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The Science Creative Quarterly seeks science humour pieces for entry into our awesome new contest. Judging will be based on a number of criteria that can be annotated as follows:

Briefly, final Score (FS) is equal to the the base score of the humour piece submitted (S), times a number (n) of modifiers (fs) which are dependant on captions provided, and their humour level. Note that captions may be submitted separately even at multiple dates after initial humour submission. Number of captions provided by author is flexible but can be no more than 1 for each image (a maximum of 17) – image sources from here.

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In other words, if we state that the maximum base score is 10, and an author is also able to present 17 “very funny” (as determined by a laugh/gag reflex) captions, the following maximum score is possible:

However, 17 unfunny captions would negatively impact and result in the following possible score:

Submissions and captions should be sent to tscq@interchange.ubc.ca, subject heading “MATH.” Contest deadline is March 31st, 2007, and entries may be published in the interim. The winner will be announced during the first week of April, 2007 and will take home whatever happens to be the latest model in the video iPod category or a gift account of equal value at Amazon.com (winner’s choice).

When my family moved to Vancouver from Hong Kong, I was at the awkward age of 14. In addition to language barrier and social adjustment, most of my cultural shock came inevitably from high school. One thing that impressed me the most was how popular gum-chewing was (and still is). All these cool kids were hanging out by their lockers, exchanging colourful and minty gums, and engaging in a perpetual chewing contest throughout classes. You see, students in Asia would never dream of eating/chewing/drinking/whining/talking in class. You can tell how fascinated I was at these rebellious classmates; they may not shower everyday and they shared one slurpee with ten people, but their breath was surely minty fresh all the time.

It didn’t take me long to realize that everybody is just paranoid about bad breath. It is socially embarrassing and simply unacceptable to speak without checking your breath. Mints are offered before/during/after meals, coffee, smoking, classes etc. The most common conversation openers are: “dude, you got some gum?” or “you want some gum?” As if that is not enough, they even have mints for dogs (note 1)! It is the trend, the necessity, the social etiquette to fight the eternal battle with unpleasant breath.

Of course, the smart business people have taken action to provide the goods and further promote them. You can feast your eyes on the different brands, flavours and forms of mints available, and the commercials on TV run non-stop…you need icy fresh breath, you need fiery cool breath (I thought I’d never see oxymoron again after English 10, note 2), you need fresh breath to attract that hot chick/dude, you need fresh breath for a good kiss…Excel, Trident, Extra, Eclipses, Mentos, Tic Tacs, Dentyne, peppermint, spearmint, winterfresh, cinnamon (!?!), strips, tablets, films, chewy, hard, etc (note 3). I think we have easily surpassed the world of Willy Wonka.

To be honest, I never liked mint. I remember only with the fear of being un-cool, did I accept that first strip of Excel peppermint gum from my friend. But in doing so, I had almost burst out in tears as the acrid taste shot up my nose, through my cerebrum, into my skull, and lingering at the tips of my hair. I don’t remember much afterwards; I must have spat it out somehow. Anyway, after this traumatizing experience, I am even now only brave enough to take restaurant mint candies and tic tacs.

With this popular trend engulfing every one of us, I started to wonder: what is mint anyway? Why does it taste and feel cool (or pungent for someone like me), in fact so cool that some people can’t be caught without it?

Most of us know “mint” comes from mint leaves/stems/flowers, primarily from peppermint or spearmint plants (note 4). These plants are all from the Mentha genus, and from them we are able to extract essential oils, where all the tasty and aromatic properties come from. Mint has been used for hundreds of years as herbal medicine, culinary herb, tea, and more[1, 2]. As well, peppermint oil is still widely used in cosmetics, candies, bath and oral hygiene products for flavour and fragrance. The magic component of peppermint oil is menthol, which gives the mint its smell and taste, and is also believed to be responsible for the therapeutic actions. Depending on the plant extraction process, peppermint oil can contain between 30% to 60% menthol [2, 5, 6].

In addition to the above, menthol is also used in cigarettes and medicinal products such as vapor-rub, cough syrup, and nasal decongestants. The most noticeable action of menthol is the cooling and soothing sensation when applied to skin and the oral cavity. Even as a herb, peppermint is used to alleviate itching, nausea and digestive disorders [2-4]. However, these pleasant outcomes are generally limited to a low concentration of menthol (<2%); in fact, once the concentration is above 5%, it becomes an irritant and causes a burning sensation [5].

So what is menthol then?

The chemical name of menthol is cyclohexanol-5-methyl-2-(1-methylethyl) [7]. Although this is a mouthful and sounds impressive, menthol is actually a very simple organic molecule. It is chemically classified as an alcohol (don’t get too excited just yet), which only means that it has an OH group in the structure (figure 1). There are 8 forms, or 4 pairs, of menthol, each differing slightly in the orientation of its 3D chemical structure. The most abundant and important one in nature is (-)-menthol (note 5) [5, 7].

Figure 1. Chemical structure of menthol. C=carbon, O=oxygen, H=hydrogen. Note the alcohol group (OH group).

So how do we feel this cold, and sometimes burning, sensation? In a nutshell, our body is mapped by a network of sensory neurons, which are cells that send messages to our brain telling us about our environment. These signals are very important for our well-being, telling us if we have stepped on a nail (ouch!), whether the stove is too hot, and so on. These signals relay like dominos: once something triggers the neurons (pushing on the first domino), an electrical signal is transmitted from neuron to neuron, until it reaches the brain. Our brain then interprets the signal, making us feel, and instructs actions if necessary. Most stimulants act on receptors on the neurons to trigger the signal and subsequent transmission. This is like fitting a key into a lock, which in turn opens a door. For example, the smelly guy is giving off these sulfur-containing molecules (the key); the odour receptors (the lock) in your nose recognize these molecules, transmit the signal to your brain as “bad smell”, and your brain will make a mental note to put him in your “Do not date and avoid” list. We feel temperature with the same mechanism, except the locks and keys are different.

Now back to menthol. It has long been suggested that menthol inflicts a cool sensation by stimulating “cold” receptors, however, the actual receptor that responds to menthol wasn’t identified until 2002 by two separate groups of scientists [5, 8, 9]. As a result, two names were given for this receptor: CMR1 and TRPM8 (note 6) [8,9]. This receptor is found all over our body, and its obvious function is to monitor environment temperature. CMR1/TRPM8 is sensitive to a range of temperatures in the vicinity of 10°C – 30°C as well as compounds like menthol, eucalyptol (from eucalyptus), and icilin [8-13]. I should also mention that many other temperature-sensitive receptors had been identified long before the menthol receptor. For example, TRPV1 is a “hot” receptor sensitive to capsaicin (what makes chili peppers hot) and temperatures >43°C. In fact, it was the research on “hot” receptors and chili peppers that eventually led to the discovery of “cold” receptors [10, 12].

The burning pain associated with high-concentration menthol is probably caused by another receptor system – the pain receptors. However, although seemingly contradictory, high-concentration menthol stimulation if continued for a long time, will lead to local anesthesia [5, 6, 14]. Of course, the intensity of the cool/burn feeling differs from person to person, depending on the amount and sensitivity of the receptors, the amount and sensitivity of the neurons, and so on [15].

Now we understand how menthol feels cool, but what about the sensation of taste? Those who remember their high school biology would know that we cannot taste “cool”, since the four basic tastes are sweet, salty, sour and bitter. However, our tongues also sense temperature, like chili peppers are “hot”, and mint “cool”. More importantly, “the smell is half the taste”, meaninging that the mint “taste” is mainly in association with the minty smell and the cool feeling in our oral and nasal cavities. Interestingly, although the taste of “hot” and “cool” is a misnomer, temperature can evoke a sense of taste (known as “thermal taste”), and this response differs greatly from person to person [15]. If pressed, menthol and capsaicin (from chili peppers) both induce a taste of bitterness. And a recent study on the taste of capsaicin and menthol in different areas of the human tongue shows that the bitterness and burn of menthol are strongest at the back (inner part) of the tongue, while the tip, front and side of the tongue mainly feel coolness [16]. This would suggest that menthol and capsaicin do indeed stimulate taste receptors, and not just temperature receptors. Bottom line is, I don’t feel so bad now that I hate mint (and chili peppers!); I only have sensitive receptors.

In addition to touch and taste, and as mentioned before, menthol has many other alleged functions that prompt its use in medicinal products. These functions include nasal decongestion, anti-coughing, thirst quenching, arousal, relief of indigestion, and antibacterial properties. Although there are only a few research reports in these areas, it appears clear that some of these actions are miscontrued. For example, studies show that although people feel decongested after using menthol vapour, there is no actual improvement in the nasal airway when air flow is measured objectively. In other words, the decongestion is a totally subjective perception, although menthol does reduce discomfort and the urge to breathe. This is why cigarettes use menthol to reduce the harshness of the smoke for a smoother “taste” (note 7) [7, 17]. The better breathing is probably due to the stimulation of cold receptors lining the nasal area and throat, as menthol has no effect on the lungs or chest muscles themselves [5, 7, 18, 19].

