Climate change rhetoric versus climate change action

Last week a billboard appeared over an Expressway in Illinois showing a picture of Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber who was convicted in 1996 of a 17 year mail bombing campaign that killed three people and injured many more.  The caption read “I still believe in global warming.  Do you?”  The next day it had been removed.  The billboard was the work of the US climate-sceptic think-tank, the Heartland Institute.  There has been general condemnation of the billboard campaign and although Heartland may have received some publicity from the event, it seems likely that such a shoddy idea will have discredited the organisation in many people’s minds.   It also suggests a level of desperation on the part of the climate-sceptics.

The rhetoric has been heating up on the pro-climate change side as well.  Jim Hansen, who some describe as “the grandfather of climate change”, recently delivered the Edinburgh Medal Lecture at the Edinburgh International Science Festival.   According to Hansen, by not dealing effectively with the known issues surrounding climate change we are storing up expensive and destructive consequences for society in the future and this is an “injustice of one generation to others”.   He went on to argue that averting the worst consequences of human-induced climate change is a great moral issue on a par with slavery. 

These are strong words from both sides of the argument but perhaps this is no bad thing as it exposes the issues more clearly.  So, how do we find our way through this minefield of argument and counter-argument on climate change?   In trying to understand the background to the topic, I tend to be guided by the scientists who have been in the field for a long time and know the subject well.  Hansen is obviously one of those scientists and he and others have a paper coming out in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA where they lay out the issues and suggest solutions.  The paper is entitled “Scientific case for avoiding climate change to protect young people and nature” and can be read here.  There is a good discussion of how carbon dioxide emissions from burning of fossil fuels drive climate change and how far we need to cut emissions to stabilise the climate.  The take-home message is simple;  we need to cut carbon dioxide emissions to avoid damaging climate change in the future and the best way to do this is via a carbon tax coupled with extensive reforestation plans. 

There is also a very strong moral overtone to the paper and I want to quote a section relating to lack of action on climate change: “It is a matter of morality – a matter of intergenerational justice.  As with the earlier great moral issue of slavery, an injustice done by one race of humans to another, so the injustice of one generation to all those to come must stir the public’s conscience to the point of action”.

Perhaps you might feel that Hansen is too close to one side of the argument?  Where do you then look for guidance?  One possibility is the Royal Society, the premier scientific body in the UK, who should know what they are talking about.  In 2010 the Royal Society produced a report: “Climate change: a summary of the science”.  The report concluded that there was indeed warming of the planet and that human activity (burning of fossil fuels and changes in land use) was the major cause of the warming over the past 50 years.  Continuing increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide caused by continuing use of fossil fuels would lead to further warming of the planet.  The report is very cautious in its conclusions but it agrees with Hansen’s ideas.  If you want a more detailed discussion of the levels of carbon dioxide desirable for climate stability and the need to reduce emissions, have a look at 350.org and Skeptical Science.

It doesn’t feel to me like there is much argument.  Climate change driven by carbon dioxide emissions from burning of fossil fuels is happening and needs to be stopped for the future of the planet.  We know this now and yet we are not doing enough to prevent climate change.  It doesn’t really matter whether you dress it up as a moral issue or not but if we don’t get on and do something soon, history and our grandchildren will judge us very badly.

Tilting at Windmills

As you drive through East Devon towards Dorset on the A 30 in the west of England, there is plenty to see.  Near the junctions for Ottery St Mary, the road descends to a broad valley in a patchwork of green fields and trees.   This view has probably changed little for many years although the road, the railway, the phone masts and, if you look carefully, two small wind turbines, provide clear evidence of the effects of technology.   For me, the wind turbines do little to detract from the natural view.  I find wind turbines rather magnificent to look at and they also reassure me that we are doing something to generate renewable energy.  But that is, of course, my opinion and it is not shared by everybody.

Wind turbines have become a contentious topic.  There are several proposals to erect large wind turbines in Dorset and Devon and these have attracted furious local opposition and strong local support, sometimes in equal measure.  Some of these proposals have proceeded, some have not.  There is a proposal to build a huge wind farm in the Channel, visible from the Dorset Coast.  This is also attracting adverse comment.  Do we now “object” more or is this a natural human reaction to change? Is it our comfortable life style that allows us the luxury of objecting?  How did previous generations react to technological change?

One of the best examples of the effect of technological advance on human lives occurred exactly 300 years ago.   In 1712, Thomas Newcomen, an ironmonger from Dartmouth in Devon, installed the first steam-driven water pump at a coal mine in Dudley Castle in Tipton, Staffordshire.   Let’s try to imagine how people might have reacted to this new machine by taking ourselves back to the early 1700’s.  It was only a century since Elizabeth 1^st was on the throne and life was fairly primitive.  Transport on land depended on walking or on horse drawn vehicles.  When power was needed this came from muscle (humans or animals) or the elements (wind or water).   The economy was largely rural and windmills were the most complex machines people encountered.    So, how would Newcomen’s steam pump have seemed to people at that time.   It looked like a great dragon; the long wooden beam nodded twelve times a minute pumping water from a depth of 50 metres.   As it nodded, steam spewed out with a fearsome hissing.  The countryside was changed forever by this noisy beast.  To some, it signalled the end of the world?  It certainly signalled a new world and major change. 

