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Scientists and War: An Ethical Dilemma

A black and white photo of an atomic bomb test, showing a massive mushroom cloud.

Major advances were made in the development of chemical weapons between World War I and the Cold War. This would present scientists with a moral dilemma.

Published August 1, 2004

By Mary Crowley

Atomic cloud during Baker Day blast at Bikini atoll. Image courtesy of National Archives Catalog. Public domain.

“Of arms I sing, and the man,” man,” began the Aeneid, Virgil’s epic poem on war and heroism, written in the first century BCE. Battle and humankind’s relationship to it is a timeless theme.

But war and weaponry took on new meaning in the 20th century, when nuclear arms created the potential to eliminate entire cities and even civilization. From the chemists who manufactured gas in World War I to the physicists who designed the atom bomb in World War II, scientists were at the fulcrum of a world literally in the balance.

And they are still there now, in the post-9/11 era, this time with molecular biologists facing off against the shadowy enemy of bioterrorism. Hopefully, they have gleaned some insights from their forebears, particularly physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who has come to represent the ethical dilemma that scientists face when called on to use their skills to defend their nation.

“The association of scientist, arms and the state is fraught with troublesome questions, many centering on whether the scientist’s obligation to the state requires deploying his or her expertise to hazardous, potentially destructive purposes and/or defending against them,” said Daniel J. Kevles, Ph.D., Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University. Oppenheimer continues to fascinate us, prompting books, plays and even a coming opera because of the “vexing vitality of these issues,” he said at a recent meeting of The New York Academy of Sciences’ (the Academy’s) History and Philosophy of Science Section.

Chemists at War

The Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 condemned the development of chemical weapons (despite objections from the Americans and the British). The ban, instituted because of fears that chemical weapons like gas could be used against cities and civilians, demonstrated “the widely supported belief, even in military circles at the time, that at the opening of the 20th century civilian populations should not be fair game in warfare among the advanced civilized nations,” said Kevles.

But by the outbreak of World War I in August 1914, the Institute of Chemistry in Germany was trying to produce nitric acid for munitions. The Institute was headed by Fritz Haber, the “father of chemical warfare,” who with Carl Bosch won a Nobel Prize in 1918 for devising a method to fix nitrogen from the air. As Haber envisioned it, gas released from cylinders got around The Hague Convention’s prohibition against delivering it via projectiles. Indeed, Haber himself led the first gas attack at Ypres, in Belgium, in April 1915.

Public Opposition to Chemical Weapons

Daniel J. Kevles, Ph.D.

In response, the Allies quickly implemented their own programs. When the United States joined the battle in 1917, it established the Chemical Warfare Service, involving some 700 chemists and more than 20 academic institutions. Quite rapidly, the letter of The Hague Convention was ignored, as well as its spirit, as the French began using gas shells to better disperse the noxious agent. By war’s end, there were an estimated 560,000 gas casualties.

Artists and writers depicted the horrors of gas attacks. A poll of Americans showed such overwhelming opposition to chemical weapons that a government advisory committee noted, “The conscience of the American people has been profoundly shocked by the savage use of scientific discoveries for destruction rather than for construction.”

Nonetheless, as the Allies were poised for victory in 1918, “gas was hailed as a triumph of Allied industry,” said Kevles. Should the war have continued, the U.S. and Britain had plans to aerially assault cities with chemical bombs, despite vehement opposition from many military officers, including General John J. Pershing. Chemical weapons were seen as a necessary evil. At hearings on Capitol Hill, General Amos A. Fries argued that the more deadly the weapons, “the sooner…we will quit all fighting.”

In part through lobbying by the gas industry and in part through support of veterans who counted gas a “humane weapon” that ended the war sooner, the Chemical Weapons Service received generous research funding. And American gas chemists “displayed no moral anguish about their wartime role,” according to Kevles. They agreed with Haber, who said that gas was “a higher form of killing.”