There is some evidence that antibacterial and antifungal effects exist when using menthol and mint oils. After all, menthol and peppermint oil both stop some bacteria and fungi from growing, especially in the context of an infected mint plant. So in some respects, this may seem to justify the use of mint/gums in fighting bad breath – but let’s not jump to conclusions. While it is true that bad breath is caused by bacteria and menthol does kill some bugs, our filthy mouths are a very complicated ecosystem. Some bacteria are bad, whereas some are good. We really don’t know what impact menthol has on that type of mixed population of bugs [20]. Incidentally, mint oil is way more effective than menthol itself in killing bugs [4, 5, 21]. One thing is for sure though, menthol is pretty good at masking bad smells [5].

Out of curiosity, I checked the ingredients of some popular gums/mints to see how much menthol they actually contained. To my great disappointment, my little survey came up with negative results. Maybe it’s trade secret, or conspiracy, but I only find “natural and artificial flavours” stated as the flavoring agent (what a waste of print! Why don’t they just say “flavours”?). What can I say…somehow my gut feeling tells me that “natural and artificial flavours” is just a bunch of chemicals that will soon be declared carcinogenic. Apparently all-natural mints are for dogs only (note 1).

Anyhow, the use of mint, whether for fashion or medicinal purposes, seems to be ubiquitous. Despite it being clear that menthol has multiple effects on several systems, there is still much to learn about this simple compound. To which it’s only fitting that I say, “Tic tac?”

Notes

1. I choked on my coffee when I saw the little tin boxes of “dog mints”. Dogs are the true rulers of this world. By the way, some dog mints don’t have mint at all. They mostly use parsley, dill and rosemary as the good-smell ingredients (e.g. YipYap Breath Fresheners for Dogs). All natural ingredients too!

2. Ah, the joy of oxymoron. It is a figure of speech that jams two contradicting words together; first introduced (to me) in Grade 10 English, Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet: “feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health…” (Act I, scene I). If you didn’t know already, Romeo and Juliet die at the end. Other examples of oxymoron: fiery cool, freezer burn, dynamic equilibrium, Microsoft Works.

3. If you want to learn more about the history, development, and social impact of chewing/bubble gum, there is an interesting book called Chewing Gum, the Fortunes of Taste by Michael Redclift (New York: Routledge; 2004) that gives a nice discussion on these topics. Also, an article by T. Imfeld, titled Chewing gum – facts and fiction: a review of gum-chewing and oral health (Critical Reviews in Oral Biology and Medicine; 1999; 10(3): 405 – 419.) provides a good review.

4. The scientific names of peppermint and spearmint plants are Mentha x piperita and Mentha spicata, respectively. There are many other mint plants from the Mentha genus. Not that we care really, maybe just the botanists.

5. For those familiar with the chemistry lingo, I am referring to different isomers of menthol. Isomers may look similar, but they are very different molecules with different properties. There are 4 pairs because of enantiomers, which are mirror images of each other, like your left and right hand (they look the same, but are actually different). The menthol isomers are: (+) and (-)-menthol; (+) and (-)-neomenthol; (+) and (-)-isomenthol; (+) and (-)-isoneomenthol. In our case, (-)-menthol is “the mint” that we refer to.

6. CMR1 stands for Cold-Menthol Receptor type 1; TRPM8 stands for Transient Receptor Potential Melatasin type 8. I personally prefer CMR1, as the name actually makes sense. These receptors in the TRP family are actually channels that allow ions (charged molecules) to go through, thus creating an electrical signal. Specifically, menthol causes calcium ions (Ca2+) to flow through the channels. For detailed mechanism, references 5, 8, 9, 10, and 12 provide great explanation.

7. There is controversy as to whether menthol plays a role in cigarette/nicotine addiction. It is a concern that menthol may increase the delivery and absorption of nicotine from cigarettes. Some observations suggest that people who smoke menthol cigarettes smoke more, and for a longer time. Chemistry aside, the increased smoking may simply be due to a more pleasant smoking experience, thus reinforcing the habit. Again, there are advocates on both sides, and more studies are needed to confirm these claims.

References

1. Robbers JE, Tyler VE, Tyler VE. Tyler’s Herbs of Choice : The Therapeutic use of Phytomedicinals. Brand new ed. New York: Haworth Herbal Press; 2000.

2. Nair B. Final report on the safety assessment of mentha piperita (peppermint) oil, mentha piperita (peppermint) leaf extract, mentha piperita (peppermint) leaf, and mentha piperita (peppermint) leaf water. Int J Toxicol. 2001; 20 Suppl 3: 61-73.

3. Ody P. The Complete Medicinal Herbal. Canadian ed. Toronto: Key Porter Books; 1993.

4. Iscan G, Kirimer N, Kurkcuoglu M, Baser KH, Demirci F. Antimicrobial screening of mentha piperita essential oils. J Agric Food Chem. 2002; 50: 3943-3946.

5. Eccles R. Menthol and related cooling compounds. J Pharm Pharmacol. 1994;46:618-630.

6. Galeotti N, Ghelardini C, Mannelli L, Mazzanti G, Baghiroli L, Bartolini A. Local anaesthetic activity of (+)- and (-)-menthol. Planta Med. 2001; 67: 174-176.

7. Ahijevych K, Garrett BE. Menthol pharmacology and its potential impact on cigarette smoking behavior. Nicotine Tob Res. 2004; 6 Suppl 1: S17-28.

8. McKemy DD, Neuhausser WM, Julius D. Identification of a cold receptor reveals a general role for TRP channels in thermosensation. Nature. 2002;416:52-58.

9. Peier AM, Moqrich A, Hergarden AC, et al. A TRP channel that senses cold stimuli and menthol. Cell. 2002; 108: 705-715.

10. Clapham DE. Signal transduction. hot and cold TRP ion channels. Science. 2002; 295: 2228-2229.

11. Brauchi S, Orio P, Latorre R. Clues to understanding cold sensation: Thermodynamics and electrophysiological analysis of the cold receptor TRPM8. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004; 101: 15494-15499.

12. Jordt SE, McKemy DD, Julius D. Lessons from peppers and peppermint: The molecular logic of thermosensation. Curr Opin Neurobiol. 2003; 13: 487-492.

13. Zuker CS. Neurobiology: A cool ion channel. Nature. 2002; 416: 27-28.

14. Galeotti N, Di Cesare Mannelli L, Mazzanti G, Bartolini A, Ghelardini C. Menthol: A natural analgesic compound. Neurosci Lett. 2002; 322: 145-148.

15. Green BG, Alvarez-Reeves M, George P, Akirav C. Chemesthesis and taste: Evidence of independent processing of sensation intensity. Physiol Behav. 2005; 86: 526-537.

16. Green BG, Schullery MT. Stimulation of bitterness by capsaicin and menthol: Differences between lingual areas innervated by the glossopharyngeal and chorda tympani nerves. Chem Senses. 2003; 28: 45-55.

17. Ferris Wayne G, Connolly GN. Application, function, and effects of menthol in cigarettes: A survey of tobacco industry documents. Nicotine Tob Res. 2004; 6 Suppl 1: S43-54.

18. Nishino T, Tagaito Y, Sakurai Y. Nasal inhalation of l-menthol reduces respiratory discomfort associated with loaded breathing. Am J Respir Crit Care Med. 1997; 156: 309-313.

19. Eccles R. Role of cold receptors and menthol in thirst, the drive to breathe and arousal. Appetite. 2000; 34: 29-35.

20. Pennisi E. A mouthful of microbes. Science. 2005; 307: 1899-1901.

21. Pattnaik S, Subramanyam VR, Bapaji M, Kole CR. Antibacterial and antifungal activity of aromatic constituents of essential oils. Microbios. 1997; 89: 39-46.

Elementary School Level:

1st Place: “My Uncle Is A Man Named Steve (Not A Monkey)”
Cassidy Turnbull (grade five) presented her uncle, Steve. She also showed photographs of monkeys and invited fairgoers to note the differences between her uncle and the monkeys. She tried to feed her uncle bananas, but he declined to eat them. Cassidy has conclusively shown that her uncle is no monkey.

2nd Place: “Pine Cones Are Complicated”
David Block and Trevor Murry (grades four) showed how specifically complicated pine cones are and how they reveal God’s design in nature.

Middle School Level:

1st Place: “Life Doesn’t Come From Non-Life”
Patricia Lewis (grade eight) did an experiment to see if life can evolve from non-life. Patricia placed all the non-living ingredients of life – carbon (a charcoal briquet), purified water, and assorted minerals (a multi-vitamin) – into a sealed glass jar. The jar was left undisturbed, being exposed only to sunlight, for three weeks. (Patricia also prayed to God not to do anything miraculous during the course of the experiment, so as not to disqualify the findings.) No life evolved. This shows that life cannot come from non-life through natural processes.

2nd Place: “Women Were Designed For Homemaking”
Jonathan Goode (grade seven) applied findings from many fields of science to support his conclusion that God designed women for homemaking: physics shows that women have a lower center of gravity than men, making them more suited to carrying groceries and laundry baskets; biology shows that women were designed to carry un-born babies in their wombs and to feed born babies milk, making them the natural choice for child rearing; social sciences show that the wages for women workers are lower than for normal workers, meaning that they are unable to work as well and thus earn equal pay; and exegetics shows that God created Eve as a companion for Adam, not as a co-worker.

