Story of Impact - NYAS

A global scientific publishing initiative follows the philosophy of the Millennium Development Goals by tackling poverty from all angles

Published September 1, 2007

By Leslie Taylor

For the last decade, a technological marvel, has been saving lives in sub-Saharan Africa. It has no bells and whistles, no microprocessors or moving parts. It is a simple piece of insecticide-treated netting.

Bed nets made from this material remain effective deterrents against mosquitoes for three to five years. Donors, governments, and community leaders have embraced the low-tech tool as a valuable public health intervention and frequently hand out nets during immunization campaigns and antenatal clinics. About $5 buys a net that will shield two children from mosquitoes as they sleep—an incredibly effective means of preventing malaria, a disease that kills more than 1 million people a year.

The nets are a great example of what can be achieved when the scientific and development communities work together to identify needs and implement new ideas, says John McArthur, who was deputy director of the United Nations Millennium Project and is now associate director of the Center for Globalization and Sustainable Development at Columbia University’s Earth Institute. To put life-saving technology in the hands of the people it is designed to benefit requires the cooperative efforts of scientists, policy makers, and the communities they hope to serve, he says.

A Different Publish-Perish Paradigm

That philosophy of partnership underpins the Millennium Development Goals, which aim to achieve target levels of world-wide nutrition, health, literacy, and environmental sustainability that were set at the Millennium Summit in September 2000. It is also at the heart of a new program called Scientists Without Borders SM that was co-conceived by The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) and the U.N. Millennium Project. And now a massive cooperative effort in the interest of global development is taking place among scientific publishers.

This year, halfway to the 2015 deadline that world leaders set for achieving the Millennium Development Goals, 230 science journals worldwide will simultaneously publish papers or special editions on the topic of poverty and human development. Publications participating in the Council of Science Editors initiative include wide-circulation journals such as Science and Nature and more specialized volumes such as the African Journal of Drug and Alcohol Studies, the Chinese Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, and the Wisconsin Medical Journal.

The Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences will publish a volume titled Reducing the Impact of Poverty on Health and Human Development: Scientific Approaches.

A Multidisciplinary Approach

The Annals volume, edited by Stephen Kaler and Owen Rennert of the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, takes a multidisciplinary look at the issues facing the world’s poor. Chapters address public health issues in the developing world as well as specific diseases associated with poverty, such as tuberculosis, malaria, HIV/AIDS, lymphatic filiariasis, and hookworm. Other chapters discuss the poor’s access to health care services, education, proper nutrition, and housing.

The volume will highlight diverse areas of research. It will include a paper on measles by Samuel L. Katz, chairman emeritus of pediatrics at Duke University, who was awarded the 2007 Pollin Prize in recognition of his contributions to pediatric infectious disease research and vaccine development; a paper titled “Sustainable Transfer of Biotechnology to Developing Countries,” by Eva Harris, who used the money from her 1997 MacArthur “Genius” Fellowship to establish the Sustainable Sciences Institute, an organization that helps scientists around the world gain access to state-of-the-art training and equipment; and a paper by Nobel Laureate James J. Heckman, professor of economics at The University of Chicago, about the consequences of poverty for human skill formation.

Poverty Is a Many-Stranded Problem

Bashir Jama, author of “Agriculture in Developing Nations,” a paper in the upcoming Annals volume, spent 19 years with the International Centre for Research in Agroforestry before becoming a policy advisor to a U.N. Development Program group working on poverty and the Millennium Goals. He says it’s very difficult to tease apart the problems of poverty and address any single factor in isolation. Agriculture is inextricably linked to health, he says.

For instance, malaria and other tropical diseases can impede worker productivity in farming communities, resulting in reduced crop yields, followed by hunger, and increased vulnerability to disease.

And illiteracy can be an obstacle to heartier harvests. Training in new farm techniques or agriculture technologies can’t be distributed in writing to farmers who can’t read, he notes. Instead, non-governmental organizations and governments must offer in-person training or demonstration farms.

“As scientists we have fairly good knowledge of the ecology and the technical issues that are slowing down progress or that can enhance production,” says Jama. “But giving people the skills they need when they live in remote areas—in areas with limited energy supplies, no electricity or clean water—is challenging.”

Within select communities known as Millennium Villages, networks of scientists with diverse areas of expertise work with residents to address the intertwining issues of agricultural productivity, health, education, and access to markets. Projects to increase food yields and improve access to education and health services coincide with initiatives to improve village infrastructure—roads, sanitation, communication technology, and energy. Villagers are also given advice on enterprise diversification and environmental management.

Leverage Existing Technologies

Residents of the 12 Millennium Villages in 10 African countries have seen tremendous improvements in quality of life since the project started, Jama says. “In one or two growing seasons we’ve seen incredible increases in agricultural productivity, phenomenal decreases in hunger, improved health with a reduction in malaria and waterborne diseases, and safe drinking water becoming available,” he says.

Successes at the Millennium Village sites were not the result of exclusive breakthrough technologies, but came about because experts in a variety of fields took action to supply villagers with a range of basic technologies, such as fertilizer, medication, and water purification systems. “We have the basic know-how,” says John McArthur. “The question in the immediate term is how to mobilize existing technologies.”

Frequently, technologies created for another purpose or discovered in the course of pure research can be greatly beneficial. “It’s a matter of adapting good technologies that may exist in other countries,” says Bashir Jama.

Seemingly uncomplicated technology can have a dramatic impact. For example, the treadle pump—an inexpensive, simple- to-operate, foot-powered pump that can draw water from a well or spring—has revolutionized farmers’ ability to grow food during the dry season. “It’s a good example of a situation where, if the investment is there, it could really increase irrigation, and improve income and nutrition,” says Jama.

Energy and Resource Use

Improved cook stove technologies have also done much to improve the lives of the poor, according to Daniel Kammen, a professor in the Energy and Resources Group at University of California, Berkeley, who contributed a paper titled “Energy & Resource Use in Developing Countries” to the new Annals volume. Respiratory illnesses are one of the biggest health problems in the developing world, where most people typically cook using very simple fires—burning wood or dung on just a few stones. “Making stoves more efficient has actually cut down on one of the leading causes of illnesses worldwide,” he says.

Kammen, who is also founding director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory, an organization that focuses on designing, testing, and disseminating renewable and appropriate energy systems, has seen how the timely application of technology can transform communities. His group works on projects such as promoting sustainable biomass energy management in Zimbabwe, evaluating the performance of single junction amorphous silicon modules used in photovoltaic systems in Kenya, and creating new technologies such as the UV-Tube—an inexpensive and easy-to-use household water disinfection device that uses ultraviolet light to inactivate pathogens.

While each country has slightly different needs, Kammen explains, in most parts of the developing world the basic issues are the same. “There’s a lack of access to clean water, a lack of electricity to do things like read at night or run a business, and a lack of access to education,” he says. “There are some constants, and those mean you can work pretty hard on a project in one country and it’s likely to be useful to people in many other parts of the world. It’s not like a solution you develop in Mozambique is only useful there.”

Create New Technologies

For problems of the poor that do not yet have technological solutions, scientists have found new ways to obtain funding to do the research they hope will ultimately alleviate suffering.

