strain of small pox, for example, have a high probability of success against a genetically modified variant of the disease? And how difficult, in the context of a bio-arms race, would it be to develop small pox variants that would resist a known, stockpiled vaccine? I suspect the answers to these questions, if they’ve been considered and if they’re knowable, are classified.
The article concludes with a hint at the clash between political decision-making processes and cost-benefit processes. What translates into political capital tends to starve ugly, obscure issues until the piper comes round at last. “How to balance the unlikely but catastrophic potential of bioterror with the steady advance of natural disease is one of the most puzzling challenges for biodefense policy going forward.” This is an unavoidable question, except I would say the “steady retreat of natural disease.” The only significant inroads natural disease has made in the last 100 years are those related to poor nutrition—consequent upon mere stupidity (including the stupidity or conspiracy of doctors) and torpor. Natheless, sichlike common health issues, never out of sight and never out of mind, exert great gravitational pull on the common politician.
Another part of the problem seems to be a matter of bureaucratic influence on policy decisions—like this Fauci genius spending 70% of biodefense funding on common diseases afflicting public health. Fauci is a public health bureaucrat, not a defense bureaucrat—so he spends what he can on public health. Bureaucrats generally fit the mold of defective wind-up toys—little action, no thought. Also, moving up a notch to the political sphere, it’s lovely to discover that Obama has ended centralized direction of biodefense. What we have is a few part-timers in the White House overseeing the program and trying to coordinate multiple mutually antagonistic bureaucracies. Well, I suppose it’s over-optimistic to expect Obama to take an interest in something other than handouts and labor unions.
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
--Gerontion
History has many cunning passages, contrived corridors
And issues, deceives with whispering ambitions,
Guides us by vanities. Think now
She gives when our attention is distracted
And what she gives, gives with such supple confusions
That the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late
What’s not believed in, or if still believed,
In memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon
Into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with
Till the refusal propagates a fear. Think
Neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices
Are fathered by our heroism. Virtues
Are forced upon us by our impudent crimes.
These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
--Gerontion
Sunday, October 23, 2011
Confirmation of Global Warming
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204422404576594872796327348.html
The assessment done by this team looks thorough and convincing. They limited themselves to determining the degree and the certainty of warming over land. Given the complexities of the historical data, a careful methodology is necessary and was here applied. The results confirm the warming trend found by prior analyses. They did not look into the causes.
As I've said since at least 2005, we ought to get cracking on this. At a minimum, there is a significant probability that warming has primarily anthropogenic causes. The results of warming are potentially catastrophic. Therefore, as insurance against the possibility of catastrophe, we ought to make an effort to reduce likely causes of warming.
To do this requires, optimally, several steps for America:
First, persuade the public of the reality of climate risks and their probable causes.
Second, impose a tax regime on greenhouse gas emissions that provides for slowly increasing taxes over 20+ years--roughly to the point that the price of coal-based energy doubles and gasoline price rises $2-3/gal over market levels.
Third, greatly increase spending on basic scientific research that may be relevant to producing less polluting energy--$50+ billion a year. Probably the foci ought to be on nuclear power, solar power, electrification of transport, batteries for transport and the electric grid, building efficiency, offshore wind power, underground emissions sequestration, and perhaps methods of pulling CO2 from the atmosphere.
Fourth, take further measures to encourage the private development and deployment of clean energy systems, to include ensuring strategic clean energy industries remain onshore (without which presence innovation will diminish and public support decline).
Fifth, optimize and impose new regulations for houses and buildings to improve their energy efficiency--and incentivize retrofits of existing structures.
Sixth, pay nations to sustain their forests.
Seventh, come to an agreement with other climate change mitigating nations to phase in tariffs on imports from nations that do not attempt to control their emissions (exemptions possible for desperate nations).
Of these efforts, I consider the first, third and fourth the most important. They are the steps that can be leveraged to generate global impact--a sine qua non for success in climate change mitigation. Also, America has a comparative advantage over other nations in these areas--we are best in the world at basic science and, especially, innovation. The cheap solar, cheap-safe nuclear, cheap batteries that we invent and commercialize would benefit the rest of the world--whether we sell to them or they steal from us.
So far, through the eras of Clinton, Bush II, Obama--we have done about one tenth of what I recommend on steps 3 and 4. We have attempted no more. The major part of the political class, including the named Commanders, have evinced nought but cowardice before this challenge. This is a national security issue, as the Pentagon recognized formally years ago. Everyone agrees on the existence of at least one governmental obligation: the provision of security against internal and external threats. This is both types of threat, yet the government sits stupidly, watches it grow monstrous and risks letting it become unstoppable.
The assessment done by this team looks thorough and convincing. They limited themselves to determining the degree and the certainty of warming over land. Given the complexities of the historical data, a careful methodology is necessary and was here applied. The results confirm the warming trend found by prior analyses. They did not look into the causes.
As I've said since at least 2005, we ought to get cracking on this. At a minimum, there is a significant probability that warming has primarily anthropogenic causes. The results of warming are potentially catastrophic. Therefore, as insurance against the possibility of catastrophe, we ought to make an effort to reduce likely causes of warming.
To do this requires, optimally, several steps for America:
First, persuade the public of the reality of climate risks and their probable causes.
Second, impose a tax regime on greenhouse gas emissions that provides for slowly increasing taxes over 20+ years--roughly to the point that the price of coal-based energy doubles and gasoline price rises $2-3/gal over market levels.
Third, greatly increase spending on basic scientific research that may be relevant to producing less polluting energy--$50+ billion a year. Probably the foci ought to be on nuclear power, solar power, electrification of transport, batteries for transport and the electric grid, building efficiency, offshore wind power, underground emissions sequestration, and perhaps methods of pulling CO2 from the atmosphere.