High School Level:

1st Place: “Using Prayer To Microevolve Latent Antibiotic Resistance In Bacteria”
Eileen Hyde and Lynda Morgan (grades ten & eleven) did a project showing how the power of prayer can unlock the latent genes in bacteria, allowing them to microevolve antibiotic resistance. Escherichia coli bacteria cultured in agar filled petri dishes were subjected to the antibiotics tetracycline and chlorotetracycline. The bacteria cultures were divided into two groups, one group (A) received prayer while the other (B) didn’t. The prayer was as follows: “Dear Lord, please allow the bacteria in Group A to unlock the antibiotic-resistant genes that You saw fit to give them at the time of Creation. Amen.” The process was repeated for five generations, with the prayer being given at the start of each generation. In the end, Group A was significantly more resistant than Group B to both antibiotics.

2nd Place: “Maximal Packing Of Rodentia Kinds: A Feasibility Study”
Jason Spinter’s (grade twelve) project was to show the feasibility of Noah’s Ark using a Rodentia research model (made of a mixture of hamsters and gerbils) as a representative of diluvian life forms. The Rodentia were placed in a cage with dimensions proportional to a section of the Ark. The number of Rodentia used (58) was calculated using available Creation Science research and was based on the median animal size and their volumetric distribution in the Ark. The cage was also fitted with wooden dowels inserted at regular intervals through the cage walls, forming platforms which provided support for the Rodentia. Although there was little room left in the cage, all Rodentia were able to move just enough to ward off muscle atrophy. Food pellets and water were delivered to sub-surface Rodentia via plastic drinking straws inserted into the Rodentia-mass, which also served to allow internal air flow. Once a day, the cage was sprayed with water to cleanse any built-up waste. Additionally, the cage was suspended on bungee cords to simulate the rocking motion of a ship. The study lasted 30 days and 30 nights, with all Rodentia surviving at least long enough afterwards to allow for reproduction. These findings strongly suggest that Noah’s Ark could hold and support representatives of all antediluvian animal kinds for the duration of the Flood and subsequent repopulation of the Earth.

Honorable Mention:
“Geocentrism: Politically Incorrect” – Richard Cody (grade nine)
“Young Earth, Old Lies” – Melvin Knuth & Glenna Reher (grade eleven)
“Thermodynamics Of Hell Fire” – Tom Williamson (grade twelve)

(BodyWorlds 3 is currently in Vancouver
at Science World, until January 14, 2007)

I had a train-wreck experience about Gunther von Hagens’ Body Worlds. I had previously heard nothing about the man, his work, or the show before we headed out to see it at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, but one of my sources inside the museum world had mentioned that there had been a fair amount of controversy surrounding both von Hagens and the exhibit.

The exhibit was divided into anatomical systems: locomotive, nervous, cardiovascular, and digestive, plus a kind of gallery of awe—bodies in motion, human bodies and elements thereof placed in their jaw-dropping context. This last contained some interesting violations of the exhibit design, which seemed to lump together what should have been a gallery of the reproductive system and human ontogeny/development.

The basic design of the exhibit was to place glass cases centrally with a variety of full-body specimens placed around the edges. The cases were designed for two lines of visitors to view simultaneously from each side. This was absolutely necessary in terms of human-flow issues. However, the specimens were not always oriented in an equal opportunity way, so it was possible to have chosen poorly in terms of the side you viewed.

The whole-body specimens were on low platforms and most had no barriers between them and the visitor. They were placed well away from the wall, although many people didn’t seem to be taking advantage of this – the ability to view them from every angle was essential as each dissection was carried out from head to toe and front to back.

One serious oddity regarding the physical set up involved the last gallery, where the reclining pregnant figure, along with several embryonic and fetal specimens, were curtained off from the rest. This area also merited its own ostentatiously placed guard. I had no idea if it was originally envisioned in this way or if there was a story behind the separation. Whatever the reason, it’s disconcerting.

The pregnant figure was the culmination of a series of fetal development specimens beginning with the very early embryonic stages. The first of these was 99% uterus, where I was privy to a amusing, yet disappointing, discussion between two (20-ish, female) visitors:

“Look! You can see the tiny fingers!”

“Even this early!”

(They were Fallopian tubes to those of us not abused by bad biology education).

Other than the last gallery, the layout was stunning. The first two full-body specimens were relatively simple dissections revealing the depth and complexity of the muscular arrangement of the appendicular skeleton. For me, these were nothing particularly new. At this point in my life, I’ve dissected or supervised the dissection of probably 30 human cadavers and 20 different primate species. In learning and teaching anatomy (and the two are difficult to disentangle), there is a physical emphasis on geography and a theoretical emphasis on system. In the lab, you master the landmarks from every conceivable view, reducing the body to manageable regions. In the lecture hall, you ignore the distance between physical structures and try to master coordinated systems. To have the two entire systems juxtaposed in correct geography was one of the biggest “Ah ha!” moments of my intellectual life. It was also a profoundly moving experience. As P. Z. Myers so eloquently put it: “I am beautiful on the inside.”

Like the “Ah ha” moment, the next exhibit took a few minutes to sink in. It was an articulated skeleton with ligaments but no other flesh, reaching out toward the figure in front of it—the musculature of the same individual, arranged in the same pose.

Most of the full-body specimens at the exhibit were equally anatomically informative and artistically challenging. The “Chess Player” dissection brought me back to my first day in the lab as a student. The supervisor had prepared a similar laminectomy dissection (removal of the spines of the vertebrae and the top arch of the spinal canal to reveal the spinal cord and nerves emerging at each vertebral level). Each dissection group came through for a tour. Mine had three anthropology students and one med student who lasted about 2 seconds before face planting.

Med student mockage aside, the “Chess Player” was a fantastic piece, bringing the processes of intellect and motion together in a way that is often missing from hands-on dissection classes. (For example, at Pritzker, the brains of the cadavers had been removed for use in the dedicated neuroanatomy class, divorcing movement from thought.)

The thoroughness of representation and the depth of perspective contained in the specimens was astounding. My fingers ached to think of the painstaking work. Every conceivable view is represented somewhere, either in the cases or the full-body specimens. The juxtaposition of diseased and healthy specimens alongside those showing medical intervention (artificial joints, valves, arterial stents, etc.) was also highly effective. I was blown away, both as a scientist and consumer of art, by the arterial specimens. The arteries were filled with red polymer and the rest of the flesh and bone was dissolved away, leaving the three-dimensional structure rendered in the bold lines of the main vessels tapering into the incredibly delicate capillaries at the skin’s surface.

Amid the cases and specimens, there were floor-to-ceiling banners with classical anatomical drawings and other artwork regarding anatomical research, and some containing text reflecting on death, the body, and being human by scientists, artists, philosophers, etc. Some of the drawings were amusingly reflective of their period (e.g., a muscular diagram of a young man standing near, for some reason, a hippopotamus), but all really add to what von Hagens seems to be trying to do.

That is, to continue in the tradition of constructing forceful, persuasive images of and ideas about the authentic, natural glory of being human.

At the end of the galleries was a guest book and a blow-up of a completed donation form from someone who was determined to donate his body as a result of seeing the exhibit. I didn’t spend much time at the guest book after seeing an entry that simply said “It was kinda sick,” and another asserting that this “isn’t really for kids or toddlers.” I’d dispute that, having been fascinated by anatomy from a very young age. Personal opinion aside, there were numerous images about the exhibit and the lobby had clips from it running on televisions. If anything, the museum went overboard in trying to give parents ample information to judge whether the exhibit was appropriate for their children or not.

I’ve also searched around a bit to get a sense for the controversy over the exhibit. I’m surprised by the vehemence of reactions and the wide variety of objections being raised. Many take issue with von Hagens’ claim that his techniques and specimens are art (something he seems to be downplaying these days), relegating him, at most, to the status of craftsman (a distinction and demotion, I note, peculiar to Westerners who view art as a recreational excess, rather than something that exists in the middle of real life).

At least two authors of this type of criticism seem to have been so determined to sneer that they missed relatively straightforward scientific and artistic messages inherent in some of the pieces. For example, one was intensely critical of the “gimmick” of “Rearing Horse with Rider,” in which the human figure holds his own brain in one hand and his mount’s in the other. The viewer can approach closely enough to get the full effect of the horse’s immensity and just as that’s sinking in, the eye is drawn to the human brain positively dwarfing the horse’s.

Others insist that the so-called artistic placement obscures the anatomical information, citing, for example, the “Drawer Man” and the figure carrying his own skin like a coat. The former wasn’t included in this exhibit, so I can’t comment, but I thought that the volume of the skin relative to the individual’s musculature was both visually striking and informative.

Another seemed to think that the main point of the exhibit was to emphasize the similarity of human flesh to food. Although I find that an overly simplistic interpretation, I actually think that’s a message worth sending.

People are usually intrigued and repelled in equal measure when they hear that I used to teach anatomy.

“Well what does it look like?”

“Kind of like chicken or pork”

“Ew! That’s disgusting! We don’t eat muscle!”

A few years ago, I had a student share a story from his wife’s Girl Scout troop. They were working on a cooking unit with some whole fryers. One of the 11-year-old girls suddenly shrieked “Ew! They look like animals!”

