Australian Bioscience News & Views

Church and State

I'm usually exceptionally positive about Sydney University, being a place where opportunity abounds, for those lucky enough to gain a place as a student or employee. It as a community that does huge amounts of charitable and voluntary work on the side, and through its professional endeavours adds much to our country's abilities in ethics, finance, science of life and matter, medicine, history, the social and anthroplogical sciences, psychology, and many worthy fields. Today though, I am saddened to report that my alma mater has fallen onto the wrong side of the divide on separation of Church and State.

In order to secure an empty piece of land curently owned by St John's College, for the purposes of creating a wonderful new facility for medical research, the leaders of the university have agreed to accept the land with the condition that no research about euthanasia, stem cells, or the use of foetal tissue be conducted in that facility. Of course, such research will still be conducted elsewhere within the university, for the benefit of all, Catholic or other, but the acceptance of such a condition is a problem none the less. Our tax dollars, and the profits of private companies are devoted to universities and their much needed basic research. This research is too expensive to do elsewhere at present, as the masses of keen scientists, administrators, technicians, and ethicists are hard to gather in other place, without huge economic impost. Yet, it is possible for a single religion to rule on what is an acceptable field of enquiry, thus side stepping the many questions our community has about the ethics of research.

I am even more demoralised by the news, because our federal government will not defend this co-mingling of Church beliefs and State decisions on our research spending. Our current leaders do not believe in this essential separation of Church and State, not seeing the value it provides a civil society. Though I suspect I'm preaching only to the converted, I will say it now, this separation is vital to our survival as a society respectful of individual difference. Among our number are of course many Catholics, Anglicans, and other Christians, but there are also great numbers of Buddhists, Secular Humanists, Hindus, Athiests, Jews, Muslims, Sikhs, Agnositcs, Taoists, Zoroastrians, Wiccans, and other beliefs too numerous to name. Our diversity makes us strong, with the ability to see the world in many different ways, to approach the same dilemma in a thousand different ways, and accept our fellow beings as whole, and worthy members of a community ready to address the world's problems. Any reduction of this essential diversity, by allowing any one group to determine how our research money is spent, is a reduction of our excellent ability to live as a respectful community full of diversity and strength.

Shame on Sydney University for giving in, and shame on our government for encouraging it!

Sugars from different angles

I've known a few people with type I diabetes, a few more with type II, and have often wondered when the new molecular and genetic research would have pay offs for them. It's not an entirely altruistic impatience, as there is some type II diabetes in the family history.

Recent reading has been rewarding on the diabetes front. Researchers from University of Tokyo have found that there are genes coding for mechanisms for increasing the number of beta cells, and the amounts of insulin they secrete. Thinking in terms of diabetes, it's easy to assume sugar is all bad, but there is a good side to it. A particular complex sugar to be found in many cells and secreted by the liver, can reduce the amount of fat in the blood.  Undertaking some research in mice, a US team found that the presence of this sugar called heparan sulfate, in the liver, increases the clearance of triglycerides and cholesterol from the blood. Both these new pieces of research look like pretty good candidates for new treatments designed from this knowledge.

It would be interesting to see what insights The Evolution Of Human Diet might provide. I'll see if a copy can be tracked down.

Not the death of science

I think I really mean, "Not the death of the scientist". Just as television was not the death of radio, I seriously do not think that high technology diagnostics remove the need for human experience and consideration in a laboratory. The use of genotyping in antimalarial clinical trials: a systematic review of published studies from 1995–2005 is a case in point. Different methods of genotyping, different technologies, interpretations, and analytical approach result in somewhat different biases in any work. In this case it was applied to genotyping of malaria infections, to see whether a positive blood sample in a drug trial is the result of an old infection raising its ugly head again, or a brand new one.

No surprise there, that different methods have inherent strengths and weaknesses. In my mind, the key element of the article is that a reasoned approach to technology & information handling can be applied to any diagnostic situation. The right mix of tools and methods can be found to apply to any conditions. Choices that are appropriate in one setting are less than ideal in another, based on the genetic and socio-economic factors of the tested population, the resources available to the testers, and of course the amounts of money available for various business practices and technologies.

In Quarantine

Humans can be cruel, uncaring beings, and yet they can also give up their lives in the desire to help others. Sometimes even one person can swing from one extreme to the other! I guess it gives us all hope. Those with an interest in the history of public health will find a range of such tales In Quarantine (In Quarantine: A History of Sydney’s Quarantine Station 1828 – 1984. Jean Duncan Foley, 1995. Kangaroo Press. ISBN 0 86417 703 8). I recommend this fascinating book for almost all readers, except possibly those currently in quarantine. While the quarantined may find it very cheering to see how conditions have improved, through the growing understanding of biology and medicine, and higher expectations of treatment and accommodation, they might also be reminded of the despair and death so often met in quarantine. I can’t imagine that reminder would be good for resistance or recuperation from something scary enough to require quarantine.

It is very hard to say what was more heart rending reading, the excerpts from personal letters and diaries, or the historical tragedy that a pandemic of pneumonic influenza which began in 1918 or so, killed approximately 21 million people. There were also joyous tales of sometimes successful treatment, recovery from the point of death, effective quarantine, and thus wide scale tragedy averted, to be found in almost every chapter, so it’s not all doom & gloom. In Quarantine also has dates, names, and facts aplenty to go with the positive and negative personal accounts of people still alive and long passed.

If I were reviewing this book for readers who aren’t constantly hooked up to the internet, I’d say that Jean Duncan Foley has one very annoying habit. If you know what measure of volume a perch is, you might not care, but the rest of us are left wondering whether the amount of land reclaimed from the sea in the late 1800s was insignificant or a proud achievement for Sydney. When antiquated units, words or names are used, it is just plain good manners to help your reader by translating them. Authors, don’t be stingy and only translate once, to leave the reader flipping pages or scrolling up & down, give us a break! By the way, a perch is  0.70 cubic meters, and chloride of lime is bleaching powder made up of calcium chloride and calcium hypochlorite used as a water based solution to clean ships. I’m still giggling as the author didn’t say so, leaving me loving the antiquated colour, but puzzled about the exact detail, until my internet connection shuddered back into life the next day, after a depressing outage.

RU 4 RU486, or Control Issues part II

Last week Australia's federal parliament voted to release RU486 from control by the Health Minister. Now, the TGA may license its sale in Australia if someone applies, whereas previously the Health Minister had the decision.  I applaud their decision, taken on personal perspective, not political party lines. As a pharmacologist and someone who has worked in a few areas of public health, I believe RU486 is like any other drug invented by humanity. It has its positive uses and negative 'side effects', and I hope that it is prescribed wisely.

I've been quiet of late in the cyber world, though grating the ears of family and the occasional workmate with the sounds of an almost uncheckable cough, all thanks to a very debilitating bout of the 'flu. It's been 8 days, and I'm still not back to full strength. I feel a greater sympathy for those pour souls facing the ever spreading risk of H5N1 avian influenza! In my rather zombie like state, I was glad to sleep about 18 to 20 hours for the first few days of this nightmare imported from beautiful Japan by my partner :-)

Later, in the possibly even more zombie like state of watching TV, I saw an advert for the world travel & tourism summit in April this year. Their theme is Open Mind, Open World. Suddenly this seemed a little less inviting in a world of killer influenzas ;-)

Insulin inhaler approved for market!

Now in Europe, the UK, and USA, diabetics may inhale their insulin (in the form of Exubera TM )instead of injecting it!