Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say. From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.
At first glance, natural selection and the survival of the fittest may seem to reward only the most selfish values. But for animals that live in groups, selfishness must be strictly curbed or there will be no advantage to social living. Could the behaviors evolved by social animals to make societies work be the foundation from which human morality evolved?
In a series of recent articles and a book, “The Happiness Hypothesis,” Jonathan Haidt, a moral psychologist at the University of Virginia, has been constructing a broad evolutionary view of morality that traces its connections both to religion and to politics.
Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) began his research career by probing the emotion of disgust. Testing people’s reactions to situations like that of a hungry family that cooked and ate its pet dog after it had become roadkill, he explored the phenomenon of moral dumbfounding — when people feel strongly that something is wrong but cannot explain why.
Dumbfounding led him to view morality as driven by two separate mental systems, one ancient and one modern, though the mind is scarcely aware of the difference. The ancient system, which he calls moral intuition, is based on the emotion-laden moral behaviors that evolved before the development of language. The modern system — he calls it moral judgment — came after language, when people became able to articulate why something was right or wrong.
The emotional responses of moral intuition occur instantaneously — they are primitive gut reactions that evolved to generate split-second decisions and enhance survival in a dangerous world. Moral judgment, on the other hand, comes later, as the conscious mind develops a plausible rationalization for the decision already arrived at through moral intuition.
Moral dumbfounding, in Dr. Haidt’s view, occurs when moral judgment fails to come up with a convincing explanation for what moral intuition has decided.
So why has evolution equipped the brain with two moral systems when just one might seem plenty?
“We have a complex animal mind that only recently evolved language and language-based reasoning,” Dr. Haidt said. “No way was control of the organism going to be handed over to this novel faculty.”
He likens the mind’s subterranean moral machinery to an elephant, and conscious moral reasoning to a small rider on the elephant’s back. Psychologists and philosophers have long taken a far too narrow view of morality, he believes, because they have focused on the rider and largely ignored the elephant.
Dr. Haidt developed a better sense of the elephant after visiting India at the suggestion of an anthropologist, Richard Shweder. In Bhubaneswar, in the Indian state of Orissa, Dr. Haidt saw that people recognized a much wider moral domain than the issues of harm and justice that are central to Western morality. Indians were concerned with integrating the community through rituals and committed to concepts of religious purity as a way to restrain behavior.
On his return from India, Dr. Haidt combed the literature of anthropology and psychology for ideas about morality throughout the world. He identified five components of morality that were common to most cultures. Some concerned the protection of individuals, others the ties that bind a group together.
Of the moral systems that protect individuals, one is concerned with preventing harm to the person and the other with reciprocity and fairness. Less familiar are the three systems that promote behaviors developed for strengthening the group. These are loyalty to the in-group, respect for authority and hierarchy, and a sense of purity or sanctity.
The five moral systems, in Dr. Haidt’s view, are innate psychological mechanisms that predispose children to absorb certain virtues. Because these virtues are learned, morality may vary widely from culture to culture, while maintaining its central role of restraining selfishness. In Western societies, the focus is on protecting individuals by insisting that everyone be treated fairly. Creativity is high, but society is less orderly. In many other societies, selfishness is suppressed “through practices, rituals and stories that help a person play a cooperative role in a larger social entity,” Dr. Haidt said.
He is aware that many people — including “the politically homogeneous discipline of psychology” — equate morality with justice, rights and the welfare of the individual, and dismiss everything else as mere social convention. But many societies around the world do in fact behave as if loyalty, respect for authority and sanctity are moral concepts, Dr. Haidt notes, and this justifies taking a wider view of the moral domain.
The idea that morality and sacredness are intertwined, he said, may now be out of fashion but has a venerable pedigree, tracing back to Emile Durkheim, a founder of sociology.
Dr. Haidt believes that religion has played an important role in human evolution by strengthening and extending the cohesion provided by the moral systems. “If we didn’t have religious minds we would not have stepped through the transition to groupishness,” he said. “We’d still be just small bands roving around.”
Religious behavior may be the result of natural selection, in his view, shaped at a time when early human groups were competing with one another. “Those who found ways to bind themselves together were more successful,” he said.
Dr. Haidt came to recognize the importance of religion by a roundabout route. “I first found divinity in disgust,” he writes in his book “The Happiness Hypothesis.”
The emotion of disgust probably evolved when people became meat eaters and had to learn which foods might be contaminated with bacteria, a problem not presented by plant foods. Disgust was then extended to many other categories, he argues, to people who were unclean, to unacceptable sexual practices and to a wide class of bodily functions and behaviors that were seen as separating humans from animals.
“Imagine visiting a town,” Dr. Haidt writes, “where people wear no clothes, never bathe, have sex ‘doggie style’ in public, and eat raw meat by biting off pieces directly from the carcass.”
He sees the disgust evoked by such a scene as allied to notions of physical and religious purity. Purity is, in his view, a moral system that promotes the goals of controlling selfish desires and acting in a religiously approved way.
Notions of disgust and purity are widespread outside Western cultures. “Educated liberals are the only group to say, ‘I find that disgusting but that doesn’t make it wrong,’ ” Dr. Haidt said.
Working with a graduate student, Jesse Graham, Dr. Haidt has detected a striking political dimension to morality. He and Mr. Graham asked people to identify their position on a liberal-conservative spectrum and then complete a questionnaire that assessed the importance attached to each of the five moral systems. (The test, called the moral foundations questionnaire, can be taken online, at www.YourMorals.org.)
They found that people who identified themselves as liberals attached great weight to the two moral systems protective of individuals — those of not harming others and of doing as you would be done by. But liberals assigned much less importance to the three moral systems that protect the group, those of loyalty, respect for authority and purity.
Conservatives placed value on all five moral systems but they assigned less weight than liberals to the moralities protective of individuals.
