Recently in Science and Media Category

When Merck's AIDS vaccine candidate failed in clinical trials, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) called a summit. The drug candidate did not reduce HIV infections, in fact the adenovirus based vaccine seemed to increase the risk of infections.

The meeting of scientists on March 25th in Washington focussed on the future of HIV/AIDS research in light of the fallout of Merck vaccine trials. Scientists including Anthony Fauci, who heads the NIAID, agree that funding needs to be redirected towards a broader research agenda and ideas beyond drug development and vaccines. Science last week noted that the decision about whether to proceed with the large NIH clinical trial planned for its HIV vaccine is still pending. ("Review of Vaccine Failure Prompts a Return to Basics" DOI: 10.1126/science.320.5872.30)

Nature also reported on the summit last week, pointing out that these clinical AIDS trials went forward not necessarily based on the strength of the science -- one of the vaccine candidates had a unimpressive track record -- but because programs needed to "show the public that progress is being made, thereby justifying the millions of dollars from philanthropists and taxpayers". ("Broken Promises" doi:10.1038/452503a).

The Nature editorial offers analysis of this HIV-AIDS vaccine experience, noting that ambitious commitments made in a flush funding environment in the early part of this decade short-changed basic research. These choices to heavily fund drug development are regarded less forgivingly in light of the trial failures and the budget shortfalls of recent years, according to the journal. Nature warns other fields, for instance stem-cell research, autism, and Parkinson's disease, are repeating these same mistakes.

The business approach comes with a high stakes mentality and ample, vigorous marketing that can ratchet up expectations both within the organization, the field and the public arena. The business-oriented nature of many philanthropic organizations influences the focus on development and can distort public expectations. But investors can and do influence the direction of an entire field. When a field becomes dominated by a few foundations it can gather tremendous productive momentum, but it can also stampede so hard down a particular path with such strong momentum in a particular direction. If that direction proves to be less fruitful than hoped research cannot turn around on a dime.

Each high-funded disease has its own idiosyncratic pitfalls, but behind the good works and fine intentions of charities, but the science research rarely responds to pressure, unlike many entrepreneurial ventures. When scientists request research funding, the results don't always yield answers as quickly as businesses might hope -- research is the mythical man myth on steroids. Some people investing in biotech and international public health come from businesses very unlike public health with its vagaries of not only politics and human behavior, but biology.

In today's fast paced communications and computing climate, intense focus on "results" is inherent to our culture. Expectations carry over from the successful and extraordinarily speedy progress of the genome sequencing. Scientists and politicians built hopes during that time that drug development and an accelerated understanding of human disease would follow. It has, but did we expect more? TV drug advertising gives the impression that scientists are developing a pill for every insignificant hangnail, when many of these drugs aren't new, just the subjects of new marketing campaigns. Meanwhile tougher diseases and conditions remain elusive.

High profile funding can influence the research environment and lead to a very public dead end. In the larger picture, despite the wisdom that should be accruing from these experiences, politicians, technology leaders, and pundits sometimes wax-on about technology's potential to produce solutions not only for specific diseases but for extremely complicated social problems such as global warming and healthcare. But while science research may yield pharmaceuticals and oil extraction techniques but one cannot look to science or technology to solve the healthcare crisis in the United States. Science and technology contextualize these problems and are integral in our lives but despite heady declarations, they are not central to the solutions.

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Acronym Required has written previously about these subjects, AIDS and research directions, and vaccines. Here are a couple of our vaccine articles:

Vaccinations -- Why Worry?
Polio Vaccinations - The end of a scourge?
Group B Strep Vaccine Development
Vaccine Development For Infectious Diseases

If a Tree Falls in a Forest, 364 Days a Year, Does Anyone Hear It?

One day a year we celebrate Arbor Day by planting trees, then we have the other 364 days that aren't Arbor Day. (We'll disregard Christmas, the sort of a pro-logging holiday.) Of course the general mood of the world is plant trees. Plant trees to keep the cities shady, plant trees to keep the forests thriving, to provide shelter and food for birds and bugs and animals, and to capture CO2, which in turn helps reduce global warming. Saving trees is the choice of the day, the prudent much ballyhooed choice. But day in and day out, people are compelled to cut trees down.

Brazil's rate of deforestation increased last year despite efforts to stop illegal logging. The rate of deforestation in the 1990's was 7,000 square miles per year. Starting in 2000, the rate was ~9,500 square miles per year. Then the rate seemed to decrease in the last couple of years until the last 5 months of 2007, when loggers cut 7000 square miles. What happened?

The environmental minister told the Financial Times in last week's article, "Brazil takes battle to the Amazon", that the rate of deforestation had temporarily decreased because of government crackdowns and the arrests of corrupt officials. Brazil is in the midst of renewing its forest protection efforts.

But some say that Brazil's deforestation due to illegal logging results from a more complicated mix, including public policies and populist local politicians which encourage logging. Others tie the rate of deforestation directly to commodity prices. According to this account the recent rise of illegal logging occurred when farmers, especially cattle ranchers, cleared land to meet the demand and to profit as food prices rose. So we can see that arguably, rising food prices might be a reason to cut down trees.

There are many other reasons why people fell trees besides for food. In each case there's a logical, rational reason. Here are some recent examples:

• To Protect Your Truck: A mailman in Vancouver, Washington hacked at more that 30 fruit trees along his route because the city wouldn't trim them and he wanted to protect his truck.
• For Your Solar Panels: For six years two neighbors in Sunnyvale, California engaged in a legal battle to resolve whether a resident who wanted solar panels could force his neighbor to cut down some redwoods. The 30 year old Solar Shade Control Act outlines the rules governing neighbors trees and solar panels.
• For Aesthetics: Every so often a corner estate gets sold and the new owners begin refashioning it as their home. First the old toilets get discarded curbside. Last, despite the opposite trend in places like Miami and LA to replace non-native palm trees with shade trees, in some neighborhoods in California quixotic homeowners owners replace shade trees with exotic palm trees. Tequila sunrise in hand perhaps. I've seen this happen.
• To Confront the Rebels: The president of Chad cut down "centuries-old trees" so that the leader could "be adequately protected". Said one bicyclist watching the trees fall: "When I was a child, soldiers used to stop us touching the trees...[n]ow they are being destroyed."

While Chad acted in the name of terrorism, the US for some reason didn't deploy that reasoning when it moved forward to develop its national forest areas. Last week the state of California sued the U.S. Forest Service, which wants to open more than 500,000 acres of California national forest for roads and oil drilling. The state wants to keep these forests free of roads.

State Attorney General Jerry Brown told the Los Angeles Times "I find it kind of ironic that the federal government won't let us clean up our cars and they now want cars going through these forests." California accuses the Forest Service of violating the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Forest Management Act by moving ahead with development plans and disregarding the state's laws. California enacted a moratorium on road construction in "pristine areas of its national forests" in 2006, according to the LA Times. But sometimes federal governments make the National Forests earn their keep, come hell or high water.

And so each new day gives a fine reason to chop a tree.

To Run

The Unreasonable Man is running for office again. I recommend the movie, whatever your point of view about Ralph Nader's decision to run for president.

For those people in our generation who are not familiar with who Nader is and what he could possibly offer, The Village Voice points out what that might be. In a good review of the movie, the author marveled that Nader, the man now reviled as "Benedict Arnold", was "once a hero -- a little guy who brought Big Auto to heel, helped prevent more than 190,000 automotive deaths in 30 years, and was directly responsible for the Environmental Protection Agency, OSHA, the Freedom of Information Act..."

These are the same institutions and scientists marginalized by recent politics. A large, growing group of individuals wants to hold a presidential debate involving the fate of science at some of these very institutions. But some in this group don't want Nader's voice, insight, or history.

Should we mention the Whistleblower Protection Act, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, The Wholesome Meat Act, Mine Health and Safety Act, Medical Devices Safety, Food Labeling, Public Citizen? Not relevant enough? I don't know, maybe he is insufferable. But is this presidential candidate more ego driven than the others? Should the other candidates not run because they've already served their country as senators, or as First Lady, as a prisoner of war during service for the US, or as a civil rights lawyer? Is Nader just too...ancient history...really?

What Nader offers is at least a different, seasoned, knowledgeable perspective to citizens and politicians alike. Why shout for democracy (or have I misunderstood) then confine yourself to two parties? The movie "An Unreasonable Man was balanced, fast-paced and interesting, and offered insight to the party system -- and perhaps contextual information about the current election season. It filled in some questions that the emotive backlash against Nader in 2000 never answered. To be clear, those angry voices are well represented in the movie. But so too is a little history, a few facts and the voices of some very thoughtful critics.

There's also a very well reviewed book on the subject that I haven't read called "Crashing the Party". This from the preface: "people should play active roles in shaping the electoral agenda and ensuring varied, open debates. In short, democracy is not a spectator sport."

During the 2000 campaign a presidential youth conference of the National Youth Platform involving thousands of young adults in their teens and twenties, supported by Pew Charitable Trust, Heinz Family Foundation, Wisenbaker Foundation, the League of Women Voters, the YMCA and the YWCA held a forum after the primary, and invited all the candidates. The students discussed ten topics with Nader for a couple of hours. Ralph Nader attended but Bush and Gore declined since polling showed that young adults have general agendas and don't vote in large numbers. Bush canceled at the last minute saying that the Republican Party had engaged students in other ways, for instance at "conventions young people have led the effort to create hand painted signs." (PR Newswire, August 1, 2000).