Peter Hotez, editor-in-chief of a soon-to-launch Public Library of Science journal called Neglected Tropical Diseases, wrote a paper about hookworm for the Annals volume. He is president of the Sabin Vaccine Institute, a nonprofit organization that works to provide the world’s poorest people with access to low-cost, safe vaccines and drug treatments for neglected tropical diseases—13 parasitic and bacterial infections that produce chronic and disabling conditions. Many people have not heard of the diseases—including scariasis, hookworm infection, trichuriasis, lymphatic filariasis, onchocerciasis, schistosomiasis, and trachoma—but they are devastating.

“Neglected tropical diseases are one of the primary reasons why poor people remain poor. In some ways [what they do to a person] is worse than death,” says Hotez. “They destroy quality of life and are one of the major reasons we have poor economic development in Africa and elsewhere. These are the diseases that are keeping people mired in this horrible cycle of destitution and despair.”

Yet, until recently, little attention was paid to these scourges. While the private sector has been willing to invest money in research that might lead to an AIDS vaccine, for which there is still a substantial market in the U.S. and Europe, “There’s no way you could ever make a profit on a hookworm vaccine,” says Hotez.

Vaccines and Medication

Thankfully, the Human Hookworm Vaccine Initiative, a public development partnership sponsored by the Sabin Vaccine Institute with major funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, is working to develop and disseminate an effective, safe, and low-cost vaccine. “It’s a unique model for making a product for people who can’t afford to pay for it,” Hotez says.

While the vaccine is not yet ready to be distributed, the Global Network for Tropical Disease Control, a program of the Sabin Institute, distributes a “rapid impact” package of medication that includes four anti-parasitic drugs to treat seven neglected diseases. The health kit, which costs only 50 cents per person per year, greatly reduces rates of morbidity, blindness, and skin disease. Yet it is only a short-term solution because diseases such as hookworm have high rates of transmission and re-infection, Hotez explains.

“Millennium development goal number six is ‘to control and fight HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases.’ We feel we can make an impact right now in the ‘other diseases’ category,” he says.

Questions of Investment: Time and Money

While sufficient will and technologies are available to raise the standard of living in the developing world, funding is a primary barrier to success. Too little money is devoted to the cause, and there is no consensus about how the money that is devoted should be spent, experts say.

“A rule of thumb, which varies a little by country and by need, is that it takes a basic investment of about $110 per person per year to achieve the goals outlined in the Millennium Development Project,” says John McArthur. “Right now there is, on average, $25 per person in foreign aid going into these places. That needs to be scaled up two- or three-fold by 2015. There’s not enough money getting to where it needs to go, and a greater share needs to go to practical technologies, like long lasting insecticide-treated bed nets, fertilizer, or drilling bore wells.”

The Need for Collaboration

Bashir Jama worries that, too frequently, what scientists have discovered about issues of development is not being incorporated into national, regional, and global programs. “Decisions are made in a vacuum as though science doesn’t exist,” he says. “Donors, international governments, the policy makers need to take advantage of this knowledge and to link up better with scientists in designing systems that work.”

At the same time, it is important for scientists to make the effort to collaborate with policy makers and with one another in the fight against poverty, suggests Hotez, sharing this quote from Dr. Albert Sabin, the inventor of the polio vaccine, after whom the Sabin Institute is named: “A scientist who is also a human being cannot rest while knowledge which might reduce suffering rests on the shelf.”

Also read: Scientists Step into New Roles to End Poverty

About the Author

Leslie Taylor is associate editor of Update and of the Academy’s online public gateway, Science & the City.

The Evolution of an Environmental Scientist

Rosina M. Bierbaum was always mindful of pollution and other environmental matters growing up in Pennsylvania, so perhaps it’s no surprise that she made a career of it.

Published September 1, 2007

By Rosina M. Bierbaum, as told to Abigail Jeffries

I grew up in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, a steel town, as the middle of five children. We lived only two blocks from the main steel plant, so I was exposed to air pollution issues from a very early age. Particulates in the air coated our cars and windowsills every day, so my siblings and I were constantly dusting! This was before the Clean Air Act.

At age 11 my interest in the environment blossomed when I read Rachel Carson’s other book, The Sea Around Us. I became very concerned about the preservation of aquatic and marine ecosystems. My father’s boat store afforded me many opportunities to study the Pocono Mountain lakes, and increasing signs of pollution worried me.

My ninth grade biology teacher was my first mentor, and a real gem. She arranged for students to work in local college labs on weekends. We studied Drosophila genetics, synthesized aspirin, and tried not to explode things; I really got hooked on science.

After taking an ecology summer course at LaSalle College at age 14, I entered—and won!—local and national science fairs with projects examining how irradiation affected the interaction of algae and bacteria. Using a meat sterilization lamp in my grandfather’s butcher store, I discovered that there were some antibiotic properties in the algae Chlorella that were destroyed by ultraviolet radiation. I went on to major in both biology and English at Boston College and pursued a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology at SUNY, Stony Brook.

A Shift to the Science-Policy World

By then, my career goal was to conduct research on marine invertebrates in a beautiful coastal setting for the rest of my life. But one of my many mentors, Dr. Bentley Glass, admonished me to participate in the science-policy world. Since I didn’t even read a daily newspaper then, he essentially embarrassed me into applying for a Congressional fellowship, which I, somewhat unhappily at the time, won. So, I left the ivory tower, but what an epiphany awaited!

In those 20 subsequent years working for the Congress and then the White House, I learned that science is not the loudest voice, that civic scientists must be ready to translate the relevance of technical information to whatever policy issue is urgent, and that one must ensure scientists are at the table when decisions about budgets, treaties, policies, and regulations are made. Economists and lawyers were routinely consulted, but it took some persistence to ensure scientists became part of the group of usual suspects.

I left my position as acting director of the White House Science Office in 2001 to return to academia to train the next generation of environmental leaders in the way I wish I had been educated when I went to DC— not just to know a narrow slice of science but to be able to speak the languages of economics, policy, law, engineering, and negotiation.

That’s my mission now, to combine social sciences, natural sciences, and design in an integrated education to enable tomorrow’s leaders to achieve a sustainable planet.

Also read: The Environmental Impact of ‘Silent Spring’

About the Authors

Rosina M. Bierbaum is the Dean of the School of Natural Resources and Environment at the University of Michigan. She holds a Ph.D. in Ecology and Evolution from the State University of New York, Stony Brook and has been a member of the Academy since 2000.

Abigail Jeffries is a freelance science and health reporter living in Tolland, CT.

Using Hydropower to Empower Sustainable Communities

A shot taken of Roosevelt Island, the relatively small strip of land between Manhattan and Queens in NYC.

Academy member Trey Taylor, co-founder and president of Verdant Power, believes that underwater turbines that convert flowing water into electricity augur the future of energy production.

Published May 1, 2007

By Adelle Caravanos

Roosevelt Island. Image courtesy of Tierney via stock.adobe.com.

Trey Taylor is in the business of sharing ideas. The co-founder and president of Verdant Power, LLC, a sustainable energy company, has built a career around assessing market forces, bringing together the best and brightest minds in a field, and passionately working for a cause. Most recently, that cause has been renewable energy, in the form of hydropower.

Taylor’s eclectic and varied background gives new meaning to “more than the sum of its parts.” His knack for storytelling and talent for explaining complex ideas betray his years of studying history and political science at Portland State University and graduate work in urban education at the University of Minnesota.

