More soul searching

My “soul searching” post of Sept 17th prompted a whole set of interesting and valid comments, from a variety of viewpoints. All of which I've been mulling over with further soul searching. Replying to all of them, or even properly to one of them, would take more time than I can envisage ... so I'll pull just two of them and do my best in the few minutes available.

First up, Dr C (for whom I have nothing but respect and admiration) who said:

“As for animal experiments, many drugs and treatments would never come to light without experimentation on animals.”

I agree. And it's a powerful argument. I don't pretend to know what is right or wrong for others to decide, and I certainly do not judge others for deciding as Dr C suggests. I can only say that I would not (in the generalised abstract) decide that way myself.

“One might make an analogy to the use of animals in farming and transportation. Certainly dragging a heavy plow around a field is not a horse's idea of fun. In fact, there would not be horse whips if this were true (or if horses ran races on a whim).”

That is true; we can indeed make that analogy. However (again, for myself and not for anyone else) ... speaking philosophically ... since I see the horse as conceptually indistinguishable from me from Dr C, and since I would not harness Dr C up and make him haul a plough around a field nor carry me at speed while I whipped him (nor allow him to do the same to me), I could not use a horse in that way either. So the analogy still leaves Dr C and I on opposite sides of the same divide.

“I think that we can make an argument for the use of research animals based on moral principals accepted by the majority.”

Once again, I agree. And, as a society, we do. But the individual has a duty to act morally according to her/his conscience, and to decide when that requires dissent from the majority. If I do not recognise the conceptual difference between human and laboratory rat, then I cannot morally or ethically use a rat where I cannot morally or ethically use a human.

“This leaves begging what I mean by "humanely".”

Indeed ... another can of worms. (No, I won't follow a byway into the philosophy of worm rights at this juncture!)

To Geoff Powell I have no right to say very much. His viewpoint seems to be the same as mine, but I hang my head at the thought of claiming his lifetime of adherence in support of my easy, facile abstraction.

On the other hand, Geoff's point that a significant proportion of modern illnesses are iatrogenic is a valid one which sits alongside Dr C's reminder that our use of antibiotics has led to multiple resistance in the bacteria which they combat. However, the proposition that we have more disease now than we had before "modern medicine" is not one which seems defensible to me. Would I swap 2009 for 1909? No, I'm afraid I would not – which, of course, causes yet more anguished soul searching and self accusations of hypocrisy

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Later additions:

On the iatrogenic issue, I agree with Ray Girvan that the putative link between polio vaccine and HIV is spurious. The MMR/autism controversy seems likely to go the same way on a balance of probabilities, although as yet it's less clear cut. Those specifics don't, though, invalidate the assertion that intervention does introduce a significant level of new problems (nor, incidentally, does iatrogenicity affect Geoff Powell's expressed preference for declining animal research based treatments). A quick search of medical literature published in the last twelve months for example, throws up almost a hundred papers mentioning iatrogenic hepatitis B or C. As I registered above, however, I do not think that a fair observer can claim an overall balance against medicine on functional grounds; my soul searching remains moral/ethical/philosophical.

On another front, in a side correspondence Matthew Revell raised the philosophical question of validity in an experiment where conceptual equivalence is denied. That's another road I haven't world enough or time to pursue here, but an intellectually intriguing one which is occupying a fair chunk of my mental "spare processing cycles time".

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• M Khurram et al, "Nephrogenic systemic fibrosis: a serious iatrogenic disease of renal failure patients", in Scandinavian Journal of Urological Nephrology. 2007; 41:565–56.

Calculator tip: symbolic to decimal

This is probably the first of an occasional series, responding to frequently asked questions. I'm putting them here purely for convenience, so that I can link to them when required. The first is one that I'm asked at least once a week in relation to Casio fx series calculators, especially the fx83-ES:

“When I do a calculation, my calculator shows the answer as a fraction instead of a decimal (for example, ¼ instead of 0.25), or some other form like 2π√3. How do I make it give me normal answers?”

Answer: after pressing the [=] key to get your answer, press the [S<=>D] key – that's "Symbolic to Decimal".

The pictures at top left show the key itself (top frame) and where to find it, just above the red [AC] and [DEL] keys (bottom frame).