Or Not

Lawrence Lessig on the other hand, decided not to run. You didn't know? In a quick turn-around for second thoughts, he called the party off. He had decided last Tuesday night to run for the seat of Rep. Tom Lantos (D-CA), who died earlier this month.

Update: The New York Times reported March 3, 2008 that David L. Allison resigned as the incoming president of the Obesity Society. He said in his email statement that "I stand behind the scientific statements I made, my right to make them, and the manner in which I made them", however he apologized for the "distress" he might have caused the Obesity Society. The economic tensions that interfere with frank science presentation and reporting remain.

Conflict of Interest?

Would you believe a nutrition researcher working for Coca-Cola who said that restricting foods might backfire in preventing obesity because 'birds put on weight when food is scarce'? Would you choose him to be president of your "Obesity Society", if your club's mission was to "be the leader in understanding, preventing and treating obesity and in improving the lives of those affected"?

A recent New York Times article, "Conflict on the Menu", threw light on the "food fight among the nation's obesity experts". The New York State Restaurant Association hired the president-elect of the Obesity Society, Dr. David Allison, to support their suit against New York City's regulation requiring chain restaurants to list the kilocalorie values on menu items.

Allison submitted an affidavit warning that listing calories on menus might encourage overeating. According to the NYT he suggested the regulation would either tempt patrons with "the forbidden-fruit allure of high-calorie foods", or leave them so hungry they'd "later gorge themselves".

Somewhat less creatively, the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Heart Association, the American Diabetes Association, the American Public Health Association, the California Center for Public Health Advocacy, the Medical Society of the State of New York, the Trust for America's Health, and many other organizations back the city's regulation.

Obesity & Personal Freedom

While the New York Times keeps the focus of the story on the skirmish within the Obesity Society, many stakeholders have a foot in this game. Public interest groups of all stripes, including "consumer freedom and choice" advocates, fight tooth and nail over the city's plan.

The Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) is a group that lobbies against government regulation. They wrote histrionically about New York City's labeling plan in "Menu Labeling Meltdown", warning that "the food cop campaign will plaster our nation's menus with warning labels.." Their consolation was Dr. Allison's "damning evidence" that labeling "might be harmful". CCF reveled in the idea that Allison's affidavit dealt a "major blow" to the city's plan and that Burger King might not have to label their Whopper with its energy value: 670 kilocalories.

CCF claims to fight for Americans' right to "guilt free eating". Their stated mission is "promoting personal responsibility and protecting consumer choice" and their especially belligerent towards specific targets, individuals or groups like the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) -- "the food cops". Sourcewatch offers a more blunt profile of CCF, calling them "a front group for the restaurant, alcohol and tobacco industries". Phillip Morris started the organization under the name "Guest Choice Network" years ago for the purpose of organizing restaurants against government smoking bans.

CCF wields the same arguments that tobacco lobbyists used to oppose government smoking bans by supporting the claim that the city's rules violate the First Amendment. However Sandra Wootan, director of nutrition policy at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), says: "The restaurant industry isn't concerned about defending the First Amendment, as its lawsuit laughably claims. It just wants to keep its customers in the dark. People need nutrition information to exercise personal responsibility and to feed their children healthy diets."

It seems like "personal freedom" stands for "corporate freedom" in this context. While personal freedom is important, governments are obliged to work on behalf of the community, for instance by mandating vaccinations, sanitary conditions in restaurants, anti-smoking laws, etc. The city regulation basically requires chain restaurants that have caloric information elsewhere, like on a website, to post in on the customer menus. This is not the cumbersome requirement that CCF makes it out to be.

Science & Policy

Despite the Center for Consumer Freedom's approval of Allison's recent position they haven't always been so friendly. In 2001 the group contested Dr. Allison's 1999 finding that obesity caused 300,000 deaths a year, calling the research "bogus". The organization accused him of "voicing support for an onerous and unnecessary 'Twinkie Tax'", and having "ties to the weight-loss industry". In 2004 and 2005 the group opposed Dr. Allison in articles like "Hypocritical Food Cops Preach 'Integrity'", accusing him of conflict of interest and citing Allison's many industry affiliations to discredit his research.

In 2005 Allison was one of ten authors on a New England Journal of Medicine paper showing that the average lifespan in the US would decrease because of the obesity epidemic. (Olshansky et al, "A Potential Decline in Life Expectancy in the United States in the 21st Century", March 17, 2005 Vol. 352:1138-1145.) The accompanying editorial said the group's assumptions were "excessively gloomy", but scientists generally thought the findings important despite the data estimates.

Although this was a science research paper, the authors pointed out policy implications, as they often do. There were possible up-sides to the research, for instance: "the U.S. population may be inadvertently saving Social Security by becoming more obese". The findings were grim, but policy interventions might reverse the death trends, they said: "Unless effective population-level interventions to reduce obesity are developed, the steady rise in life expectancy observed in the modern era may soon come to an end and the youth of today may, on average, live less healthy and possibly even shorter lives than their parents."

An accompanying editorial gave more detail. "Deadweight? --The Influence of Obesity on Longevity", by Samuel Preston, Ph.D., mentioned other research showing that only "30 excess calories a day during an eight-year period for Americans 20 to 40 years of age" produced the obesity epidemic. (NEJM Volume 352:1135-1137). Given the morbid implications of small increases in daily calories, Dr. Preston said: "reversing the increase in body mass might be accomplished through small behavioral changes...the food and restaurant industries would be valuable allies in this effort..."

So the authors recommended that government interventions were critical to maintaining current longevity, and that nominal calorie reduction might help reduce obesity if restaurants cooperated. Which makes it particularly ironic that Allison, the co-author, chooses the role of a hired gun fighting calorie labeling on behalf of restaurants.

In contrast to their opinion of Allison since 2001 CCF's coverage of the current NYC regulation does an about face. Now, abruptly, his "facts showed" and "the evidence was damning". They decided not to fill their story about his affidavit for the Restaurant Association with long lists of "conflicts of interest", which served as the meat and potatoes of their previous irate stories about his research.

News of Allison's affidavit supposedly caused a fracas among members of the Obesity Society, who got ''completely mad that a president-elect of [an] organization that cares about obesity and cares about healthy eating, wants to hold back information from people that helps them make healthy choices'', according to the NYT. This forced the current president of the Obesity Society to put out a separate statement opposing Dr. Allison's that supported the city's labeling rules.

Which made me wonder -- if Allison's position is so disagreeable, why did the nominating committee and 2,000 members in the society select him to be their future president? His consulting positions were a significant piece of his resume. He has been a paid industry consultant for at least 15 years. There must be more to this story.

When Truth Pays

A professor at the University of Alabama, Dr. Allison is an obesity statistician with a background in psychology. He's more than just a statistician with an affidavit that appears to be a conflict of interest. He's has published over 300 papers and 5 books. His home page shows him clad in a sporty warm-up jacket as if back from a jog, rather than posing with the more traditional professor air, before a pile of books or a math covered blackboard . He regards the camera a little too ravenously, as if he had picked the Veggie Delite Salad (51 kcal) at Subway, instead of the Footlong Meatball Marinara (1160 kcal), and was photographed hungry, about to grab the Ben & Jerry's New York Super Fudge Chunk from the freezer. [Although, if he wasn't getting paid to introduce doubt, we wouldn't be wasting our time here because he would have sensibly chosen the 6 inch Turkey Sandwich (280 kcal) instead of the Delite.(Subway lists their calories on menus)]

For his efforts and accomplishments Dr. Allison was honored by George Bush last year in a White House ceremony for recipients of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering". The award recognizes mentoring of women, minorities, and persons with disabilities.

Dr. Allison noted that the award was not just about mentoring but also about making sure the students "understand the ethical foundation on which science is based." It's a mission he apparently takes seriously, as The Birmingham News reported: ''In science, we are not just doing a job,'' he said. ''I was chosen. I think of it like a calling. It is a special and sacred profession. Our sacred duty is truth.''

When he was questioned by the New York Times about his support of the restaurant industry he said, "I'm happy to be involved in the pursuit for truth....Sometimes, when I'm involved in the pursuit for truth, I'm hired by the Federal Trade Commission. Sometimes I help them. Sometimes I help a group like the restaurant industry."

Speaking his truth though he may, Allison remains agnostic in his choice of client. He's widely consulted by government, industry and the media for his expertise in obesity, science, and integrity. When Eric Poehlman, the University of Vermont obesity professor was accused of falsifying data on metabolism and aging in research papers and federal grant applications, Dr. Allison interviewed the media in his defense: "I believe he's innocent, and I believe that he is being broken financially to the point where he's ready to give up the fight because he has no more money to fight with, and that's the way the game works", (Boston Globe, March, 2005). Poehlman served a year in jail, paid fines and recieved penalties.

Dough Boy

The Center for Consumer Freedom discredited any research Allison was involved in except when it ran in their favor. They accused Allison repeatedly of conflict of interest especially with companies selling "weight control product and services". CCF may be a bottom feeder, but it doesn't exaggerate Allison's impressive industry ties. In the 2005 NEJM paper about obesity longevity, nine authors disclosed zero financial interests or affiliations. Dr. Allison however, gave new respect to warm-up jackets and statistics by listing about 150 organizational affiliations in a three page single spaced PDF, attached to the paper.