But more than anything, it is Taylor’s skill at recognizing the needs of a market—and the means by which to fill them—that has propelled him through a successful career marketing for such large multinational corporations as Procter & Gamble, ITT Corporation, and British Telecom. Transitioning from marketing to advertising, Taylor became a master at networking while serving as director of advertising for some of the country’s largest trade associations: the American Council of Life Insurers, the Health Insurance Association of America, and the Edison Electric Institute (EEI).

A Hydropower Epiphany

While at EEI, the trade association of investor-owned utilities, Taylor began thinking about how new, computer-based technologies were creating an increased need for electricity. The deregulation of electrical utilities at that time meant no more power plants were likely to be built. This sparked his interest in renewable energy, and in discovering sources that hadn’t been tapped to the extent that they could be.

It was an “ah ha!” moment for Taylor. He says, “After realizing that more than a third of the world’s population didn’t have access to electricity, but lived near some form of moving water—one of the greatest untapped renewable energy sources in the world—I formed a company to commercialize technological concepts for converting kinetic hydropower to electricity.”

In 2000, Taylor co-founded Verdant Power and brought together a team of engineers and scientists to design turbines for placement in rivers and tidal estuaries where they could harness the power of flowing water. Unlike traditional hydropower technologies such as dams, underwater turbines which local communities can easily install. This was the case for Verdant’s first customer, New York City’s Roosevelt Island.

Exceeding Expectations

With support from various state and local groups, Verdant runs the Roosevelt Island Tidal Energy (RITE) project, which relies on a field of water turbines to convert the kinetic energy of the East River to electricity for the island.

In December 2002, the output of Verdant’s first turbine there exceeded expectations, producing an average power output of 14.5 kilowatts per hour. “That single turbine produced 8,000 kilowatt hours per month, delivered to a Gristedes supermarket,” Taylor says. “Now you start looking at the math: What if you had 300 turbines? It’s pretty cool!”

In early April, Verdant Power installed four additional turbines for Roosevelt Island that will provide electricity not only to the supermarket, but also to a parking garage, where hybrid electric buses will plug into tidal power. The company will conduct an 18-month environmental study of the turbines to gather empirical evidence demonstrating that the turbines are not harming fish that pass through the area. A concurrent operational test has several goals, two of which are to optimize the manufacturing of the next generation of turbines and to expand the Roosevelt Island field.

A Hybrid Renewable Future

Taylor is excited to expand Verdant’s work on the island, and eventually to other sites in the United States and around the world. He foresees hybrid renewable energy systems consisting of complementary uses of wind, solar and hydropower, along with fuel cells. “Therein lies the answer for the future of energy production in the world. We can start getting these systems right, and then integrating them in really cost-effective ways,” Taylor predicts.

Taylor now divides his time between Verdant Power’s offices on Roosevelt Island, Washington, DC, and Toronto. He and his team are exploring the installation of turbines in the Saint Lawrence River and are working with the Brazilian government to bring the technology to rural villages in the Amazon basin. Additionally, the company is looking into prototypes for use in man-made canals such as the 11,000 miles of irrigation channels in California.

The possibilities for new applications and hybrid integration are what fuel the company. But for Taylor, the picture is even bigger: “What I get excited about is the new thinking, not only among academicians but also other entrepreneurs. It’s the mass collaboration, open source energy, all these ideas come pouring in for applications and problem solving,” he says. “It’s a different way of looking at electric energy production than the old utility mind-think—the idea of powering and empowering sustainable communities.”

Also read: Sustainable Development for a Better Tomorrow

About the Author

Adelle Caravanos is a freelance science writer based in Queens, New York.

Exploring the Science of Haute Cuisine

French chemist Hervé This is a founder of the field of molecular gastronomy which uses the tools of science to explore the methodology and mechanisms of the culinary arts.

Published March 1, 2007

By Adelle Caravanos

Image courtesy of NORN via stock.adobe.com.

Students in introductory chemistry courses are taught one important and seemingly obvious rule: Do not eat in the laboratory. But for French chemist Hervé This, eating in the lab is the whole point.

This (pronounced “Teese”) is one of the founders of the field of molecular gastronomy, the application of science to culinary knowledge and practice. Along with physicist Nicholas Kurti and science writer Harold McGee, This was among the first to use the tools of science to explore the methodology and mechanisms of the culinary arts.

This will speak at The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) on April 10, as part of the Science of Food series. Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor, his first book available in English, was published in September 2006.

It Started with a Soufflé

While preparing a Roquefort cheese soufflé for friends one Sunday in March 1980, This—then an editor at Pour la Science, the French edition of Scientific American—stopped at a line in an ELLE magazine recipe that called for adding eggs two-by-two. Why two-by-two? This wondered. With his scientific curiosity piqued, This tempted the fate of the dinner by adding all the eggs at once—resulting in a dish that was “edible,” but lacked the signature pouf of a perfectly prepared soufflé.

When another party of friends called the following Sunday, This repeated his informal experiment, this time adding the eggs one at a time. Pour la Science did without its editor the following day, as This stayed home to tinker with the recipe and postulate about the precisions, or old wives’ tales, which peppered this, and many other recipes, of France’s haute cuisine.

Since that day, This has collected more than 25,000 of these precisions, with the admittedly lofty goal of putting each one to the test. He continued experimenting in his home laboratory (otherwise known as his kitchen) and in 1986 met Kurti, a physicist at Oxford who shared the same passion for science and cooking. The two began collaborating almost immediately, writing papers and hosting a series of meetings in Erice, Sicily, which were attended by the few active researchers in the newly created field of molecular and physical gastronomy, including McGee and biochemist Shirley Corriher.

In 1995, This was awarded the first PhD in molecular and physical gastronomy, and he took a part-time position in Nobel Laureate Jean-Marie Lehn’s chemistry lab at the Collège de France. Five years later, he quit his day job at Pour la Science to work as a full-time researcher at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA).

Rules are meant to be challenged

The French culinary method, viewed by gastronomes as close to perfect in its practice, is rife with detailed recipes and long lists of instructions, many of which seem almost silly. To this day, the same set of traditions that calls for cooking green beans uncovered (lest they turn blue in the pan) predicts that a menstruating woman cannot get mayonnaise to emulsify. With assistance from his wife, This debunked both tenets.

This breaks the old wives’ tales into four categories: “Some precisions seem wrong and they are wrong; some seem wrong and they are true; some seem true and they are wrong; and some seem true and they are true.” He says, “I’m most interested in ‘right’ precisions that seem ‘wrong’.” For example, one particular precision instructs a chef preparing a suckling pig to immediately cut off the animal’s head after cooking, to preserve the coveted crackling skin. Although this traditional advice seemed misguided to This, his experiments showed that the pig skin indeed softens if left on the body (due to a layer of water vapor that cannot escape unless the skin is cut).

It Takes a Kitchen-full

As This’s list of old wives’ tales grew longer, he decided to enlist the help of both the culinary and the scientific communities. He began challenging his friend, world-renowned chef Pierre Gagnaire, to create recipes using some of the precisions. These monthly challenges led to a series of more than 60 collaborative molecular gastronomy seminars in Paris.

For each meeting, sponsored by the INRA, scientists, chefs, and students are given a culinary precision in advance (for example: Is it true that omelets become dry when they are over-whipped? And what does “dry” exactly mean?). At the seminar, participants perform preliminary observations and experiments, and decide on protocol and methodology to be used to conduct more controlled tests at home. The attendees reconvene a month later to share their results and reach a consensus on the accuracy and practicality of the precision.