Dr. Haidt believes that many political disagreements between liberals and conservatives may reflect the different emphasis each places on the five moral categories.
Take attitudes to contemporary art and music. Conservatives fear that subversive art will undermine authority, violate the in-group’s traditions and offend canons of purity and sanctity. Liberals, on the other hand, see contemporary art as protecting equality by assailing the establishment, especially if the art is by oppressed groups.
Extreme liberals, Dr. Haidt argues, attach almost no importance to the moral systems that protect the group. Because conservatives do give some weight to individual protections, they often have a better understanding of liberal views than liberals do of conservative attitudes, in his view.
Dr. Haidt, who describes himself as a moderate liberal, says that societies need people with both types of personality. “A liberal morality will encourage much greater creativity but will weaken social structure and deplete social capital,” he said. “I am really glad we have New York and San Francisco — most of our creativity comes out of cities like these. But a nation that was just New York and San Francisco could not survive very long. Conservatives give more to charity and tend to be more supportive of essential institutions like the military and law enforcement.”
Other psychologists have mixed views about Dr. Haidt’s ideas.
Steven Pinker, a cognitive scientist at Harvard, said, “I’m a big fan of Haidt’s work.” He added that the idea of including purity in the moral domain could make psychological sense even if purity had no place in moral reasoning.
But Frans B. M. de Waal, a primatologist at Emory University, said he disagreed with Dr. Haidt’s view that the task of morality is to suppress selfishness. Many animals show empathy and altruistic tendencies but do not have moral systems.
“For me, the moral system is one that resolves the tension between individual and group interests in a way that seems best for the most members of the group, hence promotes a give and take,” Dr. de Waal said.
He said that he also disagreed with Dr. Haidt’s alignment of liberals with individual rights and conservatives with social cohesiveness.
“It is obvious that liberals emphasize the common good — safety laws for coal mines, health care for all, support for the poor — that are not nearly as well recognized by conservatives,” Dr. de Waal said.
That alignment also bothers John T. Jost, a political psychologist at New York University. Dr. Jost said he admired Dr. Haidt as a “very interesting and creative social psychologist” and found his work useful in drawing attention to the strong moral element in political beliefs.
But the fact that liberals and conservatives agree on the first two of Dr. Haidt’s principles — do no harm and do unto others as you would have them do unto you — means that those are good candidates to be moral virtues. The fact that liberals and conservatives disagree on the other three principles “suggests to me that they are not general moral virtues but specific ideological commitments or values,” Dr. Jost said.
In defense of his views, Dr. Haidt said that moral claims could be valid even if not universally acknowledged.
“It is at least possible,” he said, “that conservatives and traditional societies have some moral or sociological insights that secular liberals do not understand.”
Many people will say it is morally acceptable to pull a switch that diverts a train, killing just one person instead of the five on the other track. But if asked to save the same five lives by throwing a person in the train’s path, people will say the action is wrong. This may be evidence for an ancient subconscious morality that deters causing direct physical harm to someone else. An equally strong moral sanction has not yet evolved for harming someone indirectly.
By NICHOLAS WADE
Published: September 18, 2007
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Saturday, September 15, 2007
4 Winners of Lasker Medical Prize
Two surgeons who developed prosthetic heart valves that have prolonged the lives of millions of people are among the winners of this year’s Lasker awards, widely considered the nation’s most prestigious medical prizes.
Drs. Alain Carpentier, 74, of the Georges Pompidou hospital in Paris, and Albert Starr, 81, of the Providence Health System in Portland, Ore., are among three American and one French scientists to win the awards, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation announced yesterday.
The third, Dr. Ralph M. Steinman, 64, of Rockefeller University in Manhattan, discovered a cell that starts a cascade of immune responses that defend the body against microbes. The cell is now the basis of experimental therapies for cancer and many other diseases.
The fourth winner, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, 66, is an internationally known immunologist who is being honored as the principal architect of two major Bush administration programs: the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or Pepfar, and Project Bioshield, which seeks to improve countermeasures against potential bioterror agents.
Dr. Fauci, who has directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, marshaled scientific evidence to construct the United States’ responses to these two global crises. The Lasker Foundation also cited Dr. Fauci for his role “in explaining issues of great concern like the science behind emerging biological hazards” to the public.
Mechanical heart valves did not exist 50 years ago. But the valves developed by Drs. Starr and Carpentier and then by others have made such replacements the second most common heart operation in this country, after coronary bypasses. An estimated four million valve operations have been performed worldwide on patients of all ages, and about 300,000 are performed in the United States each year.
Valves control the flow of blood through the chambers of the heart. The valves can become damaged from long-term complications of infections, rheumatic fever and birth defects.
In 1960, Dr. Starr, working with the late Lowell Edwards, an engineer, implanted the first successful artificial heart valve. The patient died 10 years later after falling from a ladder.
Earlier, Dr. Starr and other surgeons and engineers had tested valves designed to mimic the mitral valve’s natural leaflets. (The mitral valve is situated between the upper and lower chambers of the left side of the heart.) But the devices failed because blood clots commonly formed, often leading to strokes.
Dr. Starr and Mr. Edwards chose a different design — a free-floating ball inside a cage that resembled a bottle stopper patented in 1858 — that hardly resembled a real heart valve. To help prevent strokes and other complications, they prescribed long-term anticoagulant drugs.
The two scientists and other researchers also went on to develop newer valves with leaflets instead of a caged ball.
Mr. Edwards founded what is now Edwards Lifesciences of Irvine, Calif., to make the valves. It was a time when the Food and Drug Administration did not regulate devices.
Because the inventors wanted accurate information about the safety and effectiveness of their valve, they created what the Lasker Foundation said was the first clinical-research tracking system for long-term follow-up of patients carrying implanted medical devices. The researchers restricted sale of the valve to medical centers specializing in heart surgery. The centers, in turn, reported any adverse reactions.