Physicists at War

Physicists played the starring role in World War II science. Early on, it was clear that this war would be “an unprecedented technological conflict,” one that would require physicists to enjoin the battle for more powerful weaponry, explained Kevles.

They were eager to do so. The Blitzkrieg in 1940 and other early assaults “established a new imperative for the social responsibility of science: Do whatever possible to meet the technological threat from fascist aggressors by forging an all out technological response in the democracies,” said Kevles. With the memory of Germany’s World War I surprise gas attack still raw, the Allies had no plans to be caught unaware. “The willingness to develop an atomic bomb, a dramatically unconventional innovation that promised to wipe out entire cities, was to prevent being beaten to the punch by the Nazis,” according to Kevles.

But the bomb never went off against its preferred target. By the time Fat Man and Little Boy were completed, the Germans had surrendered. The bombs were used instead against civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, even as Japan was on the brink of surrender.

The Oppenheimer Paradox

Robert Oppenheimer

By the time the atom bomb was dropped, “moral sensibilities about bombing civilians had been almost completely shattered, among scientists as well as policy and opinion makers,” said Kevles. J. Robert Oppenheimer’s experiences during World War II and the postwar years poignantly capture the inherent ethical dilemmas of scientists at war.

World War II transformed Oppenheimer from “an otherworldly theoretical physicist into the internationally renowned creator and sage of American nuclear strength,” who was then humiliated and destroyed by “the vicious and bare-knuckled politics of national security,” described Kevles.

Oppenheimer entered the war years eager to apply his physicist’s craft against the Nazis. He was the research head of the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos, New Mexico, feverishly working to develop an atom bomb before the Germans did. In 1945 he wrote, “We recognize our obligation to our nation to use the weapons to help save American lives [and] we can see no acceptable alternative to military use.”

That the bomb was used against Japanese civilians horrified Oppenheimer. He publicly stated in 1947, “Physicists felt a particularly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for achieving the realization of atomic weapons. Nor can we forget that these weapons, as they were in fact used, dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war. In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.”

A Dutiful Soldier of Science

Despite these reservations, he remained a “dutiful soldier of science” during the early Cold War years, when intense investment into the machines of war was considered essential for national security. Oppenheimer signed on to the plan for creating an H-bomb, and served on various government advisory boards on national defense, until he lost his security clearance in 1953. Most significantly, he was chair of the General Advisory Committee of the just-formed Atomic Energy Commission, which he claimed was supposed to “provide atomic weapons and good atomic weapons and many atomic weapons.”

“Oppenheimer is something of a paradox, embodying at one and the same time a sense of sin associated with the forging of nuclear weapons and a commitment to improving and multiplying those weapons for the sake of national security, a task that could lead to further sin,” contended Kevles. “Yet the power of nuclear weapons, the reach of new delivery systems, the utter vulnerability of cities, and the potential combustibility of the Cold War forced Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists to embrace their paradox, to accept both the anguish of their sin and the continuing responsibilities of national security.”

Biologists at War

The science warriors of our era – the biologists who are at the forefront of research that can be turned to new types of weaponry – face a similar paradox. “The horrendous events of September 11, 2001 placed bioterrorism high on the national security agenda,” noted Kevles. Biomedical researchers are confronted with a new dilemma: Much of their research can serve both the beneficent needs of health and the nefarious needs of terrorism.

Due to the contemporary global nature of biology, with thousands of journals easily accessible, the information is highly transparent – and the key agents of bioterrorism require relatively small-scale investments. Meantime, the funding stream for biology is rich. The National Institutes of Health earmarked $1.7 billion for bioterrorism research in fiscal 2003.

How biologists contend with this challenge is history waiting to be written. “The challenge posed by bioterrorism is unprecedented in the history of science, arms and the state,” concluded Kevles. “To deal with it, one would like from the country’s biomedical leadership the kind of courage, tenacity and vision that Robert Oppenheimer provided – an engagement with the problems of arms and the state that offers, to paraphrase the majority report on the hydrogen bomb, some limitation upon the totality of war, some cap to fear, some reassurance for mankind.”