Learning a New Language

Often, the participants at This’s seminars find that it is not the results, but the interpretations, that demand further study. On one occasion, Gagnaire explained to This that when French chefs make wine sauce with butter, they are taught not to whip the ingredients. According to the grand master, shaking the pan ensures the sauce will be “brilliant.”

“Even when Pierre is telling something to me, I do not trust him, technically. I trust nobody, I have to check,” This says. So the chemist set up an experiment to test the preparation methods, and found that visually, the sauces looked no different. But looking at the mixtures through a microscope, he observed that when the sauce was whipped, the melted butter droplets were very tiny.

The reverse occurred with shaking: larger droplets formed. He worked on a calculation, relating the distribution and size of the fat droplets to the energy transferred to the pan. The difference was clear: “Brilliance” is not a visual quality, but a description of the flavor (which is affected by the distribution of the fat in the sauce).

“I know that chefs very frequently use some words to describe taste, not appearance,” This says. “So probably, Pierre has seen an effect, but the words are wrong. [Chefs] can discover very minute effects that we scientists have to interpret.”

The Science and the Practice

This is careful to note the difference between molecular gastronomy—a science—and its various applications, which include molecular cooking, note-by-note cooking, and culinary constructivism. By his own admission, This is not a chef, although he aspires to change the way people cook around the globe. “Cooking in the next century will have nothing to do with cooking today,” predicts this.

“We are sending probes to Mars,” but we have yet to discover the secrets of soup stocks, says This. For him, the stock pot is the final frontier.

About Hervé This

Hervé This is a physical chemist at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research (INRA) and author of Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor (Columbia University Press, 2006.) He will speak at the Academy on April 10 as part of the Science of Food series.

Also read: Better Data Means Better Food

Organic Morality: Our Intuitive Inheritance

That graphic in the shape of a human brain.

In a new book, the Harvard evolutionary psychologist argues that all humans share an innate sense of right and wrong.

Published March 1, 2007

By Laura Buchholz

Image courtesy of Who Is Danny via stock.adobe.com.

You are in control of a switch at a railroad station. An empty out-of-control train is racing toward five people walking on the tracks. It will hit and kill them unless you pull a lever to switch the train to another track—but there it will kill one person standing on the track. Do you pull the lever? Why? Or why not?

You are an emergency room doctor. Five of your patients urgently need organ transplants in order to live. In the waiting room is a healthy young man with all of the organs necessary to save these five people. Would you sacrifice the life of the man to save your five patients? Why? Or why not?

If you answered “yes” in one case and “no” in the other, what is the difference between the two cases?

Marc D. Hauser, professor of psychology, organismic and evolutionary biology, and biological anthropology at Harvard University, explores how we answer questions like these in his new book, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong. On January 11, 2007, as part of The New York Academy of Sciences’ (the Academy’s) Readers & Writers series, Hauser explained that moral decision-making may not flow entirely from experience and education, but instead may have a significant biological aspect that has been shaped, like all human traits, by the forces of evolution.

Instinctive Morality

“We are endowed with a moral faculty evolved to generate intuitive judgments of right and wrong,” says Hauser, adding that the principles underlying those intuitive judgments are unconscious, and therefore, may be immune to cultural influence. In other words, Hauser suggests that the influence of Sunday school may pale in comparison to the effect of thousands of years of genetic programming.

Hauser, who directs the Cognitive Evolution Laboratory at Harvard, collects some of his evidence from the Moral Sense Test—a Web site his lab developed, presenting visitors with “artificial dilemmas” designed to test their moral instincts. Working with a data set of responses from 250,000 subjects from 120 different countries, with ages ranging between 13 and 70, and inclusive of all varieties of religion, Hauser’s lab finds some patterns emerging.

Hauser identifies three principles of automatic moral reasoning that transcend religion, geography, age, and culture. The first is the Intention Principle: That is, most people judge it morally worse when harm is intended as a means to an end as compared with when an equivalent harm is foreseen but as a side effect. When Joe intentionally hits John we tend to hold him more responsible than when Joe strikes an object with the foreseen consequence that this object will fall and hit John. According to Hauser, the Intention Principle operates at an unconscious level: When people judge based on this principle, they are not able to say why they made the judgment.

The second principle Hauser calls the Action Principle, and it states that harm caused by action is worse than exactly the same harm caused by omission.

Consider Two Scenarios:

#1: A man intends to kill his young nephew, who stands to inherit all the family wealth. The uncle goes up to the bathroom where the boy is taking a bath, and drowns the boy in the tub.

#2: A man intends to kill his young nephew, who stands to inherit all the family wealth. The uncle goes up to the bathroom where the boy is taking a bath, and finds the nephew drowning face-down in the tub. The man does not intervene, and lets the boy drown.

The effect is the same, but would a jury find the uncle guilty of murder in the second scenario? Probably not. This principle is available at a conscious level, says Hauser, and may explain why societies generally find active euthanasia more morally troubling than passive euthanasia.

Third is the Contact Principle, which states that harm caused by contact is morally worse than equivalent harm caused by non-contact (e.g., when we hit someone vs. seeing an object fly across a room and hit somebody—or the difference between the two introductory scenarios). This third principle is partially available to human consciousness—about half and half, says Hauser.

Remarkably, Hauser notes that subjects who described themselves as highly religious delivered the same judgments as those who said they were not at all religious. These observations suggest that the system that unconsciously generates moral judgments is immune to religious doctrine. But what does this have to do with biology? Hauser draws a parallel between what he calls our “universal moral grammar” and Noam Chomsky’s linguistic theory of universal grammar.

Judgment and Emotions

In Chomsky’s concept, a child knows, in an unconscious sense, the set of principles for all the world’s languages, and the environment feeds her the sound patterns of the native language. Hauser contends that morality is similarly innate. But what are the neural underpinnings of moral judgment? Is there a dissociation between how we judge and how we act? And how did this system evolve?

Hauser points out that people with brain damage in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) have some problems with moral judgments, suggesting that this area may play a part in our evolved moral machinery. People with damage in this area, says Hauser, tended to judge in a more utilitarian manner when faced with personal moral dilemmas involving conflict between aversive actions (hitting someone) and positive gains (saving the lives of many). When faced with less personal or nonmoral dilemmas, their judgments are similar to those of people in control groups.

This suggests that people with damage to the vmPFC have largely preserved capacities to judge in both non-moral and moral situations, but for a selective class of moral dilemmas, they are strict utilitarians. As this region of prefrontal cortex is known to be involved in mediating the relationship between emotional processing and decision making, it seems possible that morality may have evolved in tandem with the emotions, perhaps a fortuitous advance for those who would reap the protective benefits of life in a group.

We Can’t Help It

“Understanding the biology of moral judgment will not dictate what we ought to do,” concedes Hauser, pointing to a split between a description of our judgments and a prescription of how we should act or how we actually act. (Go ahead, have another cookie, says a small invisible voice. And your hand reaches out …) But what it can do is to help societies craft policies that do not violate this universal, intuitive code. “If a law is not sensitive to our intuitive psychology,” says Hauser, “it will never go anywhere.”

How different societies deal with euthanasia illustrates how our intuitive principles interact—and sometimes conflict—with policy. In the case of euthanasia, most medical boards agree that it is better simply to withhold treatment than to be an active participant in the death of a patient. However, says Hauser, Belgium and the Netherlands no longer support a distinction between active and passive euthanasia. Nevertheless, there still exists in those countries a bias towards passive rather than active euthanasia.