A few among the initial recipients of the valves lived for at least 40 years with those valves, the foundation said.
In part to overcome the need for anticoagulant drugs, Dr. Carpentier began research on use of human cadaver valves and adapting pig valves for human use in 1964. He also earned a Ph.D. at the University of Paris to learn ways to strengthen animal valves to increase their durability.
Dr. Carpentier found that a liquid chemical, glutaraldehyde, was better than other substances in sterilizing the tissue, reducing its propensity to cause adverse immunologic reactions and lengthening the valve’s use. He also combined the animal tissue with a Teflon coating to create a device that could be produced in large amounts and kept on hospital shelves and that can avoid the need for anticoagulant drugs.
Animal tissues account for an increasing percentage of valve replacements that almost equals mechanical ones, the Lasker Foundation said.
Dr. Carpentier went on to devise a ring that stabilizes and reshapes the area around the damaged valves so they can be repaired, not replaced.
In the 1970s, when most scientists were studying how the body reacted after an invasion by a microbe, Dr. Steinman began focusing on the initial steps of invasion. He discovered a rare cell in mouse spleens that moved in a distinctive way under laboratory conditions. The cell acted differently from other immune cells. For example, long projections emerged from the cells and floated before they retracted, creating a starlike pattern. He named them dendritic cells after the Greek word for tree.
Although dendritic cells comprise only 1 percent of mouse spleen cells, Dr. Steinman found that they were the most powerful cell in priming the immune system. The dendritic cell can adjust the body’s defenses by stimulating different T immune cells.
“No one had anticipated that any cell could so efficiently goad T cells into action,” said Dr. Joseph L. Goldstein, the chairman of the Lasker jury and a Nobel laureate from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
Dr. Steinman found that as dendritic cells mature, they migrate from the skin and other tissues to nearby lymph nodes. He and other scientists found that dendritic cells provide a safe haven for the AIDS virus and can transmit it to lymph nodes, helping to spread H.I.V. instead of killing it.
Scientists have found ways to produce large numbers of dendritic cells and are testing their use among cancer patients in 70 trials, Dr. Goldstein said. Scientists are also exploring use of dendritic cells for allergies, autoimmune diseases and in preventing rejection of transplanted organs and tissues.
Dr. Steinman and Dr. Fauci will each receive $150,000 and Dr. Starr and Dr. Carpentier will each receive $75,000.
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Drs. Alain Carpentier, 74, of the Georges Pompidou hospital in Paris, and Albert Starr, 81, of the Providence Health System in Portland, Ore., are among three American and one French scientists to win the awards, the Albert and Mary Lasker Foundation announced yesterday.
The third, Dr. Ralph M. Steinman, 64, of Rockefeller University in Manhattan, discovered a cell that starts a cascade of immune responses that defend the body against microbes. The cell is now the basis of experimental therapies for cancer and many other diseases.
The fourth winner, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, 66, is an internationally known immunologist who is being honored as the principal architect of two major Bush administration programs: the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or Pepfar, and Project Bioshield, which seeks to improve countermeasures against potential bioterror agents.
Dr. Fauci, who has directed the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases since 1984, marshaled scientific evidence to construct the United States’ responses to these two global crises. The Lasker Foundation also cited Dr. Fauci for his role “in explaining issues of great concern like the science behind emerging biological hazards” to the public.
Mechanical heart valves did not exist 50 years ago. But the valves developed by Drs. Starr and Carpentier and then by others have made such replacements the second most common heart operation in this country, after coronary bypasses. An estimated four million valve operations have been performed worldwide on patients of all ages, and about 300,000 are performed in the United States each year.
Valves control the flow of blood through the chambers of the heart. The valves can become damaged from long-term complications of infections, rheumatic fever and birth defects.
In 1960, Dr. Starr, working with the late Lowell Edwards, an engineer, implanted the first successful artificial heart valve. The patient died 10 years later after falling from a ladder.
Earlier, Dr. Starr and other surgeons and engineers had tested valves designed to mimic the mitral valve’s natural leaflets. (The mitral valve is situated between the upper and lower chambers of the left side of the heart.) But the devices failed because blood clots commonly formed, often leading to strokes.
Dr. Starr and Mr. Edwards chose a different design — a free-floating ball inside a cage that resembled a bottle stopper patented in 1858 — that hardly resembled a real heart valve. To help prevent strokes and other complications, they prescribed long-term anticoagulant drugs.
The two scientists and other researchers also went on to develop newer valves with leaflets instead of a caged ball.
Mr. Edwards founded what is now Edwards Lifesciences of Irvine, Calif., to make the valves. It was a time when the Food and Drug Administration did not regulate devices.
Because the inventors wanted accurate information about the safety and effectiveness of their valve, they created what the Lasker Foundation said was the first clinical-research tracking system for long-term follow-up of patients carrying implanted medical devices. The researchers restricted sale of the valve to medical centers specializing in heart surgery. The centers, in turn, reported any adverse reactions.
A few among the initial recipients of the valves lived for at least 40 years with those valves, the foundation said.
In part to overcome the need for anticoagulant drugs, Dr. Carpentier began research on use of human cadaver valves and adapting pig valves for human use in 1964. He also earned a Ph.D. at the University of Paris to learn ways to strengthen animal valves to increase their durability.
Dr. Carpentier found that a liquid chemical, glutaraldehyde, was better than other substances in sterilizing the tissue, reducing its propensity to cause adverse immunologic reactions and lengthening the valve’s use. He also combined the animal tissue with a Teflon coating to create a device that could be produced in large amounts and kept on hospital shelves and that can avoid the need for anticoagulant drugs.
Animal tissues account for an increasing percentage of valve replacements that almost equals mechanical ones, the Lasker Foundation said.
Dr. Carpentier went on to devise a ring that stabilizes and reshapes the area around the damaged valves so they can be repaired, not replaced.
