BIOLOGY 103 FALL, 2002 FORUM 1

There's been a heated disucssion for the past four decades or so between the two main camps of linguists, one of which insists that children acquire language as they grow and the brain picks it up, and the other of which insists that the basics of language (universal grammar) are hardwired into the brains of children at birth, and all they need to do is figure out which specific rules apply for the particular language they are immersed in. Both sides are convinced that they are right, but as far as I know, there hasn't been clear evidence that either is right or wrong. In a situation like this, my preferred method is simply to watch both sides argue while not being sucked into either one and wait another few decades for a new "truth" to emerge.

When Prof. Grobstein mentioned that anywhere from 80- 95% of the living organisms died 65 million years ago, I thought to myself, when did Adam and Eve exist? Were they before the dinosaurs? Did they come later? How do people really link science and religion? I think my particular hang up isn't religion per se, but the Biblical teachings. I think religion is the aknowledgement and reverence of some higher form of being. The Bible itself has a lot of stories that science has been able to help prove, or in some cases, disprove.

In all of this musing, I find myself coming back to something we learned in the first week of class (or maybe the second), that Science doesn't have a monopoly on truth - they find what they believe is accurate and possibly true to the best of their knowledge. The faithful do that as well. To believers everywhere, they can believe in the Bible or Qu'ran or Torah or any spiritual text and accept it as truth. There are few concrete answers for me; I must find some sort of blanace between science and faith myself.

"The emotions and drives and ways of thinking and learning that are uniform across the human species are part of our inheritance."

Essentially, Pinker has reason to believe that humans, like many other animals, are born with human instincts which make us prone to certain behaviors. For example: waging war, boys being violent, belief in a higher being, gossip, girls playing with dolls, marriage, and even that men wanting multiple sex partners is innate because males who were most promiscuous historically had the greatest number of offspring. Most of our behaviors occurr not becuase we pick them up somewhere but because we are born with them, genetically. In other words, the "blank slate" idea is being tried here.

The idea that certain behaviors are, genetically, part of human nature, and that we even have a 'human nature,' is extremely interesting to me. I've always assumed that humans have changed themselves and their environment so dramatically that any kind of human nature wouldn't be able to exist. We've been going over the fact in class that humans have evolved so much and changed so much in such a short amount of time. And I mean, I've heard of dog and other animal instincts but attributed their existence to the fact that they haven't changed that much over time(relative to humans). But maybe, as humans, we really haven't changed that much either? It's certainly something to think about.

Animals (including humans) rely on natural instinct to protect themselves. Wild animals do not rationalize thier instinct; they follow it because that is what it is there for. Humans are still "wild" animals, no matter how much we try to "civilize" ourselves.

I think that humans have changed enormously over the span of our exhistence, especially when compared to other organisms. The ability to think on a "higher" level is one of the main characterstics that separate humans from other animals.

In the past five hundred years, the different philosophies by which people live have changes - it was once thought that black women were inferior to white people; women are just gaining (and in some cases still fighting for) thier rights of equality. If we assume that these philosophies are (even) in part because of our "natural instinct," by changing these philosophies over time, we are actually going against out instinct.

But I was looking around the webpaper and saw a couple interesting ones. The one that really caught my eye was Christine's paper on trepedation (sorry if I spelled that wrong), it was really interesting. The idea that anyone would drill a hole in their head just for a "high" is absolutely insane! ick. I can understand people doing it thousands of years ago, because they did a lot of things that would make a modern doctor cry, but the idea of people doing it today is just messed up!

Don't be afraid to go with the silly option - it's what I'm leaning towards myself.

See you all in class tomorrow!

Many of the top public health officials stated today that they were in favor of releasing a smallpox vaccine to the general public but not until it is administered to up to 10 million health care workers, and after the vaccine is licensed for general use. This is not likely to happen until 2004. The idea behind this is to first start offering the vaccine to health care and emergency workers facing the greatest risk of handling a smallpox case. Under one plan, health officials would start by offering vaccinations to about 500,000 workers who would be most at risk of encountering any smallpox cases in hospitals. Another option would be to consider expanding the 500,000 vaccinations to all the nation's estimated 10 million health care and emergency workers.

A panel, known as the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, rejected a proposal to offer smallpox vaccinations to the general public. It recommended limiting vaccinations to health care and emergency workers who were likely to be "first responders" to a bioterror attack. The panel's chairman estimated 15,000 people would be inoculated. A series of meetings were then begun with state health officials, doctors and hospital executives. Those meetings led them to decide that they should present president Bush with options to expand vaccinations to all health professionals and law enforcement people, and eventually to all Americans who want the vaccine.

At a news conference, officials also announced that one million doses of smallpox vaccine will be provided to the military.The government halted routine vaccinations in 1972 as the disease was being errased from the world. But the terrorism attacks last year and the possibility that Iraq or other hostile nations might have the virus have caused health officials to consider a new battle against the disease.

When the vaccine was used, "life-threatening complications" occurred at a rate of 15 per million among those who received their first smallpox vaccination, and the number included about one to two deaths. The vaccine can also cause many non-life-threatening complications such as blindness.
Thirty to 50 million Americans might be disqualified from getting the vaccine because their immune systems have been weakened by cancer, AIDS or other diseases, or because they have two common skin conditions, eczema and atopic dermatitis, which increase the risk of complications.

Although it will be a very long time before a vaccination for the general public will be approved or even begin being tested or distributed, there may be a smallpox vaccine for health care workers in the not too distant future. My questions for the forum then is if there are still so many risks associated with the vaccine, won't giving it to health care workers increase the risk of it being given to patients? What if the vaccine causes mass illness or problems among a huge percentage of health care workers? Then this will also decrease the amount of healthy working health care workers. It's pretty scary to think of the risks involved. I am in favor of preventing health and emergency care workers from the risks of contracting smallpox but it seems like there is still much research to be done before distributing the vaccine to them should be considered, let alone to the general public.

Speaking of vaccines, I read an article called "AIDS and the profit factor" (europe.cnn.com) that discusses pharmaceutical companies that have developed anti-retroviral drugs to help keep HIV/AIDS sufferers alive. The price is discounted for developing countries by 90% of what they charge in the U.S. Essentially, these companies charge developed countries at profitable rates in order to provide the drugs to developing countries at discounted or exact production cost. Is this fair to HIV/AIDS patients in developed countries such as the U.S. and Europe? Aren't they assuming that these patients have the money to afford the drugs at expensive rates?

Various developing countries such as India and Brazil have fought to provide these antiretroviral drugs for free by creating generic brands that are cheaper to make. For instance, in Brazil there are 100,000 people with HIV or AIDS who receive antiretroviral drugs free of charge. Some pharmecuetical companies have recently sued developing countries on their decisions to import generic drugs to create their own generics at cheaper rates.

The debate is complicated as pharmaceutical companies (non-generic type) argue that they, unlike generic companies, invest money into research and development. GlaxoSmithKline says it spends 13-14 percent of its profits on research and development each year. They are one of two major pharmaceutical companies with a vaccine for AIDS in the clinic. They argue that without any profits, they will be unable to continue research and development for the real solution to the problem. Is it fair to charge patients in developed countries more for drugs in order for them to be provided for free/cheaper for patients in developing countries? Should generic companies be closed since they do not do research for the real solution of the disease? Can we really put a price on the value of life or death?


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