Month: May 2024

The Cholera and Bubonic Plague Vaccination Campaigns of Waldemar Haffkine Count as Evidence of “the Benevolence of British Medical Imperialism”

(p. C7) “In the end, all history is natural history,” writes Simon Schama in “Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines and the Health of Nations.” The author, a wide-ranging historian and an engaging television host, reconciles the weight of medical detail with the light-footed pleasures of narrative discovery. His book profiles some of the unsung miracle workers of modern vaccination, and offers a subtle rumination on borders political and biological.

. . .

Inoculation, Mr. Schama writes, became a “serious big business” in commercial England, despite the inoculators’ inability to understand how (p. C8) it worked, and despite Tory suspicions that the procedure meant “new-fangled,” possibly Jewish, interference in the divine plan. In 1764, the Italian medical professor Angelo Gatti published an impassioned defense of inoculation that demolished humoral theory. Mr. Schama calls Gatti an “unsung visionary of the Enlightenment.” His work was a boon to public health, though his findings met resistance in France, where the prerevolutionary medical establishment was more concerned with protecting its authority.

. . .

(p. C8) Mr. Schama alights on the story of Waldemar Haffkine, the Odessa-born Jew who created vaccines against cholera and bubonic plague. In 1892, Haffkine inoculated himself against cholera with the vaccine he had developed at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. He went on to inoculate thousands of Indians, and so effectively that his campaigns served as, in Mr. Schama’s words, “an advertisement for the benevolence of British medical imperialism.”

. . .

The author notes the contrast between the facts of Haffkine’s achievements and the response of the British establishment, with its modern echoes of the medieval fantasy that Jews were “demonic instigators of mass death.” Yet Mr. Schama’s skepticism of authority only extends so far. It would have been instructive to learn why, when Covid-19 appeared, the WHO concurred with Voltaire that the Chinese were “the wisest and best governed people in the world” and advised liberal democracies to emulate China’s lockdowns.

Haffkine’s colleague Ernest Hanbury Hankin once wrote an essay called “The Mental Limitations of the Expert.” Mr. Schama’s conclusion shows the limitations of our expert class, which appears not to understand the breach of public trust caused by the politicization of Covid policy and the suppression of public debate. You do not have to be “far right” to distrust mandatory mRNA vaccination. As Mr. Schama shows, the health of the body politic depends on scientific inquiry.

For the full review, see:

Dominic Green. “Protecting the Body Politic.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Sept. 23, 2023): C7-C8.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date September 22, 2023, and has the title “‘Foreign Bodies’ Review: Migrant Microbes, Human Borders.”)

The book under review is:

Schama, Simon. Foreign Bodies: Pandemics, Vaccines, and the Health of Nations. New York: Ecco Press, 2023.

Neuroscientists Confirm Folk Medicine Claims of Lavender’s Healing Powers

(p. D2) Lavender has purported healing powers for reducing stress and anxiety. But are these effects more than just folk medicine?

Yes, said Hideki Kashiwadani, a physiologist and neuroscientist at Kagoshima University in Japan — at least in mice.

. . .

In a study published Tuesday [Oct. 23, 2018 [sic]] in the journal Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience, he and his colleagues found that sniffing linalool, an alcohol component of lavender odor, was kind of like popping a Valium. It worked on the same parts of a mouse’s brain, but without all the dizzying side effects.

. . .

Their findings add to a growing body of research demonstrating anxiety-reducing qualities of lavender odors and suggest a new mechanism for how they work in the body.

For the full story see:

JoAnna Klein. “Purple Reigns: Folk Wisdom Hails Lavender’s Powers. Now Researchers Are Pinning Down Why.” The New York Times (Tuesday, October 30, 2018 [sic]): D2.

(Note: ellipses and bracketed date added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Oct. 23, 2018 [sic], and has the title “Lavender’s Soothing Scent Could Be More Than Just Folk Medicine.” Where there is a small difference in wording between the versions, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

The article co-authored by Kashiwadani and mentioned above is:

Harada, Hiroki, Hideki Kashiwadani, Yuichi Kanmura, and Tomoyuki Kuwaki. “Linalool Odor-Induced Anxiolytic Effects in Mice.” Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 12 (Oct. 23, 2018).

When Ocean Temperatures Dropped 30 Million Years Ago, Some Species Migrated to Warmer Waters; Others Developed New Traits

(p. D2) The Southern Ocean around Antarctica was once warmer. Then about 30 million years ago, the temperature dropped. Few fish could survive temperatures that were just above seawater’s freezing point, and they either migrated to warmer waters or went extinct.