Necomen’s steam pump

Newcomen’s pump enabled mining at greater depths so that coal could be obtained more easily.  Cheap coal lead to increased industrial activity that accelerated the Industrial Revolution.  Newcomen’s invention underpinned this and it has been said that “In the whole history of technology it would be difficult to find a greater single advance than this, nor one with a greater significance for all humanity”.  As these Newcomen engines sprung up throughout the mining parts of the UK, there must have been considerable disquiet and nobody could have foreseen the change that it brought.  James Watt improved on Newcomen’s design and later Trevithick made a small lightweight version enabling the eventual development of steam railways.  Newcomen’s invention brought disruption and change but also huge benefits; nobody could have predicted its effects.

Now let’s move forward 150 years to the heyday of Victorian railway building.  Today, we take railways for granted, they are part of our landscape, but how did people react to the coming of the railways in the 1800s?   Don’t forget that, before the railways, travel still depended on horses or horse-drawn vehicles.  Whereas some quickly saw the potential of the railways to bring prosperity, others were strongly opposed.  Opposition came from those who objected to encroachment on their land or those such as canal owners whose livelihoods were threatened.    There were also fears that the human body would not withstand travel at speed or that farm animals would be frightened by the passing trains.  Some talked of “railway vandalism”.  In Dorchester (Dorset) there was local opposition to the destruction of Maumbury Rings by a proposed railway and the route was changed.  This was the first antiquity saved by local opposition and lead in 1846 to the establishment of the Dorset Museum with the express aim of preserving local natural history and archaeology.  Overall, the railways brought major change to people’s lives.   Some of this change was negative but much was positive; the railways brought prosperity to towns linked by rail and gave people freedom to move about more easily.

These two examples from history tell us that when technological change occurs, people’s lives are affected.  There are both positive and negative effects of the change and many are hard to predict.  So what about the 21^st century, when we face great challenges, one of the greatest being climate change.  We need to wean ourselves off fossil fuels in order to cut carbon emissions so that irreversible, damaging climate change is averted.  Renewable energy sources will be very important here and we need to employ a mixture of different renewable technologies including solar, wind and wave power.   Technological change on this scale will have some negative consequences but there will be positive effects, some of which we can easily see and some that we cannot begin to predict.

 This article appeared in the May 2012 edition of the Marshwood Vale Magazine.  The magazine is published in Dorset and so all articles have a Dorset focus.  The topics covered often have relevance outside of Dorset.

Biofuels from algae?

Oil will run out sooner or later so we need to consider alternative non-petroleum based fuels for our cars and lorries.  We also need to reduce existing consumption of petroleum-based fuels so that carbon emissions are diminished and potentially damaging effects of climate change are attenuated.     There are many ways to approach these problems but one attractive way is to make biofuels from algae; in principle these are carbon-neutral fuels.  This idea has attracted quite a bit of interest but the usual bottleneck is making enough algae.  There are many players in the field including Craig Venter and ExxonMobil.  One man in South West England, James Morris, however, has some ideas about increasing production of algae that may get round the bottleneck.  He has a prototype apparatus up and running and I visited him at Plymouth Marine Labs.  You can read the full story from Devon Life Magazine here.

Spring is here…..and it’s lovemaking time for the toads!

The weather is treating us to its usual roller-coaster ride here in the UK.  Over seven days temperatures have dropped by half and summer-like weather has been replaced by chill.   Despite this, Spring is definitely here and Nature is going through its annual ritual to ensure survival for another year. 

In our garden, the birds are performing their elaborate courtship dances and scrabbling to gather all they can for nest building.   On the trees, fat buds growing bigger by the day and gaudy blossom provide the fitting backdrop for these fertility rites.

I have watched newts courting at this time of year with their elaborate ballet but I have never seen the mating ceremony of toads.  If you want to experience this, I recommend you read the beautiful description in the Country Diary section of the Guardian a few days ago.  There is a particularly striking image of mere toad’s flatus, fanned by Kestrel’s wings being transformed in to the pure sunlit gold of lark song.

Making life better for a jewel of a bird

The Coast Path in Devon (photo by Hazel Strange)

The sea was a patchwork of ever-changing shades of blue and the sun created an intense shimmering where it shone on the many small waves. It was as though a thousand small jewels reflected the sun’s rays. Far out at sea, a light mist obscured the horizon and caused the sea and the sky to seemingly melt in to one another.

The path by the sea weaves its way along the coast here, sometimes at sea level and sometimes perilously high on rocky outcrops. Here and there we saw violets, thrift and a few early bluebells – more small jewels. It was hard walking especially in this unseasonably warm weather and we had to remind ourselves that, although it felt like summer, this really was only late March.

There is another jewel that decorates the coast in this part of South Devon, a small songbird called the Cirl Bunting. This is the only part of the UK where the bird is found and it has become something of a local icon. We had seen pictures of the bird in the village of East Prawle, where we left the car, and had previously searched for the bird but not seen it ourselves more than a handful of times. Today our luck had changed. On a hedge hear the sea we spotted a mixed flock of birds including Dunnocks and Chaffinches but there was another small brown bird that continually darted from the hedge to the ground and back again. Fixing it with my binoculars I confirmed that this was a female Cirl Bunting. During the walk, we saw another six of these birds, some females, some the brightly coloured male but all with the distinctive face bar pattern.