But the largest category of criticism I found comes from those who feel that the exhibit denigrates humans by defiling corpses. Many deny that any information is conveyed. Others insist that von Hagens has no desire to convey information, only to shock. He has been called unbalanced, pornographic, psychotic, cold, calculating, and opportunistic. The words scientist, knowledge, and information frequently appear in sarcastic quote marks.

Other critics shift the focus from von Hagens to that which questions the motives of those who donate, often with pitying, contemptuous, or disbelieving tones. The specimen of the pregnant woman figures prominently in these critiques, demanding pity for her husband and loved ones, all the while insisting that she could not have known what von Hagens had in mind.

I’m not trying to pull rank, but I think it’s safe to say that I’ve put more thought into death and rituals of death than the average person. The tone of this criticism rankles, but doesn’t surprise me. It implies that individuals either have no right to determine what should happen to them after death, or that the idea of “informed consent” is a complete fallacy regarding one’s own physical remains. It’s particularly grating that the shrillest, most absolutist of these are devoid of any real consideration or appreciation for the plethora of different ways in which human groups treat the dead.

In my cultural anthropology class, I try to introduce the idea of the “Tao of Humanity” by drawing on Herodotus’ story about King Darius bringing Greeks and Indians together to talk about their rituals for the dead. The point is not that we eat or bury them, but that there is no human group that simply ignores the fact that death represents an individual and collective loss.

Bioarchaeologists have gone along for the culture-historical, processual, post-processual ride in trying to determine whether mortuary archaeology is telling us about the living, the dead, or neither. To pretend that those of us living in the Western world today have some kind of clarity on the subject is sheer hubris.

That said, there are some serious allegations that all of the specimens were not obtained via voluntary, informed consent. There have been reports in the German media that some of the corpses were victims of execution in Chinese prisons. The evidence does not seem to be especially robust, but it’s difficult to find a treatment of it that contains any facts, let alone dispassionate reporting regarding them.

All critics, regardless of the nature or orientation of their issues with the exhibit, seem convinced that von Hagens has nothing more in mind than cheap thrills and exploitation. It is very difficult for me to reconcile these simplistic condemnations with the richness of my own experience of it (and the apparent richness of the experience not just of my companions, but of the vast majority of the visitors there at the same time we were). I feel like I absorbed very little of what was available for the taking, and it’s somewhat depressing that so many seem to have been able to reduce it to so little.

If you’re anything like me you think Radiohead is the greatest band on the planet; that the Rolling Stones are important, but overrated; Natalie Portman is the greatest actress of her generation (and hot, even with short hair); the most disgusting noise is the noise of someone eating with their mouth open; and you read—a lot. But no fiction, only non-fiction. Not even James Frey non-fiction. A lot of it is news, some of it is commentary, and sometimes life experience. I read a lot about Intelligent Design (ID) these days. It’s not something that I’m particularly proud of, it’s just hard not to. It’s like a train wreck. Can’t…look…away…

The truth is I find it difficult to read about ID because of my background. It makes me question whether what I have been taught is truth. I am very skeptical. This doesn’t help me scoff at arguments easily, as so many others do. I have to analyze and spend hours considering the truth. In this day and age, it isn’t easy. Truthiness surrounds us.

Recently, I was at a party in which an old friend of mine informed me that she didn’t believe in evolution. My first thought was, how is that possible? I have known her since high school, in fact, we were in biology together. We both grew up in Calgary, and although there are many similarities between Alberta and certain American states, I did not figure that she could not believe. We were both in the Alberta Catholic school system, which, I informed her, actively believes in evolution (a statement direct from the Pope). She wanted to know what I thought about evolution and how I could be so certain that it was correct. I began to panic a little. The ID people had gotten to her. It’s like a secret organization. They are mocked and ridiculed by the mainstream, yet secretly they are among us. How could this be? She was a normal everyday engineer. Really that’s a lie. There are no normal engineers. But she had a basic background in biology. By not believing in evolution, does that mean she doesn’t believe in biology as a science? What if she’s on to something? Wait. Don’t jump ship yet.

I accept evolution because if I don’t, a lot of biology doesn’t make sense when you’re studying for it. But evolution is really challenging because it isn’t easily visualized, nor is it easy to accept unless you know a lot about it. I sometimes feel this to be the problem with ID proponents. They haven’t seen the evidence, often have no desire to see the evidence, and therefore, cannot believe in evolution. I read anti-evolution websites to see what these people are all about. They are very technical and full of evidence. After a little while, it makes me question what I know. I had to look back and examine the evidence and my own uncertainty.

Most people think of Charles Darwin when they hear the word evolution, however, the term has a complex scientific history as many different fields have used it with different meanings. In fact, Charles Darwin’s pivotal Origin of Species (1859) does not use the term evolution. In the 1850s the term began to take on its modern meaning as the “theory of transmutation of species.” Sort of. Geologist Charles Lyell is often attributed as one of the first to use evolution in its modern sense. But at this time the term was defined by a sense of progress, which is a big no-no in evolutionary theory. Eventually, evolution came to represent a process by which novel traits are inherited by future generations, and over time new species are formed. That’s pretty straightforward, but in the context of the nineteenth century Judeo-Christian world this was earth-shattering. Not in a Red Sox win the World Series kind of way, but in a much bigger, question your God kind of way (although for Sox fans, there is no bigger). It was a tough hundred years or so for God (and his followers). First, the French and their crazy deistic ideas, then geologists like James Hutton and Lyell claimed that the earth was much older than a few thousand years and that life was subject to uniformitarianism, and finally, a guy with mutton chops and in a desperate need for an eyebrow grooming, claims that species are created by random, non-progressive events.

Uniformitarianism is an important concept to biology, because it claims that natural processes occurring presently, also occurred in the past. This allows scientists to assume that processes like continental drift, and more importantly to Darwin, evolution, have been occurring since the beginning of the earth. Darwin is important to biology for theorizing on the mechanism of evolution⎯natural selection. His theory states that traits that allow individuals to survive and reproduce will be passed along to future generations. Over time, this process can lead to new species. One stipulation of Darwin’s theory is that natural selection is not progressive. It is random. Mindless. Animals don’t just become more intelligent or more complex, they can become stupider, slower, blinder, and less limb-y, as long as reproductive success is maintained (or enhanced).

Evidence for evolution is a hard sell. It’s like asking someone how they believe in sharks, if they have never seen one. Well, I infer. Besides the fact that monkeys really look like humans, and that birds, horses, fish, mice, bats, and humans all have equivalent bone configurations, medicine provides examples. Bacterial/viral resistance which is a great problem today, is an example of natural selection at work. But I guess there are people that don’t believe in medicine. Also, ID proponents would argue that adaptation may occur, but this does not give rise to new species. The problem with this argument lies in the uncertainty of biologists. The lack of a solid definition for the term species makes this a difficult argument. Some would consider new bacterial strains different species. But with an obscure definition for species, when is a species no longer the same species as it once was? In modern biology we can use DNA analysis to provide insight. But to look further into the past requires fossils.

ID websites like to use the lack of fossils as support for the impossibility of evolution. First it is important to note that not everything is fossilized. Fossilization requires special conditions. For example, a dying dinosaur needs to be somehow saved from decomposition. Dying at the bottom of a lake or a tar pit can help this. Over time the remains are mineralized, and later in time dug up by a grad student. Maybe a summer student. Digging is hard work. And another important note is that hard tissues have a better chance of fossilization. Boney animals can often be tracked in the fossil record, but animals like sharks or squid, have a hazier history.

The fossil record also indicates a punctuated type of speciation. Stephan Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, proposed a theory of punctuated equilibrium to explain this. The theory more or less states that for long periods of time little happens, then there are bursts of new species. The formation of new species likely occurs from smaller isolated populations, while any changes in large populations are diluted and less likely to form new species. These new species are less likely to be found in the fossil record unless their populations increase in number. Isolated speciation like this can explain how certain species seem to change quickly (e.g. among the human lineage) while others take more time. Because of isolation, adaptations can occur quickly, thus, evolution often occurs faster than people give it credit for.

What of transitional forms, the proverbial missing links? There are many examples of transitional forms in the fossil record. Fish, fish with lungs, fish with leg-like parts, fish-like animals that are likely not fish but amphibians. This concept of missing links is tricky. Generally, missing links in the fossil record are present between larger groups, but missing at the species level. So we may not know who our direct ancestor was, but we do have evidence of many bipedal human-like animals. Transitional forms are kind of awkward. They have developed certain adaptations, usually to improve energy efficiency, but these adaptations don’t necessarily provide direct advantages in reproduction or feeding. So they are not seen in great numbers, and less likely to be fossilized. An example is the reptilian feather. Although they are useful for insulation, it isn’t until they can be used for flight that they become helpful for reproduction/feeding.

The most convincing observation in the fossil record to me, is that when there are changes in climate (for example when the earth heats up) new life explodes on to the scene. And for all the new plants that are born, there are a number of odd looking animals that join them. This often occurs when there are mass extinctions as it frees up niches. It’s like if all the polar bears in the world died (which may happen sooner than later…), all the fish, seals, and belugas that they eat would increase in number. Eventually, something would come along to exploit this food source. This brings up an interesting point, ever notice how everything has something that will eat it? To me this is a great example of evolution, the fact that things eat nuts, grass, carbon dioxide, poop, dead moths, bacteria, and any other biological by-product. Even urine is useful!

