Medical Science Archives : Page 4 of 7 : Proslogion

Deer Sense the Earth’s Magnetic Field

A herd of roe deer on snow. (Click for credit)

There are many animals that sense the earth’s magnetic field. Monarch butterflies, for example, sense the magnetic field and use it to aid in navigation during their amazing migration.¹. Salmon seem to “imprint” a picture of the earth’s magnetic field at the point where they enter the ocean, and they later use that imprint to navigate back to that same point when they return to their birthplace to spawn. Homing pigeons also sense the earth’s magnetic field and use it as a part of their navigation.

Years ago, I read about a study that seemed to say cattle tend to align with the earth’s magnetic field while they graze. It perplexed many scientists, and some didn’t want to believe it. After all, cattle don’t navigate long distances! Why in the world would they need to sense the earth’s magnetic field? However, the study seemed to stand up to scrutiny. When I am speaking, I often use it as an example of experimental data that make no sense, but nevertheless seem to be true. I further suggest that rather than fighting against the conclusion of the study, someone should try to figure out why cattle seem to have a magnetic sense.

Well, no one (to my knowledge) has done that for cattle, but someone has done it for roe deer, which are pictured above. Roe deer tend to congregate in flat areas, so their herds are easy to watch from a distance. Researchers studied them in 60 different locations in three hunting grounds in the Czech Republic. They observed the way the deer faced while they were grazing and, more importantly, how the deer reacted when they were startled.

They found that the deer tend to align their bodies along north/south magnetic field lines while grazing. Then, when startled, they tend to run north or south, regardless of the direction from which the threat comes. These behaviors were more pronounced when the deer were in large herds.²

Why do the deer bother sensing the earth’s magnetic field? Based on their observations, the authors suggest:

…an important function of this behavior is to coordinate the movement in the group, to keep the common course of escape when frightened and to maintain the cohesion of the group.

In other words, it helps the deer escape without running into one another, and it helps them regroup once the threat is gone.

The authors say that this is the first confirmed case of mammals using the earth’s magnetic field to navigate. I suspect that it is merely the first of many. The more I learn about Creation, the more in awe I am of its Creator.

REFERENCES

1. Patrick A Guerra, Robert J Gegear, & Steven M Reppert, “A magnetic compass aids monarch butterfly migration,” Nature Communications 5:4164, 2014, doi:10.1038/ncomms5164
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2. Petr Obleser, Vlastimil Hart, E. Pascal Malkemper, Sabine Begall, Michaela Holá, Michael S. Painter, Jaroslav Červený, and Hynek Burda, “Compass-controlled escape behavior in roe deer,” Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 06 June 2016, DOI:10.1007/s00265-016-2142-y
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Dirt Can Be Good For Children

This little boy may be improving his immune system. (click for credit)

There has been a noticeable rise in allergic diseases (like asthma), especially in industrialized nations.¹ Several hypotheses have been suggested to account for this fact, but the one that seems to have the most evidence stacking up in its favor is the hygiene hypothesis. This hypothesis suggests that many children who live in industrialized nations are raised in an environment that is just too clean. Because of this, they are not exposed to infectious agents and parasites that properly “train” their immune system. In addition, they miss out on some of the good bacteria and fungi that would take up residence in their body and support their immune system. As a result, the natural development of the immune system is stunted, and the body doesn’t know how to properly respond to certain foreign agents.

Several studies have shown a relationship between the cleanliness of a child’s environment and the child’s risk of developing an allergic disease. For example, studies have shown that children who grow up in rural settings are less likely to develop allergic diseases than those who grow up in urban settings.² Even within rural settings, there is a difference. Children who grow up on farms seem to be the most protected against asthma and other allergic diseases.³

While there is a lot of indirect evidence for the hygiene hypothesis, a biological mechanism for why a “dirty” environment helps protect children against allergic diseases has been lacking. A recent study from Europe, however, has changed that.⁴

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This Study Indicates that Most Babies Should NOT Avoid Peanuts

This picture shows a person getting a skin-prick test to measure his or her allergic reactions.