Dr. Allison's list of grants, monetary donations, donations of product, payments for consultation, contracts, honoria and commitments include consulting assignments for numerous parties, like lawyers engaged in litigation, pharmaceutical companies including Pfizer, Eli Lily, Wyeth Ayerst, Glaxo, as well as Corning, Frito-Lay, Coca-Cola, the Wheat Council, Kraft Foods, Nabisco, the FDA and ILSI. He has impressive experience doing everything from serving on the United Soybean Panel's Nutrition Advisory Board, to being an expert witness for defendant Lockheed Martin at $350 an hour in a groundwater contamination lawsuit.

Much of this was listed in Allison's resume, which I assume the Obesity Society recieved prior to selecting him to their leadership council. If not it was summarized at the Integrity in Science project at CSPI, or in disclosure documents in his publications. His insouciant transparency, extensive network (I assume), precocious achievement. and ethically unencumbered attitudes to choosing clients no doubt secured him a Obesity Society leadership position.

Hungry Scientists, Money

Sometimes when you travel or walk down the sidewalk you encounter kids so poor they come running up, dozens of them -- "pen"? "dollar"? "cigarette"? Science seems like this sometimes these days. It seems there's no party that doesn't have an interest in this obesity science/business -- pharmaceutical companies, lawyers, labs, product companies, insurance companies, NGO's, government. Science results create more work and profits for some, and/or less work and profits for others. You can imagine the repercussions of some of the science results we mention above.

Allison co-authored a study published in NEJM, where the policy implications proposed are the opposite of the "expertise" Allison now sells. This costs the state in legal fees and customer choice, not to mention making a mockery of science. Poehlman's false data of age related metabolic depreciation affected policy. Doctors and researchers based study and clinical practice on his results, and granting Poehlman funding, other scientists were denied money for their research. Then there was the CDC study in 2004 which incorrectly calculated the statistics and overestimated the annual deaths from obesity. This created false public perceptions and policy implications, and raised the ire of public health advocates in other areas who eying the competitive pie of public health money (especially anti-smoking advocates who were nervous that the results would make obesity public health priority number one).

Some people think that science should remain separate from policy -- like an old TV dinner, the cut vegetables separate from meat product and the syrupy peaches, each one in its own plastic mold -- compartmentalized, never mixed. Combining "science and policy" confuses the public they say. Others, claiming pragmatism, suggest everything is already mixed up, a big stew. Indeed, this seems true when scientists recommend policy, or when results are seized upon by lobbies. In many fields results have direct policy and/or business implications.

The media impedes the first approach, separating science from politics, by blending everything together in their stories, the science, the policy, the personalities, the business, the lobbyists. This mush is extracted by the press, drained of color and interesting nutrients and doled out as an equally portioned product of pro and con, like symmetrical freeze-dried blocks. We're fed an easily digested story with the predictable arch of a food fight and a neat two part conflict: "Scientists found this...but others found that".

Unfortunately, one of the largest problems resulting from this information processing by media and various lobbies, politicians, and interest groups, is that many of us -- citizens, reporters, politicians, scientists out of their field... have not clue as to who's the lobbyist, who's the "unbiased researcher", who's the expert, and who is an apostate. If headline news runs a "science piece", separating the chaff doesn't always matter because it might ruin the storyline, and anyway, who could be bothered? But this is not and never has been an isolated conflict of interest problem, a media problem, the scientists' problem, or a government agency problem. It's a larger more thorny economic conundrum that affects us all.

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Acronym Required has previously written about obesity in public health.

Art Tries to Imitate Science Tries to Imitate Art Tries to Imitates Science.....

Last year, Acronym Required wrote about the American Film Institute's Catalyst Workshop, which recruits scientists to train them in scriptwriting. "Science's Silver Bullet -- The Silver Screen?" described a Pentagon sponsored workshop that recruited "hard-core", "lab-certified scientists" to write scripts and portray "appealing" science protagonists.

The rational behind recruiting scientists? Back in 2005, the New York Times published a story on the Catalyst Workshop that explained Hollywood's demand for scientists: "They're compensated very minimally, they're going on blind faith that what they're searching for is going to pay off. And film making is exactly the same way". ("Pentagon's New Goal: Put Science Into Scripts", 08/04/05). An unflinching assessment indeed. We venture that "blind faith" is a slur to most scientists, no doubt filmmakers as well. As for the pay, true enough, most "lab-certified" scientists get paid pitifully. When we published the story we could only guess how scriptwriters fared.

Now with the writers strike, we have more information. According to the New York Times, some writers get paid significantly more than your average "lab-certified scientist". A recent article said that the "typical TV series writer may get $30,000 an episode, plus residuals". Movie scriptwriters get a million dollars in advance payment, according to studio executives. ("In Hollywood, a Sacred Cow Lands on the Contract Table", August 5, 2007 ). Of course sometimes the truth is found by reading between words, so we'll take that for the propaganda that it is.

While the top of the pay scale for Hollywood writers does seem like a brighter star than what scientists have to wish for, we know that only a few lucky writers get a stab at these choice positions. The rest of the labor force traipses gig to gig for what many consider menial pay: "More water sir?"

Sure, wink, wink, the writers are gouging the poor executives by asking them for residuals on digital works. The obvious question is: If the projected digital profits are such pittance, than why is the executive side of the contract table so apoplectic?

Is it "Over"?

In the case of the writer's strike, despite weekend rumors originating with a Fox News executive, claiming that the strike is over, we're waiting for the writers to make the call. We know that announcements like "it's over" are sometimes craftily used by those in charge of crisises to make the media go away.

Over or not, there's happy news from an unexpected source. Nature offers a proposal to the strikers. (Nature is a science journal.) The editors tell scientists to "saunter down to your local picket line, gather up a couple of film and television writers, and introduce them to the fascinations of the scientific life..." They add that plying them with drinks might help. ("A Quantum of Solace", Jan. 31, 2008). Who knows how the Hollywood writers will receive the offer, but I can't help thinking of the Anthony Burgess quote: "We all need money, but there are degrees of desperation."

Anyway, until we can truly cheer for the writers, we'll marvel at how the tables have turned. Last year, Hollywood sought out scientist scriptwriters, this year scientists seek out Hollywood scriptwriters.

PBS Nature, Animal Fare Light

I don't too often plunk down in front of the television and watch nature shows. The last time I watched a television show on animals was in a small restaurant in SE Asia which had the sort of overwhelming television presence that precludes conversation. Animal shows were popular fare in SE Asia. I occasionally watch PBS's Nature series. The last episode I remember watching, sometime last year, was called "Can Animals Predict Disaster?"

The show was a vehicle for elephants, hippopotamuses, tigers and fish to gambol about in zoos, deserts, forests, rivers, and oceans on various continents. "Can Animals Predict Disaster?" pondered whether animals could someday warn us of disasters, like the Sumatra tsunami of 2004. Behavior researchers investigated various related questions, like whether infrasound or geological cues warn animals of upcoming earthquakes or tsunamis.

One scientist set up large speakers on the safari and blasted classical music to giraffes and hippopotamuses over an impressive wilderness stereo system, then observed the animals' reactions. That was the control part of the experiment. I shouldn't anthropomorphize the giraffes by saying they looked bewildered. The scientist then blasted some pre-recorded hippopotamus calls. This prompted chorusing¹ from nearby hippopotamuses. The show explored at length what it meant for the hippopotamuses to chorus (in instances when a scientist regales them with his own recordings of their calls), and whether the animals could communicate impending disaster to each other.

As it turns out, animals have senses that humans don't, and unsurprisingly, communications systems we don't understand. Owls see better than humans, dogs' have more acute hearing than humans, elephants can sense vibrations hundreds of miles away through their trunks, and hippopotamuses chorus. But as one scientist pointed out, it's highly unlikely that animals evolved to run from tsunamis, since tsunamis are so rare. More likely, he said, animals would run from anything that sounded as threatening as a tsunami.

The episode crept towards its tentative conclusion: At the end of the day animals probably can't warn us of impending disaster. I say "probably" because "Can Animals Predict Disaster?" left some doubt about its answer. Perhaps PBS Nature's mission statement precludes it from completely trouncing people's fantasies about animals. On that note PBS Nature concluded ambiguously with a "what-if". "What-if" someday, humans could rely on animals to warn us before "the earth turns angry"?

These programs often feature predictable, anthropomorphic, action oriented fun. Suspense builds, large animals thunder across the plains, and the predator voraciously gets the prey. It's formulaic, family-friendly TV, with lots of death but very little copulation -- and certainly no embarrassing wardrobe malfunctions.

The extent to which these shows aim to please audiences is almost always inversely proportional to the production's potential as Acronym Required blog fodder. And we do, occasionally, mock media's science offerings, for instance our posts about Meerkat Manor, and the movie March Of The Penguins, commented on anthropomorphic edutainment. But always, even as we poke fun at these productions, we're acutely aware that the alarming pablum spooned out by the media in the name of nature or science today, can be bested with a thinner and less substantive gruel tomorrow.

TV, radio, newspapers -- they're all under the same pressure: money, money, money. The Wall Street Journal used to feature long, investigative health and technology articles, with corporate friendly front and editorial pages. But the paper's entire content is being Murdochized. CNN's home page used to highlight flimsy science coverage. Now we often find a CNN front page slathered with lurid crime tales. The network even managed to get itself panned as "corrupt" for its debate hosting tactics, on the front page of last Sunday's LA Times.

TV producers seem to forever probe the depths of available content, seeking the lowest common denominator, raking up muck from ever deeper ponds, flinging it out, wrapped with delicious advertising, to the apparently hungry masses. Since I watch TV infrequently, I don't get pulled imperceptibly into watching stupider and stupider shows until one day I find myself enthusing about some reality show contestant's outfit to a stranger on the bus -- no offense. Every six months I watch TV again and it hits me -- wow, is this it?