Also read: National Security, Neuroscience and Bioethics

At Any Cost: Cheating, Integrity, and the Olympics

Runners take off from the starting line.

Researchers continue to advance the science behind doping in sports and are developing detection measures to catch the cheaters. But will it be enough to maintain the integrity of the Olympic Games?

Published August 1, 2004

By Diane Kightlinger

Image courtesy of zhengzaishanchu via stock.adobe.com.

Crossing the finish line in Athens this August should mark the climax of the athletes’ quest to put native ability, training, perseverance, and courage to work in pursuit of their Olympic moment. And provided that’s all the athletes bring into play, they won’t mind the team waiting on the sidelines to signal the start of the next challenge – the contest between the dopers and the testers.

The result can topple victors, strip medals, and bar athletes from competing, possibly for life. For now, the competitors know only that sometime between the victory lap and awards ceremony and press conference, the doping control team will take aside the top four finishers and two other randomly selected athletes to find out if they played true.

Drug testing in the Olympic Games began in 1968, a response to illness and death caused by widespread amphetamine use in prior decades. Since then, the estimate of how many athletes use performance-enhancing drugs in sport has ranged from almost none to almost all. Look at test results and the dopers amount to less than 3% of athletes; ask coaches and trainers and the number can rise as high as 90%, according to “Winning at Any Cost: Doping in Olympic Sports,” a September 2000 report released by the National Center of Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.

Banned Substances

Today the pharmacopoeia of substances banned at the Olympic Games includes not only stimulants, but narcotics, anabolic steroids, beta-2 agonists, peptide hormones such as EPO (erythropoietin) and hGH (human growth hormone), and a shelf-full of masking agents. Add designer drugs like the steroid THG (tetrahydrogestrinone), around which the Balco scandal churns, plus the specter of gene doping, anticipated by the Beijing Olympics in 2008, and the testers face increasing odds of losing the detection game.

But don’t count them out just yet. The researchers and administrators focused on catching dopers have won important battles in recent years by developing tests for THG and EPO and by using them to catch abusers. Testers are increasingly taking a proactive stance, anticipating their opponents’ next moves and the techniques needed to identify illegal substances and methods. And the creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in November 1999 should soon result in near-universal standards for doping control across sports federations and countries.

Whether in- or out-of-competition, sample collection today is a painstaking ritual overseen by the athlete, his representative, doping control agents, and independent observers who act as the public’s eyes and ears. The athlete selects a sealed collection vessel and provides a 75-ml urine sample in view of a doping control officer (DCO) of the same gender. After dividing the urine into A and B bottles, the competitor seals them securely and makes sure the DCO records the correct code on the control form. Blood tests employ a phlebotomist and similar procedures to obtain 2 tubes of at least 2-ml each.

Gaming the Tests

On site, the DCO checks the urine’s pH and specific gravity to ensure it will prove suitable for analysis, and may also screen the blood sample for reticulocytes, hemoglobin, and hematocrit. Athletes must document all prescription and nonprescription drugs, vitamins, minerals, and supplements they take; then all parties sign the doping control form and the samples are sent by courier for analysis at one of 31 laboratories accredited by WADA.

But testing during the Olympic Games accomplishes only so much: It won’t catch athletes who use steroids to bulk up during training but stop months before the Games, or those who use EPO much more than a few days before competition. “Ninety to 95% of the solution is effective, year-round, no-notice testing,” according to Casey Wade, WADA education director. “Give athletes more than 24 hours’ notice and they can provide a sample all right, but it’s going to be free from detection.”

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) requires most Olympic athletes to make themselves available for doping tests anytime and anywhere for one year prior to the opening of the Games. WADA plans some 2,400 tests this year, with a selection process based on the requirements of each sport, the substances an athlete might use, when the abuse might occur, and how long the body will take to clear the drug from the athlete’s system before the Athens Games start.

