Alzhemed. Man, it could have been a huge thing. The data looked good. The tests looked good. The company’s stock was rising. Their drug was showing real promise as a means to fix Alzheimers. Everything was perfect. But unfortunately, the good times couldn’t last forever.

Essentially, what they were looking at was a drug that would prevent amyloid plaque buildup in the brain. They began testing a chemical called homotaurine which occurs naturally in seaweed with the intention of getting FDA approval for what they would call Alzhemed. You can read the abstract from their paper A Potential Treatment For Alzheimers Disease to get a more complete picture of what their hopes were. And really, their hopes were based on sound medical work.

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We here at MK have been getting a little riled up over recent events where Islamic extremism seems to be taking a foothold in the western world. We tend to get a little grumpy when people start declaring that human rights are meaningless and the world should be under the rule of religious bigotry.

But today, whilst munching on a delicious 12″ Subway Club on whole wheat, I found a glimmer of reason and sensibility in a small 5 paragraph article in the Calgary Sun. After my initial shock at finding an actual newspaper in my hands, I found the encouraging story of a group of Canadian Muslims protesting the controversial Ground Zero mosque. The Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC) is taking an official hard-line stance against the Cordoba House Initiative, the organization proposing the building, calling it an act of ‘fitna’ or mischief which the Qur’an forbids.

The MCC’s official statement can be found here

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This article from The Guardian is just about the most awful thing I’ve seen in a very long time. It’s a story about British families who are using their summer vacation to take their kids to foreign shores for the purposes of having their genitals mutilated. And there’s a video that is horrible to watch.

There is nothing that can really be done to stop this practice. Superstitious people will go to great lengths to perform their remarkable rituals, and nobody answers “what is the purpose of your visit” with “destroying my daughter’s sexuality”. As well, I doubt there could be a charge of child abuse involved since the crime took place in a foreign (and presumably non-extradition) country. But I’m by no means an expert on international law, so that might be a mistake on my behalf.

If it’s happening in Britain, it’s happening everywhere. All I can really say about the topic is that it’s sick, and I hope really terrible things happen to the parents who arranged this and the monsters who make it their career to mutilate girls.

Female circumcision is just a polite way of saying genital mutilation. A circumcision, while not a pleasant process, is a million miles better than what is being done to women. And yes, there are a myriad of acts that lump under the female genital mutilation banner, but none are necessary, none are safe, and all result in a physically and emotionally destroyed woman. That’s not me sitting in my ivory tower of western culture and imagining that my world view is better than others; the act of disfiguring a child is despicable, and the total pre-scientific way that this ritual is performed is intrinsically dangerous and abhorrent.

Jim

Nothing on the ‘net really inspired any long-winded rants by me today, but I wanted to share a few really interesting things with you. That’s the kind of guy I am. Enjoy!

Aphids are neat
This is an article about how, in certain species, the menopausal aphids defend their colony by generating a waxy ooze in times of war. When an enemy comes a-calling, they actively go after the enemy, secreting this liquid that cools to a wax. The end result is they gum up their attackers, giving their own lives to save the colony. Reading this made me think about Dawkin’s book The Selfish Gene.

Half A Brain
Dr. Steven Novella answers a reader email about someone they know who has only one hemisphere to his brain. It’s an uncommon but not unheard-of malady, and Novella provides the neurological information on how this can happen. I found it really a fascinating tale.

Giraffe Knock-Out
This is a National Geographic video two giraffes necking, which is how bull giraffes settle disputes. This particular instance turns quite dangerous.

Surf’s Up
It’s a gorgeous picture of a not-so-gorgeous thing, a wave clotted with oil off the shore of Alabama. All I can say is “Ew“.

Academy Award Winning Movie Trailer
Nothing science-y or reason-y, but funny as hell.

Gnarls Barkley – Crazy
Again, unrelated, but I love the way this video was done all in ink blots.