Another difficulty often cited is the process of examining fossils. How is it possible to tell how a dinosaur walks from one bone? Well, as a biomechanist, this question is particularly interesting to me. Important bones, like femurs or skulls, have attachment points that let us determine the size of muscles. This allows us to infer, for example, that a certain dinosaur had major jaw crunching power and was likely a carnivore. This can be further ascertained by the discovery of teeth.

Questioning bones brings up another important concern, what if you don’t look like your ancestors? If you didn’t have your grandfather’s nose how would people know that you were related? Crocodiles fall into this category. That’s because their ancestors likely lived in a terrestrial environment, unlike current, semi-aquatic crocodilians. Since crocodiles have a low body form and their ancestors may have been bipedal, their lineage can be determined by looking at features that don’t change much among reptiles. To this, scientists look at holes in the skull. These holes can tell them which reptiles are most closely related as these skull holes shift and change shape across reptile groups. By looking at these characteristics scientists (with the help of computers) can determine which bones are most closely related, and thus part of a lineage.

A problem often cited by ID websites is the nature of complex adaptations. They claim that there are adaptations that are just too complex for evolution and therefore, must be due to a Creator. But evolution is not always as it seems. For instance, a jaw is a complex adaptation that was initially used to increase ventilation and eventually led to more efficient feeding. Moving one adaptation at a time or through a system of co-adaptations, complex traits can be developed. Darwin was afraid of the eye as it was a true challenge of his theory. How could something as complex as an eye form through the random nature of selection? As long as a reproductive advantage is offered, anything that our DNA backbone allows is possible. This is evidenced by the many different eyes that have developed. Humans, insects, fish, octopi, and snakes all have different eyes. In fact there is a spectrum of animals that have ‘eyes’ that represent the stages that would be required for eyes to develop. The slightest form of an eye, a light-sensitive patch, would be helpful in determining the direction of the sun.

An important development in this research is that eyes seem to be created from a set of genes that are shared between all animals. So although they keep popping up independently, eyes may be constrained by the genetics of animals. So that means that they follow some intelligent design, right? This isn’t really new, since limbs and body segments are often similarly conserved. Interestingly, the variations in eyes seem to go against intelligent design. If you were an intelligent designer wouldn’t you want to create the most efficient eye possible? In this case the human eye is flawed, in the sense that light has to travel through a layer of non-light-sensitive cells to reach the light sensitive retina. The more efficient (and intelligent) arrangement would be to reverse the situation so that light is optimized. This type of eye is seen in squid and octopi.

In the end I believe in evolution because of what I know. But I guess people who don’t believe, don’t need to know. Ignorance is frustrating. The problem with ID is the same as the problem with truthiness in general: it’s truthy, not facty. There is no real debate here, just selective use of facts. For rational believers, it’s easy to believe that God created the driving force for evolution—natural selection. Science is a funny thing. It’s a little like math, where knowledge is built one step at a time. Simple followed by complex. But unlike math, science that you were once taught in the beginning may not be true. It’s like finding out later in life that two-plus-two does not equal four, or sometimes it’s not entirely four. Thus, students are taught the prevailing theories of the scientific community. This means that for a particular subject this is the best information that the scientific community currently has to offer. Theories can be wrong. That’s why they are called theories. And thanks to the handsome Austrian Karl Popper, we know that we can never prove a theory to be true. But uncertainty is always looming above it, because a single unexplainable observation can disprove a theory. But more often than not, it just changes a model and the theory is altered to make sense of the rogue observation. ID supporters like to say that ‘evolution is just a theory.’

As Stephen J. Gould wrote, “In American vernacular, ‘theory’ often means ‘imperfect fact’…” Gould was particularly bitter because his words were often cited as support for the lack of evidence for evolution, when the truth was that he was just uncertain. These arguments are annoying because they allow individuals to conclude that an expert like Gould is misinterpreting his own results. He claims to still believe in evolution despite the fact that he does not have sufficient evidence. So if you’re like me and you read things that go against what you know, don’t be a victim of your uncertainty. Uncertainty makes science possible. It’s a helpful check, so that scientists don’t blindly accept theories. Others can use your uncertainty against you, but it’s really because they don’t know the facts.

REFERENCE:
The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute. (2005) BMJ 331:1498-1500

ABSTRACT:
OBJECTIVES: To determine the overall rate of loss of workplace teaspoons and whether attrition and displacement are correlated with the relative value of the teaspoons or type of tearoom. DESIGN: Longitudinal cohort study. SETTING: Research institute employing about 140 people. SUBJECTS: 70 discreetly numbered teaspoons placed in tearooms around the institute and observed weekly over five months. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Incidence of teaspoon loss per 100 teaspoon years and teaspoon half life. RESULTS: 56 (80%) of the 70 teaspoons disappeared during the study. The half life of the teaspoons was 81 days. The half life of teaspoons in communal tearooms (42 days) was significantly shorter than for those in rooms associated with particular research groups (77 days). The rate of loss was not influenced by the teaspoons’ value. The incidence of teaspoon loss over the period of observation was 360.62 per 100 teaspoon years. At this rate, an estimated 250 teaspoons would need to be purchased annually to maintain a practical institute-wide population of 70 teaspoons. CONCLUSIONS: The loss of workplace teaspoons was rapid, showing that their availability, and hence office culture in general, is constantly threatened.

REFERENCE:
The case of the disappearing teaspoons: longitudinal cohort study of the displacement of teaspoons in an Australian research institute. (2005) BMJ 331:1498-1500

ABSTRACT:
OBJECTIVES: To determine the overall rate of loss of workplace teaspoons and whether attrition and displacement are correlated with the relative value of the teaspoons or type of tearoom. DESIGN: Longitudinal cohort study. SETTING: Research institute employing about 140 people. SUBJECTS: 70 discreetly numbered teaspoons placed in tearooms around the institute and observed weekly over five months. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Incidence of teaspoon loss per 100 teaspoon years and teaspoon half life. RESULTS: 56 (80%) of the 70 teaspoons disappeared during the study. The half life of the teaspoons was 81 days. The half life of teaspoons in communal tearooms (42 days) was significantly shorter than for those in rooms associated with particular research groups (77 days). The rate of loss was not influenced by the teaspoons’ value. The incidence of teaspoon loss over the period of observation was 360.62 per 100 teaspoon years. At this rate, an estimated 250 teaspoons would need to be purchased annually to maintain a practical institute-wide population of 70 teaspoons. CONCLUSIONS: The loss of workplace teaspoons was rapid, showing that their availability, and hence office culture in general, is constantly threatened.

I

We sit, in love and gazing at the stars
That fill the violet evening sky with sparks.
What flies up there, besides our thoughts, or larks
That sing life’s glory or its scars?
Is there a being on a quest from Mars,
And launching out in meteoric arcs?
What answers would he seek when he embarks
Across the void between his world and ours?

We love each other, sitting two as one,
And mostly, life is full with soothing sun,
You hold me as we face the starry sky,
To contemplate what comes and goes; and why.
But sometimes, through my heart, cold winds have blown,
And even when you’re here, I feel alone.

II

We fear the silent darkness of the night,
Afraid the stars that slowly roll about
Might suddenly grow dim, and flicker out.
And so we hold each other ’til the light;
Asleep, or rocking madly in delight
Of one another’s moans and shrieks and shouts,
That fill the silence, blocking most our doubts
About eternal love, or guiding light.

Our music roars and echoes through the dark,
Like wine-dark viol, silver cymbal spark.
We exhale love songs in each other’s souls,
A manic chorus easing worldly roles,
Love’s noise explodes, then blazes in our eyes,
And hides the deathly silence of the skies.

III

Between the galaxies so far apart,
Among the stars and planets of the night,
There’s emptiness to give our souls a fright,
To leave us with a vacuum of the heart.
Although we call in space with words and art,
We try to beam our thoughts to cast a light,
And send our love to make the blackness bright;
The unmapped darkness still leers from our chart.

There’s so much emptiness, it goes beyond
Our dreams, our hopes, our hearts so overfull;
Few lights reflect across the endless pond
Of space, so infinite, and past our pull.
Though love, I’ve heard, can last eternally,
Can it fill up a bleak infinity?

IV

So permanent you seem; you light my sky,
You guide me in my orbiting through space,
I wait your dawning in this dismal place
Of darkness where we all must live and die.
When faced with night and asking how and why,
Your glow bestirs a humor and a grace,
I spin, then, at an optimistic pace,
In love with living. Your warmth makes me fly.

But solar flares and sunspots leave no doubt
That someday, light and fire could fizzle out,
And in the darkness that your light restrains,
In drift around the ember that remains;
My dizzy planet, fading in the night,
Will spin around a star with no more light.

V

Where is heaven, is it out beyond
The cosmos that we view and we explore,
With paltry instruments and little more
Than zealous theory, rapt religious bond?
I think sometimes that we are overfond
Of Ptolemeic notions, and a core
Belief that all our motions truly soar,
That magic circles us; we wave the wand.

Perhaps there is no heaven out past space;
That love is only in this earthly place,
And we should live like flowers on a rise,
And let the breezes sweep us to the skies;
That maybe heaven’s love’s not from afar,
Past distant stars; but just from where we are.