In this case, says Hauser, “the law does not penetrate intuitive psychology, even though permission is explicit in the culture.” Hauser is hopeful that his findings will do more than help us craft better laws. “Appreciating the fact that we share a universal moral grammar, and that at birth we could have acquired any of the world’s moral systems, should provide us with a sense of comfort, a sense that perhaps we can understand each other. Deep in our past we might find some hints to our moral state and perhaps to our future.”

About Marc D. Hauser

Marc D. Hauser is professor of psychology, organismic and evolutionary biology, and biological anthropology at Harvard University, and is co-director of Harvard’s Mind, Brain, and Behavior program. His previous books include The Evolution of Communication (MIT); Wild Minds: What Animals Really Think (Henry Holt); and The Design of Animal Communication (with Mark Konishi) (MIT). His new book, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong, is published by HarperCollins.

Also read: National Security, Neuroscience and Bioethics

National Security, Neuroscience and Bioethics

In his book Mind Wars, bioethicist Jonathan Moreno tells why the defense industry is interested in new discoveries in neuroscience. He explores why the defense department funds brain research, and what scientists should do about it.

Published November 27, 2006

By Adrienne J. Burke

Image courtesy of metamorworks via stock.adobe.com.

Jonathan Moreno was first exposed to brain research as a child. He was 10 when two dozen subjects arrived at the 20-acre sanitorium run by his father, a distinguished psychiatrist, who would observe the effects of LSD on the group.

Little wonder that Moreno has spent a career thinking about the ethics of medical research. As a Professor of Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia, and Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics there, Moreno has penned books including In the Wake of Terror: Medicine and Morality in a Time of Crisis; Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans; Ethical and Regulatory Aspects of Clinical Research; and Deciding Together: Bioethics and Moral Consensus.

Lately, his curiosity has been piqued by the attention that the defense department pays to brain research. His new book, Mind Wars: Brain Research and National Defense, explores the possible national security implications that stem from high-tech neuroscience, and reveals how much of it is funded by defense dollars.

Moreno urges neuroscientists to consider all of the possible applications and misapplications of their work, and to engage in the policymaking process.

The Academy spoke with Moreno in advance of his November 28, 2006 lecture.

You say that in 2006, most Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) funding has gone to brain-related work.

Much, I wouldn’t say most, but much. It’s clear that DARPA has an interest in neuroscience, which they should.

As you point out, DARPA funding has resulted in great technologies for the public good. What are the problems, risks, or ethical dilemmas with having neuroscience research funded by a defense agency?

One of the biggest problems is that there is so much anxiety—and in many cases paranoia—about the whole notion of mind-control or mind-reading. And I can tell you from this work and from previous work that I’ve done that there are a lot of people who think that they are the victims of mind-control experiments by the CIA. And this is actually cross-cultural; it is not confined to the United States. I was in Pakistan last year and I had a long conversation with the chairman of the Clinical Research department at Karachi University and I asked if he encountered patients who believed that [they were victims of mind control experiments]. He said, “oh yeah, it’s everywhere.”

So one problem of talking about this is just the conspiracy theory that so many people have already—which I want to disassociate myself from. But, if we put aside those conspiracy theories, there are nonetheless reasons to be interested in how information about the brain is going to be used in the future.

For example, evidence suggests that certain chemicals are released by the brain when people are in trusting relationships with one another. So, think now about interrogating detainees in Guantanamo. What if it were feasible to introduce this chemical, this neurotransmitter, artificially, so that instead of waterboarding people or playing good cop/ bad cop, you could chemically induce trusting feelings on the part of the subject of an interrogation? Some people will obviously say that that is a good thing, particularly if innocent people are at risk and this individual might have some information. Other people will say, well, this is a slippery slope here.

What might happen if the same chemical is used against our security agents, for example?

Precisely, or even domestically. If it becomes a useful intervention, then will domestic authorities be given the opportunity to use the stuff? And how does this rub up against our constitutional rights? So, that’s just one example of why we need to be concerned.

[And yet] so many of [the technologies discovered by defense-funded neuroscience] are good for people, which makes them much harder to talk about than nuclear weapons technology or biological weapons.

For example, there’s evidence that beta blockers, which are used for people with heart disease, can be used to treat people with post-traumatic stress disorder. There are some people who believe that not only are they useful after someone has been in a stressful situation, but it might even be plausible to give somebody a beta blocker before they go into a stressful situation, because the drug seems to inhibit the association of experiences with emotions and their consolidation into long-term memory.

Imagine if you were to give a beta blocker to a soldier before he or she went into a combat situation. On the one hand you might prevent or at least ameliorate the terrible emotional feelings that could come from what they see and do in combat, but, to put it in a single phrase, do we want an army of guilt-free soldiers?

So again the more we learn about the possibility of managing if not reading the brain, the more we’ll have to confront these questions. And because they are dual-use, they can be used in both military and civilian contexts, and they can be used both to heal and to harm they become all the more complicated.

All of the issues I talk about in Mind Wars about national security and the brain are part of a bigger conversation, which I think is maybe the most important thing we will talk about in the 21st century: How are we going to enter into changing what we are? What ought the limits be?

But in the end, you don’t advocate separating military from civilian science.

That’s right. Generally if you prohibit scientific research on what could ultimately be important national security technologies, you’re just going to force them underground. Especially in a society like ours, we need to maintain and enhance the relationships between our academic science institutions and the military, because if we tell our government that they can’t give grants to university scientists because we’re afraid that it will be bad for the university, we’re just going to force government to do it on its own, and secretly.

So I advocate continued and even increased funding for DARPA and finding ways to ensure that academia and the security establishment remain in contact with one another. I think it’s bad for democracy to do it any other way.

About the Author

Dr. Moreno is the Emily Davie and Joseph S. Kornfeld Professor of Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia; Director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics; and Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress, Washington, DC.

He is an elected member of the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies and serves on the Institute’s Board on Health Sciences Policy. Moreno is also a member of the Council on Accreditation of the Association for the Accreditation of Human Research Protection Programs, and a past president of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities. He is a bioethics advisor for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a Faculty Affiliate of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, and a Fellow of the Hastings Center and the New York Academy of Medicine.

Also read: What Near-Death and Psychedelic Experiences Reveal about Human Consciousness

The Dire Climate Change Wakeup Call

Smokestacks from a massive facility emit steam or carbon into the atmosphere.

British climate change expert James Lovelock says Earth is under a more dire threat than even most environmentalists imagine.

Published September 6, 2006

By Adrienne J. Burke

Image courtesy of Leonid via stock.adobe.com.

British climate change expert James Lovelock says Earth is under a more dire threat than even most environmentalists imagine. He spoke with the Academy prior to his lecture on September 7, 2005, where he’ll discuss his new book, The Revenge of Gaia: Earth’s Climate Crisis & the Fate of Humanity.

*some quotes have been lightly edited for length and clarity*

You’ve got a gloomy view of our future here on Earth!

You’re right, but it’s primarily a wake-up call. When I spoke to a whole group of climate scientists here in the UK, it was amazing how almost all of them viewed [climate change] almost as an academic exercise — not something that would affect our lives immediately.

And each of them was looking at more or less a single picture of the earth: some were looking at the melting ice in the arctic and others were looking at the disappearance of the forests in the tropical regions. They knew about each other’s work, but they didn’t seem to make it up into one single view of the planet. This worried me a lot, and since I had a kind of top-down view of the Earth as a result of Gaia theory, it seemed a lot worse than any of them were saying. That’s why I wrote the book.