Jim

It looks like all the evidence now shows that mercury is the sole cause of autism. Just kidding. In fact, I just read this article over at Pharyngula that talks about the latest research into the genetic causes of autism. It’s a tremendously interesting read because it goes a long way to showing that there is no single cause, nor is there a single gene, but we’re making some progress in understanding what to look for despite all that.

I won’t rehash the article because between the original source and PZ’s explanation, I’d just be re-saying what’s been said, but the basic gist of it is that some research is showing that the issue appears to be Copy Number Variants in a rather large number of potential genes. This really isn’t a huge surprise given the fact that autism isn’t a disease, but a spectrum of related but distinct conditions.

It is easy to see why parents of autistic children and some researchers have believed for so long that the cause of autism was linked in some way to vaccinations, and it was important that we go down that road and verify that this was not the case. We did that. But we wound up doing it over and over and over, always with the same results and always with the hope that this would be the last time. When we focus the research on actually understanding something instead of proving or disproving an already disproved theory, we make headway. Let this be a lesson to us.

Jim

Nanotechnology is one of those really neat words that most people don’t really understand. And I’m by no means an exception to that rule. What knowledge I have is gleaned from scientific press releases I’ve read and from science fiction stories. This hardly makes me an expert, but I understand at least to a small degree some of what they’re trying to do with it.

I can’t tell you why this post from Discover Blogs’s Not Exactly Rocket Science is cool. But I can tell you that it sure as hell IS cool.

You know what? I couldn’t even properly comment on this without going well into the sphere of things I don’t know about, so I’m going to give it a miss and just encourage you to read the link.

Jim

A few days ago, I made the blanket statement that thinking yourself healthy isn’t going to make you healthy, and was quite rightly called on it by Boy Infidel in the comments on the post. What I had intended to say was that a positive mental attitude is not the only treatment or preventative required. The common thing I heard during the lead-up to H1N1 from friends was “I never get the flu, and I’m really healthy, so I’m not worried about it.” I retorted to one friend that I hadn’t caught AIDS yet and I’m really healthy, so I’ll just will myself clean when I get my next hooker. Condoms be damned!

Health in general is a tricky thing, and a thing we’re still learning more and more about every day. I’m a proponent of, when sensible, medicating the body. Those who say that our wonderful bodies are naturally adept at fighting off any number of diseases are absolutely correct, but when we wind up compromised, it just seems like an obvious thing to me to use medical interventions to right the problem. Medicine is just another example of an area where our continued understanding has yielded incredible ways to increase the overall quality of life.

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A “significant breakthrough” for those who suffer from chronic pain … researchers have found that a molecular substance similar to capsacin (which gives hot peppers their heat) is released at the site of pain in the human body. Using SCIENCE!, they have been able to successfully block the molecule and significantly eliminate pain. The cherry on top is that the new medication is completely addiction free.

This article from Science Daily sums up the research nicely.

There are those in this world who believe that there is an Intelligent Designer (who, for brevity we’ll refer to as “God” here, or possibly even “He who created all the universe with his awesome power in just seven days, which is way cooler than what I could accomplish in a week even if I was skagged out on meth the whole time”) who has a direct plan for each and every one of us. It comes as no shock that this is not an opinion that sits well with me. I am not outright hostile to the idea of a creator or a creative force, but that such a creator made the entire universe and everything in it right down to the yous and the mes, well that’s just hard to accommodate.

If God cares about who we are, I have a question for you. What’s with all the sperm? No seriously, I’m curious. Allow me to explain.

Let’s pretend for a moment that nobody ever ejaculated during masturbation, or during wet dreams, or during oral or anal sex, or while rubbing their genitals on any number of substances. I don’t want to focus on the trillions of sperm I wasted prior to my vasectomy every year. We’re just looking specifically at that magical mysterious ejaculation during coitus.

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http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2010/03/amok_time_for_crayfish.php

It’s a post on Pharyngula that I thought was really neat. It’s about crayfish mating and pee.

Jim