VI

The universe spins out, chaotically,
The stars, so brilliant white, disperse themselves
‘Mongst gasping branches, shifting sandy shelves
Of oceans that may rise spasmodically,
Or disappear in glacial memory.
Among the atoms, starlight’s photon elves,
Will crash protons to quarks as starlight delves
And breaks existence unrelentingly.

If hopes should take us heavenward, I fear
That chaos there will bring us back to earth
And make eternity a jape, a jeer;
The universe, ironic house of mirth.
But still I’ll hope – as all things fall apart
That in the chaos, we’ll find love and art.

VII

Where are those strings that hold us in our place?
Are they dimensions of our seeking heart,
The twanging notes of some canonic art?
An unexplained arpeggio out in space
Might be what brings a cadence to the race.
Vibrations change, have changed right from the start,
And can’t be placed by writings of Decartes
Or Heisenberg; the measures move apace.

“There are no Gods,” some physisists have mused;
Still, with religion, science is infused.
As long as mystery surrounds the stars,
We all pontificate, debate in bars,
And hope for music of eternal peace,
A universal chord that will not cease.

As of November 2005, 776 Nobel Prizes have been awarded (758 to individuals, 18 to organizations) in physics, chemistry, medicine, literature, peace, and economics. In that same month, according to the U.S. Bureau of Census, there were an estimated 6,469,818,677 people alive in the world. Consequently, the average person (or even the average scientist) has a very small chance of winning a Nobel Prize or even ever knowing anyone who has done so. However, there is a very small group of people whose odds of winning this estute award are exponentially increased. These people were the members of an elite brotherhood consisting of 20 members, known as the RNA Tie club. Eight of these members went on to win Nobel Prizes making the odds of winning a Nobel Prize in this specific ‘population’ 2 in 5. Indeed, this crude analysis is riddled with copious confounders. However, for the purposes of this discussion they have been wittingly ignored.

Founded in 1954 by Russian physicist George Gamow, the RNA tie club served the purpose of encouraging comradery and collaboration between some of the forward researchers of the time. This inter-disciplinary ‘team’ met bi-annually to try and solve the mystery of RNA structure and how it contributed to the formation of proteins. In the meantime, they wrote letters to one another proposing new ideas that were not yet developed enough to be submitted for publication in scientific journals. Gamow believed it was imperative to advancement and discovery that scientists from different fields share their ideas and results. However, this club was also an excuse to gather and drink whiskey and beer. If one were to speculate, it could be thought that this may be part of the reason why Marshall Nirenberg (not a club member) beat the entire RNA tie team to deciphering the first letter of the genetic code.

The members of the RNA tie club that achieved the most popular fame were Drs. James Watson and Francis Crick. Every club member received a moniker after one of the 20 amino acids. Dr. Watson was named after proline, and Dr. Crick after tyrosine. In the April 25th 1953 issue of Nature, one of the most eminent papers of all time was published by Watson and Crick: “Molecular structure of nucleic acids; a structure for deoxyribose nucleic acid”. It is within this article that they announced that DNA was a right-handed double helix. Before this, there had been a frenzy of work and publications attempting to explain the structure of DNA. The key to Watson and Crick’s model was that the nucleotides were assumed to be laying perpendicular to the plane of the phosphate backbone with hydrogen bonds between a purine on one strand and a pyrimidine on the opposing strand. They also propose that the specific pairing that they suggested insinuates a copying mechanism for DNA. Watson and Crick received their Nobel prize in 1962 for this discovery, and thus did not benefit from the RNA tie club in this regard. Crick would later be able to attribute some success in proposing the adaptor hypothesis, and later the wobble hypothesis, to interactions with other tie club members. In fact, Crick refers to his proposal of the adaptor hypothesis in a letter to other members of the RNA tie club as the most influential unpublished paper he had ever written. In this letter he proposed that there existed twenty adaptors and twenty enzymes, one for each amino acid. The specific enzyme would join the amino acid to its corresponding adaptor, which would then travel to the RNA template and be held in place by hydrogen binding. This was essentially correct, although Crick did not discover the tRNA molecule.

Lesson number 1: perform the work for winning a Nobel prize before joining a prestigious club so that you can sit back, relax and get the most out of conversing with your fellow scientists.

George Gamow founded the RNA Tie club after his first attempt at deciphering the genetic code. Gamow postulated in a 1953 Nature paper that there existed a diamond shaped cavity formed between 4 nucleotides in which amino acids could fit in a stereotypic fashion. The amino acids would line up within this groove, and once complete, an enzyme would come along and link them all together. He proposed this as an overlapping triplet code; he was correct on the triplet aspect, but not on the overlapping sequence. Crick would later use the protein sequence data available at the time to show that the diamond code model was unfeasible; there were known patterns of amino acid repetitions that the diamond code was not able to reproduce. Gamow continued on and proposed the triangle code; an overlapping triplet code that again was disproved by another RNA tie club member. This time, it was Sydney Brenner (2002 Nobel Prize winner, also known as valine) who used the protein sequencing data to show that overlapping codons could not contribute to the amino acid sequence. By doing this, Brenner ended the era of the overlapping triplet code.

Although Gamow’s work masquerading as a molecular biologist was largely unsuccessful, he is still well known for work pre-RNA tie club where he established the theory of alpha decay. He also showed that as a star burns hydrogen it heats up, thus providing strong support for the Big Bang theory. Gamow’s personal life was almost as remarkable as his career. He was born in the Russian empire to which he returned after his post-doctoral training at the University of Copenhagen and at the Cavendish Laboratory with Ernest Rutherford. He made two attempts to flee the increasing oppression in his native country by trying to kayak across the Black Sea with his wife to Norway. After failing both times because of bad weather, he used his wits a bit more and obtained permission for both he and his wife to attend a conference for physicists in Brussels. They never returned to Russia and instead set up a new life in the United States. George Gamow never received a Nobel Prize.

Lesson number 2: never be the founder of a prestigious club full of future Nobel laureates.

Lesson number 3: never attempt a daring escape of any kind with 2 physicists until they have had at least 2 practice runs.

Melvin Calvin, or histadine, won the 1961 Nobel Prize in chemistry for his work on the biochemistry of carbon fixation. Calvin exposed algea to the carbon-14 isotope and mapped the complete route that carbon travels through a plant from CO₂ absorption to conversion into organic compounds, such as carbohydrates. Having worked out the major steps involved in the metabolic process of photosynthesis, this pathway would later take his namesake and be referred to as the ‘Calvin Cycle’. Calvin did not make any major public discoveries regarding the mysteries of RNA or the genetic code.

Lesson number 4: do not focus your research on anything even resembling what the other future Nobel prize winners in your group are doing.

Comradere was not always found between the members of the RNA tie club. Erwin Chargaff, or lysine, apparently did not get along very well with Watson and Crick from their very first meeting. However, his work was crucial for Watson and Crick to discover the structure of DNA. Chargaff has proposed two rules, fittingly known as the Chargaff rules. The first rule was essentially that in DNA, the number of adenine molecules equals the number of thymine molecules, and that the number of cytosine molecules equals the number of guanine molecules. He also noted that cytosine and guanine are of lesser abundance than the other two nucleotides. The second rule states that DNA composition varies between species, particular with respect to the relative amounts of matching nucleotides. This pointed strongly to DNA being the source of genetic material. Chargaff did not win a Nobel Prize, although many believe he should have shared the prize with Watson and Crick. He no longer has the opportunity to win the Nobel Prize as he passed away in 2002; the Nobel prize is not awarded posthumously.

Lesson number 5: not liking someone else who will win a Nobel prize is okay.

There are many more members of the RNA tie club not addressed here. They all have fascinating stories, with each one full of lessons to be learned. However, important lessons also stem from the men who actually cracked the genetic code, and were not RNA tie club members. Marshall Nirenberg and his colleague Johann Matthaei were able to uncover the first letter of the genetic code using an elegantly simple experiment. They took a test tube and added to it all of the components believed to be required for protein synthesis. This included ribosomes, free nucleotides, amino acids, energy and an RNA template. The genius part of this experiment was that the RNA template that they used consisted of a string of uracils. Protein synthesis ensued and resulted in a chain of phenylalanines. This showed that UUU coded for phenylalanines. They continued on and found that a succession of cytosines codes for proline. Har Gobind Khorana, a scientist from the University of Wisconsin, followed suite by synthesizing chains of dinucleotide repeats to decipher the rest of the coding sequence. Nirenberg and Khorana shard the Nobel prize in 1968 with Robert Holley, the discover of transfer RNA. Matthaei did not win the Nobel prize. He was a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institute of Health at the time and thus Nirenberg was able to take all of the credit for the work they did together. Some believe that he was much more deserving of this award than Khorana.

Lesson number 6: never work as a post-doctoral fellow for someone who will go on to win a Nobel prize.

Lesson number 7: joining a prestigious club may distract your from your Nobel prize winning work.