     

Male Cirl Bunting (from RSPB)

So why is there a fuss about this little bird? It’s found quite widely in continental Europe and it used to be found over all of southern England. Intensive farming, however, almost eliminated Cirl Buntings from the UK and even now it is confined to a small coastal strip of land between Exeter and Plymouth. In 1989 there were only 118 breeding pairs and the bird was destined to be extinct in this country.

The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) devised a plan to protect and encourage Cirl Buntings but for the plan to work they needed to have the support and cooperation of local farmers. The RSPB worked out that the decline in the population of Cirl Buntings had been caused by farming practices which took away the bird’s food supplies. In the winter, the birds forage in weedy stubble fields eating seeds and spilt grain. In the summer, they nest in hedges and scrub and forage in unimproved grassland full of invertebrates with grasshoppers being especially important for chicks. The breeding and wintering habitats must be close as the birds do not move more than about 2 km. Intensive farming, including winter ploughing, use of herbicides and grubbing out of hedges severely depleted the bird’s natural habitats. In order to provide these habitats, famers agreed to change some of their practices, leaving stubble over winter, leaving wide margins around fields, planting low intensity grassland and restoring hedges. These changes have been supported by environmental subsidies from the EU.

The programme has been a great success so far and by 2009 there were 862 breeding pairs as well as increases in other wildlife in the area. Confidence in the bird’s stability has increased to the extent that some chicks have been hand raised and set free in Cornwall to try to establish another colony of Cirl Buntings in the next county.

The Cirl Bunting Programme was based on simple ideas that took account of the life cycle of the bird and how that had been affected by changes in farming practice. It is wonderful to see the little birds doing so well and the programme is a perfect example of cooperation and conservation in practice.

In a previous post, I wrote about music written by John Spiers to celebrate the Red Kite conservation project.  Perhaps another “folkie” should write a tune celebrating Cirl Buntings?

Poppy head tea, laudanum and heroin: now we can “see” where they act

In the 19^th century many houses in the Fenlands of East Anglia in the UK reserved a corner of their garden for a patch of white poppies.  The plants were harvested and dried to make “poppy head tea”, a beverage containing small amounts of morphine leached from the poppies.  The tea was consumed to counter the aches, chills, agues and fevers experienced in this bleak part of the UK.  The compounds present in the poppy heads may be obtained in a more concentrated form by piercing the unripe seed head.  A milky liquid seeps out and this is dried to produce “opium” which contains up to 10 % morphine.   Opium was consumed liberally in the 19^th century in the form of laudanum.  This was a concoction of opium and alcohol, and was taken for relief of pain and to reduce cough.  Laudanum contains about 1% morphine and cases of addiction were common but the preparation offered the only source of pain relief for many.  Nowadays the highly addictive morphine derivative, heroin, is considered one of the most harmful drugs available. 

There is an urgent need to find out more about how these drugs act and new research, published in Nature last week, shows for the first time a picture of the site of action of morphine.  This is a step change in our understanding of how these drugs work and a major advance in pharmacology.

The effects of opium have been known for centuries; some of the earliest reports date back to the ancient Greeks.  Morphine is the principal “opiate” in opium and quite how the drug worked was unclear until the 1970s when morphine was shown to bind to specific sites in the brain.  It seemed odd at the time that the brain should have binding sites for a plant-derived chemical but this conundrum was soon solved when natural opiates (enkephalins and endorphins) were discovered.  The sites where morphine bound opportunistically were in fact sites where the natural opiates acted to modulate brain function. 

These sites in our brains where morphine and the natural opiates bind and affect brain function came to be called opiate receptors.  Surprisingly, the principle whereby opiates are detected by their receptors is similar to that also shown for many other signals that humans are able to detect.  Other examples are smells, tastes, vision and the myriad chemicals (neurotransmitters) in the brain and hormones in other parts of the body that influence our behaviour.  The surprising conclusion of years of work in many labs has been that signal detection in all of these examples is based on a common principle.  In each case, there is a signal and a detector protein, termed a receptor, with the ability to recognise that specific signal and react to it.  The receptor collaborates with a transducer termed a G protein (named for its ability to bind a molecule abbreviated as GTP).  The receptor and G protein together sit in the membrane of a cell providing a signalling machine.  The signal molecule from the outside of the cell attaches to the receptor and activates the G protein sending a chemical stimulus to the inside of the cell and altering its activity.

Not only do we find this common principle of signal/receptor/G protein for many signalling systems but the receptors are also the sites of action of a third or more of currently prescribed drugs including many best sellers.  For example, drugs used to treat high blood pressure, asthma, schizophrenia and Parkinson’s disease act via these kinds of receptors.   Some illegal drugs such as cannabis and, of course, morphine also target this class of receptor.   If you are still not convinced of the importance of these receptors then bear in mind that if you are drinking coffee or tea while reading this, the caffeine in these drinks is also acting via one of these receptors.