Fourth, take further measures to encourage the private development and deployment of clean energy systems, to include ensuring strategic clean energy industries remain onshore (without which presence innovation will diminish and public support decline).
Fifth, optimize and impose new regulations for houses and buildings to improve their energy efficiency--and incentivize retrofits of existing structures.
Sixth, pay nations to sustain their forests.
Seventh, come to an agreement with other climate change mitigating nations to phase in tariffs on imports from nations that do not attempt to control their emissions (exemptions possible for desperate nations).
Of these efforts, I consider the first, third and fourth the most important. They are the steps that can be leveraged to generate global impact--a sine qua non for success in climate change mitigation. Also, America has a comparative advantage over other nations in these areas--we are best in the world at basic science and, especially, innovation. The cheap solar, cheap-safe nuclear, cheap batteries that we invent and commercialize would benefit the rest of the world--whether we sell to them or they steal from us.
So far, through the eras of Clinton, Bush II, Obama--we have done about one tenth of what I recommend on steps 3 and 4. We have attempted no more. The major part of the political class, including the named Commanders, have evinced nought but cowardice before this challenge. This is a national security issue, as the Pentagon recognized formally years ago. Everyone agrees on the existence of at least one governmental obligation: the provision of security against internal and external threats. This is both types of threat, yet the government sits stupidly, watches it grow monstrous and risks letting it become unstoppable.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Death by Office Chair, Death by Shift Work
|
I'm surprised they found such a strong correlation here. It looks to be a quality study. Even the physically active have a 40% kick-up in mortality between the never-sitters and the almost always sitters. For the obese it's much worse: the mortality rate jumps fourfold. Most of the increase in risk for all sub-categories occurs between those sitting half the day and those sitting all day. So, if you keep to your feet half the day, you avoid almost all of the risk from sitting. This may be part of the reason: "Marc Hamilton, Ph.D., one of Katzmarkzyk’s colleagues, suspects it has to do with an enzyme called lipoprotein lipase (LPL), which breaks down fat in the bloodstream and turns it into energy. Hamilton found that standing rats have ten times more of the stuff coursing through their bodies than laying rats. It doesn’t matter how fit the rats are; when they leave their feet, their LPL levels plummet. Hamilton believes the same happens in humans." It may be that inadequate LPL causes blood fats to accumulate in the bloodstream, which may cause an inflammatory or clotting effect.
There was also another study on this issue, comparing street car or trolley drivers who stood on the job and bus drivers who sat. All I remember is that it appeared to be a well-controlled study, the standers lived 5 years longer than the sitters, and most of the sitters' excess mortality was from cardiovascular disease. One more touchstone worthy of mention is a study, at least reasonably well-controlled, that indicated a 5 year survival advantage for those who consistently slept well and at night compared to those who slept poorly most of the time. |
Sunday, January 2, 2011
Attempting Science
|
This guy overstates the case, but I look forward to reading his book to find what sort of evidence he can muster. Also, it hardly surprises me that an evolutionary biologist would notice some of the advantages of a paleo diet and lifestyle.
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Monday, November 22, 2010
IQ and Infectious Disease
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/early/2010/06/29/rspb.2010.0973.full
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2010/07/reader-writes-in-reference-to-new-paper.html
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2010/07/guardian-lower-iqs-found-in-disease.html
http://www.economist.com/node/16479286
Science as the Evasion of Science by Means of Political Correctness
The first link is to a recent paper on the link between infectious disease rates in different nations and their IQ levels. They found a correlation of r = -.82 (the closer to -1, the stronger the negative correlation). They then mention, in passing, this curious inconvenience:
Truly, it must be a bit discouraging for scientists to have to write such weak stuff. But, if you want to be published in "mainstream" journals, the proper political mask must be donned--howsoever ridiculous it may be. After all, in our time, this does not count as stupidity among one's peers. It's only convention, habit, a matter of rote--and barely distracts the conscious mind for a moment. Enough.
My rebuttal to their "reasons" for not analysing the skin color factor:
It scarcely matters what specific infectious diseases skin color may be a marker of--darker skin is known to be associated with enhanced protection from infectious disease in general. This leads to the inference that the pressures exerted by Darwinian selection in equatorial regions favored those with stronger immune systems, the added strength of which may have diverted resources from the highly resource intensive human brain. Those who allocate their energetic resources optimally for their environment survive and reproduce most successfully, enacting natural selection. Dark skin is genetically determined. The same forces which caused the evolution of dark skin may very well, by this logic, have caused a genetically determined reduced allocation of resources to the brain development of dark skinned people. It looks as though some IQ is given up at the genotypic level and, for those still exposed to equatorial disease rates, still more IQ is given up at the phenotypic level when children must fight off diseases. The different degree of exposure to infectious disease in childhood may provide part of the explanation for the IQ differences between Africans raised in developed nations and those still living in Africa. African-Americans (and African-Dutch and African-English) run at about 83-86 on IQ tests, indigenous Africans manifest, for various reasons, a large range of 64-82. In contrast to the evolutionary pressures faced by the dark skinned equatorial dwellers, those who left Africa 60,000 years ago and migrated north confronted a harsher environment which may have constrained them to evolve more intelligence than their tropical ancestors had required. Reduced UV exposure coterminously caused evolution of lighter skin. I think this constitutes a "reasonable theoretical framework." It's called The Theory of Evolution.