The prevalence of peanut allergies has grown significantly in recent years. In the U.S., for example, only 0.4% of children were reported to have a peanut allergy in 1997. By 2008, the percentage had more than tripled to 1.4%.¹ As a result, people have become more aware of peanut allergies, and some businesses have made accomodations for people who have them. Delta airlines, for example, says:

When you notify us that you have a peanut allergy, we’ll refrain from serving peanuts and peanut products onboard your flight. We’ll also advise cabin service to board additional non-peanut snacks, which will allow our flight attendants to serve these snack items to everyone within this area. Gate agents will be notified in case you’d like to pre-board and cleanse the immediate seating area. Unfortunately we still can’t guarantee that the flight will be completely peanut-free. Note that some snack products on board may be processed in plants which also process peanut products.

This is important, since some cases of peanut allergies have resulted in tragic deaths (see here, here, and here, for example).

Naturally, many parents would like to know if there is anything they can do to prevent their children from developing peanut allergies. In the year 2000, the American Academy of Pediatrics said that the best thing to do was to avoid peanut products for any child who showed any risk of allergy. However, the Academy reversed itself in 2008, saying there was no evidence that peanut avoidance reduced the risk of a child developing a peanut allergy later in life.²

A study released earlier this year now tells us that the evidence points in exactly the opposite direction: If you want to prevent peanut allergies in your children, you should consider exposing them to small amounts of peanut products when they are very young.³

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An Interesting Article From a Formerly Anti-Vaccine Mother

Tara Hills (the mother in this picture) explains why she is no longer anti-vaccine. (click for credit)

I ran across an interesting article on my Facebook news feed yesterday. The author (a mother of seven) wrote it from ~~hospital~~^* quarantine, because all seven of her children have pertussis, which is better known as “whooping cough.” While her older ones are getting better, her younger ones are still struggling. What is so important that she thought she should write the article now? Because she wants people to know that had she vaccinated her children, she most likely wouldn’t be where she is right now. She had been convinced that vaccines pose too much risk and too little benefit, but now she understands how wrong such a notion is. She hopes to help others learn from her mistake.

Ironically, she had already been convinced that the anti-vaccine movement was wrong before her kids ended up in the hospital. In fact, she and her family doctor had worked out a catch-up vaccination schedule for all her kids, but before they could start it, pertussis raged through her household. Here’s how she expresses it:

…the irony isn’t lost on me that I’m writing this from quarantine. For six years we were frozen in fear from vaccines, and now we are frozen because of the disease.

She expects some backlash from the anti-vaccine community, and some gloating from the pro-vaccine community. However, I applaud her for making her story known. I hope others will read it and benefit from it. As she says:

Right now my family is living the consequences of misinformation and fear. I understand that families in our community may be mad at us for putting their kids at risk. I want them to know that we tried our best to protect our kids when we were afraid of vaccination and we are doing our best now, for everyone’s sake, by getting them up to date. We can’t take it back…but we can learn from this and help others the same way we have been helped.

This mother isn’t the first to experience tragedy because of misinformation about vaccines. A mother named Tammy contacted me several years ago and said:

Thank you for your vaccine stance and research! I am a mother who had heard some “horror stories” and was wary of vaccines. As a result, my 3 year-old daughter (now 7) went deaf in one ear due to complications of chickenpox. I have since immunized my younger son (& dear daughter has been immunized against all other known diseases for which vaccines were appropriate).

Two other mothers have written me with similar stories (here and here).

Now please don’t misunderstand what I am saying. I am not saying that children should be vaccinated because of the experiences of these four mothers. I am saying that children should be vaccinated because the science is very clear: vaccines are both safe and effective for the vast majority of people. Anecdotes like these simply illustrate the importance of making the correct decision.

Please see Jo’s comment below. They may not be in hospital quarantine, even though the article makes it sound that way.
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Not a CDC Coverup…A Case of Using the Wrong Analytical Method

Sometimes, you can get the job done even when you use the wrong tool. However, sometimes the wrong tool produces the wrong results.