In the 1970s, when most scientists were studying how the body reacted after an invasion by a microbe, Dr. Steinman began focusing on the initial steps of invasion. He discovered a rare cell in mouse spleens that moved in a distinctive way under laboratory conditions. The cell acted differently from other immune cells. For example, long projections emerged from the cells and floated before they retracted, creating a starlike pattern. He named them dendritic cells after the Greek word for tree.
Although dendritic cells comprise only 1 percent of mouse spleen cells, Dr. Steinman found that they were the most powerful cell in priming the immune system. The dendritic cell can adjust the body’s defenses by stimulating different T immune cells.
“No one had anticipated that any cell could so efficiently goad T cells into action,” said Dr. Joseph L. Goldstein, the chairman of the Lasker jury and a Nobel laureate from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.
Dr. Steinman found that as dendritic cells mature, they migrate from the skin and other tissues to nearby lymph nodes. He and other scientists found that dendritic cells provide a safe haven for the AIDS virus and can transmit it to lymph nodes, helping to spread H.I.V. instead of killing it.
Scientists have found ways to produce large numbers of dendritic cells and are testing their use among cancer patients in 70 trials, Dr. Goldstein said. Scientists are also exploring use of dendritic cells for allergies, autoimmune diseases and in preventing rejection of transplanted organs and tissues.
Dr. Steinman and Dr. Fauci will each receive $150,000 and Dr. Starr and Dr. Carpentier will each receive $75,000.
By LAWRENCE K. ALTMAN
Wednesday, September 05, 2007
Possible mastodon carving found on rock
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. - They aren't certain, but underwater archaeologists say they may have discovered a boulder with a prehistoric carving in Lake Michigan's Grand Traverse Bay.
The granite rock has markings that resemble a mastodon — an elephant-like creature that once inhabited parts of North America — with what could be a spear in its side, say divers who have seen it.
They came across the boulder at a depth of about 40 feet while searching for shipwrecks in June, said Mark Holley, a scientist with the Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve Council.
"When you see it in the water, you're tempted to say this is absolutely real," Holley said Tuesday during a news conference with photos of the boulder on display. "But that's what we need the experts to come in and verify."
Specialists shown pictures of the boulder have asked for more evidence before confirming the markings are an ancient petroglyph, said Holley, an underwater archaeologist who teaches at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City.
"They want to actually see it," he said. Unfortunately, he added, "Experts in petroglyphs generally don't dive, so we're running into a little bit of a stumbling block there."
Among those withholding judgment is Daniel Fisher, curator of the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology, who has studied human interactions with mastodons. He has examined a couple of the photos and is waiting for more.
"The difficulty I saw was that the features of what's interpreted as an engraving were so subtle, and they're not the only thing on the boulder," Fisher said in a phone interview.
Also, he said, mastodons are not known to have ranged into northern Michigan, although fossil remains have been found in the southern part of the state. They became extinct about 10,000 years ago.
It's possible that ancient peoples familiar with the beasts migrated north, Fisher added.
"It's conceivable" that the image on the rock is a petroglyph, he said. "I'm intrigued enough to take another look."
The boulder is within the 32-mile-long bay, Holley said, but the exact loction will be kept secret to prevent vandalism or theft.
Students of Holley's and divers with the preservation council found the boulder on the flat, sandy lake floor, which is strewn with algae and zebra mussels.
It was part of a row of stones of varying sizes that might have marked the shoreline 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, Holley said.
Some — although not the boulder — were arranged in a circle. That could indicate human manipulation although it's unclear, said Rob Houston, a geology instructor at the college who has inspected the site.
The boulder with the markings is 3.5 to 4 feet high and about 5 feet long. Photos show a surface with numerous fissures. Some may be natural while others appear of human origin, but those forming what could be the petroglyph stood out, Holley said.
Viewed together, they suggest the outlines of a mastodon-like back, hump, head, trunk, tusk, triangular shaped ear and parts of legs, he said.
"We couldn't believe what we were looking at," said Greg MacMaster, president of the underwater preserve council.
Michigan has only two confirmed petroglyphs, said John Halsey, the state archaeologist. They include sandstone carvings in the Thumb area known as the Sanilac Petroglyphs, and images in an isolated rock in the northern Lower Peninsula. Ancient rock paintings have been found in the Upper Peninsula.
The Grand Traverse Bay group plans further research and consultations with outside specialists.
"We want to get them involved with this project so that we can categorically prove it," Holley said.
___
On the Net:
_Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve: http://www.gtbup.org
By JOHN FLESHER, Associated Press Writer
The granite rock has markings that resemble a mastodon — an elephant-like creature that once inhabited parts of North America — with what could be a spear in its side, say divers who have seen it.
They came across the boulder at a depth of about 40 feet while searching for shipwrecks in June, said Mark Holley, a scientist with the Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve Council.
"When you see it in the water, you're tempted to say this is absolutely real," Holley said Tuesday during a news conference with photos of the boulder on display. "But that's what we need the experts to come in and verify."
Specialists shown pictures of the boulder have asked for more evidence before confirming the markings are an ancient petroglyph, said Holley, an underwater archaeologist who teaches at Northwestern Michigan College in Traverse City.
"They want to actually see it," he said. Unfortunately, he added, "Experts in petroglyphs generally don't dive, so we're running into a little bit of a stumbling block there."
Among those withholding judgment is Daniel Fisher, curator of the University of Michigan Museum of Paleontology, who has studied human interactions with mastodons. He has examined a couple of the photos and is waiting for more.
"The difficulty I saw was that the features of what's interpreted as an engraving were so subtle, and they're not the only thing on the boulder," Fisher said in a phone interview.
Also, he said, mastodons are not known to have ranged into northern Michigan, although fossil remains have been found in the southern part of the state. They became extinct about 10,000 years ago.
It's possible that ancient peoples familiar with the beasts migrated north, Fisher added.