Once the Olympic village opens for the Games, the IOC will take charge of testing at sporting venues. WADA will continue to conduct out-of-competition tests inside and outside Greece, however, and at non-Olympic venues in Athens to determine which athletes will be allowed to take part in the Games.

The Key to Meaningful Doping Tests

The key to meaningful doping tests lies in the lab’s ability to detect substances and also to document the chain of custody meticulously enough to meet the burden of proof in court cases. Once the samples arrive in the lab, scientists store the B bottle for use in confirmation tests, and open the A bottle, withdraw multiple aliquots, and test for substances on the WADA Prohibited List. The U.S. Olympic Lab at the University of California at Los Angeles, a preeminent testing facility, employs an array of mass spectrometry techniques to work through the samples.

“Mass spectrometry breaks up the molecules and sorts the resulting fragments by mass,” said Don Catlin, the lab’s director. “We can identify steroids by chemical moieties with characteristic masses but, for example, THG was modified in such a way that it lacked those characteristic fragments, making it difficult to spot on conventional tests.”

THG posed only one of many challenges the lab has faced and overcome. Catlin said that the detection of EPO and hGH abuse is particularly vexing. EPO increases oxygen delivery to the muscles, and hGH enhances muscle growth. As potent substances, both appear only in minute quantities in body fluids.

“With methyltestosterone, you might have 500 nanograms per ml of urine; with EPO, you might have less than a nanogram,” explained Catlin. “You have to extract the EPO from the urine, and the less there is, the more difficult it is to extract with good recovery. Then you’re faced with the final jolt: EPO has a molecular weight of 30,000 to 35,000, whereas most of the drugs we’re working with have molecular weights of 300. EPO molecules are too large for our mass spectrometers, which means we have to use different approaches based on molecular biology. It’s really tough work.”

Blood and Gene Doping

A long-acting form of EPO, darbepoetin, became available shortly before the Winter Games in 2002. The existing test for EPO could detect darbepoetin, but Catlin chose not to announce it – catching two gold medalists. Both were stripped of medals for events in which they tested positive in Salt Lake City and, later, of all medals they won at the Games.

For hGH, scientists, lab directors, physicians, and administrators have not yet agreed on a test, but that doesn’t mean athletes can freely abuse the substance. WADA has placed hGH on the Prohibited List, and DCOs will draw, freeze and store blood samples during the Athens Games for later analysis.

In addition to banning dozens of substances, the Prohibited List also bans methods such as blood and gene doping. The proliferation of gene therapy trials, which now number in the hundreds, and the promise of gene transfer methods to build skeletal muscle and increase red blood cell production, make genetic approaches to enhancing performance an encroaching reality.

“All the technology is in the medical literature,” said Theodore Friedmann, director of the Program in Human Gene Therapy at the University of California at San Diego. “The genes are all available or you can make them. The vectors, the viral tools, are all published and available. All it takes is three or four reasonably well-trained post-docs and a million or two dollars.”

On and Off: Inducible Genes

With that in mind, researchers are already focusing on several approaches for gene doping tests. Geoffrey Goldspink, professor, University College Medical School, London, England, described some of the possibilities being pursued. If an adenovirus or lentovirus is used as the vector to transmit a gene such as hGH, Goldspink said, the virus might also move into cells in the blood or mucus. A scrape of the inside of the cheek, followed by real-time RT-PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction), could produce sufficient sample for scientists to distinguish the wild-type virus from the engineered version.

In addition, some gene transfer techniques may involve inducible genes, which can be switched on and off. Without a mechanism to stop production, EPO could swamp the body with red blood cells, for instance. But introducing a gene that can handle the switching function might give testers a detectable bit of DNA on the vector. Friedmann cautioned that although these approaches represent reasonable first steps, new technology will be required to characterize the system and enable researchers to predict when vectors or genes or gene products will appear and then detect them.

Whatever techniques ultimately prove viable, they are likely to drive one change already taking place: the shift from urine to blood tests for detection. “Some of the new tests that we are developing are based on the blood matrix,” said Olivier Rabin, WADA science director. “This is clearly going to be used to detect new substances, to better detect blood transfusions, and also in the future to detect gene doping.”