"Inspiring People to Care About the Planet": National Geographic, Aircraft Carriers, and Automobile Factories

In some blip of high expectations and naivete the other night, without considering any schedule, I turned on the TV and flipped to the National Geographic channel. I grew up reading National Geographic, along with Scientific American. Somewhere along the line, Scientific American changed. It used to carry long science articles with great graphics and lucid explanations of physiology and geology and other interesting topics. I still like it, but my impression of the current format is that it falls somewhere on the spectrum between USA Today and Highlights magazine -- albeit SA's website is better than Highlights'.

National Geographic used to feature anthropological articles on people and places around the world. Of course I wouldn't expect the same stories today, about some never-before-discovered jungle tribe that fashions strong vines for transportation,and brews therapeutic teas from the roots of exotic plant species, for example. But that evening I thought I'd learn something at least vaguely interesting, about a place, an animal, an ocean, some fish, a spider, an expedition. So I was surprised to tune in to the National Geographic channel and find myself watching a feature about the world's largest aircraft carrier, the USS Ronald Reagan.

The USS Ronald Reagan is in the Seventh Carrier Strike Group led by Rear Admiral Wisecup. I sat through a segment on loading supplies from the supply ship, everything slung onto the carrier via a pulley system set up between the two ships. What was I watching? Could this be right? I met the supply chief, Commander Pimpo. National Geographic? I checked the channel to make sure I hadn't landed on the wrong channel. The USS Ronald Reagan is big. Its run like a small city, with its own fire department, hospital, and police force. Maybe the remote is broken? No, all of this and more was the subject of National Geographic's "Supercarrier: USS Ronald Reagan." I guess it had been a while since I watched National Geographic. I suddenly yearned for a goofy show with the snake gulping down the bird.

The supercarrier has won several best in class awards, such as the "Ship's Store Retail and Services Excellence Award", for the U.S. Pacific Fleet for fiscal year 2006 in the CV/CVN class"; the excellence in food service award for its class; and the "Battle "E"" award, for its condition and wartime readiness. All of this is interesting if nuclear powered aircraft carriers interest you. You'd find this story fascinating if aircraft carrier logistics stories excite you as much as stories about animals, history, science or space. You'd be intrigued if patriotism to you means appreciating the fine tuning necessary for "prompt and sustained combat" by 6,000 people manning a ship longer than the Empire State building, that costs taxpayers $2.5 million dollars a day to run.

National Geographic claims its mission is: "Inspiring People to Care About the Planet". I'm sure some people would argue that a show about the Navy's USS Ronald Reagan fulfills the mission. Anyway National Geographic can feature any type of show it wants. And it does. Take for instance "Ultimate Factories". There's "Ultimate Factories: Ferrari", "Ultimate Factories: BMW", and "Ultimate Factories: Corvette". Sure, ok, car factories are fun. But does a Ferrari factory inspire you to "care about the planet?" Yes, these are slick cars, but am I total stick in the mud, given NG's mission statement, to point out that Ferraris get 7-10 mpg in the city and 12-16 mpg on the highway?

On National Geographic's "Advertise with us", website page they advise hopeful advertisers: "Now we are placing more emphasis on preservation, seeking a sustainable relationship with our planet, and promoting greater public understanding that will lead the way to global balance." When does it start? Or is the sentiment reserved for the "Global Warming" section of the website, where they dare not mention that cars contribute to global warming? Oh well. I'm sure that National Geographic's hat tip to the US military and car manufacturers is rewarded.

Discovery: Future Weapons

Where else would one turn for a good nature show these days? The Discovery Channel? In 1985 the fledgling cable network was launched to be "Scientific American of the air", as a spokesperson told AdWeek. When asked how Discovery Channel planned to compete with other networks (at a time when cable TV hadn't taken off), he said "If we are a 'dark-horse' to be a fourth network, we're almost invisible because we're so dark". He added, "To be a fourth major network, we'd have to add a lot of stuff, which we are not going to do. The true beauty of The Discovery Channel is that it's differentiated and focused." In 1988 about one-third of the network's programming was nature documentaries, one-third was documentaries about "other lands and their cultures", and the rest was devoted to shows on science, technology, history, and human adventures such as trekking and mountaineering,according to a Christian Science Monitor article at the time.

But things change. Today the vast Discovery Communications, produces multiple channels; Discovery, Health, Science, Animal Planet, Travel, HD theatre, and TLC ("an affirmative and connective experience"). They launched the "Military Channel" in 2005. The channel was a rework of an aviation show that producers expanded because of "viewer demand" for land and sea --not just air-- military content. Last February, when Discovery added home-grown content to "Military Channel", Vice President Bill Smee enthused to USA Today about the US soldiers' videos they planned to air. The films wouldn't always be "feel-good", he assured, because they were filming on the job: "...I don't want to overpromise firefights, but you may see the aftermath of an improvised explosive device."

So why not I guess? Shouldn't gore be part of the "The Military Channel"? Granted, no one in their right mind would go there looking for basic science or nature shows. But fight fervor is not confined to the "Military Channel". If you happened to naively click over to Discovery Channel at 11:00 on a Thursday evening, you wouldn't find "Planet Earth", or "Shark Week", or "Man vs. Wild", or "Storm Chasers". You'd be watching "Future Weapons".

"Future Weapons" is now in its second season. The show created a stir last year with its special website dedicated to building audience enthusiasm for weapons. BAE Systems helped sponsored the site. The defense contractor told AdWeek in June, 2007, that their media goals for working with Discovery were "to keep the Non-Line-of-Site (NLOS) Cannon front and center in terms of the Army and people who are interested in the military'". BAE found Discovery's content so useful that it used the Discovery Channel's NLOS site as "real third-party validation that we could show to our prospective customers".

To be fair, defense contractor advertising has always been a part of Discovery Communications, even when the network wanted to be "Scientific American of the air", back in 1985. Shiny spiffy weapons just haven't been quite so "front and center". Also to be fair, Discovery Communications' mission is more in line with its commitment to military content than National Geographic's. On their "About" page, the corporation proclaims: "Discovery, it's not just our name, it's our very calling". A little dull, but universally inclusive, which gives the corporation an opening for all programming, even military recruiting.

Discovery Communications offers no pretense about saving the planet. Nevertheless, if "discovery is [y]our calling", forgive your audience for thinking along the lines of exploring the Amazon, or investigating bone marrow cell transplants, or climbing Everest, or observing some animals on the Kalahari -- without the NLOS Cannon and its "unprecedented responsiveness and lethality". Sure military technology is based on science -- but building enthusiasm for weapons is used for the purpose of exciting people about war, not science. From "discovery is our calling", its only a hop, skip and a jump to historical slogans like "it's not a job, it's an adventure", or the current Navy slogan of dubious meaning: "accelerate your life". ²

More, New Science on Cable

I do sometimes lament what passes for science programming these days, and I'm not alone. In 2003 there was a flurry of announcements and excitement around a proposed C-Span like science station called Cable Science Network - CSN. Science, and Scientific American, and Wired announced the program. The founders wrote in Scientific American: "Wouldn't it be great to watch congressional hearings on cloning, bioterrorism, global warming and aging? Wouldn't it be fabulous to attend--via cable--cutting-edge lectures given by scientists at various annual scientific conferences?" I'm not sure how the public answered, but CSN apparently never got off the ground.

There are other efforts starting however, and while programming can get worse, it can surely always get better. The National Science Foundation (NSF), has teamed up with the Research Channel to produce programs for national and international cable, TV, and internet audiences. There's also a PBS/Wired program called Wired Science. I'm sure there are others, I'll just have to channel surf a little more. Then there's always Second Life.

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¹Documented in various insects and amphibians. William Barklow has done (and popularized) the research with hippopotamuses, (ie, J. of Animal Behavior March 28, 2002, "Amphibious communication with sound in hippos, Hippopotamus amphibius").

² Granted, "discovery is our calling" doesn't fit too well with the new army slogan, "Army Strong" -- too many words in the former, whereas-latter-distorted-English --grunt. See more about "Army Strong" at goarmy.com.

Acronym Required writes frequently about science and media and has also written about global warming and cognitive dissonance, for instance in Cars: Buying Cognitive Dissonance", Sea Change or Littoral Disaster, Science Communication, Communicating Climate Change, and Climate Change, Fueling the "Debate", and others. Links to other Acronym Required articles are included in the text.

I've just finished reading a fun book that I got at a book swap called How Proust Can Change Your Life, by Alain de Bottom. I liked it of course, although other reviewers who are more opinionated about incorporating Proust in a book title found it alternatively "clever"- "witty..funny..tonic" or "superficial..contrived..patronising".

Happily, I can stay in theme by reading a couple of new releases that not only include Proust but science too. In Proust Was a Neuroscientist, Jonah Lehrer writes about artists who, ensconced in their writing or cooking or painting, conceived of some aspect of sensory science ahead of the scientists. In Proust and The Squid, Maryanne Wolf writes about human development and reading.

On Proust's place in neuroscience, I didn't bring Proust along to fill in the empty moments between my neurobiology experiments as Lehrer did, and have yet to finish "In Search of Lost Time" -- I may not be the best judge. While Proust inspired books divert my attention, Proust stares down from the spines of seven unfinished volumes shelved up by the ceiling, mocking my frenzied schedule. Although some reviewers make it seem unique or iconically 21st century to mix literature and science, I contend that the pairing is natural. Scientists have always been a cultured lot to my mind, especially neuroscientists, and artists forever inquisitive about the natural world. Whatever the circumstances or pretenses Proust so often finds himself as muse, these two new books promise interesting reading.