In the new work, two labs in California (Brian Kobilka at Stanford and Ray Stevens at the Scripps Institute in La Jolla), have determined the structure of opiate receptors in three dimensions using x-ray crystallography.  Many labs had spent years trying to analyse the structures of this class of receptor until about five years ago a technical breakthrough made it possible to make crystals of the proteins.  The structures of several of these receptors have now been reported (see a previous post) and the new work describes the structures of two opiate receptors.     The images contained in these new studies show the structures of the receptor together with a drug sitting in its binding site.

Just having the structure of these opiate receptors is an important milestone in the field but they also open the way to rational drug design.  It should now become possible to design new drugs based on their ability to fit in to the binding site of these receptors.  The hope is that drugs will emerge that retain the pain killing ability of opiates but lack the addictive potential.

There is another fascinating aspect of one of the new opiate receptor structures:  the receptors were found in closely linked pairs.    There has been much circumstantial evidence that these kinds of receptors functioned as pairs, rather like identical twins, but this is some of the first hard evidence of this.

Se a related post: Shedding new light on how adrenaline works

The medieval Plague and how science has identified the cause

Dorset,a county in the south west of England was reputedly the first part of the UK to be infected with the medieval Plague and here is the article I wrote about this for the Dorset-based Marshwood Vale Magazine: 

 

 

“In this year 1348, in Melcombe, in the county of Dorset, a little before the feast of St John the Baptist, two ships, one of them from Bristol, came alongside.  One of the sailors had brought with him from Gascony the seeds of a terrible pestilence and, through him, the men of that town of Melcombe were the first in England to be infected.”  Greyfriars Chronicle

 

Nearly ten years ago, SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) emerged in the Far East sparking fears of a global pandemic.  Troubling images of men, women and children in Hong Kong and Toronto, protected by face masks were beamed around the world.  In the end the infection was controlled by traditional public health measures, but in these days of mass air travel the possibility of a quickly spreading pandemic disease stays with us.  The deadliest pandemic the world has seen actually occurred 650 years ago and Dorset has the dubious distinction of being the first part of England to be affected.  According to the report above, the disease entered the UK at Melcombe (now part of Weymouth).

The ship that docked at Melcombe in that wet summer of 1348 brought the plague and within a few days, others in the port became unwell.  Fever and flu-like symptoms would have been followed by the emergence of apple sized swellings called buboes in the groin, neck and armpits.  The buboes turned from red to dark purple or black.  Sufferers reported vomiting, headache and aching joints and up to 75% died in a few days.  This was the bubonic plague and it was accompanied by a second more deadly pneumonic form, localised to the lungs.  The infection swept mercilessly across England reaching the whole of the UK within two years and killing 30-50% of the population.  There were further waves of plague, or Black Death as it came to be called, until the 17^th century.  

So how did the disease spread so rapidly?  There were two culprits:  first, black rats, probably present on the ship that docked at Melcombe but happy to live on land; second, fleas that lived on the rats but also on humans.   Both the rats and the fleas carried the infection but when a flea moved to a human host it would bite and transfer the disease.   Medieval towns with their filthy conditions, cramped housing and open sewers favoured both rats and fleas and encouraged spread of the infection.   This was augmented by movement of people in their daily lives or when they fled in panic from the disease.  If they were suffering from the pneumonic form of the disease, direct person to person transmission occurred via coughing.

From the perspective of the 21^st century, we tend to view plague as a historical curiosity but it still circulates and kills about 2000 people a year worldwide.  These modern cases of plague have been shown to be caused by infection with a bacterium, Yersinia pestis.  The modern form of plague seems to be much less virulent than the medieval disease so there has been speculation that another agent, perhaps the Ebola virus or the Anthrax bacterium was responsible for the medieval infection.   This speculation has been investigated in a recent study by groups from Germany and Canada using modern genetic techniques.  The researchers chose to look for evidence of the Yersinia pestis bacterium in remains of those known to have died from the medieval plague.  They went to a medieval cemetery at East Smithfield in London, known to have been used for burial of plague victims in 1348 and extracted genetic material from teeth of victims.  They found clear evidence of Yersinia pestis showing conclusively that this was the source of the 14^th century disease.  If the causative agent is the same, then why was the medieval disease so much more dangerous?   It seems likely that people in the 14^th century were poorly nourished with depressed immune systems and not having previously encountered the bacterium, they were easy prey. 

But let’s return to 14^th century Dorset to see how plague affected the way of life.   There had been rumours that a terrible illness was laying waste to Europe but, once it arrived in England, it created fear and panic on a previously unimaginable scale.  Plague respected neither class nor position; it killed indiscriminately and quickly and death was disfiguring and deeply unpleasant.  The high mortality rate disrupted normal life; crops were left to rot in fields, animals were left to roam and villages were abandoned as people fled the disease.  Portland was particularly badly affected; the quarries were deserted and coastal defences left unmanned.  Poole took 150 years to return even to its pre-plague state.  In Bridport, the number of wills recorded in the 14^th century tells the terrible story.  52 wills were recorded in the entire 14^th century and of these 16 were in 1348.