The “news story” headline is astounding: “Fraud at the CDC uncovered, 340% risk of autism hidden from public.” The article says that data in a 2004 CDC study on the relationship between the Measles, Mumps, and Rubella (MMR) vaccine and autism were purposefully hidden so it could deny a relationship between the two. Those hidden data supposedly show that some who got the MMR vaccine were significantly more likely to become autistic than those who didn’t. According to the article, this shows that the original study is “fraudulent,” and there is now a petition to get the study retracted. It also calls into question the other studies that the CDC often cites to show that there is no relationship between vaccination and autism. And this article has to be reliable. After all, it is on CNN’s website, right?

Well, not exactly. If you go to the article, you will see “NOT VERIFIED BY CNN” at the top, and you will find a CNN producer note that this website is the network’s “user-generated news community.” So the article wasn’t written by someone at CNN. It was written by a blogger. Does that mean it’s not reliable? Of course not. I read several blogs regularly, and I find most of the articles written on them to be very reliable. In fact, I would say that some blogs are more reliable than some standard media outlets! The question, of course, is whether or not this particular blog article is reliable. When you look into the details, you find that it’s not.

The article’s big claim is that by including data which were supposedly covered up by the CDC, you can find that African American boys have a 340% increased risk of autism if they got the MMR vaccine. This conclusion, however, was “hidden due to pressure from senior officials.” Of course, to make such a claim, someone must have done some sort of study. The article itself tells you nothing about that study, but the CNN Producer Note at the top indicates that it was a study done by Dr. Brian Hooker (a bioengineer) and was published in a journal called Translational Neurodegeneration. An update to that note indicates that the journal has pulled the study, and the journal says this is “because of serious concerns about the validity of its conclusions.”

That doesn’t sound very good, but then again, maybe the journal has been pressured by the CDC to participate in their elaborate coverup. Fortunately, I was able to read the study before it was pulled, and I have to agree with the journal’s decision. The study’s conclusions are obviously wrong, because it used the wrong kind of tool to evaluate the data.

Continue reading “Not a CDC Coverup…A Case of Using the Wrong Analytical Method”

It Did Sound Too Good to be True…

These are stem cells taken from the embryo of a mouse. The color is the result of a stain used to make them easier to see. The embryo had to be killed to get the cells, but they can develop into almost any kind of mouse cell (skin, nerve, muscle, etc.). (image in the public domain) — These are stem cells taken from the embryo of a mouse. The color is the result of a stain used to make them easier to see. The embryo had to be killed to get the cells, but they can develop into almost any kind of mouse cell (skin, nerve, muscle, etc.).
(image in the public domain)

Every once in a while, I run across a story in the scientific literature that seems just too good to be true. Such was the case when I was reading the February 22nd issue of Science News. In a story entitled “A little acid can make a cell stemlike,”¹ the author reported on some amazing results that were published in the journal Nature. In the published studies, scientists from the RIKEN Center for Developmental Biology in Kobe, Japan claimed that they could take cells from various parts of a mouse (like the brain, skin, and liver) and transform them into stem cells by simply treating them with acid or other external stimuli!

This would be an amazing feat, because stem cells are able to develop into many different kinds of cells. Consider, for example, what happens when two mice successfully mate. The sperm from the male fertilizes the egg from the female, and the result is a single cell that will eventually develop into a new mouse. In order for that to happen, the cell begins making copies of itself. As more and more copies are made, the individual copies begin to start “specializing” so they can do specific tasks. Some develop into skin cells, others develop into nerve cells, others develop into blood cells, etc. This process of cells specializing into different types of cells is called differentiation.