When a story about the human appendix not being "useless after all" hit the press and blogosphere a month ago, quite a few science blogs explained that this "new" functionality idea was flawed and carefully pointed out the problems with the research, in the midst of what was largely unabashedly uncritical enthusiasm. The writers noted that this was not new research, just a review of the literature. More importantly, the Duke authors' proposal in the Journal of Theoretical Biology that the appendix was not vestigial but served to house beneficial gut bacterial was unproven (though some deemed it interesting).

Despite the effort, I noticed that Answers.com featured the appendix story in "Today's Highlights", and alas it wasn't listed as "fake news".

Summary:

Just a thought: If bisphenol A were a therapeutic drug going to market, instead of a chemical with an established global market, and there were 700 studies (LA Times) showing hormone effector effects in animals, but also "two dozen" human studies showing the same responses in humans-- therefore if bisphenol A, the hypothetical drug, had passed through the equivalent of Phase I safety, Phase II efficacy and was well into Phase III trials-- the stock of a certain pharmaceutical company would be skyrocketing based on the evidence. Financial analysts would be jumping up and down in their Aeron chairs predicting sales of the next blockbuster drug... But bisphenol-A is not a drug. It's a chemical used in mostly polycarbonate products such as baby bottles and sport's drink bottles, but ubiquitously in toys, dental epoxies, food cans... 2.8 million tons of bisphenol A were produced in 2002. So manufacturers, politicians and organizations like the American Dental Association deny that the animal studies mean anything. They insist that bisphenol A is safe. Is it? If not why did city legislators in San Francisco decide not to restrict its use in products?

Plastic People

Chemical & Engineering News published an article August 6, 2007, titled "More Concerns Over Bisphenol A: Human Exposures are Usually as High as Those Causing Profound Effects in Rodents". The article presented evidence from four toxicology studies that "bolstered" the link between "bisphenol A (BPA) and adverse health affects". Bisphenol A is used extensively in producing certain hard plastics used for various products. It is an endocrine disruptor that in mice causes a myriad of deleterious physiological effects, and when scientists do corresponding studies in humans, they produce the same results as in mice.

Makers of bisphenol A and the chemical industry label anyone who questions the safety of chemicals a "green activist" with "anti-chemical agenda". But the American Chemical Society hardly fits into this category. When the American Chemical Society notes the "profound effect" of bisphenol A, won't industry lobbyists and Fox news temper their caustic comments towards anyone who dares questions the safety of a chemical? Will they realize how out of date and trenchant they sound and change their tune? Doubtful. As the American Chemical Society also notes, "despite growing evidence of toxic effects in lab animals, manufacturers of BPA insist that their product is safe."

It's curious that the chemical industry has manage to conceive and manufacture hundreds of thousands of chemicals for millions of "better living through chemistry" applications, but seems hamstrung by the challenge to create less toxic options. Instead, they vehemently oppose the idea of taking a toxic product like bisphenol A off the market. Once production is in place and market share is established, removing a product from the market is as much an anathema to industry as it is to the politicians and media who represent industry. Of course there are "economic repercussions" to such a move. But industries remove consumers favorite products all the time when it benefits their bottom line. In fact isn't "planned obsolescence" a foundation of capitalism? But rather than focusing on the potential profit that would come from a new, less toxic product, these industries cling like traumatized children to their old business.

Chemical & Engineering News doesn't need to tell us that the Chemical, Plastics and Toy Manufacturing industries might not be the most reliable source of information for toxicity of chemicals. This is not strange or unprecedented business practice, rather a predictable one. The car industry bucked seatbelts for years, the tobacco industry denied that dragging on cigarettes caused cancer, and the oil industry launched/launches vigorous attacks against all science and scientists who observed and predicted climate change and global warming. We've come to expect this of industries. They bombard the market with new and exciting products on the their own terms. They find infinite new uses for chemicals; for phthalates and bisphenol A that make plastic products pliable or rigid or just plastic-y so. They create and manufacture plastic products en force, to strong demand, with impressive budgets that buy marketing, press releases, opinion pieces, disclaimers, liability notices, and a bevy of braying lobbyists and complicit politicians.

When it comes to our health, consumers are learning not to depend on industry information. Since Acronym Required first started reporting on bisphenol A and phthalates a couple of years ago, public awareness of the potential dangers and the lack of industry transparency about them has grown tremendously. Despite this self-determination, however, consumers remain dependent on the media to inform us, and the legislature to protect us. We're the largest constituency of politicians, and the largest consumer group of newspapers, and TV networks. However to the media and politicians, citizens are just one of many constituencies -- not necessarily the loudest, the most consistent, or the most generous. Politicians and the media are also indebted to their own bottom line; to donors, partner businesses, trade groups, and advertisers, not only readers and voters. Health and environmentally conscious citizens sometimes discover that their influence is relatively small, just one line on a whole balance sheet of competing interests.

The Press and Poison, The Press and Pills

Media coverage on potential toxins can be good, as in a USA Today article on October 30th about bisphenol A, but it can also be confusing if not downright bad. Consider the editorial decisions that Los Angeles Times made last month, in publishing an article titled: "Some Chemicals May Affect the Reproductive System, Growing Research Suggests. But as Consumers seek Alternatives, Scientists Point out that Human Studies are Few."

Discussing the bisphenol A, the article relayed the warning of a panel of 38 scientists working for a EPA and NIH panel on bisphenol A, who surveyed "700 studies of bisphenol A". The scientists concluded:

"human exposure to BPA is within the range that is predicted to be biologically active in over 95% of people sampled. The wide range of adverse effects of low doses of BPA in laboratory animals exposed both during development and in adulthood is a great cause for concern with regard to the potential for similar adverse effects in humans."¹ [emphasis ours]

Said the Los Angeles Times "the vast majority of studies" looked at BPA effects in animals, but "only two dozen studies measured levels of the chemical in people, and three have examined the health effects of everyday exposure to the chemical". "Hundreds of studies" in lab animals, the article notes, found that "bisphenol A damages the reproductive system by interfering with the effects of reproductive hormones. Male rats have reduced sperm counts and enlarged reproductive glands; female rodents have altered mammary glands, hit puberty faster than normal and have trouble getting pregnant."

If bisphenol A were a therapeutic drug going to market, and there were 700 studies, many in animals, but "two dozen" human studies showing the same responses in humans as mice, and if therefore the hypothetical drug had passed through the equivalent of Phase I safety, Phase II efficacy and was well into Phase III trials, the stock of pharmaceutical company would be skyrocketing. Financial analysts would be jumping up and down in their Aeron chairs predicting the company's astronomical growth based on the "exciting" news. They would be exclaiming about "surpassed expectations" of a "new blockbuster drug", and headlines would be shouting about the "cure" for diabetes, cancer, heart disease, or arthritis in very very large font.

For an extreme example of this see the Times Online article this week titled "'Magic Bullet' Devised to Beat Cancer", a piece optimistic about a strategy to cure cancer based on an experiment that "eliminated ovarian cancers in five out of six mice, and greatly reduced the tumour's size in the sixth mouse." Six mice. Yet when it comes to evidence that points to the deleterious effects of bisphenol A based on hundreds of studies in mice, the Los Angeles Times chooses a presentation that intermingles hair raising evidence with reminders of how meaningless this all is; the studies are "small and few", "few", "nonexistent", "paltry", "little", and "we mostly don't know" -- their list of belittling adjectives is impressive.

"Paltry" Proof of Phthalates

There is even stronger data on phthalates than there is on bisphenol A. The LA Times acknowledges that "phthalates and other chemicals" are toxic to animals, but emphasizes that "in humans, the data are still inconclusive". Combining a couple of different ideas the writer says:

...In fact, when it comes to humans, the data are nearly nonexistent. Very little research has examined the health risks associated with consumer use of plastics. And because of suggestive evidence from studies of lab animals, much of that research has focused largely on chemicals in two types of plastics: those marked with recycling No. 3 and No. 7.

No. 3 is polyvinyls that contain phthalates. Despite the paper's assurances, here is what the article actually says about phthalates in animals:

"...high doses of phthalates cause a conglomeration of health effects that suggest the chemical may either block the activity of male sex hormones (such as testosterone) or hamper their synthesis in the developing embryo...[and]...lowered testosterone levels; a shortened distance between the anus and scrotum; testes that fail to descend; reduced sperm counts; and defects in the urethra, prostate and seminal vesicles."

As for humans, the author notes that the National Toxicology Program issued a report about DEHP (a particularly worrying phthalate)¹ expressing "'serious concern' that critically ill male infants exposed to the plasticizer could suffer damage to their developing reproductive systems". In 2002 the FDA notified healthcare providers that they shouldn't use tubes, bags or equipment containing DEHP "when treating premature babies, adults undergoing dialysis, heart transplant recipients and women pregnant with male fetuses", because the DEHP leaches out. (Many hospitals are currently phasing out DEHP.) The LA Times also lists the following research results for phthalates in humans:

• A study showing elevated mono-(2-ethylhexyl) phthalate in men corresponded with "50% more sperm DNA damage ."
• A study showing that men with elevated monobutyl phthalate "were more than three times as likely to have a low sperm count than men with the lowest levels of the phthalate"
• A study of "85 mother-and-son pairs, showing that, as in rats", higher levels of phthalates were associated with "shorter ano-genital" distance in infants, as well as "undescended testes, smaller scrota and smaller penises". The level of phthalates associated with these reproductive effects was lower than what was considered acceptable by the EPA.
• Another study showing that the longer newborns spent in intensive care the higher their levels of phthalates.
• Another study showed that high levels of phthalates correspond to "decreased levels of thyroid hormones".
• Studies showing increased levels of phthalates in dust corresponded to "decreased lung function" in men and asthma in children.
• A study showing that increased levels of phthalates was also linked to "insulin resistance" and larger waist size in men.