One bottom-dweller held on. Through the power of natural selection, its descendants developed traits that let them survive these unlikely conditions. Today, the Antarctic blackfin icefish, or Chaenocephalus aceratus, thrives in these frigid waters with no scales, blood as clear as water and bones so thin, you can see its brain through its skull.

For the full story see:

JoAnna Klein. “Skullduggery: It’s Not Hard to See How His Brain Works.” The New York Times (Tuesday, March 5, 2019 [sic]): D2.

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 28, 2019 [sic], and has the title “How the Icefish Got Its Transparent Blood and See-Through Skull.”)

The article quoted above references the following academic article:

Kim, Bo-Mi, Angel Amores, Seunghyun Kang, Do-Hwan Ahn, Jin-Hyoung Kim, Il-Chan Kim, Jun Hyuck Lee, Sung Gu Lee, Hyoungseok Lee, Jungeun Lee, Han-Woo Kim, Thomas Desvignes, Peter Batzel, Jason Sydes, Tom Titus, Catherine A. Wilson, Julian M. Catchen, Wesley C. Warren, Manfred Schartl, H. William Detrich, John H. Postlethwait, and Hyun Park. “Antarctic Blackfin Icefish Genome Reveals Adaptations to Extreme Environments.” Nature Ecology & Evolution 3, no. 3 (March 2019): 469-78.

“Terminal Lucidity” Is “the Light Before the End of the Tunnel”

(p. D6) . . . “terminal lucidity,” [is] a term coined by the biologist Michael Nahm in 2009 to describe the brief state of clarity and energy that sometimes precedes death. Alexander Batthyány, another contemporary expert on dying, calls it “the light before the end of the tunnel.”

A 5-year-old boy in a coma for three weeks suddenly regains consciousness. He thanks his family for letting him go and tells them he’ll be dying soon. The next day, he does.

A 26-year-old woman with severe mental disabilities hasn’t spoken a word for years. Suddenly, she sings, “Where does the soul find its home, its peace? Peace, peace, heavenly peace!” The year is 1922. She sings for half an hour and then she passes away. The episode is witnessed by two prominent physicians and later recounted by them separately, at least five times, with identical descriptions.

Early reports of terminal lucidity date back to Hippocrates, Plutarch and Galen. Dr. Nahm collected 83 accounts of terminal lucidity written over 250 years, most of which were witnessed by medical professionals. Nearly 90 percent of cases happened within a week of death and almost half occurred on the final day of life.

Terminal lucidity occurred irrespective of ailment, in patients with tumors, strokes, dementia and psychiatric disorders. Dr. Nahm suggested the mechanism of terminal lucidity may differ from one disease to another. For example, severe weight loss in patients with brain tumors could cause the brain to shrink, yielding fleeting relief of pressure on the brain that might allow for clearer thinking. Yet this theory doesn’t explain terminal lucidity in people dying from dementia, kidney failure or other diseases. Like death itself, terminal lucidity retains a screen of mystery.

My grandfather talked to us for 10 minutes the day before he died. He hadn’t spoken coherently in days. His hands had become baby-like, grasping our fingers or the bed railing reflexively. The weight of his eyelids had become too heavy to lift.

Suddenly, he was back. “What’s the good word?” he asked, as if that day was the same as all the days before. He marched down the line of grandchildren at his bedside, asking for the latest news in our lives. He asked if they ever finished building the Waldorf Astoria in Jerusalem. He made a joke, one I can’t remember except for the way he smiled out of the right side of his mouth, tilted his head from side to side, and held up his hands in jest.

And then, again, he was gone.

For the full commentary see:

Sara Manning Peskin, M.D. “The Gentler Symptoms of Dying.” The New York Times (Tuesday, July 18, 2017 [sic]): D6.

(Note: ellipsis and bracketed word added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 11, 2017 [sic], and the same title as the print version.)

Burning One’s Own Book Is Protected by the Right of Free Expression

(p. C6) There are few sights as alarming as a book set alight. Igniting the printed word in order to destroy the ideas contained therein runs counter to our notions of enlightenment, deliberation and reason. It can also carry a message of contempt for those who consider the burned book sacred. But while there’s no need to condone book burning and plenty of reasons to condemn it, it shouldn’t be punished by law.