Although only a sampling of the RNA tie club members and some of the other major players in cracking the genetic code have been discussed, their stories hold some important lessons for today’s biologists. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that a club containing the leading researchers in the scientific community would exist as successfully today. There is a lot to learn from this club aside from lessons relating to the Nobel Prize (which have been introduced satirically). One of its main goals was to promote sharing of intellectual ideas; this is rare in today’s world of intellectual property and patents. It was also to create a focus on interdisciplinary learning, another side of science that has been ignored as the required knowledge base in each discipline expands. However, lately a myriad of ‘interdisciplinary’ programs are popping up in universities, usually related to biology and computer science. Many of the ideas proposed by the club members were formed by thinking about available data at length, forming a hypothesis and then testing this hypothesis through either experimental methods or mathematics. This methodology is often overlooked by scientists today who perform ‘high-throughput’ experiments and then later form hypotheses based on their results. This premeditation step before ploughing through experiments is key to designing the elegantly simple experiments seen a few decades ago. Until scientists begin to think like this again, we will be bogged down with papers regarding minute gene changes occurring in a cell without anyone seeking the answers to the big picture questions. The RNA tie club and its members not only laid the groundwork for all molecular biology today, they also taught us valuable lessons in how to win (or not win) a Nobel Prize and how we should conduct our research today.

(This article was reprinted with permission from the edition of that finest of fine publications, n+1)

Over the course of the past century, mean global temperatures increased by .6 degrees C. This change seems slight but isn’t: in the winter of 1905 my great-grandfather, a coppersmith, installed the roof on a new reef-point lighthouse two miles from Lake Michigan’s shore. Each morning he drove out across the open ice in a horse and buggy laden with his copperworking tools; today the water that far from shore never freezes, much less to a depth that could support a horse’s weight.

Well into the 1990s, such changes had happened gradually enough to seem salubrious, at least in the Upper Midwest—a karmic or godly reward, perhaps, for hard work and good behavior. No snow in October! Another fifty-degree day in February! It was as if the weather, too, partook of the national feeling of post-WWII progress: the economy would expand, technology would advance, the fusty mores of a black-and-white era would relax, and the climate, like some index or celebration of all this, would slowly become more mild. This was America. Our children would not only have bigger cars, smaller stereos, a few extra years to find themselves—they’d have better weather, too.

Now we know what we’ve done. Or we should. The fuel-burning binge (and the beef-eating binge, and the forest-clearing binge) we’ve been on for the past 150 years, and especially the last 60, and increasingly and accelerantly, has brought into view the most dangerous threat in the brief history of our civilization. It’s become possible to glimpse the disappearance of so many things, not just glaciers and species but ideas and institutions too. Things may never be so easy or orderly again. Our way of life that used to seem so durable takes on a sad, valedictory aspect, the way life does for any 19th-century protagonist on his way to a duel that began as a petty misunderstanding. The sunrise looks like fire, the flowers bloom, the morning air dances against his cheeks. It’s so incongruous, so unfair! He’s healthy, he’s young, he’s alive—but he’s passing from the world. And so are we, healthy and alive—but our world is passing from us.

* * *

For a long time, we feared that we would destroy ourselves by a sudden spasm of bomb-dropping. We still fear this, and should: the bombs are everywhere, attached to missiles that are meant for us, for our cities and our skins, though they point toward the empty sky. Despite our fear, we’ve learned to rest almost easily in the idea that for nuclear catastrophe to happen buttons must be pushed; that though it’s easy to push buttons the imaginative connection between the buttons and their consequences will not be lost; that no human being would willingly push those buttons and accept those consequences again. We may well be wrong about this, but it is possible we are right; each day that passes without nuclear disaster implies the hope of decades, centuries, eons of the same.

Global warming—and the other environmental disasters that will exacerbate and be exacerbated by global warming—doesn’t permit this hope. It takes forty years or more for the climate to react to the carbon dioxide and methane we emit. This means that the disasters that have already happened during the warmest decade in civilized history  (severe droughts in the Sahel region of Africa, Western Australia, and Iberia; deadly flooding in Mumbai; hurricane seasons of unprecedented length, strength, and damage; extinction of many species; runaway glacial melt; deadly heat waves; hundreds of  thousands of deaths all told) are not due to our current rates of consumption, but rather the delayed consequences of fuels burned and forests clear-cut decades ago, long before the invention of the Hummer. If we ceased all emissions immediately, global temperatures would continue to rise until around 2050.

This long lag is the feature that makes global warming so dangerous. Yes, this is how we would destroy ourselves—not by punching red buttons in an apocalyptic fit, but by  appropriating to ourselves just a little too much comfort, a little too much warmth, a little too much time. Like Oedipus, we’ve been warned. Like Oedipus, we flout the warning, and we’ll act surprised, even outraged, when we find out what we’ve done.

* * *

Warming of 3 degrees C—five times as much as has occurred since 1900—is a standard projection for the century just begun. Though such a change would cause unimaginable destruction, it doesn’t constitute a worst-case scenario by any means; in fact, it’s the amount of warming assumed by the US Climate Action Report of 2002, a carefully combed and vetted State Department document that begins with a heartening quote from President Bush (“My Administration is committed to a leadership role on the issue of climate change”). Three degrees Celsius is a conservative composite of the numbers produced by our best supercomputer climate models, and it doesn’t presuppose any of the dramatic events—the shutdown of the Gulf Stream, the disintegration of a major ice shelf, the collapse of the Amazon rainforest—that have climate scientists increasingly worried.

These computer models grow continually more sophisticated and detailed—but to truly understand how it’s going to be, to know what life will be like with a warming of 3ƒC, we would need a Borgesian computer model that stretched from the height of the thermosphere to the ocean floor; a computer model to account for the possible extinction, migration, or adaptation of every living species; a computer model to assess the reactions of cowed, calamity-shaken governments to widespread flooding, food and freshwater shortages, storm-wrecked shorelines, aggressively rising seas. In a few short decades, nothing will be as it is now, everything will have to be recalculated, and the task of laying out even one of the many possible scenarios is akin to imagining in full a science-fiction planet sort of like our own: no matter how many dozens upon dozens of novels you wrote, there would always be details and consequences that escaped your consideration, and, once recognized, forced you to reconsider the whole.

* * *

Certain consequences, however, are obvious and inarguable, because they’re already underway. Increased rainfall and evaporation will intensify cycles of drought and flooding worldwide. The Climate Action Report describes an America where, within our lifetimes, “Drought is an important concern virtually everywhere. Floods and water quality are concerns in many regions.” Equatorial countries—which depend on the decreasingly reliable summer monsoons or life-sustaining rains, and which tend to be hardest hit by El Nino’s storms and droughts—will suffer even more.

Sea levels will continue to rise, partly due to glacial melt, but mainly because water expands as it warms. Higher seas, combined with increasingly powerful overwater storms, will devastate, destroy, or simply consume low-lying areas. The Dutch have begun making plans to abandon large tracts of their hard-won, dike-drained nation to the advancing sea. Tuvalu and other low-lying islands are reluctantly plotting the relocation of their entire citizenries. Some studies estimate that there will be 150 million environmental refugees by midcentury, largely as a result of flooding in poor countries like Bangladesh, where 13 million people live within three feet of sea level. The billions of dollars needed to rebuild New Orleans will be needed again and again and again, mostly by countries that don’t have them.

Extirpation of other species has long been a human specialty, but global warming, combined with continued habitat destruction, will accelerate the process by orders of magnitude. Our coral reefs and alpine meadows will be destroyed. Tropical diseases like malaria and dengue fever will spread to ever higher altitudes and latitudes. Food production will be hampered or crippled in many regions, and some people, perhaps many people, will starve.

And so on. Only one feature of our otherwise forgotten 20th-century world seems likely to remain and be reinforced—the supreme importance of wealth. Rich countries will do better than poor countries, rich households will do better than poor households, rich species (Homo sapiens and their pets) will do better than poor species (all the rest). Global warming will deepen the divide between haves and have-nots—Hurricane Katrina offers a one-off example of how this can occur even in the US, but the sharper distinction will be international. As poor countries are hammered by sudden disasters and longer-term droughts, shortages, and epidemics, wealthier countries will paradoxically and perversely provide less aid, as they struggle with their own resource problems and future uncertainties.

In a world of relative stability, governments can make decisions with relative leisure and even magnanimity. They think twice about bombing one another; they sometimes indulge ideals of generosity, equity, humanitarianism. This cannot remain true of a world where the most fundamental stability of all—the sameness of climate on which agrarian civilization was founded—has been casually discarded. Exiled from a more or less predictable world, we will become desperate and confused, and no computer program can model that desperation. Our President has declared a perpetual borderless war as a consequence of a single unforeseen attack; even a much saner administration may become unhinged when nothing, least of all the weather from one year to the next, can be relied on. Skirmishes or worse will flare as resources dwindle. Our isolation will grow as millions of fellow species become extinct. The suppressed nightmare of nuclear war will recur during daylight hours.

These are not worst-case scenarios. The worst-case scenarios are much worse.

* * *

Of all the crimes committed by our current administration—institutionalized torture, pursuit of war under false pretenses, et cetera—its ecological crimes are the most damaging and regrettable. George W. Bush has dismantled decades’ worth of environmental legislation, but his worst offense has been to take the oil companies’ despicable campaign of disinformation about global warming and make it national policy. Even in the not-so-likely event that our next administration fully understands the scope of the danger, the costs of these eight years of paralysis will prove incalculable.