Unexpectedly, however, the destruction wrought by plague was a harbinger of positive social change.  It was the beginning of a gradual improvement in the way of life for peasants, previously at the bottom of the heap in a harsh feudal system.  The shortage of workers meant that peasants could now demand wages allowing them to pay rent for land they farmed.  Previously they had worked for the Lord of the Manor in return for land leased to them.   Once they were paid for work they could demand higher wages and also move where they wished.  This was the start of the breakdown of the feudal system leading to a profound and irreversible change in the way of life in this country.

Magic mushrooms, Sigmund Freud and depression?

There’s something slightly edgy about medical research using controlled drugs and it usually provides good media fodder.  So it was towards the end of January, when there was a flurry of interest in the UK media about research on the effects of the controlled psychedelic drug psilocybin on human volunteers.    Headlines such as – Magic mushrooms “could treat depression” – were seen, none of which did justice to the real substance of the work.  The BBC even carried a description of one of their presenters, Michael Mosley taking the drug – for research purposes of course! 

Psilocybin is one of the hallucinogenic substances in “magic mushrooms”.  It has a fascinating history so I thought I would write about it.

Magic mushrooms in Green Park, London

The story starts at dawn on October 3^rd 1799 when a poor man can be seen gathering field mushrooms in London’s Green Park.  When he gets home, the mushrooms are cooked with flour, water and salt to provide a morning broth for him, his wife and their four children.

A few hours later Everard Brande, a doctor, is summoned to the household where the family are experiencing strange symptoms.  The father has developed vertigo and disturbed vision whereas the rest of the family complain of poisoning and stomach cramps with their extremities becoming cold.  Their pulse and breathing oscillate between frightening highs and lows.  The family are overwhelmed with the fear of dying – all that is except eight year old Edward who is “attacked with fits of immoderate laughter”.

We know nowadays that the family must have consumed, by accident and through ignorance, some Liberty Cap mushrooms (“magic mushrooms” “shrooms”).  These grow widely in the UK and continental Europe in the autumn.  The 200-year old story of the family and these mushrooms opens the door to a fascinating scientific saga.

Some history

Liberty Cap mushrooms (Psilocybe semilanceata) are part of the large family of up to 200 species of Basidiomycota mushroom that contain the psychedelic drug psilocybin.  These mushrooms are found in many parts of the world with the Psilocybe genus being the major type.  Psilocybe have long been associated with ritual because of their ability to change human perception – the “psychedelic” effect.   Evidence had been found in Algeria, Mexico and Spain for their use in religious ceremonies.  The Aztecs called them teonanacatl (divine mushroom) and the mushrooms were reportedly served at the coronation of Moctezuma II in 1502.  Use of Psilocybe by the Aztecs was suppressed following the Spanish conquest but they have continued to be used covertly by native Indians in this part of America.  

Little was known about these ceremonies in the US and Europe until husband and wife team, Gordon and Valentina Wasson travelled to Mexico in the 1950s.  Their aim was to understand the culture associated with the “divine mushroom” and they made several visits to Mexico at that time.  In 1955, Gordon Wasson was one of the first westerners to participate in an indigenous mushroom ceremony.  In an article in the popular magazine “Life” in 1957, Wasson described the mushroom ceremony and the sensations he experienced.  On one visit they were also accompanied by the French mycologist, Roger Heim, who identified the mushrooms as Psilocybe mexicana.   

In order to identify the active species in the mushrooms, samples were given to Albert Hofmann at Sandoz in Basel. Hofmann (pictured above) was already well known as the chemist who had first synthesised the related psychedelic drug LSD in 1938 and who later inadvertently experienced the effects of the drug himself.   Hofmann made extracts of the Psilocybe and analysed the constituents for their psychological effects.  His work was greatly helped by his readiness to test extracts on himself.  In this way he showed that there were two principal active compounds in the mushrooms, psilocybin and psilocin.  Once ingested, psilocybin is rapidly converted to psilocin.

The effects of psilocybin and LSD

So what are the effects of psilocybin and psilocin on humans?  Psilocybin has effects rather similar to the two other principal psychedelics, mescaline and LSD, although there are differences in detail and in potency.  Sol Snyder in his book “Drugs and the Brain” describes how he took LSD to document and to understand its effects.  This is an excellent description from a respected scientist and he reports changes in sensory perception, especially visual effects.  Objects may seem distorted, change colour or even move.  Confusion between sensory modalities (synaesthesia) may also occur.  Sense of time and space are altered but it is the effect on the sense of self that is particularly striking.  “Boundaries between self and non-self evaporate, giving rise to a serene sense of being at one with the universe.”  He goes on to speculate:  “The almost predictable transcendence of ego boundaries brought on by these drugs has caused scientists to consider that there might be a neural basis for the ego.”   Others report heightened awareness, super-reality and mystical experiences after taking the drug.  Many people enjoy the effects produced by these drugs which sometimes offer insights not available in normal life.  For others it is an unpleasant experience and a minority have injured or killed themselves as a result of disorientation caused by changed perception or loss of self.   The experience may depend on the state of the individual and their environment when they take the drug (“set and setting”).  More recently a five-component scale has been devised to provide a semi-quantitative measure of the effects of these drugs. 