That principle is now in jeopardy in Denmark, which has witnessed more than 170 anti-Muslim demonstrations in recent years, including a number of public Quran burnings. In response, lawmakers have introduced a bill to criminalize “improper treatment of objects of significant religious importance.” Offenders would face up to two years in prison. In announcing the proposed law, the Danish government cited the problem of being “seen in large parts of the world as a country that facilitates insulting and denigrating actions against other countries and religions.”

The move marks a reversal from the Danes’ approach in 2005, when the publication of cartoons depicting the Muslim Prophet Muhammad in a Danish newspaper sparked worldwide violence. Then the Danish government stood firm in its defense of free expression, rejecting calls to censor—or even censure—the paper.

. . .

The Danish government insists that its proposal is merely a “targeted intervention,” claiming it will “not change the fact that we must maintain very broad freedom of expression in Denmark.”

. . .

Yet by treating religious sensitivities as inviolate, the measure risks legitimizing the notion that vengeance may be warranted against those perceived to have denigrated the sacred.

. . .

The impulse to outlaw expression that creates unease, offense and uproar is not unique to Denmark. Censors around the world designate speech as dangerous and subversive in order to silence it. Denmark needs to reassure Muslims that it is committed to keeping them safe, protected and respected. It should do that by upholding rather than betraying the country’s core commitment to free expression and human rights.

For the full commentary, see:

Suzanne Nossel. “Book-Burning Bans Are the Wrong Way to Fight Religious Hatred.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, Sept. 23, 2023): C6.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date September 21, 2023, and has the same title as the print version.)

Nossel’s essay, quoted above, is related to her book:

Nossel, Suzanne. Dare to Speak: Defending Free Speech for All. New York: Dey Street Books, 2020.

“Terminal Rage” May Be “Rage Against the Dying of the Light”

The quotation below from Dylan Thomas is his first line and title for one of my favorite, albeit sad, poems. It is the first line, but my favorite line is: “Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

(p. D4) Terminal Agitation

“Do not go gentle into that good night” (Dylan Thomas)

My grandfather screamed two days before he died. “Open that door and let me out! Right now! It’s a travesty! Open that door!”

It was the scream of a lost child. My grandfather’s eyebrows, which had been lost over the years from the outside inward so that only a centimeter of long gray hairs near the middle remained, tilted toward each other.

Until then, we were preparing for missing and absence. Not for an agitated delirium. Not for rage.

. . .

Instead of peacefully floating off, the dying person may cry out and try to get out of bed. Their muscles might twitch or spasm. The body can appear tormented.

. . .

People who witness terminal agitation often believe it is the dying person’s existential response to death’s approach. Intense agitation may be the most visceral way that the human body can react to the shattering of inertia. We squirm and cry out coming into the world, and sometimes we do the same leaving it.

For the full commentary see:

Sara Manning Peskin, M.D. “The Symptoms of Dying.” The New York Times (Tuesday, June 20, 2017 [sic]): D4.

(Note: ellipses added. In the original, the line of Dylan Thomas’s poem, and his name, appear in italics.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the same date and title as the print version.)

Giant Bee “Feared Extinct” Is Found Alive

(p. D2) It’s been 38 years since scientists last spotted the insect known as Wallace’s Giant Bee, a rare species found only in a group of Indonesian islands called the North Moluccas. With a wingspan of 2.5 inches and a body the size of a human thumb, it’s considered the world’s largest bee, and was feared extinct.

Those fears can now be somewhat laid to rest. In January [2019], an international team of conservationists found a Megachile pluto, as the species is called, in the wild.

For the full story see:

Douglas Quenqua. “Still Bite-Size: A Bee Absurdly Big, And Surprisingly Alive.” The New York Times (Tuesday, March 5, 2019 [sic]): D2.

(Note: bracketed year added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date Feb. 21, 2019 [sic], and has the title “The World’s Largest Bee Is Not Extinct.”)

Observations of Non-Credentialed Citizens Add to “Scientific” Knowledge

(p. D5) In 1811, a 12-year-old girl named Mary Anning discovered a fossil on the beach near her home in southwestern England — the first scientifically identified specimen of an ichthyosaur, a dolphin-like, ocean-dwelling reptile from the time of the dinosaurs. Two centuries later, less than 50 miles away, an 11-year-old girl named Ruby Reynolds found a fossil from another ichthyosaur. It appears to be the largest marine reptile known to science.

Ms. Reynolds, now 15, and her father, Justin Reynolds, have been fossil hunting for 12 years near their home in Braunton, England. On a family outing in May 2020 to the village of Blue Anchor along the estuary of the River Severn, they came across a piece of fossilized bone set on a rock.