The first time you press the [S<=>D] key it will turn the symbolic answer into a decimal one. The second time, it will turn the decimal answer back into a symbolic one. And so on. For example:

• ¼ → 0.25 → ¼ → 0.25 → ¼ → 0.25 → ¼ → 0.25 ...
• √2 → 1.414213562 → √2 → 1.414213562 → √2 ...
• 2π → 6.283185307 → 2π → 6.283185307 → 2π ...

Soul searching

I have a moral quandary when it comes to science and the place of animal experiments within it.

I am, unequivocally, of the philosophical opinion that experiments on living animals (or the killing of animals for subsequent experiment) are morally indefensible in principle. Observation, yes; intervention, no.

(I do not, by the way, have the same objection to killing animals for food. I don't choose to do it myself, but that is because I have the luxury of living in a society where the choice exists.)

On the other hand, I am a scientist fascinated by the vast body of knowledge acquired, very often ... by experiment on animals.

I am pragmatic enough to say that I can do nothing about past experimentation, and that no purpose is served by refusing to use the knowledge thus gained. But ongoing use is a different matter.

I have just learned, and made use of for good purposes, information derived from long distance migratory birds with tracking devices surgically implanted within their bodies, and from birds deliberately flown for hours, to exhaustion, within a wind tunnel. The first I find repugnant; the second unforgivable. But what I think will not change the fact that these methods are being used by a majority who feel differently. As a scientist, I cannot isolate myself from the knowledge of where my information and understanding come from.

Now ... I also hold it to be true that there is no conceptual different between a human being and a bird or a dog. Of course, faced with the choice, if I find a human being under attack from a bird or a dog and know nothing of the context, I will help the human being – but that is instinctive social species loyalty, not philosophical acceptance of conceptual difference. I would not force a human being to run in a wind tunnel until s/he dropped, so I would not do it to a bird.

So (and I know the anger that this will stir up) ... if I remain a scientist despite knowing that the raw material is being obtained by methods which I consider morally unacceptable, on creatures which I consider conceptually no different from a human being, how do I (in my own moral perception, not in absolute fact) differ from a Nazi conducting experiments on human beings in a tank of freezing water? In fact, am a I perhaps even worse – because I cannot claim, as that Nazi did, that in her/his perception there was a conceptual difference between experimenter and subject?

Socially, that's not an acceptable question to ask post 1945. But it is, I think, an important one.

Morphit

At the risk of repetitiousness, it has to be said: an office spreadsheet product is not, for a wide range of reasons, the best place to do analytic work. On the other hand, office spreadsheets in general and Microsoft's Excel in particular are nevertheless the place where a large and ever increasing amount of analysis is, in the real world, done. For that reason, anything which offers spreadsheet users an independently-implemented set of analytic tools without frightening them away has to be welcomed.

Morphit, from software consultancy The Edge, is a package designed to provide scientists with such an option. [more...]

Weighed in the balance (2)

Serendipitously following my "weighed in the balance" post of Tuesday night, Simon Says records an altogether tougher test.

Weighed in the balance

Coming through the railway station, an hour ago, I paused to check train times.

Suddenly, there was a small boy in front of me. About four years old, very serious expression on his face. Head tilted right back to look up at me.

“Are you a good man?” he asked.

How do you answer that?

“I hope so,” I replied cautiously, “I try to be.”

He nodded, still serious.

“OK” he said, and skipped off to join his parents.

I've been wondering, since, where on earth that question to a stranger might have come from.

Belated solidarity

Though it was published three months ago, I'm afraid I have only just read Solidar's Briefing paper #11.

If you haven't yet read it either, in my opinion it's worth getting a round to.

“...before the fall of Lehman Brothers and the jitters on Wall Street, the developing world was already suffering from a massive lack of affordable food and fuel. In addition, the challenges of climate change, HIV/AIDS and the attainment of almost all of the Millennium Development Goals were already combining to make an urgent revision of our economic modus operandi a necessity. The latest financial crisis, its impact on the real economies of developing and developed countries alike and the strain this will put on aid budgets have transformed this from an urgent task to an urgent necessity.”

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• Connie Reuter, Briefing paper #11: The Economic Crisis and its Impact on Developing Countries. 2009, Brussels: Solidar.