Another sign that their chosen leading predictor of IQ may be second best is the major group of outliers that can be seen in Figure 1 of the paper. These countries have IQs about 15-25 points lower than their disease rates would predict. They happen to be a group of African-populated Caribbean countries with relatively low disease rates, yet IQs consistent with those found in disease-ridden Africa. The authors' "explanation": "Because these outliers are in the same geographical location, it is possible that local parasites that are not included in the DALY owing to infectious disease variable are causing these outliers." That's it. No notice that these countries are not outliers when skin color and IQ are graphed. I might add that the authors are quite lucky that American blacks never founded their own nation in N America. If you add American, Dutch, English blacks to their graph these groups would also constitute a group of major outliers about 15 IQ points below their disease-predicted levels. By comparison, East Asian nations end up 11 IQ points above their disease-predicted levels (there does appear to be a latitudinal or racial gradient for IQ in East Asia, which, when accounted for, leaves little if any predictive power to disease). Europeans are close to their predicted levels. Another point is that, in comparing Sub-Saharan African nations, no IQ-disease relationship visible in the data. Given the skin color similarity, this is perhaps unsurprising. The virtual absence of an IQ-disease relationship once nations are grouped according to skin color is rather striking. This absence is true in groups comprising Sub-Saharan Africa, N Europe, S Asia, NE Asia, and SE Asia. The lack of relationship in S America (inclusive of the Caribbean) is so obvious that the authors admit to it themselves. There seems to be some disease-IQ relationship in S Europe (which would make them an anomaly, the exception that proves my proposed rule that the authors thesis lacks a sound basis in the data presented).
What do we have left of the original thesis? This: infectious disease rates may be considered a proxy for skin color in most places. Those cases where they are not a proxy (eg, blacks in rich northern countries or healthy caribbean ones) may reveal the racial component in genetic IQ determination. Since both infectious disease rates and skin color are latitudinally determined in most cases, the clearest way to reveal the relative causal power of these two factors would be to find instances where either disease or skin color are not in line with what is typical of a given latitude. In Singapore, we have a case of equatorial latitude, but low disease prevalence (2.7) and light skin (most being of Chinese extraction). Result (with both factors in its favor): average IQ 108, the highest in the world and 17 points higher than disease levels predict--as much as a 17 point racial bonus, though some of this is certainly non-racially determined. Surrounding Singapore, Malaysia is almost half lighter-skinned Chinese, the rest darker indigenous Malays, with a disease level (3.2) somewhat higher. IQ is 92, 6 points higher than disease-predicted. Another Chinese-based racial bonus?
Nations in the following graph (I made it based on the paper's data) are all of the 18 non-African nations with the highest disease burden (3.5-4.4, compared to the 4.2-4.8 range in black Africa), the closest disease-based comparison to sub-Saharan Africa.
High Disease Non-African Nations:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S290610_-A9
First, and once again, there is little disease-predicted IQ relationship to be seen here. Second, on average these unhealthy nations have IQs 5.5 points higher that predicted by the disease-IQ correlation. By comparison, black Africa is 4.5 points lower than predicted. In other words, these unhealthy non-African nations had IQs measuring 85, the black African nations measured 68--a 17 point difference--whereas according to the disease-IQ theory the numbers should have been 79.5 and 72.5, which would be a 7 point disease-created difference. Could it be that black Africans have a more serious case of melanin over-determination? Amusingly, the only two non-African nations actually within the black African disease range (4.2-4.8) are Cambodia (4.2, IQ 91) and Afghanistan (4.4, IQ 84). These are the two most direct comparisons with black Africa and they clock in at 16 and 23 points higher than black African average IQ. It's difficult to think of any IQ relevant advantages those two have over Africa. Except skin color, of course.
So, when we compare black African IQs to the 18 globally scattered nations with similar disease burdens, African IQs fall well short of the expected level, insofar as disease is at all determinative. And when we compare blacks in various rich countries with low disease burdens to other races in such places we find that blacks fall 10-15 points short. The consistency of this shortfall in every study and every environment of which I am aware is quite impressive.
The ironic thing about this post is that I've followed the data in a direction that surprises me. As an a priori matter, I expected infectious disease to be a major factor in creating IQ deficits. But, once race is accounted for, it looks as though the impact is limited. With uncontrolled studies like this (ones without good control groups), one can only estimate the degree of causation behind disparate IQ levels. And different causes will have more influence in some nations than others. In America, infectious disease levels are low and therefore cannot explain much of any deficit that may exist. For the black American deficit vis-a-vis white Americans other causal factors must be sought. Besides, as the authors commendably note, there are multiple other factors, known and unknown, that influence the phenotypic expression of the genetically-determined IQ potential. Nutrition, education, wealth, pollution exposures, stress levels (like growing up in a war zone), mental stimulus in the environment, familiarity with testing--it's likely that all of these elements (and probably others) play a role in achieving one's genetically-determined potential IQ. Disentangling the relative causal power of each factor will only ever be an exercise in estimations. All of these factors have improved in those places (all rich countries) where the Flynn effect (IQ scores rising 2-3 points per decade over the last 100 years) has been observed.
Various studies have come up with an IQ heritability number of about 80% for adults (even the red-tainted NY Times assents to this established figure). The main qualification of this number is that it presumes a similarly favorable environment for the parents and children. The Flynn effect makes for a secondary qualification, though the IQ increases seen in the developed world are diminishing. These stable, favorable conditions are found in the rich world, not in the third world. If you have black African parents with typical 68 IQs, roughly 30% of IQ variation would be genetic. Black Americans with typical 84 IQ parents might have 80% of their IQ genetically determined--though this percentage might be lower for the extremely poor. Basically, the worse your environment, the less influential genes are in finalizing your IQ and the more influential is the environment.