So, how are these curious effects on human consciousness achieved by these drugs?  In the case of psilocybin and LSD, it is thought that the drugs hijack some of the normal processes in the brain.  Brain function depends on the release of chemicals termed neurotransmitters.  These are detected by their binding to specialised proteins called receptors.  One neurotransmitter that is important for regulating a host of functions in the brain and elsewhere is serotonin.  This neurotransmitter regulates behaviour, mood, sleep, appetite and blood flow.  Psilocybin and LSD both bind to and activate receptors for serotonin so it is not surprising that they lead to widespread effects. 

Therapeutic use of psilocybin

In the 1950s it was felt that drugs such as LSD and psilocybin held promise as therapeutic agents and they were used during psychotherapy to lower psychological defences and to facilitate emotional insight.  In the 1960s the effects of psilocybin were studied by the Harvard Professor, Timothy Leary, who became notorious for his work on psychedelics.    Leary’s eventual dismissal from Harvard fuelled the growing view at the time that use of these drugs was a form of cultural rebellion.  The drugs were increasingly discussed by the media in terms of their potential for abuse and there were moves by the authorities to ban the drugs.  Now, in most countries, LSD, psilocybin and mescaline are controlled drugs.  Somewhat anomalously, the Psilocybe mushrooms were not initially controlled and even in the early years of the 21^st century there were shops freely selling “shrooms” in London.  In 2005 the law in the UK was changed and the mushrooms were included in the ban, but as with other controlled drugs nowadays, it is still possible to buy the mushrooms via internet suppliers. 

When the drugs became illegal this inhibited research on their therapeutic uses almost completely.  Recently there has been a resurgence of interest and several careful studies have been performed on the effects of psilocybin on humans.

Franz Vollenweider and colleagues in Zurich have carefully catalogued the effects of psilocybin on humans, describing the psychological effects using standard rating scales.  They concluded that, although there is a small risk of a bad reaction to psilocybin which could include dysphoria, anxiety or panic, the administration of moderate doses of the drug to healthy, high functioning and well prepared subjects is associated with acceptable levels of risk providing it is done in a carefully monitored research environment.  They did state, however, that this did not apply to recreational or less controlled studies. 

Roland Griffiths and colleagues at Johns Hopkins in the US administered psilocybin to human volunteers under controlled conditions and described the acute perceptual and subjective effects.  These included a complete mystical experience for 61% of those tested and/or extreme fear and anxiety in 39% of those tested.  One month after testing, about two thirds of the participants rated the experience as having substantial personal and spiritual significance leading to positive change in attitude, mood and behaviour.  14 months later, these feelings were undiminished.   These are fascinating observations suggesting that psilocybin has considerable potential for changing human behaviour. 

Psilocybin has also been reported to have useful effects in treating obsessive-compulsive disorder, cluster headache and anxiety associated with terminal cancer.

The most recent studies

But let’s now return to the work I mentioned at the outset that caused the media flurry in the UK.  This is work performed by a group lead by David Nutt at Imperial College in London in collaboration with the Beckley Foundation.

In one study, brain imaging techniques were used to try to understand how the psychological effects of psilocybin were related to changes in brain activity.  Two indicators of brain activity (blood oxygenation and cerebral blood flow) were assessed in a small number of volunteers and it was found unexpectedly that psilocybin caused reductions in brain activity.  For one brain region the reduction in activity correlated with the psychological effects reported.  They interpreted the work in terms of an effect of psilocybin to reduce activity and connectivity in key “connector hubs” in the brain.  These “connector hubs” normally act to facilitate information transfer so the authors conclude that it is not surprising that a reduction in their activity leads to profound effects on consciousness.

In a second study, the effect of the drug to facilitate access to personal memories and emotions was tested.   There have been reports in the past that psychedelics lead to “relivings” of past memories and the Imperial College group had observed this before with one volunteer who had taken psilocybin.  In the new study, volunteers were presented with memory cues and asked to recollect autobiographical memories.  The study was performed after psilocybin administration and after placebo and participants were asked to rate the vividness of the memories evoked.   Memories were found to be more vivid and more visual under psilocybin but no “relivings” occurred.  This may have been because the cues were positive whereas in the past, negative cues had lead to “relivings” of negative memories.    Two weeks after these tests were performed participants reported significant increases in well-being related to the vividness of the memories.

These are interesting observations but it should be pointed out that Vollenweider and colleagues have also studied brain activity after psilocybin administration and find activation, in complete opposition to what was reported by the Imperial College group.  This contradiction may relate to differences in experimental technique but it certainly needs to be resolved.   Another gripe I have with the Imperial College work relates to their use of the term “trend level significance” for some correlations tested.  We all know this is a sanitised way of saying “no significance”.   Indeed, for these examples, the P values are greater than 0.05 so there is no correlation; this should have been the conclusion and it is misleading to imply otherwise.

Where does the future take us?