Firearms perceptions

Personal firearms are like medicine: discussion of either reveals fundamental attitudes in a society and, when the discussion expands to involve more than one society, exposes fundamental differences and similarities between them. Individuals in the US and UK, to take a specific case, may make common cause over personal arms or funding of healthcare, and may appear to be on the same side, but can never operate from the same psychosocial assumptions.

In both cases, the root of specific difference lies in a general philosophical divergence over the balance between two necessary component personal freedoms: the right of the individual to act freely versus the right of that same individual to protection from the actions of others. There's no objective right or wrong view of exactly how these two should interact, but that doesn't keep either side from subjective certainty.

Studying such a difference can tell the curious observer a great deal about both societies.

Such routine musings were pulled to the surface of my mind yesterday by a chance conjunction of two pebbles dropped into my personal pond: publication of a VPRP report and a comment by Jim Putnam over at TTMF.

I won't comment more on either than I can help, for fear of contaminating them with my own ineradicable programmed assumptions. In Jim's case, if you haven't already done so, pop over to TTMF and read the post (particularly, if you are really in a rush, paragraphs 3-5). The VPRP report is much longer, weighing in at around 25 megabytes (split into nine smaller downloads, and containing a lot of photographs) but all of it worth reading – again, if you are in a rush, go for the executive summary.

One thing that interested me is the following pair of media headlines (from a much longer list of two dozen emailed by a friend who shall remain unnamed, on the precautionary principle, unless they ask to be identified). They illustrate nothing about firearms or societal variation, but a great deal about how differently the same research can be seen even within one society.

• "UC researchers find vast unregulated weapons markets at gun shows" (Contra Costa Times)
• "Researcher: State doing good job of firearms control at gun shows" (Sacramento Bee)

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• Wintemute, G., Inside gun shows: what goes on when everybody thinks nobody's looking (B. Claire, Editor). 2009, Sacramento, CA: VPRP, UC Davis School of Emergency Medicine. http://ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/vprp

Two historical fictions

I've neglected books lately. There have been several good ones, which I've intended to mention ... but then time and a half slipped by... (Ray Girvan used to have a link to my books tag but I notice that he has tactfully removed it to spare my blushes.) One of them I really must address because it's one of the most impressive fictions I've ever read ... watch this space, “real soon now”. The rest, since time is finite, will have to drift away.

I will, however, briefly mention a young adult novel which I read on the recommendation of The conscience pudding – Jennifer Donnelly's “lovely, plaintive book”, A northern light. I won't review it here; Watoosa has done that for me. I'll just add a couple of comments. First, to register a small reservation (as she does in her current post) about the tendency of fiction in general, and young fiction in particular, to "prettify" or idealise the past – there are some social aspects of Mattie's world which are more generous than true. At the same time, I nevertheless am impressed by the way difference between “then” and “now” is soaked into the fabric of the book in a way which brings it home to the intended audience. Chrissie, a 16 year old of my acquaintance, was deeply affected by the description of life only a hundred years ago and embarked on a library search to fill out her understanding of social development in the century between. (Aside: this book is an example of the irritating practice, mentioned by Watoosa, of changing titles as they cross the Atlantic: in Britain it is for some reason known as A gathering light which somewhat misses the original point.)

Also a hundred years ago is the story within a story of Salvador Carriscant, a surgeon in the early 20th century, told in retrospect by the narrator of William Boyd's A blue afternoon. The descriptions of surgical and medical knowledge (or, from our viewpoint, lack of it) didn't actually tell me anything I didn't already intellectually know, but they did for the first time bring many things home to me in visceral (literally!) and vivid context just as A northern light did for Chrissie. Two days after reading this, serendipitously, I found Unreal Nature's post on surgery and poetry and the ensuing discussion in its comments.

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• Jennifer Donnelly, A northern light. 2004, San Diego: Harcourt. 0152053107 or 978-0152053109 (published in the UK as A gathering light. 2003, London: Bloomsbury. 0747570639)
• William Boyd, The blue afternoon. 1993, London: Penguin. 0140238255 (pbk)

Bring back Harry O

Another brief post prompted by Nicholas Malleson, whose latest results suggest that giving burglars access to transport reduces the geographical extent of their burglary activities.

Both intriguing and logical.

Be sure to click on the graphic to enlarge it – its full detail is engrossing and (to me, at least) its patterns have a seductive music.