The Magnitude of the Doping Problem

For decades, the magnitude of the doping problem among Olympic sports and the rewards made possible by ignoring the issue tarnished every medal awarded, even if the athlete tested clean. Tom Murray, bioethicist and president of the Hastings Center in Garrison, New York, and a longtime member of the committee entrusted with drug control for the U.S. Olympic team, said “I think for most of the time, drug control was just seen as a nuisance that they’d rather have go away. Their concerns were marketing and bringing home medals. Drug control was just a pain.”

Since the inception of quasi-independent organizations such as WADA and the national anti-doping agencies, which are funded only partly by their respective Olympic committees, many of the problems cited in the CASA report of 2000 have been alleviated. WADA employs a standard protocol for establishing the Prohibited List; accredits testing labs around the world; sends independent observers to oversee major events; and provides timely notice of banned substances and methods for athletes, coaches, and administrators. In addition, a detailed approach to reporting and managing results insures legal recourse and standard sanctions for athletes who test positive.

Making Strides

On the other hand, the $3 million in research grants doled out by WADA each year, combined with $2 million from the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, still runs far shy of the $50 million to $100 million collaborative effort over five years that the CASA report called for. But scientists are making strides by developing effective tests, streamlining existing procedures, and lowering costs.

And they seem almost eager to face sophisticated new substances and delivery systems, no matter how difficult detection may be. Catlin summed up his view by saying, “We’re still here, we’re still able to hold our heads up. When I toss in the towel, because there’s so much doping by so many means that we can’t detect it, then it’s an issue. But I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Also read: The Science Behind Doping in Sports

Advancing Human Rights and Heathcare in Vietnam

Long-imprisoned Vietnamese doctor is named recipient of Human Rights Award from The New York Academy of Sciences for his commitment to healthcare, bettering humankind.

Published July 21, 2004

By Fred Moreno

Image courtesy of joyfotoliakid via stock.adobe.com.

Dr. Nguyen Dan Que, a 61-year old Vietnamese medical doctor who has dedicated his life to improving the lives of the Vietnamese people and who has spent nearly 25 years in prison or under house arrest, has been named the recipient of the 2004 Heinz R. Pagels Human Rights of Scientists Award by the New York Academy of Sciences.

The Pagels prize, awarded annually in recognition of services on behalf of the human rights of scientists, will be bestowed at the Academy’s Annual Meeting on Monday, September 13, 2004. Dr. Que will be cited “in recognition of his courage and singular moral responsibility as a medical doctor committed to the welfare and healthcare of the Vietnamese people and for peacefully promoting human rights in Vietnam.”

Joseph L. Birman, chair of the Academy’s human rights committee, said that Dr. Que was chosen because of his “unwavering efforts to improve the daily lives of people in Vietnam and to promote a peaceful transition to democracy and freedom there.” Prof Birman added that Dr. Que, who is the founder of the Vietnamese Non-Violent Movement for Human Rights, was rearrested in March 2003 and has been held incommunicado since then.

Clinic for the Poor

Dr. Que has been committed to providing medical care for the poor since graduating from medical school in 1966, including a free clinic he founded and staffed with volunteer doctors, nurses, and medical students. One of the first of many examples of his civil courage was his willingness to treat students and others who were injured during demonstrations against the government.

After further medical studies in Europe under a scholarship from the World Health Organization, Dr. Que returned to Vietnam to join the Saigon University Faculty of Medicine and, later, became director of the Medical Department at Cho Ray Hospital. He also resumed his work at the free medical clinic, where he became well know for his efforts on behalf of the poor, especially from rural areas. In the late 1970s, he challenged the government’s health care policies and was subsequently arrested and imprisoned for 10 years without charge or trial.