On the whole, analyzed critically, this paper is useful in diagnosing some of the problems causing low IQ. It would have been rather better had it presented a proper statistical analysis of the race-IQ correlation compared to the disease-IQ correlation. This would have provided a clearer view of the proportion of IQ lost to disease. Nevertheless, disease certainly takes its toll on a phenotypic level. And, whether the worst effected lose 3 points or 15 points (I suspect it's about 6-8 points in the worst areas, though the paper implicitly claims something like 12-15 points), it's worth funding corrective measures. Bill Gates has explained that this is part of the rationale for his multi-billion dollar effort to cure the major diseases of black Africa. On a return on investment (ROI) basis, even if African lives are valued at relatively low dollar amounts, this area has been hugely underfunded for decades. Gates knows this too. Unfortunately, most NGOs are mismanaged by mediocrities and timeservers ducking the challenges of private sector competition. The non-profit sector of the economy is flabby and incompetent precisely because they are not forced into fitness by the competitive forces of capitalism--the only thing (some of them) compete for is handouts--and this is the only thing most are good at, coincidentally--as Gates also knows and even, delightfully, says. Not only is the money for poor countries' assistance misspent, but too little is allocated to begin with. The other source of funds, rich country governments, also have the very same competency problems common to all non-competitive enterprises and have historically done little good (though there be exceptions, esp work on eradicating small pox and polio). If black Africa were at the IQ levels of black Americans (84), they would then be at the same level as these countries: Brazil, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco. All are in better shape than black Africa--Brazil and Mexico have progressed so far as to escape into the second world. There are also a couple of failed or failing states at that IQ level (Afghanistan and Pakistan), nor is IQ anywhere near the sole determinant of national success (or any other success). My contention: a reasonable national IQ is necessary, but not sufficient.
A few graphs I created from the paper's data, broken down into world regions (and skin color), showing, except in S Europe, limited IQ-disease correlation once region/race are accounted for:
Sub-Saharan Africa and Black Caribbean nations:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S290505LvL5
NE Asia:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S290517b9r1
SE Asia:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S290519Fue6
S Europe:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S290611C5lb
N Europe:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S290612tTHr
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2010/07/reader-writes-in-reference-to-new-paper.html
http://isteve.blogspot.com/2010/07/guardian-lower-iqs-found-in-disease.html
http://www.economist.com/node/16479286
Science as the Evasion of Science by Means of Political Correctness
The first link is to a recent paper on the link between infectious disease rates in different nations and their IQ levels. They found a correlation of r = -.82 (the closer to -1, the stronger the negative correlation). They then mention, in passing, this curious inconvenience:
Yes, skin pigmentation is a stronger predictor of international IQ differences than any other factor yet discovered. The second best predictor is infectious disease rates, third average winter temperatures--both of these two factors, however, may be considered good proxies for skin pigmentation since infectious diseases are more prevalent in the environment (and not only in the populace) in equatorial regions and higher latitude strongly correlates with the lighter skin pigment of peoples who evolved at those latitudes. This means that when skin color is used as a predictor of national IQ, it is highly accurate in its predictions and essentially eliminates the supposed predictive powers of infectious disease rates. To be fair, it is also true that when this process is inverted and infectious disease rates are first used as predictors of IQ, skin color has reduced predictive power beyond that gained by looking at infectious disease levels. These two characteristics almost cancel each other out--though, again, skin color has a bit more power. This makes the problem of distinguishing the causal factors from the merely correlative factors much more difficult. In dealing with various other potential influences on IQ expression, they used statistical analysis to clarify degree of overlap in the correlations compared. This way the proportion of causation to be assigned to each factor may be estimated more accurately. But, in the case of the most powerful correlation (and presumptively the most important), skin color, here's how the study's authors approached their challenge:Lynn (1991) and Rushton (1995, 2000) proposed that temperature and climate provide important Darwinian selective pressures for intelligence, with cold climates selecting for higher intelligence, because low temperatures provide more fitness-related problems for humans that must be solved through cognitively demanding means, and through more complex social organization. Templer & Arikawa (2006) tested and supported predictions of this proposal in a cross-national study and found that average IQ correlated significantly with winter high temperature (r = −0.76), winter low temperature (r = −0.66)...Templer & Arikawa (2006) also found that average IQ correlated significantly with average skin darkness (r = −0.92). The authors offered little explanation of why this trend exists, except that they believed skin colour was related to exposure to certain climates over evolutionary time.
Although Templer & Arikawa (2006) found a positive relationship between IQ and skin darkness, we will not use skin darkness in our analyses for three reasons: (i) although evidence suggests that skin darkness is a measure of historical infectious disease intensity over evolutionary time, it is unclear exactly what kind of infectious diseases it is indicative of (see discussion); (ii) Templer & Arikawa (2006) argued that the relationship between skin darkness and IQ is not causal; and (iii) Templer & Arikawa (2006) did not sufficiently explain why the association between intelligence and skin darkness exists. Without a reasonable theoretical framework for this association, we did not feel it was appropriate to compare it with other variables for which there is a better theoretical rationale.What's this? Inconvenient data? Will the reviewers let us toss it? Yes? And they agree with us that political correctness must here prevail over science and reason? Yes? Then let it be tossed!
Truly, it must be a bit discouraging for scientists to have to write such weak stuff. But, if you want to be published in "mainstream" journals, the proper political mask must be donned--howsoever ridiculous it may be. After all, in our time, this does not count as stupidity among one's peers. It's only convention, habit, a matter of rote--and barely distracts the conscious mind for a moment. Enough.