"It's conceivable" that the image on the rock is a petroglyph, he said. "I'm intrigued enough to take another look."
The boulder is within the 32-mile-long bay, Holley said, but the exact loction will be kept secret to prevent vandalism or theft.
Students of Holley's and divers with the preservation council found the boulder on the flat, sandy lake floor, which is strewn with algae and zebra mussels.
It was part of a row of stones of varying sizes that might have marked the shoreline 6,000 to 10,000 years ago, Holley said.
Some — although not the boulder — were arranged in a circle. That could indicate human manipulation although it's unclear, said Rob Houston, a geology instructor at the college who has inspected the site.
The boulder with the markings is 3.5 to 4 feet high and about 5 feet long. Photos show a surface with numerous fissures. Some may be natural while others appear of human origin, but those forming what could be the petroglyph stood out, Holley said.
Viewed together, they suggest the outlines of a mastodon-like back, hump, head, trunk, tusk, triangular shaped ear and parts of legs, he said.
"We couldn't believe what we were looking at," said Greg MacMaster, president of the underwater preserve council.
Michigan has only two confirmed petroglyphs, said John Halsey, the state archaeologist. They include sandstone carvings in the Thumb area known as the Sanilac Petroglyphs, and images in an isolated rock in the northern Lower Peninsula. Ancient rock paintings have been found in the Upper Peninsula.
The Grand Traverse Bay group plans further research and consultations with outside specialists.
"We want to get them involved with this project so that we can categorically prove it," Holley said.
___
On the Net:
_Grand Traverse Bay Underwater Preserve: http://www.gtbup.org
By JOHN FLESHER, Associated Press Writer
Archaeologists discover ancient beehives
JERUSALEM - Archaeologists digging in northern Israel have discovered evidence of a 3,000-year-old beekeeping industry, including remnants of ancient honeycombs, beeswax and what they believe are the oldest intact beehives ever found.
The findings in the ruins of the city of Rehov this summer include 30 intact hives dating to around 900 B.C., archaeologist Amihai Mazar of Jerusalem's Hebrew University told The Associated Press. He said it offers unique evidence that an advanced honey industry existed in the Holy Land at the time of the Bible.
Beekeeping was widely practiced in the ancient world, where honey used for medicinal and religious purposes as well as for food, and beeswax was used to make molds for metal and to create surfaces to write on. While bees and beekeeping are depicted in ancient artwork, nothing similar to the Rehov hives has ever been found before, Mazar said.
The beehives, made of straw and unbaked clay, have a hole at one end to allow the bees in and out and a lid on the other end to allow beekeepers access to the honeycombs inside. They were found in orderly rows, three high, in a room that could have accommodated around 100 hives, Mazar said.
The Bible repeatedly refers to Israel as a "land of milk and honey," but that's believed to refer to honey made from dates and figs — there is no mention of honeybee cultivation. But the new find shows that the Holy Land was home to a highly developed beekeeping industry nearly 3,000 years ago.
"You can tell that this was an organized industry, part of an organized economy, in an ultra-organized city," Mazar said.
At the time the beehives were in use, Mazar believes Rehov had around 2,000 residents, a mix of Israelites, Canaanites and others.
Ezra Marcus, an expert on the ancient Mediterranean world at Haifa University, said Tuesday the finding was a unique glimpse into ancient beekeeping. Marcus was not involved in the Rehov excavation.
"We have seen depictions of beekeeping in texts and ancient art from the Near East, but this is the first time we've been able to actually feel and see the industry," Marcus said.
The finding is especially unique, Marcus said, because of its location in the middle of a thriving city — a strange place for thousands of bees.
This might have been because the city's ruler wanted the industry under his control, Marcus said, or because the beekeeping industry was linked to residents' religious practices, as might be indicated by an altar decorated with fertility figurines that archaeologists found alongside the hives.
By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press Writer
The findings in the ruins of the city of Rehov this summer include 30 intact hives dating to around 900 B.C., archaeologist Amihai Mazar of Jerusalem's Hebrew University told The Associated Press. He said it offers unique evidence that an advanced honey industry existed in the Holy Land at the time of the Bible.
Beekeeping was widely practiced in the ancient world, where honey used for medicinal and religious purposes as well as for food, and beeswax was used to make molds for metal and to create surfaces to write on. While bees and beekeeping are depicted in ancient artwork, nothing similar to the Rehov hives has ever been found before, Mazar said.
The beehives, made of straw and unbaked clay, have a hole at one end to allow the bees in and out and a lid on the other end to allow beekeepers access to the honeycombs inside. They were found in orderly rows, three high, in a room that could have accommodated around 100 hives, Mazar said.
The Bible repeatedly refers to Israel as a "land of milk and honey," but that's believed to refer to honey made from dates and figs — there is no mention of honeybee cultivation. But the new find shows that the Holy Land was home to a highly developed beekeeping industry nearly 3,000 years ago.
"You can tell that this was an organized industry, part of an organized economy, in an ultra-organized city," Mazar said.
At the time the beehives were in use, Mazar believes Rehov had around 2,000 residents, a mix of Israelites, Canaanites and others.
Ezra Marcus, an expert on the ancient Mediterranean world at Haifa University, said Tuesday the finding was a unique glimpse into ancient beekeeping. Marcus was not involved in the Rehov excavation.
"We have seen depictions of beekeeping in texts and ancient art from the Near East, but this is the first time we've been able to actually feel and see the industry," Marcus said.
The finding is especially unique, Marcus said, because of its location in the middle of a thriving city — a strange place for thousands of bees.
This might have been because the city's ruler wanted the industry under his control, Marcus said, or because the beekeeping industry was linked to residents' religious practices, as might be indicated by an altar decorated with fertility figurines that archaeologists found alongside the hives.
By MATTI FRIEDMAN, Associated Press Writer
Tuesday, September 04, 2007
In the Genome Race, the Sequel Is Personal
The race to decode the human genome may not be entirely over: the loser has come up with a new approach that may let him prevail in the end.
