iblog

Virgil: We’ll all have come across flu at some point in our lives. Less commonly referred to as influenza, it is a dangerous virus that spreads during winter and causes as many as 1,000,000 deaths every year (4,000 in the UK). To combat this, most people are strongly encouraged to get an annual flu vaccination, and this demand sets drug companies into a manufacturing rush each winter. However, the problem for such companies is not so much the quantity as the quality of the drug; because the virus mutates over time, it needs to be constantly altered to fit the particular strain that is circulating.

It is for this same reason that people have to have the jab again and again to maintain immunity. This is of course expensive, as well as tedious for patients, resulting in many people simply not getting the jab at all. However a new vaccine produced by drug company Acambis hopes to be able to tackle all possible mutations of the most common form of the virus, Influenza A. The drug, appropriately named ACAM-FLU-A, works by targetting a particular protein named M2 that is present in all strains of flu. Previous drugs targetting different proteins showing up on only some of the strains.

In a limited human trial, 9 out of 10 patients developed lifelong immunity to flu, however Acambis scientists are now working to perfect the drug before larger human trials. Dr Michael Watson is very confident:

“As a universal vaccine, ACAM-FLU-A can potentially overcome many of the drawbacks of existing influenza vaccines. It can be manufactured at any time of the year, and could be stockpiled in advance of a pandemic or potentially used routinely to ensure population protection against future pandemics.”

It is the notion of a pandemic that scares most experts. Analysts claim that a pandemic of the human form of bird flu across the world is “inevitable”, and that when this arrives it could kill as many as 50,000,000 people. At this sort of scale, the “winter-only” drugs currently in use would be much less effective in stopping the virus, which would mutate as it moves around. But will the new lifelong jab prevent this kind of catastophe? Whilst it has the potential to immunise most of us to most types of flu we are likely to encounter, Professor Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading, states that “larger trials and tests on a wider range of viruses will be needed before the full potential for pandemic protection can be assured.”

Rushda: A new study has found that despite there being many benefits of low-energy lightbulbs in helping the environment, they can in fact be harmful to those with skin conditions by causing painful rashes to develop or worsen. Thousands of people are at risk if they have photosensitive skin problems.

Fluorescent bulbs, which use about a quarter of the energy of conventional bulbs, have long been marketed by the light industry as one of the major things we should all be switching to in order to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Furthermore, they are part of the government aim which is to stop the sale of ordinary bulbs by 2011 in order to meet its environment aims. This is all particularly worrying as there are more and more low-energy bulbs coming into use in the home and also in public places.

Many experts including British Association of Dermatologists has asked that the switch shouldn’t be made too hastily and people with such skin conditions must be able to continue to use ordinary bulbs and insist that their workplaces use them under the Disability Discrimination Act. After all, the problem is a serious one and it is estimated that 100,000 people in the UK with the condition will be affected in some way. However, representatives from the lighting industry say that there should be no need to carry on using conventional bulbs as they will now develop alternatives to fluorescent bulbs.

Dr Colin Holden, President of the British Association of Dermatologists, said:

“It is important that patients with photosensitive skin eruptions are allowed to use lights that don’t exacerbate their condition. It is essential that such patients are able to protect themselves from specific wavelengths of light emitted by fluorescent bulbs, especially as they are often trapped indoors because they can’t venture out in natural sunlight.”

For those who have long insisted that low energy bulbs are the ultimate way forward, this new piece of news puts them in a problematic position, especially considering that only recently it was announced that low-energy bulbs are bad in other ways, including causing migraines. It seems that as a nation we have become obsessed with saving the environment - at the expense of possible harm to ourselves.

Rushda: A scientist has recently claimed that men are naturally more prone to have a sense of humour because of the hormone testosterone. Professor Sam Shuster, of Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital conducted and examined studies of the behaviour of men and women in humorous situations to come to the conclusion that men not only tell more jokes than women but that their humour is more “aggressive” as well.

Shuster, who is also a unicyclist, conducted an experiment whereby he examined how different genders reacted to him performing his activity in public. He noted that whilst women were polite and encouraging, men jeered, using humour in a way to humiliate the unicyclist. For example, many men were abusive and said mocking things like, “Lost your wheel?” with 75% of the men responding to the show verbally whereas most women remained quiet. As Shuster remarks:

“The idea that unicycling is intrinsically funny does not explain the findings. The difference between the men and women was absolutely remarkable and consistent. At 11-13 years, the boys began to get really aggressive. Into puberty, the aggression became more marked, then it changed into a form of joke. The men were snide.”

As a woman, naturally I feel snubbed by the results of the study and find it a little misleading. Whilst it may be true that men are more aggressive than women, I don’t understand how it follows that they have a better sense of humour - surely the link isn’t so obvious! I would never have thought humour is anything to do with aggression, unless of course we are talking about the jokes told by drunken pub louts… but then, that isn’t really humour is it? The study is showing not how men use and react to humour but how perhaps important it is for them to look cool in front of other men and women! As such, I think that it is difficult to say who is really more humorous.