My rebuttal to their "reasons" for not analysing the skin color factor:
It scarcely matters what specific infectious diseases skin color may be a marker of--darker skin is known to be associated with enhanced protection from infectious disease in general. This leads to the inference that the pressures exerted by Darwinian selection in equatorial regions favored those with stronger immune systems, the added strength of which may have diverted resources from the highly resource intensive human brain. Those who allocate their energetic resources optimally for their environment survive and reproduce most successfully, enacting natural selection. Dark skin is genetically determined. The same forces which caused the evolution of dark skin may very well, by this logic, have caused a genetically determined reduced allocation of resources to the brain development of dark skinned people. It looks as though some IQ is given up at the genotypic level and, for those still exposed to equatorial disease rates, still more IQ is given up at the phenotypic level when children must fight off diseases. The different degree of exposure to infectious disease in childhood may provide part of the explanation for the IQ differences between Africans raised in developed nations and those still living in Africa. African-Americans (and African-Dutch and African-English) run at about 83-86 on IQ tests, indigenous Africans manifest, for various reasons, a large range of 64-82. In contrast to the evolutionary pressures faced by the dark skinned equatorial dwellers, those who left Africa 60,000 years ago and migrated north confronted a harsher environment which may have constrained them to evolve more intelligence than their tropical ancestors had required. Reduced UV exposure coterminously caused evolution of lighter skin. I think this constitutes a "reasonable theoretical framework." It's called The Theory of Evolution.
Another sign that their chosen leading predictor of IQ may be second best is the major group of outliers that can be seen in Figure 1 of the paper. These countries have IQs about 15-25 points lower than their disease rates would predict. They happen to be a group of African-populated Caribbean countries with relatively low disease rates, yet IQs consistent with those found in disease-ridden Africa. The authors' "explanation": "Because these outliers are in the same geographical location, it is possible that local parasites that are not included in the DALY owing to infectious disease variable are causing these outliers." That's it. No notice that these countries are not outliers when skin color and IQ are graphed. I might add that the authors are quite lucky that American blacks never founded their own nation in N America. If you add American, Dutch, English blacks to their graph these groups would also constitute a group of major outliers about 15 IQ points below their disease-predicted levels. By comparison, East Asian nations end up 11 IQ points above their disease-predicted levels (there does appear to be a latitudinal or racial gradient for IQ in East Asia, which, when accounted for, leaves little if any predictive power to disease). Europeans are close to their predicted levels. Another point is that, in comparing Sub-Saharan African nations, no IQ-disease relationship visible in the data. Given the skin color similarity, this is perhaps unsurprising. The virtual absence of an IQ-disease relationship once nations are grouped according to skin color is rather striking. This absence is true in groups comprising Sub-Saharan Africa, N Europe, S Asia, NE Asia, and SE Asia. The lack of relationship in S America (inclusive of the Caribbean) is so obvious that the authors admit to it themselves. There seems to be some disease-IQ relationship in S Europe (which would make them an anomaly, the exception that proves my proposed rule that the authors thesis lacks a sound basis in the data presented).
What do we have left of the original thesis? This: infectious disease rates may be considered a proxy for skin color in most places. Those cases where they are not a proxy (eg, blacks in rich northern countries or healthy caribbean ones) may reveal the racial component in genetic IQ determination. Since both infectious disease rates and skin color are latitudinally determined in most cases, the clearest way to reveal the relative causal power of these two factors would be to find instances where either disease or skin color are not in line with what is typical of a given latitude. In Singapore, we have a case of equatorial latitude, but low disease prevalence (2.7) and light skin (most being of Chinese extraction). Result (with both factors in its favor): average IQ 108, the highest in the world and 17 points higher than disease levels predict--as much as a 17 point racial bonus, though some of this is certainly non-racially determined. Surrounding Singapore, Malaysia is almost half lighter-skinned Chinese, the rest darker indigenous Malays, with a disease level (3.2) somewhat higher. IQ is 92, 6 points higher than disease-predicted. Another Chinese-based racial bonus?
Nations in the following graph (I made it based on the paper's data) are all of the 18 non-African nations with the highest disease burden (3.5-4.4, compared to the 4.2-4.8 range in black Africa), the closest disease-based comparison to sub-Saharan Africa.
High Disease Non-African Nations:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S290610_-A9
First, and once again, there is little disease-predicted IQ relationship to be seen here. Second, on average these unhealthy nations have IQs 5.5 points higher that predicted by the disease-IQ correlation. By comparison, black Africa is 4.5 points lower than predicted. In other words, these unhealthy non-African nations had IQs measuring 85, the black African nations measured 68--a 17 point difference--whereas according to the disease-IQ theory the numbers should have been 79.5 and 72.5, which would be a 7 point disease-created difference. Could it be that black Africans have a more serious case of melanin over-determination? Amusingly, the only two non-African nations actually within the black African disease range (4.2-4.8) are Cambodia (4.2, IQ 91) and Afghanistan (4.4, IQ 84). These are the two most direct comparisons with black Africa and they clock in at 16 and 23 points higher than black African average IQ. It's difficult to think of any IQ relevant advantages those two have over Africa. Except skin color, of course.
So, when we compare black African IQs to the 18 globally scattered nations with similar disease burdens, African IQs fall well short of the expected level, insofar as disease is at all determinative. And when we compare blacks in various rich countries with low disease burdens to other races in such places we find that blacks fall 10-15 points short. The consistency of this shortfall in every study and every environment of which I am aware is quite impressive.