You say that even the people who are talking about sustainable development right now are not even going far enough. You talk about sustainable retreat instead.

Exactly. I think — and so do many of my colleagues — that we may have passed the point of no return and that sustainable development as a program is probably too late. This means that change will take place more or less whatever we do, and therefore our prime tasks are both amelioration, if we can do it, and defense and preparing for the climate damage that will be inevitable.

How hopeful or optimistic are you that technologically developed nations will start to initiate a retreat like that?

Well, I have a feeling that when you in the US really start noticing or believing in climate change — I think it’s been denied for quite a while — you’ll almost certainly say, “but we can fix it,” and try to think of technological solutions.

Already several have been proposed. Perhaps the most intriguing is the idea of sun shades in space. Other ones, much simpler and probably more practical, like putting an aerosol in the stratosphere, are well worth considering because they may buy us time. But, they are not a long-term answer to the problem any more than going on dialysis is a long term solution for one of us if one of our kidneys fail.

A lot of environmentalists might be surprised to read your position on things like wind energy, biofuel, and organic farming: they are not necessarily solutions let alone good directions to be headed, according to your book.

Well I’m afraid you’re right. My reason for that is that, by and large, environmentalists are not scientists; they’re well-intentioned people, usually fairly wealthy, who think of remedies to get back to what they would think of as a natural world. I’m very sympathetic with their desires for things like organic food and so on, but I think we’ve reached such a state now that they’re not very practical.

… I am concerned about waking them up from their very strange objection to nuclear energy, which is one of the very useful ways that we can get energy for our needs — and we do need it to keep civilization going — without adding all these greenhouse gasses or doing anything in particular to the climate. That was my purpose really, in, if you like, chasing the environmentalists.

[Nuclear power] is one of the most useful answers we have — not the only one, but one of the many — whereas the things the environmentalists suggest, like biofuels, could be even more dangerous than doing nothing. If you think about it, the average car produces 10 times as much carbon dioxide as its driver. Now, we’re having trouble getting enough land to feed all the people in the world, how on Earth could we possibly feed all the cars?

And not only that, but the land surface that would be used to produce the food also exists as part of the greater system that regulates the climate and keeps it comfortable. We’ve taken about 40 percent [of the land] for food and forestry products for ourselves, and that’s a big loss of ability of the planet to keep things as comfortable as we’d like.

For the background of our readers, would you describe in a nutshell Gaia Theory, which you originated?

That’s always one of the most difficult questions. There are lots of ways of looking at it. The one I prefer, really, is … try to look at the earth as an evolving system, on which it isn’t just the organisms that evolve by natural selection, but the whole planet. The organisms and the world around them are so tightly coupled that they evolve as a single system.

In other words, organisms don’t just adapt to a geology which is described in another building in the university. They adapt to, what is in effect, the blood and the breath and the bones of their ancestors. The whole thing is tied together so tightly that it is ridiculous to try to separate the earth from the organisms that are on it, in systems terms.

You’ve merged Darwinian evolution with geological evolution?

Exactly. You couldn’t have put it better.

About James Lovelock

James Lovelock, PhD, Dsc, is the originator of the Gaia Hypothesis (now Gaia Theory), on which he has written several books. He is also the author of more than two hundred scientific papers. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society and has received numerous awards, including the American Chemical Society’s award for Chromatography, the Norbert Gerbier Prize of the World Meteorological Organization, and in the Amsterdam Prize for the Environment by the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2006, he received the Wollaston medal from the Geological Society of the United Kingdom.

He has received honorary Doctorates in Science from seven universities in England, Sweden and the United States. He was made a Commander of Order of the British Empire in 1990, and in 2003 a Companion of Honour by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.

Also read: Our Iceland Adventure Turned into a Climate Crisis Wake-Up Call

5 Tips for an Eco-Friendly Lifestyle

The author of The Big Green Apple Guide gives his advice on what New Yorkers can do to promote a more environmentally friendly lifestyle in the concrete jungle.

Published September 1, 2006

By Adelle Caravanos

Image courtesy of ZoomTeam via stock.adobe.com.

Ben Jervey says it’s easy being green in New York City.

Upon moving to Brooklyn from Vermont five years ago, Jervey searched for a comprehensive source of environmentally friendly organizations in his new neighborhood. When he didn’t find one, he decided to write one.

The Big Green Apple: Your Guide to Eco-Friendly Living in New York City is a compilation of tips, resources, and information about all aspects of the NYC green scene. In it Jervey describes the various ways New Yorkers can contribute to making their urban environment sustainable for years to come. Many of his tips are applicable beyond New York as well.

Jervey offered Science & the City these five tips from his new book:

1. Change Your Lightbulbs

Switching from ordinary lightbulbs to compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) “is a really simple action that can make a big difference,” says Jervey. CFLs use 25 percent of the electricity of incandescent lightbulbs, and the $4 to $5 that you will spend for each replacement will pay itself off in a month or two on your electric bill, Jervey says.

“In a society that places such value on the newest technology, TVs and iPods, I find it strange that we are still using bulbs that haven’t changed much since Thomas Edison’s time,” Jervey says. CFLs come in many varieties, can simulate the light of an incandescent bulb, and can last for more than five years.

2. Order a Home Water Conservation Kit from the DEP

New Yorkers know hot summers sprinkled with drought warnings. But you might not know that the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is providing a free home water conservation kit for house and apartment owners—complete with a faucet aerator, a showerhead that reduces water flow without compromising pressure, and other pieces of water-saving equipment, says Jervey.

3. Join a Community-Sponsored Agriculture Group

Through community-sponsored agriculture (available in many places around the U.S.), you can buy a share of a local farmer’s harvest, and each week receive delivery of a portion of the farm’s seasonal vegetables and fruits. The average weekly cost is $15, and there are about 40 programs in NYC’s five boroughs, serviced by farms within a 150-mile radius of the city, according to Jervey. One share is meant for a family of four, and options such as half-shares or shared shares are also available.

“It’s remarkably affordable, and you get a collection of good, organic food,” Jervey says. “It’s turned me on to a lot of foods that I wouldn’t normally have tried,” because the assortment varies with the time of year. Community-sponsored agriculture is also making quality produce available in neighborhoods not served by green markets or grocery stores, where financial and transportation constraints can result in nutritional problems.

4. Choose Your Own Energy Source

Through the Con Ed Solutions program, you can opt for electricity produced by wind power, instead of by coal or other means.

Con Ed determines your actual energy demand, and then purchases that amount of power from renewable energy providers such as wind farms, with no change to your bill, Jervey says. Many other energy companies around the U.S. have similar programs.

5. Reduce, Reuse, Recycle-In That Order!

“What people don’t realize is that the classic phrase—reduce, reuse, recycle—is actually prioritized,” says Jervey. Reducing waste is the most important thing New Yorkers can do, as far as waste management, because the city now ships 100 percent of its waste out of the state.

Second comes reuse, and Jervey emphasizes the need to find alternative uses for items we would normally throw away. Besides reusing things in your own home, Jervey suggests organizations like Freecycle, a global group of more than two million people who freely give away their “garbage”—unwanted items from furniture to junk car parts—to others looking for just those items.