Jeanne: Elephants appear to be better at keeping tabs on family members than some humans, it seems. In a recent study, scientists found that elephants were able to use their absent relatives’ scent to keep track of their location despite the fact that these relatives were not present in the group at the time. The research was carried out by examining the behaviour of wild elephants in Kenya and provides further evidence to suggest that certain members of the animal kingdom may be more developed than previously believed.

Wild elephants often move in herds. However, they frequently leave the companionship of their pack and break off into smaller groups to compete with other elephants for good and grazing land. Elephants were shown samples of pack members’ urine and, in general, reacted with surprise when presented with the scent of a family member that they believed not to be in the area. Dr. Lucy Bates, one of the researchers involved in this study, elaborated on the phenomenon when speaking to the media:

“We reckoned that only if each elephant was continually updating its memory of where everyone was, and was able to identify specific individuals from their urine, would they show any different reaction to such cases.”

The elephants’ need to keep track of their fellow pack members has interesting parallels with human behaviour. Anybody with young children, for example, will know how difficult it can be to keep track of youngsters in a crowded area. As Dr. Richard Byrne of St. Andrews University comments:

“You think of a comparable human situation - perhaps a mum in the supermarket with three kids and a husband who’d rather be looking in the DIY section - keeping track of four or five people is really quite a strain. But our elephants are doing it in parties of 20 to 30 family members. It may be that where elephants really excel in memory is not remembering things for very long periods but in everyday working memory - where it is important to update and delete things rather than remember things forever.”

If only human parents could adopt a similar technique!

Kayleigh: The BBC has discovered that women are still having back street abortions even though they were made legal over 40 years ago.

A BBC undercover reporter posed as an illegal immigrant who was 6 weeks pregnant and went ‘for help’ to special Chinese herb shops in East London. One of the staff who worked at the Shanghai Herbal and Acupuncture Centre offered to help her. He said:

“If you see the bleeding come out, that’s fine, some people don’t. I need to call another company, from China, [they will] deliver it to here, you understand?”

He then sold her a drink for £40 so she would have a miscarriage.

Currently in the UK, an abortion is only legal up to 24 weeks. Some desperate women, often teenagers and younger women, feel they have to turn to illegal abortions to get the help they need. Professional private abortions can cost between £350 and £750, so you can imagine it can be difficult for some to find this kind of money.

Whilst I do not agree with illegal back street abortions, I do think the waiting list for abortions is far too long on the NHS and needs to be looked at. Abortion can be a traumatic experience for any woman to go through, and women shouldn’t have to feel they have to turn away from their healthcare service in order to get one.

Rushda: The secret behind the intelligence of famous curvy women such as Nigella Lawson may be in their curves. New research from the US has revealed the very interesting finding that curvy women are, on the whole, more intelligent than their waif-like counterparts. Not only that but they are even said to produce more intelligent offspring as well. Apparently the bigger the difference between a woman’s waist and her hips, the better.

During the study, 16,000 women and girls of varying degrees of voluptuousness were asked to take cognitive tests and the results were striking - the curvy women did better on the whole and so did their children. Evolutionary scientists believe that the result could possibly be explained by the fact that fatty acids found around the hips is most likely to be Omega-3 which has long been said to boost mental abilities.

I’m not sure to what certainty we can point to something abstract as intelligence as lying in particular fatty tissue. Many experts too feel that any result at this stage would be a little premature given all the different factors we need to take into account. For example Martin Tovee of Newcastle University says:

“On the fatty deposits being related to intelligence front, it’s very hard to detangle that from other factors, such as social class, for instance, or diet.”

No doubt curvy women will be very pleased to hear the findings of the study - not only have they long been shown to be the most attractive, now one is saying that they have the best beauty and brains.

Rushda: A huge international study based on lifestyle has recently found that body weight and eating habits strongly influence the risk of developing cancer. The new advice given by The World Cancer Research Fund, based on the “biggest study ever”, is that even if you are not overweight you could significantly lower your cancer risk by slimming down even more, and furthermore they also advise tough nutritional measures such as cutting out all bacon and ham from the diet altogether.

Before this study, the advice was always to stick to a moderate diet and stay within the healthy weight range (i.e. a Body Mass Index of between 18.5 and 25). However, experts now say that the closer you are to the lower end of the healthy spectrum, the better. Indeed, everyone should try and become as thin as possible without being underweight.

Though there is still much research to be done into the causes of cancer, it is important that everyone realises how much their lifestyle can affect their risk. Though only a third of all cancers are due to lifestyle conditions, following simple health advice could cut three million new cases of cancer across the world a year. As Professor Wiseman from the research group says:

“Cancer is not a fate, it is a matter of risk, and you can adjust those risks by how you behave. It is very important that people feel that they are in control of what they do.”