The ironic thing about this post is that I've followed the data in a direction that surprises me. As an a priori matter, I expected infectious disease to be a major factor in creating IQ deficits. But, once race is accounted for, it looks as though the impact is limited. With uncontrolled studies like this (ones without good control groups), one can only estimate the degree of causation behind disparate IQ levels. And different causes will have more influence in some nations than others. In America, infectious disease levels are low and therefore cannot explain much of any deficit that may exist. For the black American deficit vis-a-vis white Americans other causal factors must be sought. Besides, as the authors commendably note, there are multiple other factors, known and unknown, that influence the phenotypic expression of the genetically-determined IQ potential. Nutrition, education, wealth, pollution exposures, stress levels (like growing up in a war zone), mental stimulus in the environment, familiarity with testing--it's likely that all of these elements (and probably others) play a role in achieving one's genetically-determined potential IQ. Disentangling the relative causal power of each factor will only ever be an exercise in estimations. All of these factors have improved in those places (all rich countries) where the Flynn effect (IQ scores rising 2-3 points per decade over the last 100 years) has been observed.
Various studies have come up with an IQ heritability number of about 80% for adults (even the red-tainted NY Times assents to this established figure). The main qualification of this number is that it presumes a similarly favorable environment for the parents and children. The Flynn effect makes for a secondary qualification, though the IQ increases seen in the developed world are diminishing. These stable, favorable conditions are found in the rich world, not in the third world. If you have black African parents with typical 68 IQs, roughly 30% of IQ variation would be genetic. Black Americans with typical 84 IQ parents might have 80% of their IQ genetically determined--though this percentage might be lower for the extremely poor. Basically, the worse your environment, the less influential genes are in finalizing your IQ and the more influential is the environment.
On the whole, analyzed critically, this paper is useful in diagnosing some of the problems causing low IQ. It would have been rather better had it presented a proper statistical analysis of the race-IQ correlation compared to the disease-IQ correlation. This would have provided a clearer view of the proportion of IQ lost to disease. Nevertheless, disease certainly takes its toll on a phenotypic level. And, whether the worst effected lose 3 points or 15 points (I suspect it's about 6-8 points in the worst areas, though the paper implicitly claims something like 12-15 points), it's worth funding corrective measures. Bill Gates has explained that this is part of the rationale for his multi-billion dollar effort to cure the major diseases of black Africa. On a return on investment (ROI) basis, even if African lives are valued at relatively low dollar amounts, this area has been hugely underfunded for decades. Gates knows this too. Unfortunately, most NGOs are mismanaged by mediocrities and timeservers ducking the challenges of private sector competition. The non-profit sector of the economy is flabby and incompetent precisely because they are not forced into fitness by the competitive forces of capitalism--the only thing (some of them) compete for is handouts--and this is the only thing most are good at, coincidentally--as Gates also knows and even, delightfully, says. Not only is the money for poor countries' assistance misspent, but too little is allocated to begin with. The other source of funds, rich country governments, also have the very same competency problems common to all non-competitive enterprises and have historically done little good (though there be exceptions, esp work on eradicating small pox and polio). If black Africa were at the IQ levels of black Americans (84), they would then be at the same level as these countries: Brazil, Colombia, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Morocco. All are in better shape than black Africa--Brazil and Mexico have progressed so far as to escape into the second world. There are also a couple of failed or failing states at that IQ level (Afghanistan and Pakistan), nor is IQ anywhere near the sole determinant of national success (or any other success). My contention: a reasonable national IQ is necessary, but not sufficient.
A few graphs I created from the paper's data, broken down into world regions (and skin color), showing, except in S Europe, limited IQ-disease correlation once region/race are accounted for:
Sub-Saharan Africa and Black Caribbean nations:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S290505LvL5
NE Asia:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S290517b9r1
SE Asia:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S290519Fue6
S Europe:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S290611C5lb
N Europe:
https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?snapid=S290612tTHr
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Magical Sharks
A couple of entertainments: |
Saturday, May 8, 2010
A Key to the Mystery
|
I deem this study slightly dubious, but, if true, it would imply that African and non-African races could be considered separate sub-species--an implication oddly consonant with experience and observation. Also to remember: neanderthal brains were at least as large as human brains.
I wonder a little at the idiot presumption of the researchers that the gene flow would have to cut both ways. Have they failed to notice that a neanderthal male is far more likely to assault a woman, than a man is to assault a (butt-ugly) neanderthal female?
|
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Summary of a Paradigm Shift
This fellow wrote a book, "Good Calories, Bad Calories", a couple of years ago that demolished the received thinking about nutrition, the dogma promulgated by the USDA, the ADA, the AHA, etc. He summarizes his main findings in this lecture: I also recommend this talk, by another researcher with a similar point of view: |
Sunday, February 14, 2010
The Pied Piper's Song
If we really wished to induce the young to pursue science and engineering, we would more effectively convey its seductions. Instead of merely grinding them through the fundaments, we would also introduce some of the grand challenges and possibilities.
Here, for example, is a concept I just learned about--one which may be absolutely vital within the next 20-30 years--an attractive time horizon for current students:
Many other possibilities lurk on near or far horizons: the promise of nuclear fusion, of discovering the "god particle" in a particle accelerator, of building a space ladder with nanotechnology, of computational neural interfaces, autonomous vehicles, gene therapy, tissue engineering.
If we had a pied piper who knew how to sing this song...
|
Monday, February 8, 2010
An Exemplary Study
I consider this news both good and bad, but quite unsurprising. There are 100,000 chemicals in use today in America. Their impact on human health is not known, with a few exceptions. Do you know what it would cost to determine their impact? Hundreds of billions--plus which, these tests, to be thorough, would have continue for decades for each chemical, and new chemicals are invented every year. Also, these tests would not measure the interactions of exogenous chemicals in the human body--leaving a huge area of ignorance even if all this time and money were to be expended. For this case, the good side is reduced fertility in an overpopulated world--I've suddenly realized that Haiti and Africa and the Muslim world are in desperate need of flame-retardant lifestyles. The bad side is that this is the tip of the iceberg in a great many senses--this chemical has more nasty effects yet to be discovered, there are 100,000 other contaminants and essentially infinite possible interactions between them, and our life becomes more inescapably chemicalized every day. |
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Exponential Relations
The 3 largest earthquakes of the last 100 years released more energy than all the other thousands of earthquakes in that period combined. I did not know this. The earthquake energy scale explained: |
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
An Impressive Step
http://www.physorg.com/news180620740.html
It must be a tremendous encouragement for the patient to have this outlet. Plus which, if speech can be read from the mind, other paralytics, especially the far more common quadriplegics, will have opportunities for increased independence and interaction in the world.
