Links for 6/11/07 [my NetNewsWire tabs]

Wow, have I mentioned yet how much I love this MarsEdit/NetNewsWire combo? (See my sidebar). I didn’t have to type (or copy/paste) a single web address, or the overall list code. Piece of cake! Although, I will admit to some formatting difficulties when changing back and forth from the WordPress WYSIWYG and MarsEdit. The solution? Only use MarsEdit (so I apologize if anyone’s feed shows this post updated a million times).

• Opinion: Over-the-counter Plan B long overdue – Breaking Bioethics – MSNBC.com

  “Emergency” contraception does the exact same thing (and uses the same hormones) as “regular” (medication) contraception. So why the big fuss?

  “Emergency contraception is not an abortion pill. It is basically a big dose of one of the key ingredients in an ordinary birth control pill.

  [snip]

  The pill acts in two ways. Primarily, it prevents the ovaries from releasing an egg so no fertilization can occur. Then in the rare event that an egg has already been released by the ovaries, the pill also changes the chemistry of the lining of the uterus so that any fertilized egg cannot implant.

  Is this an abortion pill? No. For the most part the pill simply stops an egg from being available to come in contact with sperm. And even if there happens to be an egg present when sex occurs there is no disruption of an implanted embryo. The only way the pill can be seen as inducing an abortion is if one holds the view that non-implanted, fertilized eggs are fetuses — a view which few doctors, pharmacists, scientists or Americans subscribe to.” (my emphasis)

• Drugs and Poisons: A brief history of antidepressants

  Great, simple run-through of antidepressants.

• Incinerating Presuppositionalism: The Moral Uselessness of the 10 Commandments

  Thanks for writing this. I wish more people were able to see this.

• Edge: WHY DO SOME PEOPLE RESIST SCIENCE By Paul Bloom and Dena Skolnick Weisberg

  Great commentary and insight. Definitely worth a look, and several re-reads. Here’s a teaser:

  “The strong intuitive pull of dualism makes it difficult for people to accept what Francis Crick called “the astonishing hypothesis.” Dualism is mistaken — mental life emerges from physical processes. People resist the astonishing hypothesis in ways that can have considerable social implications. For one thing, debates about the moral status of embryos, fetuses, stem cells, and non-human animals are sometimes framed in terms of whether or not these entities possess immaterial souls.

  [snip]

  But this rejection of science would be mistaken in the end. The community of scientists has a legitimate claim to trustworthiness that other social institutions, such as religions and political movements, lack. The structure of scientific inquiry involves procedures, such as experiments and open debate, that are strikingly successful at revealing truths about the world. All other things being equal, a rational person is wise to defer to a geologist about the age of the earth rather than to a priest or to a politician.

  Given the role of trust in social learning, it is particularly worrying that national surveys reflect a general decline in the extent to which people trust scientists. To end on a practical note, then, one way to combat resistance to science is to persuade children and adults that the institute of science is, for the most part, worthy of trust.” (my emphasis)

• Daily Kos: Book Review: Al Gore’s “Assault on Reason”

  I’m so totally getting this book. This post makes me drool in anticipation. (But is that really saying much? I have a whole bunch of unread books sitting on my shelf right now that make me drool when I think about reading them; in a good way).

A few New England Journal of Medicine articles:

• NEJM — Religion, Conscience, and Controversial Clinical Practices

  Damn MD’s and their woo. Some won’t even refer a patient to another MD if they have personal objections to certain procedures. Who are the offenders? Religious, male MD’s. {shudder}.

• NEJM — Interleukin-1-Receptor Antagonist in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

  Just because I’m researching IL-6: “At 13 weeks, in the anakinra group, the glycated hemoglobin level was 0.46 percentage point lower than in the placebo group (P=0.03); C-peptide secretion was enhanced (P=0.05), and there were reductions in the ratio of proinsulin to insulin (P=0.005) and in levels of interleukin-6 (P less than 0.001) and C-reactive protein (P=0.002).”

• NEJM — Effectiveness of Adjunctive Antidepressant Treatment for Bipolar Depression

  Antidepressants don’t help if the patient’s are already taking mood stabilizers.

A Cross-section of posts on sponges and proto-synapses:

• Thinking for Free: The Nerve of Some Sponges!

  First to report (to my knowledge).

• Pharyngula: Sponges have synapses?

  Great PZ post (this time with actual science!)

• Sea sponges have the makings of a nervous system « Neurophilosophy

  Super quality post; great writing, excellent explanations. Here’s a teaser:

  “In the new study, Kenneth Kosic and his colleagues analyzed the Amphimedon genome, and found that it contains 36 families of genes known to encode proteins of the post-synaptic density. So, even though it has no neurons, this sea sponge synthesizes an almost complete set of post-synaptic density proteins. A comparison of the DNA sequences from the 36 sea sponge genes with the homologous sequences from humans, Drosophila melanogaster (fruit flies) and Nematostella vectensis (a cnidarian with a simple nervous system, consisting of a loose network of nerves) revealed striking similarities between the genes in all four species. One gene, called dlg, encodes a crucial component of the post-synaptic density scaffold. The protein product of that gene contains a number of regions that form the protein-protein bonds that hold the scaffold together. The segment of the dlg gene encoding these binding regions was found to be highly conserved – the DNA sequences in the sea sponge gene were identical to the human sequences. This suggests that in the sea sponge these proteins interact in exactly the same way as they do in the human post-synaptic density.” (my emphasis)

Some highly appropriate satire:

• Daily Kos: Paris Hilton for President

~ by jryanstevens on June 11, 2007.