None of this seems particularly healthful. The European Union, Mexico, Japan, Fiji and Argentina have banned phthalates. But the LA Times, either in a desperate attempt to balance competing interests or because they have phthalate syndrome, has a higher bar of proof than Fiji. The paper reminds us once again that phthalates data is in its "infancy", and bisphenol A data "in the womb".

In light of what scientists tend to consider proof, if this were a drug going to market, wouldn't such evidence be trumpeted, as proof of efficacy? Indeed, drugs for breast cancer, leukemia, Huntington's Disease, brain tumors, Down's Syndrome, MS, various tumors, Alzheimer's, Gleevec resistance, diabetes, H5N1 infection, lupus, and hundreds more -- are touted as showing "promise" based on far less "data in mice". If this were a potential drug wouldn't the money be pouring into determining the proper dosage? Instead, any testing of these hazardous chemicals is incumbent largely on government and occurs, slowly, slowly, and only as "time and resources allow", as San Francisco recently put it in legislation on phthalates.

Precautionary Principle

When public concern is high enough, as it is for bisphenol A and phthalates, a toxin might catch the attention of politicians. But even then, when push comes to shove, politics can water down the most well intended legislation. Take, for example the short sequence of events in San Francisco's recent legislation effort on bisphenol A and phthalates.

• On June 6, 2006, the San Francisco supervisors passed a ban on phthalates and bisphenol A .
• On October 25, 2006, bisphenol A manufacturers, the American Chemistry Council, California Retailers Association, California Grocers Association and Juvenile Products Manufacturers Association and a local store called CitiKids sued the city.
• On November 16, 2006 manufacturers of phthalates, the California Chamber of Commerce, the Toy Industry Association and Ambassador Toys, a local store, filed another lawsuit against the city (notice, always a local merchant as a plaintiff?).
• November 19, 2006, the San Francisco Chronicle published an article showing that the chemicals showed up in plastic toys, despite the fact that they were labeled free from chemicals. The story alarmed parents. It also gave support for the supervisors' subsequent changes to their ban based on the fact that plastic products lacked any labeling and enforcement of the ban would be too difficult.
• November- January, 2006: The Chronicle published a couple of opinion pieces that opposed the ban, including ones from the American Council on Science and Health (ACSH - an industries lobby group), and the American Plastics Council. The Chronicle also ran its own editorial, writing that however "well-intended", the ban lacked the "appropriate planning and consultation with public health authorities, retailers and toy manufacturers."
• On December 1, 2006, the ban was slated to go into effect, but it was postponed by city officials, who told businesses the city would wait until after the holidays to begin enforcement.
• On January 23, 2007, Supervisor Angela Aliota-Pier proposed changes to the ban which were approved by the Board of Supervisors in April, 2007. All bisphenol A legislation was removed. Instead of banning certain phthalates, under the changed legislation labs would be hired to test specific products over the next couple of years (as resources permitted, the legislation noted). The products were only those that were specifically meant to be put in the mouths of children under three. If these products had certain levels of phthalates sale of those specific toys could be punishable. The fine for the first offense would be $100.
• In response to the amended legislation Bisphenol A manufacturers and parties of that lawsuit dropped their case against the city.

The ordinance that was eventually passed seemed to take in mind "retailers and toy manufacturers", as the of the San Francisco Chronicle had suggested. The city understandably pushed some of the work up to the state and federal levels. The supervisors say they intend to remain abreast of developments in bisphenol A research. But if San Francisco's citizens were looking for guidance from the city on which plastic toys they should allow their children to teethe on, at what age, or whether using bisphenol A containing Nalgene bottles for water might cause breast cancer, they are still left to their own devices.

The state has also passed a phthalates bill (not bisphenol A) sponsored by Fiona Ma. Governer Schwarzenegger commented upon signing, "I do not believe that addressing this type of concern in the legislature on a chemical by chemical, product by product basis is the best or most effective way to make chemical policy in California". It remains to be seen how California will enforce the legislation.

The San Francisco supervisors invoked the "precautionary principle" when they proposed their first ban in June of 2006. There is a huge body of literature and argumentation about the precautionary principle which we're going to skip over here, but basically it says "When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause-and-effect relationships are not fully established scientifically".

Specific to the examples of phthalates and bisphenol A, what really does it really mean to say that "cause-and-effect relationships are not fully established scientifically"? What about the standards we use for drug development? Wouldn't all these results in BPA and pthalates "establish" the science if this were a drug? If this were drug development with a potential market similar to the size of the population effected by BPA and phthalates use, the pharmaceutical company would be pouring money into further testing. Despite this reasonable sounding premise, the precautionary principle consistently fails to gain traction with city, state and federal politicians, who are realistic to all interests.

If the city is "precautionary", it's NOT on the side of health or the environment, but (if inadvertently), on the side of industry. While San Francisco has made a admirable public statement about these chemicals its hard to see how this is going to diminish the threats to kids. Since plastic toys aren't labeled, is the city going to go into the plastics product testing business? What city can afford to regulate products? I'm not criticizing politicians -- this is the system we have -- but let's be realistic about implementing the "precautionary principle". Does it even make sense for politicians to invoke the phrase? Perhaps at the federal level or state levels we could be precautionary. But on the local level, so far it looks more like the "pragmatic principle": all interests considered.

Perhaps the precautionary principle is only personal ideal for individuals to follow. Fortunately, to be optimistic, individual families can decide to make product choices (basically by finding plastic alternatives like glass and wood) despite inevitably slow legislative efforts and still conflicting -- though on the whole increasingly good -- coverage in the media.

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¹ A second study released by the National Toxicology Program concluded that bisphenol A raised "some concern" about "neurological and behavioral effects in developing fetuses, infants and young children." This study was controversial, as it was conducted after the original contractor, Sciences International, was fired by NIH under a cloud of conflict of interest concerns. Acronym Required documented the conflict of interest issues.

Acronym Required also wrote about bisphenol A in the following articles:

Plastic Bottles- Protecting Your Baby, by the ACC (July, 2005)

Bisphenol-A and Phthalates Bill in California (January, 2006)

San Francisco Bans Bisphenol A, Phthalates (July, 2006)

San Francisco phthalates & Bisphenol A Ban (November, 2006)

Studs Terkel writes in "The Wiretap the Time", in the New York Times today, that the current government wiretapping defies a 1978 law, and that the case should be allowed to go to court. Mr. Terkel is a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits against the telephone companies that conducted broad wiretapping on behalf of the Bush administration.

The administration has been seeking to grant immunity to the telephone companies to protect them from such lawsuits, a move that some say would set a dangerous precedent. The Senate has spent significant effort fighting the administration to gain access to key documents in order to proceed with the case. Civil liberties groups argue that the government is trying to cover-up possible wrongdoing.'"Immunity suggests that there's been a violation of the law and they want to be absolved from any liability," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., told reporters. "I would like to know what happened before I absolve anyone from liability."'

Mr. Terkel, 95, speaks of the wiretapping that he's witnessed, the Palmer raids in 1920, Bureau of Investigation raids, the Red Scare McCarthy era of the 1950's, in which Terkel was blacklisted and disallowed from working in television and radio "after refusing to say that I had been "duped" into signing my name to these causes."

In defiance of the 4th amendment, Bush has gutted the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, its "legal structure and social contract", saysTerkel, and of his century of experience: "nothing much surprises me anymore. But I always feel uplifted by this: Given the facts and an opportunity to act, the body politic generally does the right thing."

The IPCC: Worth Its Weight In Gold

Acronym Required previously commended Al Gore's movie in An Inconvenient Truth or Or The Break-Up? What To See. Al Gore carried a message to the public in his movie: you have a moral imperative to act on global warming. But more important than his message to the general public may have the one to business: we have a golden opportunity here. That's the message that seemed to grab attention and excite a buzz in the investment community.

Many people reacted to the Nobel Prize awarded to Al Gore and the IPCC by talking about Al Gore -- the chances he'll run for president (nil), his turnaround from losing the 2000 election, what a great a guy he is...of course there are naysayers asking whether he cares about the environment at all or whether the environment even matters. However the efforts of the other winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, the IPCC, for assessing and presenting the science studies which underlie our understanding of climate change, for informing policy makers, and for enabling Al Gore to make his movies, deserve overdue respect and the Nobel Prize.

Unfortunately the IPCC often goes under-recognized. For kicks, we did a Google search of Nobel Peace and IPCC; vs. Nobel Peace and Gore. The result? (Needless to say this is quite unscientific) 687,000 for the Nobel Peace IPCC, and 1,120,000 for Nobel Peace Gore. While Al Gore's communication of the climate change problem was stellar and important, we should be impressed by the efforts of the IPCC, with its hundreds of scientists who convene to issue report after report, no deviation from their science charge, just descriptions of the science and its the potential outcomes.