Of course, the cells in the developing mouse don’t start differentiating right away. There has to be a group of cells that have the ability to produce all the different kinds of cells the mouse needs, and these cells are generally called embryonic stem cells. Examples of mouse embryonic stem cells are shown in the image above. They may look unassuming, but they are truly amazing, because they can produce any kind of cell that the mouse needs. Of course, in order to produce that image, the mouse embryo from which the cells came had to be destroyed. In other words, to get mouse embryonic stem cells, you have to kill the mouse whose cells you want. If you want human embryonic stem cells, you have to kill the developing baby whose cells you want.

This, of course, presents a problem. Embryonic stem cells have great potential when it comes to solving many medical issues. Suppose, for example, you have a heart attack. As a result, some of the cells that make up your heart muscle died. In most cases, the body can’t completely replace the cells that are killed, so you will probably have a weaker heart for the rest of your life. If stem cells could be used, perhaps they could differentiate into heart muscle cells and completely repair the damage to your heart.

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The More We Learn About Bone, The More Amazing It Is!

This is the latest view of the microscopic structure of bone. (click for credit)

The bones that make up the skeletons of animals and people are a marvel of engineering. As one materials scientist put it:¹

…bone properties are a list of apparent contradictions, strong but not brittle, rigid but flexible, light-weight but solid enough to support tissues, mechanically strong but porous, stable but capable of remodeling, etc.

More than three years ago, I posted an article about research that helps to explain why bones are so strong. The calcium mineral that makes up a significant fraction of the bone, hydroxyapatite, is arranged in crystals that are only about three billionths of a meter long. If the crystals were much longer than that, the strength of the resulting bone tissue would be significantly lower. What restricts the size of the crystals? According to the previous research, the tiny crystals are surrounded by molecules of citrate. It was thought that the citrate latches onto the outside of the crystal, stopping it from growing.

Some very interesting new research from the University of Cambridge and the University College London indicates that this is, indeed, what happens. However, it also indicates that citrate does much more than simply restrict the size of the crystals. It also helps to produce a cushion that allows bones to flex rather than break when they are under stress.

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More Evidence That Antibiotic Resistance Existed LONG BEFORE Antibiotics Were Developed

This is a drawing of a bacteriophage, a virus that attacks bacteria. (click for credit)

Many people know that bacteria have developed resistance to popular antibiotics. Indeed, it is a big problem in medicine, and it has caused many health-care providers to call for doctors to prescribe antibiotics only when they are necessary. The Centers for Disease Control calls this “antibiotic stewardship” and thinks it will improve medical care throughout the country.¹ I have written about antibiotic resistance before (see here and here), because some evolutionists try to cite it in support of the idea that novel, useful genes can be produced by evolutionary processes. Of course, the more we have studied the phenomenon, the more we have seen that this is just not the case.

There are essentially two ways that a bacterium develops resistance to an antibiotic. One way is to have a mutation that confers the resistance. For example, a bacterium can become resistant to streptomycin if a mutation causes a defect in the bacterium’s protein-making factory, which is called the ribosome. That defect keeps streptomycin from binding to the ribosome, which makes streptomycin ineffective against the bacterium. However, it also makes the ribosome significantly less efficient at its job.² So in the end, rather than producing something novel (like a new gene that fights the antibiotic), the mutation just deteriorates a gene that already existed. While this is good for a bacterium in streptomycin, it doesn’t provide any evidence that novel, useful genes can be produced by evolutionary processes.

There is, however, a second way that a bacterium can develop resistance to an antibiotic: It can get genes that fight the antibiotic from another bacterium. Bacteria hold many genes on tiny, circular portions of their DNA called plasmids. Two bacteria can come together in a process called conjugation and exchange those plasmids, which allows bacteria to “swap” DNA. If a bacterium has a gene (or a set of genes) that allows it to resist an antibiotic, it can pass those genes to others in the population, ensuring their survival.

Of course, the natural question one must ask is, “Where did those antibiotic-resistance genes come from in the first place?” Many evolutionists want you to believe that evolution produced those genes in response to the development of antibiotics. After all, antibiotics didn’t exist until 1941, when penicillin was tested in animals and then people. Why would antibiotic-resistance genes exist before the antibiotics?