Then, of course, recycle. According to Jervey, the city’s recycling system is improving every year, and more citizens are participating. In fact, New Yorkers are already living some of the more sustainable lifestyles in the world, he says.

“A person’s ecological footprint is made much smaller by living in the city— it’s an amazingly efficient way to live, by sharing a lot of resources, sharing small places,” Jervey says. “New Yorkers need to understand that there is a real unconscious level of environmentalism here, and while there are still enormous battles to be fought, it’s one of the ‘greenest’ places in the world.”

Also read: Finding New, Sustainable Uses for Food Waste

About the Author

Adelle Caravanos is assistant editor of Science & the City.

The Molecular Science of Making Babies

A graphical representation of in-vitro fertilization.

Nobel Laureate Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard talks about embryology at the molecular level, connecting the development of fruit flies to that of vertebrates.

Published August 2, 2006

By Alan Dove, PhD

Sponsored by: Readers & Writers and Women Investigators Network
Cosponsored by: Goethe-Institut, Kales Press, and the German Book Office

Image courtesy of Destina via stock.adobe.com.

Where do Babies Come From?

The question has unnerved parents for millennia. Even if you are completely comfortable discussing sex with someone barely out of potty training, there is a more fundamental pedagogical problem: you probably don’t really know the answer. Don’t feel bad. Until very recently, nobody did. Indeed, the problem of animal development—how an egg becomes a chicken, or a person, or a frog—has bedeviled scientists at least since Aristotle.

In the early 1970s, the molecular biology revolution finally started to reveal the fundamental mechanisms of heredity and physiology, but theories to explain development remained rudimentary.

“When you asked a chemist what they thought, they thought that in the egg there are molecules that are arranged in the pattern of the future mouse or whatever, and then this would somehow be … preformed in the egg, and then you asked how does this prepattern get into the egg, and they’d say ‘oh, yeah, there is a problem,'” says Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, director of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology. Unsatisfied with this answer thirty years ago, she decided to move developmental biology beyond this primitive understanding.

Nüsslein-Volhard spoke to a sellout crowd of more than 100 at the Goethe-Institut in New York City on June 8, 2006, as part of the Academy’s Readers & Writers seminar series. The event launched the English translation of her new book Coming to Life, which summarizes the astonishing progress scientists have made in understanding how genes drive development. Nüsslein-Volhard’s work, which earned her a Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995, is at the core of both the book and modern developmental biology.

Designing on the Fly

The first hint that molecules drive development came from another German, Hans Spemann, whose brilliant microsurgical manipulations of frog embryos demonstrated that special “organizing centers” in the embryo are capable of directing the development of specific structures. Grafting an organizer from the anterior end of one embryo onto another, for example, could produce a frog with two heads. After Spemann’s reports in the 1920s and ’30s, though, scientists were stumped for almost half a century. The organizer was obviously producing some kind of molecular signal that told how to build part of a frog, but nobody could isolate that signal biochemically.

Inspired by the success of fly geneticists in mapping traits to specific genes, Nüsslein-Volhard and her colleagues decided to use genetics to search for the organizing factors. Fruit flies, Drosophila melanogaster, have become such a fixture of developmental biology today that it is difficult to appreciate how revolutionary this idea was. Fly eggs are minuscule, and nobody thinks about looking for mutations that affect the developmental pattern.

Because the mutations they sought are rare, Nüsslein-Volhard and her colleagues had to screen vast numbers of eggs and larvae from mutagenized flies, looking for the tiniest differences between them. As an oblong fly egg develops into a maggot, it divides itself into segments lengthwise. Segments at one end will eventually develop into the structures of the head, and segments at the other become the abdomen. Something akin to Spemann’s organizers must direct this pattern.

Genome Mutations Lead to Defects

Nüsslein-Volhard and her colleagues eventually found that mutations in the fly genome can cause specific types of defects in this process. A mutant called knirps, for example, derailed the pattern in a specific zone of segments, while another, called even-skipped, affected alternating segments along the whole length of the larva, and a third, called hedgehog, affected all of the segments.

The researchers eventually determined that the fly body builds itself by following a programmed sequence of molecular signals encoded in the genome. In the early stage, a set of signals establishes general zones of the larva, corresponding to the future head, thorax, and abdomen. Then, each zone receives signals that subdivide it into more complex structures, like the mouthparts and eyes in the head.

To determine what types of structures to build, the cells of the embryo rely on gradients of the signals. For example, a signaling protein produced by cells at the anterior end will diffuse back toward the posterior end, fading like the signal of a radio station as one drives away from the transmitter tower. Cells of the future head will receive the signal clearly, triggering them to start building a head.

Where the anterior signal is weaker, cells will instead begin a thorax, and where the anterior signal is completely unreadable, the cells execute the abdomen-building procedure. A counter-gradient of signals from the posterior end has the opposite set of effects. Later in development, sub-gradients within each zone build the sub-structures within each major body segment.

Social Development

The fly work has become a cornerstone of modern developmental biology, and the book’s summary of it should make sense to most scientifically literate readers—with effort.

“It is complicated, I cannot help it,” Nüsslein-Volhard concedes, adding that “it is even simpler than you might have imagined, but there are some rules and there are genes and you have to … learn some vocabulary.” She points out that even a simple fly is far more complex than a computer or a car, so non-biologists hoping to understand development will have to brace themselves for a tough subject.

Many readers will undoubtedly skip directly to the final chapter of the book, which deals with current social controversies involving developmental biology. Though these subjects interest Nüsslein-Volhard far less than her laboratory work, she hopes to elevate the level of public discussion about issues like cloning, stem cell research, in vitro fertilization, and designer babies. The final chapter stems in part from her experience on the National Ethics Council of Germany, which she joined in 2001.

Though it is not mentioned in the book, Nüsslein-Volhard, one of only 12 women to receive a Nobel Prize in a scientific field, has another important project outside the lab. The Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Foundation aims its money directly at one of the biggest problems facing women in science: child care.

Women qualify for the Foundation’s grants primarily on the quality of their scientific work, but the money can be used for a range of household expenses, addressing what some studies euphemistically call the “work-family balance.”

Fishing for Answers

Meanwhile, Nüsslein-Volhard still heads a large, productive laboratory that remains on the leading edge of developmental biology. Having worked out the fundamental processes of fly development in the 1970s and ’80s, the group next began to explore vertebrate development, using the common aquarium zebrafish Danio rerio as a model organism.

“I started working with fish because I thought … it’s nice to know how flies develop, but can we deduce anything for other organisms from it? Maybe it’s totally different in frogs or in fishes,” says Nüsslein-Volhard. The small, fast-breeding zebrafish develop inside transparent eggs, making them ideal for the same type of analysis that had worked so well in flies: a large-scale genetic screen for developmental signals.

There were reasons to hope that flies and fish might share at least some of the basic mechanisms of development. Besides the general tendency of evolution to conserve useful functions, there were also some old observations from comparative anatomy and taxonomy that suggested strong parallels between vertebrate and invertebrate body plans.

Very early in the development of any animal, the ball of dividing embryonic cells undergoes gastrulation, forming the initial opening of the gut. In protostomes, a large and diverse category of animals that includes arthropods, this initial opening becomes the mouth. In deuterostomes, the group that includes vertebrates, the initial opening becomes the anus. This head-to-tail mirroring prefigures the rest of the developmental plan.