The journal Nature recognized the IPCC effort in its editorial October 18th, "Rising to the climate challenge". Nature's editors suggested that perhaps more frequent reviews by the IPCC may be prudent to the urgent problems that we face. But the article commended the agency's report process:

"Many climate scientists would like to move away from an IPCC process in which three independent working groups that investigate science, impacts and mitigation, respectively, work almost entirely independently of each other. But the established process is difficult to avoid in drawing up a full-scale assessment, and any suggestion of a merger should be resisted: assessing mitigation is best kept separate from assessing science if only to support the objectivity of the latter.

Nature reminds us: "This Nobel peace laureate is an organization whose strengths include an understanding that, however urgent the challenge, robust scientific advice, like science itself, needs patience."

Scientists Speak, Governments Ignore, Our Peril

Last week United Nations Environmental Program also issued a report, UNEP's Global Environment Outlook (GEO-4). Their last report was issued twenty years ago, titled: "Our Common Future". The current 550 page report, which took five years and 388 scientists urges governments to pay attention to climate change, water shortages, extinction of species, and the overall resource depletion that increasingly challenges a growing population. It says that to date, governments' response has be: "woefully inadequate", and distinctive for "a remarkable lack of urgency."

Science is methodical, and policy should be necessarily separated from science. If governments don't heed the messages of scientists, or their policies in time don't stretch to reflect science, it's not because the details weren't made clear by thousands and thousands of scientists, year after year after year, or because the scientists are or are not adorned with identifying pocket protectors, or because Al Gore said it twenty years ago and he's a Democrat.

Governments fail to listen not because the report was released on the wrong day of the week or for any myriad of the many silly reasons that individuals, communities, and a few scientists themselves -- ever open to a little self immolation -- would like to suggest or accept as their burden. These are not easy problems to fix. But if the governments "don't hear", its because our leaders are funded by entities (including corporations), who don't yet see any economic advantage to sustaining the earth that sustains us. And they don't hear because the public says to the politicians it elects, hey, as long as I have my MTV -- its ok.

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Acronym Required frequently comments on environmental issues. We've talked about the subject of cognitive dissonance and willful ignorance of the environment in: Green Spirit, Cars, Buying Cognitive Dissonance, Climate Change Communication, and Sea Change or Littoral Disaster, plus some other pieces. Acronym Required also wrote about the IPCC in Climate Change, Fueling the Debate , and here.

The New York Times today reports that the Bush administration is trying to rewrite the federal government's bungling of Hurricane Katrina as a state problem .

Acronym Required previously wrote a number of articles on Katrina and FEMA.

(This post picks up from another, Mbeki's AIDS Legacy and Ours)

Mini-Skirts, Public Health & Mbeki

It should have been no shock last summer when President Mbeki, a man who has not recently tolerated dissenting views, sacked Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge, the assistant health minister who very publicly tried to advocate for stronger action on South Africa's AIDS epidemic. Madlala-Routledge had taken the helm of the health ministry from Dr. Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, who was out on medical leave. But after a short stint at the post, Madlala-Routledge was fired for "unsubordination", when Mbeki disapproved of her decision to attend an AIDS meeting in Europe.

If outspokenness and a maverick nature were Madlala-Routledge's transgressions, one might wonder, than why wasn't she dismissed earlier - or why was she ever assigned to the post? How did she so suddenly cease being a "team player"?

International media outlets checked their surprise -- the South Africa's government wasn't turning around on AIDS? -- before perfunctorily broadcasting dissapproval and a polite request that the South African government pay attention to AIDS. Mbeki is quite used this cadre of international critics who gripe about his refusal to deal with AIDS and he adeptly fended off the outcry. It's well-rehearsed, Mbeki and his naysayers, an almost monotonous dance...Mbeki forever lets the AIDS crisis in South Africa gain momentum, his compatriots die.

Predictably, the international spotlight on Mbeki's perennial denial of his country's AIDS crisis illuminated the problems with all the intensity of firefly on a summer's night, fluttering briefly here, flitting off there. The press reacted quickly and instinctively to AIDS news, but it was not the only issue about which Madlala-Routledge was outspoken. She was also starting to raise a warning flag about public hospitals.

A six week investigation by the (famous) Eastern Cape paper, the Daily Dispatch reported that despicable sanitary conditions, understaffing, underfunding and lack of equipment at the Frere hospital in East London were causing high rates of infant and neonate deaths. The South African national press riveted its attention on public health problems that were perhaps more germaine to Mbeki's prospects for continuing to lead the African National Congress (ANC) party once his second term is up in 2009.

Although the Unicef reports infant mortality figures for South Africa are about 45 deaths per 1000 babies, and 21 deaths per 1000 neonates, the reporters spent weeks in the hospital wards, manned the morgue, and conducted interview after interview before publishing their expose and claiming that the mortality figures were higher than reported and worsening:

"Minutes from weekly management meetings reveal damning admissions by doctors that patients were dying because of outright negligence...Mothers and babies die at an alarmingly high rate, confirmed a former hospital gynaecologist....Last year's figures appear to be the highest on record, when at least 199 babies were stillborn [at Frere]......'I once saw a cleaner doing a delivery while there were students in the ward and she chased the students out because she said they don't know what they're doing,' said a student nurse, a claim corroborated by a veteran of Frere's maternity wards."

Assistant health minister Madlala-Routledge visited the hospital upon hearing of the report, and declared the situation deplorable. She was promptly fired. A resuscitated health minister Tshabalala-Msimang then returned to her post in time to summon a committee and report that the conditions at the hospital were fine. Containment achieved?

The press dug in, lambasting Mbeki for reigning over the now apparent public health crisis. Mbeki arguably expended more personal effort addressing this issue than the accusations from the AIDS activists. In his weekly newspaper column, he wrote a 3000 word essay titled, "Facts, Fiction and Mini-skirts", dismissing the paper's claims. The many threaded column wove through post-modernism, Charles Dickens, Marx, "the truth", and an interpretive course in statistics, not to mention the central mini-skirt theme:

"Mini-skirts achieved their high point as an indispensable item of women's fashion and an iconic representation of the ethos of an age during the 1960s. Even at the height of the craze, when it was virtually a social offense not to show a considerable part of women's thighs, the statisticians remained loyal to their profession.

They spread the notion, not difficult to understand even by the most discreet observer, that mini-skirts showed or suggested more than they revealed..."

The thrust of the mini-skirt-memo was to assure readers that the newspaper's six week investigation on Frere's infant deaths was wrong, statistically spurious, not to be believed. The piece set to sooth the potentially volatile public, but also outlined in so many words the political confines that frame the president's stance on AIDS and emphasized his steadfast commitment to a neoliberal economic agenda.

Places of Death

The Dispatch editors were not silenced by the mini-skirt memo, instead they counterattacked, charging that Mbeki's faux mortality figures would be uncovered and he'd be left "hoist by his own petard." The fray surrounding Frere hospital and other public hospitals in the East Cape roiled the national headlines. The demonstrative exchange (relative to some of the staid journalism we're so used to), was not merely drama to sell papers. The public health infrastructure in South Africa has been ignored for years.

This may surprise people outside of the country who have heard of the country's cutting edge hospitals and its modern private health care system. Medical tourism is part of the fast growing tourism business in South Africa, a booming, much ballyhooed sector. You've probably heard of 'adventure seekers' who travel to Africa on "medical safaris", or more hair-raisingly known as "silicon safaris" or "scalpel safaris". Prospective patients travel to South Africa's state-of-the art medical facilities to get plastic surgery, fertility treatments, treatments and surgeries that would be more expensive in Europe or the US. Sounds enticing. Fly the 12 hour, 9700 km (6000 mi) flight from London to Capetown on Virgin Airlines, get a nose job or tummy tuck, hop in a jeep with your safari cohort and spend the day bumping over the grasslands looking for tigers running down wildebeests, then catch a quick dinner and the 12 hour flight back to London.

The safari goers and international investors chauffeured to the shinier places can't necessarily know of the economic disparities in Africa, acutely visible in the differences between public and private health systems, even more apparent to anyone who falls ill and enters a public hospital on the Eastern Cape. Phyllis Ntantala, a former professor of History and English in the U.S., wrote about the Eastern Cape hospital conditions in 2006. The 80 year old woman, who lives in the United States but grew up in the Eastern Cape, South Africa, was rushed to the hospital when she collapsed visiting her family in South Africa. She documented the hazards of public hospital admission in an essay titled "Places of Death, not Life".

"The state of the public hospitals in the Eastern Cape is horrific", she wrote, after finding broken equipment, dirt, piled up garbage, patients who lay unattended in the hospital for days, and water shortages that forced nurses to dry urine soaked mattresses in the sun outside. Ntantala describes her stay at Nelson Mandela Hospital:

"I was stripped and lay naked in bed under an obviously used sheet for two days until a member of my family managed to bring me some night clothes. In all my 80-plus years I have never felt as insulted as I did for those two days and nights lying naked in that bed."

She also inadvertently locked herself in a bathroom on account of a broken door that automatically locked from the outside.The octogenarian reported pounding on the door yelling for help for 45 minutes before someone let her out. When she recovered from her illness she traveled in the Eastern Cape and documented the deteriorating conditions across the province. She relays the story of a young man admitted to Mjanyana TB hospital for suspected tuberculosis:

There was no doctor on duty when he was admitted and he stayed there for three weeks without being examined or having a chest X-ray taken because the X-ray machine was out of commission. His family finally removed him and he was referred to a doctor in East London where he was diagnosed with TB and treated.

She described the bathrooms at Mjanyana:

"filthy death traps where germs must be multiplying by the millions. Toilets do not flush, tiles are cracked and broken and there is moisture everywhere. In such an environment, it is difficult to imagine how anyone could come out alive."