In 2003, a government-financed consortium of academic centers announced it had completed the human genome, fending off a determined challenge from the biologist J. Craig Venter. The consortium’s genome comprised just half the DNA contained in a normal cell, and the DNA used in the project came from a group of people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.
But the loser in the race, Dr. Venter, could still have the last word. In a paper published today, his research team is announcing that it has decoded a new version of the human genome that some experts believe may be better than the consortium’s.
Called a full, or diploid genome, it consists of the DNA in both sets of chromosomes, one from each parent, and it is the normal genome possessed by almost all the body’s cells. And the genome the team has decoded belongs to just one person: Dr. Venter.
The new genome, Dr. Venter’s team reports, makes clear that the variation in the genetic programming carried by an individual is much greater than expected. In at least 44 percent of Dr. Venter’s genes, the copies inherited from his mother differ from those inherited from his father, according to the analysis published in Tuesday’s issue of PLoS Biology.
Huntington F. Willard, a geneticist at Duke University who has had early access to Dr. Venter’s genome sequence, said that the quality of the new genome was “exceptionally high” and that “until the next genome comes along this is the gold standard right now.”
Dr. Willard said it was “hugely better” than the consortium’s sequence, at least for his particular research interest.
“I don’t want to fan the fires but I like this, it’s a really good genome,” said Edward M. Rubin, a genome expert at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Dr. Venter’s race with the consortium began in 1998 when he spotted a quicker method of decoding the human genome. He tried to wrest this rich scientific prize from his academic rivals by co-founding a genome-decoding company called Celera. By June 2000, the two sides were neck and neck preparing a draft sequence of the genome. But in January 2002, Dr. Venter was abruptly fired as president of Celera. The consortium went on to claim victory when it announced its completion of the genome the next year.
But the consortium’s genome, though immensely useful to biologists, was full of gaps and only complete in the sense that it was the best that could be done with existing technology.
Dr. Venter has spent the last five years and an extra $10 million of his institute’s money in improving the draft genome he prepared at Celera. That genome was based mostly on his own DNA, and the new diploid version is entirely so. His critics may accuse him of an egocentricity of considerable dimension, but by analyzing his own genome he has sidestepped the problems of privacy and consent that could have arisen with other people’s DNA when he made the whole sequence publicly available, as he is doing now.
Like James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA, whose genome is also being decoded, Dr. Venter believes strongly in making individual DNA sequences public to advance knowledge and hasten the era of personalized genomic medicine.
If other experts find that Dr. Venter’s genome is the best available, could it be said that he won the human genome race after all?
“There is this long history of Craig’s vanity, which for much of the scientific community is irritating,” Dr. Rubin said, declining to give a direct answer.
Asked the same question, Dr. Venter replied: “I’m not sure I’d want to be the one to say that, but we’re not through racing yet. I’ll let you know when we’ve stopped.”
James Shreeve, author of “The Genome War,” said, “I think he already believes he’s the true winner of the genome race for what he did at Celera,” noting that the consortium, too, believed it had won.
Though there are now novel technologies for decoding DNA very cheaply, Dr. Venter’s genome sequence could set a high bar for a long time. It was decoded with an old method, known as Sanger sequencing, that is expensive but analyzes stretches of DNA up to 800 units in length. The cheaper new technologies at present analyze pieces of DNA only 200 units or so long, and the shorter lengths are much harder to assemble into a complete genome.
Dr. Watson’s genome is being decoded with a next-generation machine developed by 454 Life Sciences. But the company’s researchers are putting the pieces in correct order by matching them to the consortium’s genome sequence rather than by doing an independent assembly.
Dr. Venter’s genome could be the gold standard for many years, especially if he continues to improve it. Samuel Levy, who led the J. Craig Venter Institute team that decoded the genome, said that it was a work in progress and that new versions would be published as the remaining gaps were closed. There are 4,500 gaps where the sequence of DNA units is uncertain, and no technology yet exists for decoding the large amounts of DNA at the center and tips of the chromosomes.
Biologists studying variation in the human genome, whether to discover causes of disease or for other reasons, have mostly looked at what are called SNPs or “snips,” which are sites on the genome where a single unit of DNA is changed.
But there are other kinds of variation, all of which can have consequences for a person. One type is called indels, where a single DNA unit has either been inserted or deleted from the genome. Another is copy number variation, in which the same gene can exist in multiple copies. There are also inversions, in which a stretch of DNA has been knocked out of its chromosome and reinserted the wrong way around. Dr. Venter’s genome has four million variations compared with the consortium’s, including three million snips, nearly a million indels and 90 inversions.
“This is the first time that anyone has had an accurate representation of how much variation there is in a human genome,” said Stephen W. Scherer of the University of Toronto, a co-author of the study.
Biologists had estimated that two individuals would be identical in 99.9 percent of their DNA, but the true figure now emerges as much less, around 99.5 percent, Dr. Scherer said.
The genome is being made publicly available on the database operated by the National Center for Biotechnology Information and is free for any use. Dr. Venter said he would add phenotypic information to the version on his own Web site, meaning medical records and other data to help researchers correlate his bodily characteristics with his DNA.
What little is understood about the human genome at present consists mostly of medical variants that put people at risk of disease. So interpreting a genome brings mostly adverse news. Dr. Venter reports that he has variants that increase his risk of alcoholism, coronary artery disease, obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, antisocial behavior and conduct disorder.
But these predictions are far from certain. As more individual genomes are decoded, the information from them will become more valuable, Dr. Venter said, provided that people can overcome “irrational fears of even seeing their genetic code.”
Although Dr. Venter has decoded the DNA sequence inherited from both of his parents, he does not yet know which sequences are from his mother and which from his father. The issue could be resolved by analyzing DNA from his mother, who is alive and well, and the matter is under consideration, Dr. Levy said. Dr. Venter has traced his ancestry for three generations and found that his mother’s and father’s ancestors came from England.