On the other hand, this must also be on the military's radar. It approaches the condition of mind-reading. That would be a neat trick for intel agencies all over the globe.
It must be a tremendous encouragement for the patient to have this outlet. Plus which, if speech can be read from the mind, other paralytics, especially the far more common quadriplegics, will have opportunities for increased independence and interaction in the world.
On the other hand, this must also be on the military's radar. It approaches the condition of mind-reading. That would be a neat trick for intel agencies all over the globe.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Limits of Climate Science
The problems presented by climate modelling are very serious and are known to be very serious. It is mathematically impossible (and always will be) to create precise climate models because there are too many unknown and estimated variables involved in the equations (it is called a chaotic or nonlinear system). Only probabalistic estimates are possible. Note that this is why anyone who professes certainty about the future of the climate is a liar or hopelessly ignorant about the issue, regardless of which side he is on--these mathematical issues are not points of contention, they are an obvious fait accompli. Some question how accurate these probabilities are and this is a legitimate (perhaps the most legitimate) line of skepticism. Most climatologists believe the probabilities incline toward the theory that certain gases warm the atmosphere and they primarily focus on trying to calculate how much warming is likely to result, not whether warming will result. The balance of evidence I have seen leads me to agree with these scientists.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
More on the Climate Change Email Issue
Some of the emails posted as evidence of horrendous immorality are merely casual banter between close colleagues. Others betray the possibility of unethical activities and intentions. Much of what seems offensive to readers results from the fact that people do not understand the way science works. It is a competitive enterprise. It always has been. In the heat of competition some competitors exercise poor judgement to gain an advantage over their adversaries. The presumed ethical lapses here displayed represent an excessive zeal whose momentum apparently carried several individuals outside the boundaries of the game.
What concerns me more is the scientists and (more often) politicians who stand before the public and tell outright lies. The habitual liers seem more frequently to fall in the "denialist" camp, though both sides are prey to this temptation. Both sides are tempted to dogmatize on an issue which is too complicated by far to be susceptible to the simplifications and stupidities inherent in any dogmatic stance. Both dogmas being necessarily false, their prophets speak falsehoods. To assume either the certainty that global warming is occurring or the certainty that it is not--is to be an absolute fool and an ass. But, this is what dogmatic tendencies lead to.
But how does dogma arise? I believe it proceeds along two parallel paths. First, scientists must construct interpretive analyses based on the data they collect. Otherwise the data would be random and meaningless. This the beginning of scientific dogmas or theories, and the scientists in the field then attempt to use new data to continuously improve the theory. If some scientists do not think the first established theory is the best fit for the raw data, they may formulate another theory in opposition to it. From this point, the scientific process becomes explicity competitive between the adherents of the two theories. Competition can lead to such excesses as the emails seem to reveal. But, on the whole, competition is as salutary to the progress of science as it is to economic progress: it is a motivator that uses selfish priorities of vanity and ambition to promote social benefits.
The second parallel path of dogma follows upon the advent of competition between scientific theories and essentially amounts to a vulgarization of those theories for popular consumption and to political ends. The adulteration and distortion of the science in the course of this secondary process often becomes so extreme, as in this case, as to lead to results completely at variance with the underlying science. Result: the public is either misled or confused, and the competition between the two dogmas becomes indistinguishable from a propaganda campaign.
Only intelligent people, who invest some time in learning about this issue and who are willing to take the threat seriously, are even capable of arriving at a minimal understanding of the its nature and implications. Popularization of such an issue is impossible in any meaningful sense. Most people are not fit for it because they are too stupid, too lazy, and too malignant.
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Big Government
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2007/02/tony_tether_has_1/
We need more agencies like DARPA and ARPA-E. They give quality people a long leash, think long-term, and understand the concept of risk-reward. Result: breakthroughs and high return on capital.
Here's an excerpt from an interview with Tony Tether (TT), DARPA head, from the article above:
TT: There’s one that’s really over the horizon, the fact that it goes back to the testing part, too. There’s always been this notion of the "golden hour." If you can get somebody to good medical care, where they can be given blood and all of that stuff within an hour, the survival is greatly enhanced. Well, when you have these small units out there, and especially in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s really six hours before someone can be evacuated. So a person with great blood loss, which is what happens in wars, will die.
We had a guy with an idea. He said, why is it that people die with
60% of their blood gone? Is there any reason for that? What happens, what is going on? So we started an effort. We went out in our normal way and challenged the community. Look, here’s the problem: Is there any way we can keep a person alive with 60% blood loss for six hours as opposed to an hour? And we have found two amazing techniques.
NS: Tell me about them.
TT: These are techniques that could be given by a medical on the spot. One is giving somebody a shot of estrogen. I know that’s sort of strange, isn’t it? And it’s the typical Darpa fashion. Somebody said, "You know, women in general survive blood loss better than men."