“We were both excited as we had never found a piece of fossilized bone as big as this before,” Mr. Reynolds said. His daughter kept searching the beach, he added, “and it wasn’t long before she found another much larger piece of bone.”

They took home the fragments of bone, the largest of which was about eight inches long, and began their research. A 2018 paper provided a hint at what they’d found: In nearby Lilstock, fossil hunters had discovered similar bone fragments, hypothesized to be part of the jaw bone of a massive ichthyosaur that lived roughly 202 million years ago. However, the scientists who’d worked on the Lilstock fossil had deemed that specimen too incomplete to designate a new species.

Mr. Reynolds contacted those researchers: Dean Lomax, at the University of Bristol, and Paul de la Salle, an amateur fossil collector. They joined the Reynolds family on collecting trips in Blue Anchor, digging in the mud with shovels. Ultimately, they found roughly half of a bone that they estimate would have been more than seven feet long when complete.

. . .

Dr. Lomax said that this discovery also highlighted the importance of amateur fossil collectors. “If you have a keen eye, if you have a passion for something like that, you can make discoveries like this,” he said.

Ruby Reynolds said: “I didn’t realize when I first found the piece of ichthyosaur bone how important it was and what it would lead to. I think the role that young people can play in science is to enjoy the journey of exploring as you never know where a discovery may take you.”

For the full story see:

Kate Golembiewski. “Huge Ocean Reptile From Dinosaur Days.” The New York Times (Tuesday, April 30, 2024): D5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 17, 2024, and has the title “An 11-Year-Old Girl’s Fossil Find Is the Largest Known Ocean Reptile.” Where there is a difference in wording between the versions, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

Lomax co-authored an article with Justin Reynolds and Ruby Reynolds that described and named the huge ocean reptile:

Lomax, Dean R., Paul de la Salle, Marcello Perillo, Justin Reynolds, Ruby Reynolds, and James F. Waldron. “The Last Giants: New Evidence for Giant Late Triassic (Rhaetian) Ichthyosaurs from the UK.” PLOS ONE 19, no. 4 (2024): e0300289.

Mao’s Red Guard “Just Wanted to Beat Us to Death”

(p. C7) The Cultural Revolution is the monster that lurks behind the Communist Party’s claims of harmonious, orderly leadership in China. Under Mao’s direction, fanatical youth turned on their teachers, their parents, all figures of authority. This was an era of torture and violence, committed in many cases by mere children. Nobody was safe—perpetrators became victims, and victims took revenge. As many as two million died, and tens of millions had their lives destroyed.

. . .

In “Red Memory” the author explores how people in 21st-century China continue to process a collective trauma that the government would prefer to erase, even as the Party itself cannot put Mao behind it. The book unfolds as a series of portraits of people and settings tied to the events from half a century ago.

. . .

A music composer who was savagely tortured tells Ms. Branigan that he used to think there was some catharsis at work behind the violence, a correction of some kind to help bind people together. But there was not. “I wasn’t helping them at all,” he said of his tormentors. “They just wanted to beat us to death.”

. . .

The reporting in this book was gathered between 2008 and 2015, when Ms. Branigan was a Guardian correspondent in China. Poignantly, she observes that she could not have conducted such interviews today. In the past several years, even greater pressure has come down on those who wish to remember a past the Party wants to forget. People who spoke freely with her 10 years ago might not risk doing so today. The internet sites of commemoration have been shut down.

For the full review, see:

Stephen R. Platt. “The Chairman’s Children.” The Wall Street Journal (Saturday, May 13, 2023): C7.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date May 12, 2023, and has the title “‘Red Memory’ Review: China’s Cultural Revolution Still Echoes.”)

The book under review is:

Branigan, Tania. Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2023.

Economical Parrots Decline an Immediate Smaller Treat to Be Able to Trade a Token for a Bigger Treat

(p. D3) Chalk up another achievement for parrots, . . . .

Anastasia Krasheninnikova and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany tested four species of parrots in an experiment that required trading tokens for food and recently reported their findings in the journal Scientific Reports.

. . .

A metal hoop could be traded for a piece of dry corn, the lowest value food, a metal bracket for a medium value sunflower seed and a plastic ring for the highest value food, a piece of shelled walnut.

The birds were then offered various choices, like a piece of corn or the ring. They all reliably chose to forgo the corn and take the ring. Then they were able to trade the ring for a piece of walnut.

They also did well choosing a bracket instead of the corn, and in other situations where the token was of higher value than the food.