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For Some Diseases, It Was Vaccination, Not Sanitation

This is the logo of Project Tycho. It depicts Tycho Brahe with his unique view of the universe.
(click for credit)

Dr. Wilbert van Panhuis and his colleagues have started an exciting initiative called Project Tycho^TM. In it, they are taking public health data that have been collected over the years and putting them into an easy-to-access digital system that is open to everyone. They describe the goal of their project in this way:

We aim to advance the use of public health data for the improvement of public health. Oftentimes, restricted access to public health data limits opportunities for scientific discovery and technological innovation in disease control programs. A free flow of data and information maximizes opportunities for more efficient and effective public health programs leading to higher impact and better health. Our activities are focused on accelerating the availability and use of public health data…

They named the project after Tycho Brahe, one of the more colorful 16^th-century astronomers. Not only did he live an interesting life, he had a very interesting view of the universe. He made an enormous number of astronomical observations that he meticulously documented, and those observations convinced him that the planets must orbit the sun, not the earth. However, he couldn’t give up the idea of the earth being at the center of everything, so he produced what is probably the most interesting view of the universe ever. As shown in the logo above, he put the earth at the center of the universe, and he had the sun and moon orbiting the earth. The rest of the planets were then assumed to orbit the sun, as it moved in its orbit around the earth. While this view of the universe is clearly unworkable, it was incredibly original!

Why would a project involving public health data be named after this colorful character? Because his main contribution to science was the data he collected. While he couldn’t make heads or tails of his data, another astronomer, Johannes Kepler (who was once employed by Brahe) did. Kepler was able to use Brahe’s data to develop three laws of planetary motion that demonstrated all the planets, including the earth, orbit the sun. Sir Isaac Newton was then able to use Kepler’s Laws to develop his Law of Universal Gravitation, which describes how gravity works both here on earth and throughout the universe. Brahe’s data, then, were the foundation of some of the greatest advancements in the field of astronomy in the 16^th and 17^th centuries.

In Dr. van Panhuis’s view, the data he is collecting could end up being like Brahe’s data. It might be used by other scientists to better understand diseases and how to deal with them as they spread through populations. While I can’t say whether or not that will ever happen, I can say that these data make it easy for me to address a popular myth about vaccination.

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More Amazing News About Breast Milk

This is an oligosaccharide - a molecule made up of a few simple sugars linked together. (click for credit) — This is an oligosaccharide – a molecule made up of a few simple sugars linked together.
(click for credit)

Approximately a year ago, I wrote about the bacteria in human breast milk. While that may sound like a bad thing, it is actually a very good thing. Over the years, scientists have begun to realize just how important the bacteria that live in and on our bodies are (see here, here, here, here, and here), and the bacteria in breast milk allow an infant to be populated with these beneficial microbes as early as possible. Not surprisingly, as scientists have continued to study breast milk, they have been amazed at just how much of it is devoted to establishing a good relationship between these bacteria and the infant who is consuming the milk.

For example, research over the years has shown that human breast milk contains chemicals called oligosaccharides. These molecules, such as the one pictured above, contain a small number (usually 3-9) simple sugars strung together. Because oligosaccharides are composed of sugars, you might think they are there to feed the baby who is consuming the milk, but that’s not correct. The baby doesn’t have the enzymes necessary to digest them. So what are they there for? According to a review article in Science News:¹

These oligosaccharides serve as sustenance for an elite class of microbes known to promote a healthy gut, while less desirable bacteria lack the machinery needed to digest them.

In the end, then, breast milk doesn’t just give a baby the bacteria he or she needs. It also includes nutrition that can be used only by those bacteria, so as to encourage them to stay with the baby! Indeed, this was recently demonstrated in a study in which the authors spiked either infant formula or bottled breast milk with two strains of beneficial bacteria. After observing the premature babies who received the concoctions for several weeks, they found that the ones who had been feed bacteria-spiked formula did not have nearly as many of the beneficial microbes in their intestines as those who had been feed bacteria-spiked breast milk.²

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