And what is one of the chemical differences between a male and a female? Estrogen. Think about what had to happen in order for us to have survived for all this time and evolve. Childbirth is a very bloody process. If a woman had a baby 5,000 years ago, and if she couldn’t handle that blood loss and take that baby and go to a safe spot and all the rest of it, we would have gone away. And if you look at what happens with a woman at childbirth, she gets a big shot of estrogen from her own body. So we tried it. By the way, the one difference between Darpa and the National Institutes of Health, for example, is that Darpa will take a bet on an idea to go get the data to see if the idea is worthwhile, whereas at the NIH you typically need to have the data before they give you the effort to get the data. I’m sure you’ve heard those stories.
NS: Yeah.
TT: So we went out and gave this fellow a contract. And, by
God, with a shot of estrogen — the control group is made of rats, mind you –
NS: Yeah, I’m assuming.
TT: The IRB on rats is a little bit easier. [laughs] First we bled all of them 60 percent. The rats that didn’t have the estrogen all died within three hours. Of those that were given a shot of estrogen â??
which, by the way, is very safe â?? right after 60 percent blood loss, 75
percent of them were living after six hours. Now that is not as good as the next technique. One fellow had another idea. When you have severe blood loss, your cells pass electrons. And when you have full blood, this electron passage is somewhat tampered. The doctors will call these the ions. You will take vitamins to try to get rid of –
NS: Yeah, free radicals.
TT: Yeah, get rid of these free radicals. Well, these electrons cause these free radicals. But when you get 60 percent blood loss, these electron passages still go up. And, he said, you know, it’s probably the electrons that are causing the people to die because they are really destroying tissue, and there’s nothing there to stop them, because you’ve got only 40 percent of the blood you had. He found that if you gave a small amount of hydrogen sulfide — this is a poison –??
NS: Oh, right, this is [Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center biochemist] Mark Roth, right?
TT: Yeah. If you give a small amount of hydrogen sulfide, it inhibits the electron generation. So his rats, OK, you bleed them 60
percent. The control group all dead within three hours. The group that you just give a little bit of hydrogen sulfide to, after 10 hours, 90
percent of them are still living. And, by the way, in both of these cases, to resuscitate them you just give them water. I mean you don’t have to even give them blood. You just give them water.
NS: It’s amazing. And also they’re not hibernating — I mean these aren’t hibernators.
TT: They’re not, no.
NS: It is really amazing.
TT: Yes, it is amazing. That’s a typical Darpa type of thing.
TT: There’s one that’s really over the horizon, the fact that it goes back to the testing part, too. There’s always been this notion of the "golden hour." If you can get somebody to good medical care, where they can be given blood and all of that stuff within an hour, the survival is greatly enhanced. Well, when you have these small units out there, and especially in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, it’s really six hours before someone can be evacuated. So a person with great blood loss, which is what happens in wars, will die.
We had a guy with an idea. He said, why is it that people die with
60% of their blood gone? Is there any reason for that? What happens, what is going on? So we started an effort. We went out in our normal way and challenged the community. Look, here’s the problem: Is there any way we can keep a person alive with 60% blood loss for six hours as opposed to an hour? And we have found two amazing techniques.
NS: Tell me about them.
TT: These are techniques that could be given by a medical on the spot. One is giving somebody a shot of estrogen. I know that’s sort of strange, isn’t it? And it’s the typical Darpa fashion. Somebody said, "You know, women in general survive blood loss better than men."
And what is one of the chemical differences between a male and a female? Estrogen. Think about what had to happen in order for us to have survived for all this time and evolve. Childbirth is a very bloody process. If a woman had a baby 5,000 years ago, and if she couldn’t handle that blood loss and take that baby and go to a safe spot and all the rest of it, we would have gone away. And if you look at what happens with a woman at childbirth, she gets a big shot of estrogen from her own body. So we tried it. By the way, the one difference between Darpa and the National Institutes of Health, for example, is that Darpa will take a bet on an idea to go get the data to see if the idea is worthwhile, whereas at the NIH you typically need to have the data before they give you the effort to get the data. I’m sure you’ve heard those stories.
NS: Yeah.
TT: So we went out and gave this fellow a contract. And, by
God, with a shot of estrogen — the control group is made of rats, mind you –
NS: Yeah, I’m assuming.
TT: The IRB on rats is a little bit easier. [laughs] First we bled all of them 60 percent. The rats that didn’t have the estrogen all died within three hours. Of those that were given a shot of estrogen â??
which, by the way, is very safe â?? right after 60 percent blood loss, 75
percent of them were living after six hours. Now that is not as good as the next technique. One fellow had another idea. When you have severe blood loss, your cells pass electrons. And when you have full blood, this electron passage is somewhat tampered. The doctors will call these the ions. You will take vitamins to try to get rid of –
NS: Yeah, free radicals.
TT: Yeah, get rid of these free radicals. Well, these electrons cause these free radicals. But when you get 60 percent blood loss, these electron passages still go up. And, he said, you know, it’s probably the electrons that are causing the people to die because they are really destroying tissue, and there’s nothing there to stop them, because you’ve got only 40 percent of the blood you had. He found that if you gave a small amount of hydrogen sulfide — this is a poison –??
NS: Oh, right, this is [Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center biochemist] Mark Roth, right?
TT: Yeah. If you give a small amount of hydrogen sulfide, it inhibits the electron generation. So his rats, OK, you bleed them 60
percent. The control group all dead within three hours. The group that you just give a little bit of hydrogen sulfide to, after 10 hours, 90
percent of them are still living. And, by the way, in both of these cases, to resuscitate them you just give them water. I mean you don’t have to even give them blood. You just give them water.
NS: It’s amazing. And also they’re not hibernating — I mean these aren’t hibernators.
TT: They’re not, no.
NS: It is really amazing.
TT: Yes, it is amazing. That’s a typical Darpa type of thing.
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