Next month, Dr. Venter will publish an autobiography, “A Life Decoded.” The book describes the twists and turns that led him down the unlikely path into scientific research. “Rebellious and disobedient,” as he describes himself, he dedicated his teenage years to the pursuit of young women and the California surf, to the detriment of his academic career.
He was drafted at the time of the Vietnam war and enlisted in the Navy. Because of a high I.Q. score, he was given a choice of any Navy career, from nuclear engineering to electronics. He chose the hospital corps school, because it was the only course that did not require any further enlistment. Only too late did he discover the reason. Corpsmen in Vietnam did not usually survive long enough to re-enlist — the half-life of medics in the field was six weeks, he writes.
Learning how to manipulate the Navy bureaucracy, he got himself assigned to the Navy hospital in Da Nang, where chances of survival were better. But the work was harrowing. He witnessed several hundred soldiers die on his operating table, mostly when he was massaging their heart or trying to breathe life into them.
“I learned more than any 20-year-old should ever have to about triage, about sorting those you can salvage from those you cannot do anything for except ease their pain as they died,” Dr. Venter writes in the autobiography.
He escaped from Vietnam with his life and an interest in medical research. With his lack of academic skills, this was a hard field for him to break into, but by 1975 he had a Ph.D. By the late 1980s, he was starting to make his mark as one of the few scientists who could get useful results out of the first DNA sequencing machines that were then becoming available.
He was the first to sequence the genome of a bacterium, Hemophilus influenzae, even though his grant application was turned down by the National Institutes of Health on the advice of experts who said his method would not work. With the human genome, an even greater prize, the pace of competition was intense, especially when his approach turned out to be more efficient than the one his rivals had chosen.
In the book, Dr. Venter says that detractors badmouthed his work, pressured other scientists not to cooperate with him and tried strenuously to block publication of his report, of which they had earlier maneuvered to be made co-authors.
“Like most human endeavors, science is driven in no small part by envy,” he writes.
Dr. Venter has never fully lost his youthful disrespect for authority and establishments. His investment in himself — choosing his own genome to sequence, naming his laboratory the J. Craig Venter Institute — may come across as vainglorious, but it can also be seen as a signal of survival, defying the establishments he believes have sought to crush him. However nettlesome he may seem to some of his colleagues, he has the charm and the personal skills to have recruited many highly able researchers to his teams.
Another reason for his success has been his skill at raising private finances to achieve research goals after being denied support from the National Institutes of Health. That a scientist of his ability has been forced to work outside the N.I.H.’s peer-review system puts peer review in a strange light. If his diploid human genome should become a standard, the success is one that he will have earned by perseverance and defiance of long odds.
A team led by J. Craig Venter, above, has finished the first mapping of a full, or diploid, genome, made up of DNA inherited from both parents. The genome is Dr. Venter’s own.
By NICHOLAS WADE
In 2003, a government-financed consortium of academic centers announced it had completed the human genome, fending off a determined challenge from the biologist J. Craig Venter. The consortium’s genome comprised just half the DNA contained in a normal cell, and the DNA used in the project came from a group of people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.
But the loser in the race, Dr. Venter, could still have the last word. In a paper published today, his research team is announcing that it has decoded a new version of the human genome that some experts believe may be better than the consortium’s.
Called a full, or diploid genome, it consists of the DNA in both sets of chromosomes, one from each parent, and it is the normal genome possessed by almost all the body’s cells. And the genome the team has decoded belongs to just one person: Dr. Venter.
The new genome, Dr. Venter’s team reports, makes clear that the variation in the genetic programming carried by an individual is much greater than expected. In at least 44 percent of Dr. Venter’s genes, the copies inherited from his mother differ from those inherited from his father, according to the analysis published in Tuesday’s issue of PLoS Biology.
Huntington F. Willard, a geneticist at Duke University who has had early access to Dr. Venter’s genome sequence, said that the quality of the new genome was “exceptionally high” and that “until the next genome comes along this is the gold standard right now.”
Dr. Willard said it was “hugely better” than the consortium’s sequence, at least for his particular research interest.
“I don’t want to fan the fires but I like this, it’s a really good genome,” said Edward M. Rubin, a genome expert at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
Dr. Venter’s race with the consortium began in 1998 when he spotted a quicker method of decoding the human genome. He tried to wrest this rich scientific prize from his academic rivals by co-founding a genome-decoding company called Celera. By June 2000, the two sides were neck and neck preparing a draft sequence of the genome. But in January 2002, Dr. Venter was abruptly fired as president of Celera. The consortium went on to claim victory when it announced its completion of the genome the next year.
But the consortium’s genome, though immensely useful to biologists, was full of gaps and only complete in the sense that it was the best that could be done with existing technology.
Dr. Venter has spent the last five years and an extra $10 million of his institute’s money in improving the draft genome he prepared at Celera. That genome was based mostly on his own DNA, and the new diploid version is entirely so. His critics may accuse him of an egocentricity of considerable dimension, but by analyzing his own genome he has sidestepped the problems of privacy and consent that could have arisen with other people’s DNA when he made the whole sequence publicly available, as he is doing now.
Like James Watson, the co-discoverer of DNA, whose genome is also being decoded, Dr. Venter believes strongly in making individual DNA sequences public to advance knowledge and hasten the era of personalized genomic medicine.
If other experts find that Dr. Venter’s genome is the best available, could it be said that he won the human genome race after all?
“There is this long history of Craig’s vanity, which for much of the scientific community is irritating,” Dr. Rubin said, declining to give a direct answer.
Asked the same question, Dr. Venter replied: “I’m not sure I’d want to be the one to say that, but we’re not through racing yet. I’ll let you know when we’ve stopped.”