We hear more about AIDS in Africa, than public health. International health campaigns that get our attention tend to focus on one specific issue in order to galvanize attention and raise money. Many an agency fundraises in the name of AIDS and children, orphans or babies, to great reward. Children's health programs especially can make use of a photo of a child dragging a teddy bear up a desolate looking stairwell, in the name of malaria, or AIDS. We commend these campaigning efforts, in Africa alone over 2 million children will be orphaned from aids by 2020. We very much understand the necessity of NGO's that understand the imperative of facing down pandemics. Marketing campaigns that isolate diseases are essential to fighting disease. Public health, on the other hand, is an unwieldy area that doesn't lend itself to private fund-raising, heart-tugging advertisements, or measurable endpoints. But while NGO's carve out a special place for AIDS (as well as malaria, tuberculosis, leishmania etc), in reality, an AIDS crisis cannot be so facilely uncoupled from general public health.

History bears this out. In the late 1980's Romania's many malnourished orphaned children were given blood microtransfusions using unscreened blood. Unsterilized equipment, poor public health, government poverty and denial of the problems caused outbreaks of AIDS among hundreds of the children. Libya arguably had a public health problem before it had the tragic AIDS epidemic among hospitalized children which was then blamed on foreign health workers. China's contaminated blood and plasma banks spread HIV virus to thousands of transfusion patients. In each of these cases, Libya being the most recent, a combination of issues plus political denial of the problem by the country's leaders, led to an AIDS epidemic and tragedy.

While people die in public hospitals at unacceptable rates, the tourism board promotes private hospitals in brochures abroad. South Africa is not just ignoring its HIV/AIDS populations, it's ignoring public health when the result can go unnoticed. A recent Unicef report notes that 5.4 million people were infected with HIV/AIDS as of 2006 in South Africa, amounting to almost one fifth of the total population. Moreover, South Africa is also not likely to meet the UN's Millennium Development Goal of cutting under-five mortality by two thirds by 2015. "Instead, child mortality rose by an annual 5.8 percent in the ten years between 1990 and 2000". For several months, the spirited South African media diligently kept public health debacle in the news.

You're Either With the Revolution....or with the Opposition

Underlying the failure on both (inseparable) issues is ambivalent leadership on the part of the president's party. In August, the African media's Frere hospital investigation merged with the African media's condemnation of Mbeki's coddling of Tshabalala-Msimang, as the Sunday Times broke a couple of stories based on leaked medical records from hospitalizations of the Health Minister. One report, Manto: A Drunk and a Thief, told of the Health Minister's drinking, alcoholism, liver cirrhosis, kleptomania, and verbal abuse of hospital staff during a hospital stays. The paper also questioned whether favoritism and power allowed her to receive a recent liver transplant in ahead of others. The Times quoted hospital staff reactions to her behavior, including an employee who "said Tshabalala-Msimang’s antics were common knowledge among staff: 'Everyone here thinks its hilarious that she is today a health minister in South Africa'".

Mbeki responded in the the paper's account in another memo in ANC Today, August 31. Mbeki defended his compatriot, Tshabalala-Msimang, who had been a loyal member of the "democratic revolution". Her approach to nutrition and AIDS was that of the ANC he said, and followed a "scientifically based pursuit of the goal of health for all". Following on with an interesting argument, he said:

"anybody could have the audacity publicly to argue that nothing should have been done to attend to the health of another South African human being, allowing her to die instead as some in our society have argued"

The ubuntu culture which he grew up in, he explained "valued and values the sanctity of human life". He defended the Minister's place in "the movement" and her 45 years serving the people. Finally he noted that "recent events have brought to the fore the obligation our movement faces, to choose between either ecstatic media adulation, or the defense of the truth as it understands this truth."

Media Revelations...Then Hoist By Their Own Petard?

The media has been taking government to task, now the South African government has heightened interest the media. Police are investigating how Sunday Times editor Mondli Makhanya and senior journalist Jocelyn Maker obtained the Health Minister's medical records. Last week the Times reported the two were going to be arrested, then a couple of days later, the Times reported that they weren't yet going to be arrested.

Also, last week the Financial Times (October 16, 2007) reported that activist shareholder Brian Molefe was trying to purchase the company Johncom, which owns the Sunday Times. Molefe runs the Public Investment Corporation "which manages R720bn (Pounds 52bn, Dollars 106bn, Euros 75bn) of civil servants' pension funds he is the single largest investor on the Johannesburg Stock Ex-change (JSE)." He works to "force traditionally white-run companies to promote more black people on to boards and into top management". According to the Financial Times, this approach has drawn criticism form those who think he should spend more time managing assets, and less time being a "government hit man stepping outside his mandate to enforce black economic empowerment (BEE), which is the "African National Congress government's policy to redress the financial inequalities of apartheid by transferring a stake in the economy to black control." Molefe insists that while he does wish to change the employee incentive system of the paper, he doesn't intend to change the editorial direction of the Times.

Why aren't there more women in science? It's a dilemma that receives a lot of attention. There's more than a few ways of looking at this, but reading about the subject, you will first be convinced of a long history of women's contributions to science, for example at the website: "4000 Years of Women in Science". You'll also learn that throughout the millennia, women succeeded as scientists. You can find evidence of this in accounts such as, "Women in Science: A Selection of 16 Significant Contributors". 16 contributors, 4000 years, that's distorted. But if you're interested in seeing women get ahead in science, as an educator or young scientist, the real odds still might send you into a morose spiral, worsened when you realize how relentless the message will be. Year after year the same grants announcing the same basic questions, the same studies launched to puzzle quizzically over the same conundrum, ending up with the same conclusion.

Getting more personal, you could delve into biographies of women, classics of famous scientists like Barbara McClintock, and Rita Levi-Montalcini are readily available. Born in the beginning of the 20th century, these two women are/were (McClintock passed away in 1992) highly intelligent, tenacious and gutsy. Barbara McClintock discovered transposable elements that can introduce DNA into distant parts of the genome in certain conditions. Levi-Montalcini discovered nerve-growth factor. Both received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.The biographies tell of singularly driven individuals who labored deep into the night, who made tremendous contributions to science under conditions we would consider adverse.

If you were going to write a book, you might not consider a biography in this genre, one that tells some variation, some essence, of an American dream, of woman scientists renowned for their 20th century contributions and work ethics. However, "A Feeling for the Organism", Barbara McClintock's biography that was first published in 1984, has now been released in its 10th edition. These are timeless classics, and in their characterizations of women at the bench, struggling with firmed jaw against the odds and naysayers, carry a disconcerting longevity. It's almost ominous, as though these mythical struggling women scientists forever hover about our schools, presented this year and the next by earnest teachers in our classrooms as grim reminders of past struggles. Their ghosts might haunt women in their labs...work later?...um...what would Barbara McClintock do?

It seems that in many areas of public life we are afflicted by memory failures about history that are the bane of international relations, public policy, and banking. But as far as women and science goes, there's almost too much history, an endless recounting of a dark time in not so long ago in never forgotten past. According to the AAAS Benchmarks for science education, by the time a student graduates from 8th grade, they should have internalized the following:

"Until recently, women and racial minorities, because of restrictions on their education and employment opportunities, were essentially left out of much of the formal work of the science establishment; the remarkable few who overcame those obstacles were even then likely to have their work disregarded by the science establishment."[italics added]

The AAAS "benchmarks" were updated in 1993, but are still listed on the site as current. The astute 8th grader might deduce from the evidence as presented in the "benchmarks" that nothing has changed for women in science in her own lifetime -- since 1993. The present 8th grader might wonder what the AAAS means by "recently"? Before I was born she might wonder? An ancient time, like 1992? Or are we talking 1960,1940, or when Levi-Montalcini was born in 1909? Can the AAAS update this to give a date when they think things actually turned around? Or are women in science forever just about to turn the corner of milk and honey and equal opportunity?

Teachers are advised to let make their students understand by leaving 8th grade that "no matter who does science and mathematics or invents things, or when or where they do it, the knowledge and technology that result can eventually become available to everyone in the world." Which I suppose could mean that if you do science, no matter who you are, everyone in the world will recognize your work. Alternatively it could mean that if your don't go into science, you would still be able to access it even if you live in a remote village in Africa. A democratic interpretation either way.

You'll see articles that make it look like things are looking up. Nature last week reported in "Equal pay for women in science is achievable" about a study for the University of Arizona Hospital. (Originally published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine: A. L. Wright et al. J. Gen. Intern. Med. 22, 1398 - 1402; 2007). The U. or A. researchers recounted "administrative changes" at the University of Arizona that equalized pay between men and women and improved upon their previous study: "Unequal Pay for Equal Work in the Annals of Medicine (2005). The first study found that in 2000, the University had a total of 375 staff, men were getting paid $117,598, and women only $105,148, 89.4% of the male total. The new paper reports that by 2004, the University had 445 staff, men were paid $132,770, and women $124,108, 93.5% of the male total. To achieve this, the University gave 21 women raises of an average $17,000 over 4 years. The authors concluded: "This study shows that gender disparities in compensation can be reduced through careful documentation, identification of comparable individuals paid different salaries, and commitment from leadership to hold the appropriate person accountable."

A cynical person might say that transforming basic cost of living allowance into gestures of grand social reform, then parlaying these into an academic publication is probably a helpful recruiting tool for the University of Arizona. And though pay raises always help, a more thorough review of the study doesn't necessarily reveal all you would need to know to feel that the changes were meaningful, or that women will be any more emancipated fr