On Monday I went to my first meeting of the Boston Skeptics. I got on the mailing list a while ago after reading lots and lots of Orac's anti-vaccination lunacy posts. I decided these were likely people I'd enjoy hanging around with. That assumption was correct. (I should say "skeptic" is getting a bad connotation because of climate deniers, but these skeptics are the original version--the ones associated with the Randi Foundation sort of "show me the evidence" type of skeptics. And evidence means peer-reviewed science and data.)
I ended up at a table with a couple of British researchers. He studies Crohn's Disease. She studies cholera. We were totally in sync on all of our favorite denier topics and tactics. And then we moved to vaccines and GMOs.
We were discussing how difficult it is for us to understand why some of the deniers on these topics are so dismaying. These are frequently people with educational background that include some college (although often not in the fields with their new hobbies--immune system and plant science). And yet via Google U they are coming to some really mystifying conclusions.
We chalked it up, in fact, to the actual relative wealth and successes of our current lives. You don't see kids with brain damage from measles anymore. Fewer die of whooping cough (although some anti-vaxxers are trying to change that). And famines are receding in people's family experience. These are good things--but they change your view of the real threats in the world that many people still face.
The cholera scientist said to me, {paraphrased}: Yeah, they think the world is all Eat Pray Love. It's not, for millions of people. It's Eat Pray Love Cholera.
We laughed about this. But I couldn't stop thinking about that as I saw an ad for Eat Pray Love. And then the next day I saw something else that struck me. A great post by erv at ScienceBlogs: Green our vaccines! Part II.
This post has two of my favorite topics: vaccines and GMOs. Because, as erv describes:
While poop jokes are all in good fun here in the US (and in other developed parts of the world), diarrhea really isnt all that funny for most of the planet. Dehydration due to diarrhea is the second leading cause of death for babies, worldwide (it was #1 until we started aggressive education/re-hydration efforts). Hundreds of thousands of people die from cholera and enterotoxigenic E. coli (ETEC) infection every year.
Thats not funny :(
And it looks like a genetically modified rice may help to combat this disease that kills--hundreds of thousands of people--each year.
There's solid science here, which erv describes in this post and a prior post on the mechanism. Proteins in the rice may enable the body to fight cholera if it appears. Head over to erv for the details.
This method has huge advantages for regions where it may be difficult to get medical teams, stable vaccines, and/or require rapid distribution for outbreaks. It is shelf-stable, and immunity seems to persist for a reasonable length of time. We think it has a terrible name (MucoRice--egads), and that scientists suck at branding. But that's not it's biggest hurdle.
It's another example of a technology that some well-fed and healthy folks think babies with diarrhea shouldn't have. What do you think? Are you qualified to demand that this technology is withheld from people who might benefit from it?
Many people who wail about vaccines and about GMOs will never have to face cholera. That's great. I wish that was true for everyone. But it's not. It's not Eat Pray Love for lots of people. It's Eat Pray Love Cholera.
And my favorite comment at erv's on this, #FTW:
So...the mice that ate this MucoRice totally got autism, right?
Posted by: Scientizzle | July 29, 2010 10:45 AM
No, the mice don't get autism. They do get immunity. I hope that the kids will as well, someday. There's recently been a suggestion that battling infection might divert energy from brain development at crucial times, and may account for some deficits in impoverished communities.
I say we use all the tools we have to try to remedy this. What tools do you want to withhold?