In 1988, NASA’s top climate scientist, James Hansen, testified before Congress that he was “99 percent sure” that human-induced global warming was underway. His words made the front page of the Times and marked the entrance of global warming into mainstream public discussion. The following year, Al Gore called Hansen to testify again; this time, the first Bush Administration forced him to alter his prepared statement. A furious Gore called the incident “science fraud” perpetrated by the “Science Politburo of the Bush Administration.”

But Bush Sr., who oversaw the Montreal Protocol that reversed the destruction of the ozone layer, was a staunch ecologist compared to his son. (In between, Clinton and Gore were crucial to the forging of the Kyoto Protocol, and generally much sounder on environmental matters, but also presided over a 14 percent increase in US greenhouse emissions.) The second Bush has shown a Bolshevik flair for asserting ideological control over scientific inquiry. Hansen, who still heads NASA’s climate program, was recently warned of “dire consequences” if he persisted in speaking out about the need for immediate reductions in carbon emissions. Scientists at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have been muzzled too. The White House has altered or excised passages on climate change in several EPA reports; the former head exciser, Philip A. Cooney, took a job at ExxonMobil after resigning.

After his first Congressional appearance, Hansen was criticized by many scientists for drawing premature conclusions. He alone understood the difference between science, which demands constant skepticism in a search for total certainty, and politics, which demands reasonable assessments of probabilities and costs. The rigors of science look like weakness and temporizing when viewed through the lens of politics. This is the same blurred distinction on which the second Bush has based his devious insistence on “sound science”—i.e., perfect foreknowledge of future events as a prerequisite for action.

Meanwhile the Pentagon has begun scenario-planning for abrupt climate change. A DoD-commissioned report from 2003 begins by noting that “there is substantial evidence to indicate that significant global warming will occur during the 21st century” and goes on to envision the consequences of one abrupt-change scenario that has increasingly captured the attention of scientists—the shutdown of the Gulf Stream, which could plunge most of Europe into a deep chill while the rest of the world continues warming. The report isn’t terribly imaginative or grammatical, but it is based on sound fundamentals: “With at least eight abrupt climate change events documented in the geological record, it seems that the questions to ask are: When will this happen? What will the impacts be? And, how can we best prepare for it? Rather than: Will this really happen?”

The authors go on to conclude that, while superior wealth and resources would allow the US to adapt moderately well to such a scenario, we would find ourselves in a world “where Europe will be struggling internally, large numbers of refugees are washing up on [US] shores, and Asia is in serious crisis over food and water. Disruption and conflict will be endemic features of life.” Such conclusions force us to consider the most cynical of all possible interpretations of our indifference to global warming: on some level, we believe not only that we’ll be fine, but that our relative advantage over other countries will actually increase. Instead of yielding aspects of our dominance to bigger nations like China and India, we’ll maintain our hold over a troubled world—an idea as unethical as it is dubious.

* * *

The US, with 5 percent of the world’s population, produces 25 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases, and thus is disproportionately responsible for the warming that has occurred so far and will occur in coming decades. The Climate Action Report maintains—and the White House continues to insist—that US “strategies are expected to achieve emission reductions comparable to the average reductions prescribed by the Kyoto agreement, but without the threats to economic growth.” Two paragraphs later, it’s made clear that our emissions are scheduled to increase by 43 percent between 2000 and 2020—a “comparable” amount, somehow, to the 7 percent reduction prescribed by Kyoto.

It’s often said that Kyoto doesn’t matter, because the cuts prescribed are so small as to be wholly inadequate—but our refusal to go even this far has brought the international political effort to address global warming to a dead halt. Kyoto expires in 2012, and governments should now be creating far more ambitious post-Kyoto plans, but such plans are unthinkable in the absence of US economic leadership. EU countries can act as responsibly as they like, but China and India, the slowly waking behemoths of US-style fossil-fuel use, will do nothing until the United States demonstrates that a grand-scale transition to renewable energy can be achieved by big industrial countries.

This is the responsibility incumbent on us, and its fulfillment could easily be couched in the familiar, voter-friendly language of American leadership, talent, and heroism. But it has not been. Instead we are welcoming the prospect of running shipping routes over the thawed North Pole, and scheming to drill for fresh oil beneath what used to be tundra. Instead of enacting a Manhattan Project for renewable fuels, we continue building technologically fossilized infrastructure at massive cost. After a profit-minded turn away from coal-fired power in the ’80s and ’90s, scores of new coal plants are scheduled to be built in this country by 2025. China and India are following suit, adding coal-fired capacity as fast as they can. A slow, self-congratulatory creep toward sustainability—a small investment in solar power, a fleet of “green” SUVs that get thirty miles a gallon—is no match for billions of dollars of deathly infrastructure. Once built, these plants will remain online for decades, pouring gigatons of carbon into the air, unless some humanitarian-minded nation sends its fighter planes to bomb them.

* * *

Hard, but not impossible, for a free democratic people to circumvent their government. In the past year, there’s been a definite uptick in public attentiveness to global warming, spurred by Elizabeth Kolbert’s quietly harrowing three-part piece in the New Yorker and then by the horrors of Katrina. New books abound and are selling well. A full-length documentary debuted at Sundance. ABC News and 60 Minutes have run prime-time specials. Rolling Stone publishes pieces by Al Gore and Bill McKibben. And yet the impression on our consciousness remains a dangerously shallow one. An accumulation of editorials has not amounted to a political movement, much less a transformation in our thinking. There remains an eerie discrepancy between the scope of the problem and our attention to it.

This is true not just of the pollsters’ America, that amorphous TV-watching body that extracts convenient messages—Drive that SUV! Build a five-bedroom house when the kids leave home!—from their administration’s silence. It’s true of the mainstream press and the left as well. The Times continues to give column inches to global-warming skeptics, as if such skeptics existed outside the protected biosphere of petroleum-company funding. The Nation devotes as much space to the dangers of warming as anyone, but it also publishes “A ‘Top Ten’ List of Bold Ideas,” which aims at “positive, aggressive post-Bush (and post–New Democrat) near- and long-term change.” So what do progressives boldly wish for? A thirty-hour workweek and universal  daycare—but the words global warming are nowhere to be found, and the weakly worded “investing in conservation and renewable energy” rates only an honorable mention. This is as perverse as it is typical. Imagine a historian in the year 2080, reading such lists as she researches the vexing question of how even educated, “progressive” people could have refused to face what was happening.

If such a thing as a literary/political/intellectual left exists, it is defined by its capacity for imaginative and sympathetic reach—by its willingness to surmount barriers of difference (class, distance, nationality) and agitate for a more equitable distribution of the goods and goodnesses that make up our idea of human (and nonhuman) well-being. To be able to imagine what it might be like to be tortured, or to live in abject poverty, or under the watchful eyes of US Predator drones—this capacity is crucial to the project of any political left in a wealthy country. But in the case of global warming, our collective imagination has failed us utterly.

There seems to be a persistent if unstated resistance on the part of the left to the precepts of ecology. Environmental causes haven’t captured the attention of our subtlest thinkers and writers, but remain cordoned off to be pursued by nature lovers and nonprofiteers. In fact, global warming represents the third great crisis of technological civilization. The first two have not been resolved—they stay with us, in the form of third-world sweatshops and slums (the brutal conditions and wealth discrepancy that first spurred Marx and Engels) and stockpiled hydrogen bombs (the application of each new technology to the art of killing humans). The third promises to overwhelm them both, even while it exacerbates them.

The most powerful and cogent critique that can currently be leveled against our mode of capitalism is that markets fail to account for ecological costs. In a crowded world of finite size, our political economy values only acceleration and expansion. Scarce natural resources like clean air and water, not to mention more complex systems like rainforests or coral reefs, are either held at nothing or seriously undervalued. Corporations could clear-cut all our forests, reduce croplands to swirling dust, turn rivers to conveyors of toxic sludge, deplete supplies of minerals and metals, double and redouble carbon emissions—and all our economic indicators would show nothing but robust growth until the very moment the pyramid scheme collapsed. Indeed, most of these things are happening, with only scattered opposition. When our math improves, when the costs of our products fully reflect the resources used and the wastes produced—especially CO₂: then and only then can capitalism begin to become a viable and humane economic system.

* * *

Meanwhile it feels strange to be alive and well, strange to keep riding the wave of our wild prosperity, strange to feel the warmth of the February sun on our necks. Do we know what’s happening or don’t we? It seems like we know, it seems like everyone knows—the news is out, the science corroborates our senses, until it seems impossible not to know—but we refuse to believe it. We’ve been taught to imagine ever longer and happier and healthier lives for ourselves—we can’t help half-consciously numbering the walks we’ll take, the books we’ll read and write, the grandchildren we’ll hoist in the year 2060. And maybe these dreams will come true. Maybe, as the Pentagon report suggests, the same privileged caste of people who engineered the coming disasters will live in fifty years much as they do now, buffered from harm by money and medicine and force of arms. The weather will be an erratic and dangerous spectacle, economies and ecosystems will collapse, millions will die elsewhere in the world, but we’ll seal our borders, abandon our ideas of nature, buy Canada (“the Saudi Arabia of freshwater”), and adapt.

Fifty years after that? We won’t be around. Those who will be can fend for themselves, and call us what they like.