For the full story see:

James Gorman. “Parrots Think They’re Pretty Smart.” The New York Times (Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2018 [sic]): D3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the same date as the print version, and has the title “Parrots Think They’re So Smart. Now They’re Bartering Tokens for Food.” Where there is a small difference in wording between the versions, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)

The paper published in Scientific Reports and mentioned above is:

Krasheninnikova, Anastasia, Friederike Höner, Laurie O’Neill, Elisabetta Penna, and Auguste M. P. von Bayern. “Economic Decision-Making in Parrots.” Scientific Reports 8, no. 1 (2018): 12537.

To Save One Species of Brown Owl, the Feds Want to Shoot Hundreds of Thousands of a More Adaptable Similar-Looking Species of Brown Owl

Isn’t it interesting that many in the Pacific Northwest and in the federal government want to take guns away from self-defending citizens at the same time that they want to use large-bore shotguns to shoot hundreds of thousands of barred owls whose only sin is that, unlike the spotted owls who they resemble, they are not picky eaters?

(p. D1) In the ancient forests of the Pacific Northwest, the northern spotted owl, a rare and fragile subspecies of spotted owl, is being muscled out of its limited habitat by the barred owl, its larger and more ornery northeastern cousin. The opportunistic barred owl has been moving in on spotted owl turf for more than half a century, competing with the locals for food and space, outnumbering, out-reproducing and inevitably chasing them out of their nesting spots. Barred owls have also emerged as a threat to the California spotted owl, a closely related subspecies in the Sierra Nevada and the mountains of coastal and Southern California.

. . .

(p. D5) In a last-ditch effort to rescue the northern spotted owl from oblivion and protect the California spotted owl population, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has proposed culling a staggering number of barred owls across a swath of 11 to 14 million acres in Washington, Oregon and Northern California, where barred owls — which the agency regards as invasive — are encroaching. The lethal management plan calls for eradicating up to half a million barred owls over the next 30 years, or 30 percent of the population over that time frame. The owls would be dispatched using the cheapest and most efficient methods, from large-bore shotguns with night scopes to capture and euthanasia.

. . .

The agency’s plan, outlined last fall in a draft report assessing its environmental impact that is due for final review this summer, has pitted conservationists, who say it will benefit both species, against animal supporters, who consider the proposed scale, scope and timeline unsustainable.

Last month, a coalition of 75 wildlife protection and animal welfare organizations sent a letter to Secretary of the Interior Deb Haaland urging her to scrap what they called a “colossally reckless action” that would necessitate a perpetual killing program to keep the number of barred owls in check. Wayne Pacelle, the president of Animal Wellness Action and an author of the statement, said it was dangerous for the government to start managing competition and social interaction among North American species, including ones that have expanded their range as a partial effect of “human perturbations” of the environment. “I cannot see how this succeeds politically, because of its price tag and its sweeping ambitions,” he said in an email.

Mr. Pacelle questions whether barred owls, which are indigenous to North America, truly meet the criteria for an invasive species. “This ‘invasive’ language rings familiar to me in our current political debates,” he said. “Demonize the migrants, and the harsh policy options become much easier from a moral perspective.”

The signatories argued that the current predicament warranted nonlethal control, and that the agency’s approach would lead to the wrong owls being shot and to the death of thousands of eagles, hawks and other creatures from lead poisoning. “Implementing a decades-long plan to unleash untold numbers of ‘hunters’ in sensitive forest ecosystems is a case of single-species myopia regarding wildlife control,” the letter said.

. . .

At first sight, it’s easy to mistake a spotted for a barred: Both have tuftless rounded heads, teddy bear eyes and bodies mottled brown and white. They can interbreed to produce chicks called sparred owls. But they differ in their habitat requirements. Up to four pairs of barred owls can occupy the three-to-12 square miles that one spotted couple needs, and barred owls aggressively defend their terrain. “The closer spotted owls live to barred owls, the less likely the spotted owls are to have offspring,” Dr. Wiens said. Barred owls also produce four times as many young.

Spotted owls are extremely picky eaters: In California, they eat only flying squirrels and wood rats. “Barred owls devour anything and everything,” Ms. Bloem said, . . .

For the full story see:

Franz Lidz. “The Lethal Cost of a Rescue.” The New York Times (Tuesday, April 30, 2024): D1 & D5.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 29, 2024, and has the title “They Shoot Owls in California, Don’t They?” Where there is a difference in wording between the versions, the passages quoted above follow the online version.)