For example, a lobster’s heart is dorsal, up in its shoulders, while a cat’s heart is ventral, down in its chest. Though it seems like a major anatomical difference, this is simply the outcome of switching gastrulation from one end to the other. The adult forms are very different, but in the earliest stages of development, a cat is just an upside-down lobster.

Anatomic Inversions at the Molecular Level

By screening thousands of mutagenized fish for developmental defects, Nüsslein-Volhard and her colleagues found that this anatomic inversion also holds true at the molecular level. The signals that mark the dorsal side of a fly embryo have homologues in fish, but the fish versions mark the ventral side of the embryo. The evolutionary recycling continues in later stages of development, with vertebrates and invertebrates using the same genes and signaling strategies to produce radically different forms and structures.

Besides covering Nüsslein-Volhard’s own work, Coming to Life puts the results into the general context of molecular biology and embryology. Helpful introductory chapters guide a general reader through basic genetics, cell biology, and biochemistry, and the findings from flies and fish accompany related results from other organisms, including humans. Throughout this thin but thorough volume, the author’s own line drawings provide clear illustrations of the main concepts. Sections on the burgeoning field of evolutionary development and exciting recent results on human origins round out the story.

For biologists, the book is a useful refresher of concepts they forgot or missed in a basic embryology course, and for students and the scientifically curious, it is a solid introduction to the topic. Parents of inquisitive preschoolers may still want to invoke storks, baskets, or Sears to explain where babies come from, but at least scientists now have much more detailed answers about embryonic origins and development. We’ve certainly been asking long enough.

About Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard

Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, PhD, is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen and also leads its genetics department. She graduated from Tübingen University with a degree in biochemistry in 1968 and earned her PhD there in 1973. Nüsslein-Volhard then began her investigation of Drosophila and conducted a large-scale mutagenesis study of embryonic development of the fruit fly that provided insights into genes involved in development. The findings also showed that protostomes and deuterostomes probably have a common ancestor with a complex body plan. Moreover, the results of the study were helpful in understanding the regulation of transcription and cell fate during development.

Together with Eric Wieschaus and Edward B. Lewis, Nüsslein-Volhard received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1995 for research on the genetic control of embryonic development. Nüsslein-Volhard has also been honored with the Albert Lasker Award for Basic Medical Research and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. She became a member of the Nationaler Ethikrat (National Ethics Council of Germany) for the ethical assessment of new developments in the life sciences and their influence on the individual and society.

Also read: Portrait of a Scientist and Mentor

About the Author

Alan Dove is a science writer based in New Haven, Connecticut.

Academy Inspires Future with Young Einsteins Program

A shot of a science classroom with books, calculators, and a microscope in the foreground, and a blackboard with math equations in the background.

This summer, the program tackled the energy crisis, terrorism, and how pigeon waste can be used as a biological weapon.

Published July 28, 2006

By Jennifer Tang

Image courtesy of Sensay via stock.adobe.com.

Can pigeon waste be used to spread a dangerous fungus affecting millions of people? How can carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas linked to global warming, be used to extract a natural gas, methane, to help curb our energy crisis? How can we protect New Yorks computers from hackers and terrorism?

These are just some of the cutting-edge scientific topics being tackled by 55 students in the Academy’s Science Research Training Program (SRTP). Now in its 30th year, the eight-week summer program has prepared thousands of high school students for careers in the sciences by training them to do hands-on, scientific research with leading scientists from institutions such as Columbia University, Burke Rehabilitation Center, New York Medical College, NYU School of Medicine, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.

Each spring, hundreds of students from public and private schools located in New York City, Westchester, Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut apply to get into this competitive program, which is open only to newcomers. Students choose their favorite category (i.e., biology, chemistry, computer science) and are assigned a mentor. After working Monday to Thursday, students supplement their lab experiences by attending special Friday workshops held at the Academy.

The workshops examine the responsibilities of a scientist from a multiplicity of perspectives and discuss issues such as writing and presenting scientific papers. Last week, the Academy held a panel discussion on alterative science careers featuring The New York Times reporter Andrew Revkin, astrophysicist Garret Schneider and lawyer and chemist Mary Jane O’Connell.

Cell Phones and Pigeons

Working with her mentor, Dr. Jason Nieh from Columbia University, Janice Escobar, a fifteen-year-old student from Manhattan’s Chapin School, has embarked on a project not likely to be found in a typical high school science textbook – mapping cell phone networks in order to prevent new acts of terrorism. “Recently, terrorists in Iraq have been using cell phones to detonate bombs,” she observed. “Perhaps our research could ultimately help prevent events like that from happening in Manhattan. We’re also mapping out the number of open access points in the city. Where there is an open access point, Internet hackers could do a number of harmful things: break into private files, download illegal programs, and create viruses.”

Another student, Steven Mieses from the Bronx’s High School of American Studies at Lehman College, is spending his summer studying pigeons but from the perspective of a lab bench rather than that of a park. “Cryptoccoccus neoformansis a fungus commonly found in pigeon waste and affects people who are immunocompromised,” he says. “New York City is heavily populated with pigeons, putting people with HIV, or people who have undergone immuno-suppressive therapy such as chemotherapy, at risk of contracting this deadly pathogenic fungus.”

Working with his mentor, Dr. Arturo Casadevall at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Steven studies Crypotoccoccus neoformans cells under a microscope and tests for antibodies. “By helping to make these antibodies for GalXM, we can possibly eliminate one of the many opportunistic infections in the world and save thousands of lives,” he says. “This is why science is my favorite subject – in the lab, I never know if the day will end in failure or success. What I do know is that the day is going to have many surprises.”

Excitement of the Unknown

Unexpected discoveries and surprising results are true to the experience of real scientists, says Matthew Kelly, the Program’s Coordinator. “The purpose of the program is to give students a taste of what real-life scientific research is all about,” he says.

Students thrive on satisfying their curiosity. Yena Jun, a student from New Jersey’s Academy for the Advancement of Science and Technology, stresses that’s why she became a SRTP student.

“At my school, the results of the lab experiments are often known before the experiments actually take place,” she says. “In the SRTP, we don’t know what the results will be.”

Yena and Zeke Miller, a student from Davis Renov Stahler Yeshiva High School for Boys in Woodmere, New York, are studying how methane gas might be extracted and used as an alterative fuel, a project that would help today’s energy crisis.

“Gas hydrates, which are found in huge quantities in marine and Arctic sediments, contain twice the amount of carbon found in all other fossil fuels and make them a significant energy source in the future,” she observes. “However, extracting methane hydrates from sediments in the ocean floor may cause landslides or lead to further climate change. We’re looking at how carbon dioxide might be used to replace methane, an intriguing concept that would kill two birds with one stone – use methane as a fuel and reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, a cause of global warming.”

Hooked on Science

It’s challenging subjects like these and their potential to make an impact on today’s society that has SRTP students hooked on science. “I hope that my research will help speed up progress in curbing dependence upon foreign oil – with methane in such abundant supply, this would be a potential solution to the world’s energy problems,” Zeke says.

Despite the hot weather, most SRTP students say they don’t regret spending their summers in labs or libraries rather than tossing volleyballs on the beach. “Being in the program makes you more aware of the roles politics, economics, ethics and society play in scientific findings, and overall you become aware of the issues that we are faced with now,” says Janice.

Steven adds, “Unlike a vacation that ends once the summer is over, the information I learn here will be with me forever, and I can take it wherever I go.”

Do you know a young, inspiring scientist? Encourage them to check out the Academy’s educational programming.

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