The underlying aim of this kind of work on brain imaging in relation to psychological testing is to try to find correlates of psychological processes in brain activity.  This is moving ahead very rapidly in a field termed neuropsychoanalysis.  One of the aims here is to find neural correlates for the Freudian concepts of Id, Ego and Super Ego.  This is discussed well on another blog but personally I wouldn’t want to go very far with these correlates until I had resolved the discrepancies between the brain responses to psilocybin measured using different techniques.

The Imperial College group have also speculated that psilocybin may be a novel antidepressant.  This is based on their observation of effects of the drug on activity in the medial prefrontal cortex.  Other antidepressant treatments have similar effects to psilocybin on this brain region leading to the speculation. 

There is a lot to think about here and much promise for the future.  It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that by banning psilocybin we may have missed out on many useful effects of this drug.

The Higgs Boson and faster-than-light neutrinos – what should we believe and can statistics help us?

I’ve been pondering this topic ever since I read Philip Ball’s column in the Guardian on Christmas Eve.  The recent announcement of tentative evidence for the Higgs Boson and the report of neutrinos travelling faster than the speed of light have created both interest and confusion.   In his article, Philip Ball proposed some guidelines on how we should respond to these new “discoveries”.   In his view, statistical measures associated with the experiments should be ignored but rather we should be lead by the prevailing beliefs of scientists in the field.  Taking this approach, we could conclude that the Higgs boson might have been found but that neutrinos might not travel faster than light.

I had always thought that scientists should follow the statistics and that following opinion might run the risk of being tainted by bias so I wanted to write something about this apparent paradox.   I am also not really sure why we need to second guess the outcome of these experiments.  It might be better to wait until more data are available and, in the case of the neutrinos, to wait until the experiments have been repeated by other groups.  But scientists are intrinsically gossipy and will always want to speculate on the science done by others so here we go.

If you delve a little, you find that Philip Ball’s piece was triggered by an article by Italian particle Physicist Giulio D’Agostini.  Now this is a difficult read but it makes some good points.  D’Agostini is concerned about the misuse of statistics by journalists, by lay people and by scientists.    It’s easier to see his argument with an example.  He uses data from a study at Fermilab in the US that were interpreted by some as evidence of a “new physics”.  Scientists at Fermilab had seen an unexpected “bump” in their data and wanted to evaluate whether this was a real difference (implying a “new physics”) or just part of the variation seen in any experiment (no “new physics”).  Here they used a p-value which is a statistical measure of the probability that the results they had observed would be seen even if there were no “new physics”.  

The Fermilab scientists came up with a p-value of 0.00076 for the experiment and this tells us that with no “new physics” the probability of seeing the “bump” would be 0.076% or about 0.1%.  Putting this in a different way, the results seen by the Fermilab scientists could have occurred with standard physics although the probability is quite low.   What worries D’Agostini is that this probability value is then misused.  The misuse is to turn the p-value into a predictor of the hypothesis, in this case “new physics”, and he quotes several media reports that made this error. These reports suggested that because the p-value was very low there was a very high chance that the hypothesis was correct.  As D’Agostini points out, the p-value tells us about the experimental data (i.e. what is the probability of observing the data in the absence of new ideas) but not about what the experiment means i.e. the hypothesis.   

If the statistics can’t help then how do we understand this experiment?  Here D’Agostini suggests we look at what is already known and ask what other scientists in the field believe.  Do they believe the hypothesis that a “new physics” is required to explain the results or do they not?  Here we have to look at the way science works.   Scientists perform experiments to test hypotheses and gradually, as the data emerge, networks of beliefs about science arise.  These networks of beliefs can be called theories.  These theories will be believed by many scientists in the community although there may be dissenters.  If a prevailing theory, based on extensive prior information, is challenged by new data indicating an alternative idea then we will require substantial further experimental work to make us change our beliefs.  As D’Agostini points out, this is why many people did not believe the Fermilab results.  The faster-than-light neutrinos also fit this category, being a completely new observation that challenges existing ideas.  If new data can be interpreted within existing theories then they are more likely to be believed.  This seems to be the case for the data obtained on the Higgs Boson at the Large Hadron Collider. 

This scheme, proposed by D’Agostini and endorsed by Ball does not, however, completely fit the way progress is made in other branches of science.  In the life sciences, for example, p-values are a mandatory aspect of reporting the results of experiments and they are used extensively to assess outcomes of experiments.  In examining the possible effect of a perturbation on a system, typically the experiment is set up with two groups, control and treated.  The data are analysed and mean values calculated for the two groups.  The two means may differ and the p-value is then the probability that the mean for the treated group (different from the control group mean) will be seen even if there is no real effect of the treatment.  A low p-value implies a low probability and, as we have seen above, this should not be taken to infer the magnitude of the probability that the treatment has had an effect.  Nevertheless, we need to be able to make progress and typically life scientists take a p-value of 0.05 (5%) as a cut off.  p-values greater than 0.05 are taken as evidence that the treatment had no effect and p-values less than 0.05 are taken as evidence that the treatment had an effect.  This is a bit different from what D’Agostini recommends but it seems to have allowed advances in the life sciences and the generation of theories of how systems function.