A more comprehensive list of advice is given below:

1. Reduce red meat consumption.
2. Drink less alcohol.
3. Avoid all processed meats - including bacon, ham, salami, etc.
4. Avoid fizzy drinks.
5. Stay as thin as possible without becoming underweight.
6. Exercise every day.
7. Breastfeed children.

Subsequent to the results of the study, many have protested that the radical advice given by scientists is progressively becoming more and more difficult to manage and hence quite ridiculous. However, it is clear that the evidence given is not simply a case of “scaremongering” but supported by compelling reasons. Indeed the experts say that their new list is simply recommendations rather than commandments. And personally, most of the recommendations seem very reasonable if not also obvious. Whether anyone acts on it is a different matter, but it makes sense that a healthy diet will always promote a healthier lifestyle - and hence reduce the risk of fatal disease.

Rushda: It’s official: organic food really is better than non-organic food. A new study funded by the European Union has found startling differences between the nutritional content of the two types. The study which cost £12m and lasted four years is the biggest ever study into organic foods and it has found that not only is organic food “more nutritious” than ordinary produce but eating it may actually lengthen people’s lives. It is hoped that these results will finally settle the long debate over whether organic food really is what government calls “a lifestyle choice” or actually something scientifically shown to be better for you.

The research found that organic fruits and vegetables contain as much as 40% more antioxidants than ordinary food. Antioxidants have long been known to protect against killer diseases such as cancer and heart disease. Not only that but they also have higher levels of important minerals such as iron and zinc. In fact, head researcher on the project Professor Carlo Leifert said that the difference was so great that eating organic would even compensate for not eating the five recommended portions of fruits and vegetables a day. He says:

“If you have just 20% more antioxidants and you can’t get your kids to do five a day, then you might just be okay with four a day.”

Furthermore, the study has also found that even in milk, the antioxidants from organic herds were up to 90% higher than milk from ordinary herds.

These results show that the government was most likely wrong when it claimed that there was no significant effect of having organic foods. Now the Food Standards Agency has confirmed that it is reviewing the above evidence before considering changing its official advice to consumers.

Rushda: Pro-lifers will be dismayed to hear that Health Minister Dawn Primarolo recently defended the current regulations that abortions are permissible up till 24 weeks, saying there is no scientific evidence to lower this upper limit. The issue has once again become a hot topic, as many are angry at how women who have been pregnant for 6 months can still be allowed to abort their babies at such a late stage.

One of the key reasons for keeping the limit as it is, according to the British Medical Association, is that the number of babies capable of surviving at 24 weeks is “extremely small.” Any change in abortion laws is most likely to consider medical advances rather than moral issues, and so there is no reason, according to the Health Minister, to lower the limit at this stage. As she explains:

“The medical consensus still indicates that whilst improvements have been made in care that at the moment that concept of viability cannot constantly be pushed back.”

And when she was criticised by Conservative MP Nadine Dorries, a former nurse, for not having a fair view towards the act and being far too committed to the liberalisation of abortion, she said that the Department of Health are not supporting delayed abortions and that if they are to be done, the quicker the better. However, she maintains any bid to lower the limit, also saying:

“I am not here to discuss my personal views. I’m here as the minister to answer the questions the committee puts to me about the information the department has.”

Ms Dorries also asked the Health Minister:

“If the evidence shows that a foetus could feel pain at 20 weeks or less, would the department consider altering its guidelines or making amendments to the Act?”

However, no specific response has been given to this question except that research would still be continued. Needless to say, many people will be disappointed with what could be described as a very dogmatic stance on such a controversial issue. It certainly seems that there are very few considerations which would cause the regulations of the Act to change in the less liberal direction. In fact, recent news suggests the opposite: that MPs are planning the “most extensive liberalisation of abortion laws for 40 years” by allowing women to have abortions with one doctor’s signature rather than two and performing the second stage of the medical termination at home rather than in hospital.

Rushda: New research from the US into how we recognise others’ emotions has found some remarkable things about human psychology. Apparently we are more sensitive to noticing fear than happiness as a look of horror will grab our attention many times quicker than a smile.

The study, which was conducted at Vanderbilt University in the US and published in the journal Emotion, examined volunteers, found that fear is the emotion we pick up on the quicker than any other feeling such as joy. Furthermore, what is even more interesting is that this result remained the same even when volunteers were shown pictures of faces where only the eyes were showing, which means we are very perceptive when it comes to subtle facial changes. Indeed, it has been found that the brain responds to facial expressions at the rate of less than 40 milliseconds.

The researchers believe that the results about detecting fear were as anticipated and can easily be explained by how we evolved to make instant decisions in life threatening situations. Smiles signal safety so they do not require immediate attention in the same way. As Dr David Zald, associate professor of psychology at the institution, explains:

“We believe that the brain can detect certain cues even before we are aware of them, so that we can direct our attention to potentially threatening situations in our environment.”

Now the team will be doing research on how we respond to other emotions such as anger to find out the bigger picture.