Mark M. Green (sciencefromaway.com)
A long serving congresswoman from upstate New York, Rep. Louise M. Slaughter is coming closer towinning a congressional battle she started many years ago, to stop the use of antibioticsbeing used as routine additives to food and water given to farm animals, antibiotics which are also used in human beings. There is no doubt that bacteria resistant to antibiotics is an increasing and major problem in the treatment of disease, as discussed in two earlier columns in this series: http://blogs.poly.edu/markgreen/2007/11/21/resistance-to-antibiotics-part-1/ and http://blogs.poly.edu/markgreen/2007/12/12/resistance-to-antibiotics-part-2/
Although all parties agree that unnecessary use of antibiotics used in treating infirmities in people in which they do no good is a major source of the problem, the suspicion that routine use of antibiotics in animal feed on farms contributes to the problem has been controversial, not in the least because of resistance to this idea by the agricultural industry – large scale farms and the corporations serving these industrial farms. Now controlled experiments on studies of farm workers show that these antibiotics can be isolated from those working on farms that use antibiotic laced feed but not from workers on farms avoiding this routine use of antibiotics. The resistant bacteria isolated are Staphylococcus aureus. These are the superbugs discussed in the earlier columns in this series.
In a study of Drosophilia, those tiny flies hanging around rotted fruit, flieswhich are favored by scientists for their short life spans and therefore easily seen genetic and behavioral changes in short periods of time, neurobiologists in France and Tokyo working independently, discovered more evidence of what scientists call the plasticity of the brain. When the flies are deprived of food, starved, they shut down a form of long-term memory that requires the synthesis of proteins in the brain, an activity requiring expenditure of energy. However, a form of memory associated with finding food is maintained. Much of this kind of plasticity is certainly going on in us, as forcefully demonstrated in the changes in the brains of certain taxi drivers who are forced to learn the intricate streets in the center of London (http://blogs.poly.edu/markgreen/2008/09/20/science-from-away-memory/).
Genetic studies at Uppsala University in Sweden focused on the DNA of both dogs and wolves led to the discovery that the domesticated canines had many more copies of the gene for digesting amylase than that of wolves. Amylase is a form of starch, which sustained our ancestors and presumably those wolves that decided to cast their lot with our kind, causing these wolves to adapt to our kind of eating. Modern wolves gain most of their nourishment from eating meat.
I remember shaking my head in agreement, which seemed obvious, in discussing with the professorinthe officeadjacent to mine that the unfortunate characteristic of human beings in going to war and killing those of another “tribe,” (whatever defines that difference – from religion to geographic location to race and more ways we distinguish ourselves from others) is certainly associated with an intrinsic nature of human beings – murderous souls presumably. This hypothesis, and that is what it is, had been supported by scientific studies, which have been refuted by the results of studies by Finnish researchers on existing “primitive” peoples living today as “Mobile Forager Bands.” The Finnish work shows that the overwhelming lethal aggression in and among these bands arises from the kinds of disputes one would expect – interpersonal conflict within the band about insults, slights, competition for a woman (most lethal activities are by men), marital disputes and so on and not by war among bands. There was one exception to this observation – the Tiwi tribe who live on islands off the northern coast of Australia. For more details on this Finnish study you can go to the July 19, 2003 issue of Science on page 270. Among the several fascinating aspects of the Tiwi people, according to what is found in Wikipedia, is the belief that a female can be pregnant at any age, meaning she must be married at any age, although not constrained to live with her husband until the age of 14, who can be any age. Powerful elderly men might have up to 100 wives. It would be interesting to know the level of testosterone in those busy husbands and if this hormone might be connected to the unusual high level of lethal aggression among these people.