James Shreeve, author of “The Genome War,” said, “I think he already believes he’s the true winner of the genome race for what he did at Celera,” noting that the consortium, too, believed it had won.
Though there are now novel technologies for decoding DNA very cheaply, Dr. Venter’s genome sequence could set a high bar for a long time. It was decoded with an old method, known as Sanger sequencing, that is expensive but analyzes stretches of DNA up to 800 units in length. The cheaper new technologies at present analyze pieces of DNA only 200 units or so long, and the shorter lengths are much harder to assemble into a complete genome.
Dr. Watson’s genome is being decoded with a next-generation machine developed by 454 Life Sciences. But the company’s researchers are putting the pieces in correct order by matching them to the consortium’s genome sequence rather than by doing an independent assembly.
Dr. Venter’s genome could be the gold standard for many years, especially if he continues to improve it. Samuel Levy, who led the J. Craig Venter Institute team that decoded the genome, said that it was a work in progress and that new versions would be published as the remaining gaps were closed. There are 4,500 gaps where the sequence of DNA units is uncertain, and no technology yet exists for decoding the large amounts of DNA at the center and tips of the chromosomes.
Biologists studying variation in the human genome, whether to discover causes of disease or for other reasons, have mostly looked at what are called SNPs or “snips,” which are sites on the genome where a single unit of DNA is changed.
But there are other kinds of variation, all of which can have consequences for a person. One type is called indels, where a single DNA unit has either been inserted or deleted from the genome. Another is copy number variation, in which the same gene can exist in multiple copies. There are also inversions, in which a stretch of DNA has been knocked out of its chromosome and reinserted the wrong way around. Dr. Venter’s genome has four million variations compared with the consortium’s, including three million snips, nearly a million indels and 90 inversions.
“This is the first time that anyone has had an accurate representation of how much variation there is in a human genome,” said Stephen W. Scherer of the University of Toronto, a co-author of the study.
Biologists had estimated that two individuals would be identical in 99.9 percent of their DNA, but the true figure now emerges as much less, around 99.5 percent, Dr. Scherer said.
The genome is being made publicly available on the database operated by the National Center for Biotechnology Information and is free for any use. Dr. Venter said he would add phenotypic information to the version on his own Web site, meaning medical records and other data to help researchers correlate his bodily characteristics with his DNA.
What little is understood about the human genome at present consists mostly of medical variants that put people at risk of disease. So interpreting a genome brings mostly adverse news. Dr. Venter reports that he has variants that increase his risk of alcoholism, coronary artery disease, obesity, Alzheimer’s disease, antisocial behavior and conduct disorder.
But these predictions are far from certain. As more individual genomes are decoded, the information from them will become more valuable, Dr. Venter said, provided that people can overcome “irrational fears of even seeing their genetic code.”
Although Dr. Venter has decoded the DNA sequence inherited from both of his parents, he does not yet know which sequences are from his mother and which from his father. The issue could be resolved by analyzing DNA from his mother, who is alive and well, and the matter is under consideration, Dr. Levy said. Dr. Venter has traced his ancestry for three generations and found that his mother’s and father’s ancestors came from England.
Next month, Dr. Venter will publish an autobiography, “A Life Decoded.” The book describes the twists and turns that led him down the unlikely path into scientific research. “Rebellious and disobedient,” as he describes himself, he dedicated his teenage years to the pursuit of young women and the California surf, to the detriment of his academic career.
He was drafted at the time of the Vietnam war and enlisted in the Navy. Because of a high I.Q. score, he was given a choice of any Navy career, from nuclear engineering to electronics. He chose the hospital corps school, because it was the only course that did not require any further enlistment. Only too late did he discover the reason. Corpsmen in Vietnam did not usually survive long enough to re-enlist — the half-life of medics in the field was six weeks, he writes.
Learning how to manipulate the Navy bureaucracy, he got himself assigned to the Navy hospital in Da Nang, where chances of survival were better. But the work was harrowing. He witnessed several hundred soldiers die on his operating table, mostly when he was massaging their heart or trying to breathe life into them.
“I learned more than any 20-year-old should ever have to about triage, about sorting those you can salvage from those you cannot do anything for except ease their pain as they died,” Dr. Venter writes in the autobiography.
He escaped from Vietnam with his life and an interest in medical research. With his lack of academic skills, this was a hard field for him to break into, but by 1975 he had a Ph.D. By the late 1980s, he was starting to make his mark as one of the few scientists who could get useful results out of the first DNA sequencing machines that were then becoming available.
He was the first to sequence the genome of a bacterium, Hemophilus influenzae, even though his grant application was turned down by the National Institutes of Health on the advice of experts who said his method would not work. With the human genome, an even greater prize, the pace of competition was intense, especially when his approach turned out to be more efficient than the one his rivals had chosen.
In the book, Dr. Venter says that detractors badmouthed his work, pressured other scientists not to cooperate with him and tried strenuously to block publication of his report, of which they had earlier maneuvered to be made co-authors.
“Like most human endeavors, science is driven in no small part by envy,” he writes.
Dr. Venter has never fully lost his youthful disrespect for authority and establishments. His investment in himself — choosing his own genome to sequence, naming his laboratory the J. Craig Venter Institute — may come across as vainglorious, but it can also be seen as a signal of survival, defying the establishments he believes have sought to crush him. However nettlesome he may seem to some of his colleagues, he has the charm and the personal skills to have recruited many highly able researchers to his teams.
Another reason for his success has been his skill at raising private finances to achieve research goals after being denied support from the National Institutes of Health. That a scientist of his ability has been forced to work outside the N.I.H.’s peer-review system puts peer review in a strange light. If his diploid human genome should become a standard, the success is one that he will have earned by perseverance and defiance of long odds.
A team led by J. Craig Venter, above, has finished the first mapping of a full, or diploid, genome, made up of DNA inherited from both parents. The genome is Dr. Venter’s own.
By NICHOLAS WADE
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