You may have now spotted another paradox.  The p value reported for the Fermilab experiments was 0.00076 and this is much smaller than the 0.05 figure typically used in life sciences as an indicator that data are not just a result of random fluctuation. So why were the particle physicists not more accepting of the result?  Apparently particle physicists use more stringent cut offs in their work with p-values of 4×10^-7 being required for a “discovery”.   In the end, however, these figures don’t matter greatly as it is the relation between the new findings and prior knowledge that matters.  When a new finding is made, even if the experiment is supported by a strong p-value, if it goes against prior data then most scientists in the field will shrug their shoulders and wait for replication before getting too excited.

Let’s conclude by considering a potential problem in the scientific belief system.  Science proceeds by experiments that test hypotheses and gradually networks of beliefs (theories) arise.  As more data are found that are consistent with the theory, belief in the theory strengthens.  If data are found that disagree, then the theory should, in principle, be weakened.  Sometimes this weakening of belief does not work as it should because of the way people treat theories.   Within the life sciences there are large research groups and smaller research groups often working in the same field.  The larger groups often produce large numbers of papers and attain a preeminent status in the field.  Sometimes theories produced by these groups assume dominance and are awkward to dislodge.  It can even become difficult to publish data that disagree with the prevailing theory and there may be a reluctance to interpret data in terms of other frameworks.  Sometimes data that disagree with the dominant theory don’t get published at all.

Strong theories can also have insidious effects on the way experiments are performed and interpreted.  Sometimes when analysing data there can be a tendency for a researcher to reject data points that “don’t fit” and it is essential to avoid such bias.  It is for this reason that, where drugs are tested on humans, the randomised controlled trial is the only acceptable method.  This includes randomisation of subjects between, for example, control (placebo) and treatment groups.  Ideally, there should also be “blinding” where neither subject nor observer knows which group a subject is in and there should be enough subjects enrolled on the trial to eliminate chance effects.  This design provides a way to reduce bias to a minimum so that a fair appraisal of the effects of a drug can be obtained. 

The success of the randomised controlled trial system also depends on full disclosure of data.  So, for example if a pharmaceutical company performs ten trials on the effects of a new drug in different parts of the country, all of those trial data should be made public.  An editorial and associated papers in the British Medical Journal this week show that full disclosure of trial data is not occurring.  The results of many trials are not disclosed leading to deficits in knowledge.  This is a form of bias and in some cases leads to misleading conclusions (positive and negative) about the effects of a drug.

Lists – Don’t they make you sick?

Lists start to appear in UK newspapers in December, rather like migrating swallows in spring.  Let’s take two examples from the Guardian.  On December 10, the Weekend Magazine published a list of people who have achieved success at a very young age (Overachievers:  what it takes to be a bright young thing.).  There were playwrights, designers, novelists, directors, DJs, entrepreneurs but no scientists or engineers.  On December 16, The Women of the Year 2011 list appeared in the G2 section of the paper.  Politicians, sportswomen, actors, singers were rightly celebrated but no scientists or engineers were featured. 

Science and engineering are two important parts of our creative culture.  I find such casual neglect of these disciplines increasingly tiresome and I wrote a short note for the Weekend Magazine pointing out the omission.  I can only think that very little time is spent in compiling these lists (see below) and it is likely that the journalists involved are not scientists.  It’s all the more surprising in the Women of the Year category as a female scientist has already been singled out elsewhere for awards.  This is Jenny Rohn of University College London, who received the Achiever of the Year Award for setting up Science is Vital leading to a change in government policy on science funding.

The journalistic bias exposed by these lists is just another example of the “Two Cultures” that continue to pervade society in the UK.   We see it in education where children must begin to express preferences for humanities versus sciences from the age of 14.  University degrees in humanities subjects make little or no reference to science and vice versa.  Few science graduates enter politics or the media with the result that governments exhibit little understanding of science and reporting of science in the media is poor and often incorrect.   The outcome of this may be serious for public health, for public policy and for general understanding of science.  Unjustified fear spread by some papers about the MMR vaccine lead to a drop in herd immunity leaving some children at risk of measles infection.    Repeated stories, usually incorrect, about the cancer promoting or protecting properties of food substances must leave people bemused and untrusting.  The paucity of science reporting in quality papers such as the Guardian continues to surprise me.

It’s no good just moaning, however,we need to propose solutions.  The education system could be altered to allow less specialisation.  For students at senior school the International Baccalaureate provides a broader alternative to A levels and some schools are now offering this qualification.    Degree courses in humanities could include discussion of current scientific issues so that the methods used by scientists are more widely understood.  For science students, cross cultural teaching could focus on understanding the place of science in society and examining portrayals of science in literature.  More generally, scientists need to come out of their labs to explain the importance of their work, illustrate its creativity and its importance for society.

Let’s finish on a lighter note.  The Independent on Sunday newspaper in the UK publishes an annual Pink List.  In 2010 Peter Tatchell was number 7 in the list whereas he was surprisingly absent from the list in 2011.  It seems that he was omitted from the main list deliberately as he had been selected for a special award as “national treasure” alongside Stephen Fry and Sandi Toksvig.  In the end Tatchell was missing completely from any category because the post-it note with his name was shuffled in to the wrong pile and no one noticed.  It shows just how much trouble is taken in compiling these lists.