Even after his release in an amnesty in 1988, he continued to speak out for basic human rights in Vietnam and demanded the government invest in the welfare of the people and reductions in the military. Charged with “activities aimed at overthrowing the People’s government,” he was rearrested in 1990. During his imprisonment under harsh conditions, Dr. Que did whatever he could to improve the health care of his fellow inmates, even performing minor surgery with homemade instruments.

Refused to Leave Vietnam

Released again under a presidential amnesty in August 1998, Dr. Que’s health had worsened considerably and he was unable to walk without assistance. Refusing to leave the country, he was held under house arrest for over four years but continued to promote respect for human rights. For example, in addition to appealing to the government to improve prison conditions, he wrote articles calling for democracy and for better treatment of indigenous minorities.

Harassment of Dr. Que intensified, including 24-hour surveillance, disconnection of his telephone and Internet service, and interrogation of visitors. After writing an article criticizing recent Vietnamese government claims that there is freedom of information in Vietnam, he was arrested once more in March 2003.

“Repeated requests to visit Dr. Que of even just speak to him by telephone by his family, as well as international diplomats, have all been denied,” said Prof. Birman. “Given his current isolation and the fact that he was denied medical care during his previous incarcerations, it is feared that he may not be receiving any medical attention for his grave ill health.”

Pagels Award

The Academy’s first human rights award was given in 1979 to Russian physicist Andrei Sakharov. Renamed in 1988 in honor of former Academy president Heinz R. Pagels, the award has been bestowed on such imminent scientists as Chinese dissident Fang Li-Zhi, Russian Nuclear Engineer Alexander Nikitin, and Cuban Economist Martha Beatriz Roque Cabello.

“In his fight for human rights and freedom of speech, Dr. Que exemplifies the virtues demonstrated by our first award winner, Andre Sakharov,” said Nobel Laureate Torsten Wiesel, chair of the Academy’s Board of Governors. “The Academy is proud to have Dr. Que join the list of more than 25 exemplary citizens of the world who have been honored with this award.”

Also read: Academy Aids Effort to Release Political Prisoner

The Science Behind Doping in Sports

Scientists fear new drugs and genetic doping lie ahead for Olympic athletes: Can cheating be stopped?

Published July 20, 2004

By Diane Kightlinger

Image courtesy of weyo via stock.adobe.com.

Can doping athletes be stopped? With the Athens Olympics about to open, scientists are increasingly concerned that sophisticated techniques for evading drug tests will make it difficult for testers to catch athletes using steroids and other drugs, especially at future athletic competitions when genetic-based enhancements are expected to be prevalent.

Advances in drug production and genetic engineering are benefiting athletes interested in evading tests – and the ways in which scientists are figuring out ways to create ever-better detection techniques.

Today, the pharmacopoeia of substances banned at the Olympic Games includes not only stimulants, but narcotics, anabolic steroids, beta-2 agonists, and peptide hormones such as EPO (erythropoietin) and hGH (human growth hormone). Last year, the drug company Balco was charged with distributing designer drugs such as the steroid THG (tetrahydrogestrinone).

Putting Drugs to the Test

In recent years, researchers focused on catching dopers have won important battles by developing tests for THG and EPO and using them to catch abusers. In addition, the creation of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) in November 1999 may soon result in near-universal standards for doping control across sports federations and countries. However, current methods of Olympic testing still cannot catch athletes who use steroids to bulk up during training but stop months before the Games, or those who use EPO more than a few days before competition.

To combat these tricks to avoid detection, new techniques are being developed to identify illegal substances and methods. WADA has also implemented “year-round, no-notice testing,” says Casey Wade, WADA education director. “Give athletes more than 24-hour notice and they can provide a sample, but it’s going to be free from detection.”

The International Olympic Committee requires most Olympic athletes to make themselves available for doping tests anytime and anywhere for one year prior to the opening of the Games. This year, WADA plans some 2,400 tests, a process of selection that takes into account the substances that an athlete might use and the time it would take a body to clear the drug from an athlete’s system before the Athens games start.

Lab testing faces many challenges. The U.S. Olympic testing lab facility at the University of California at Los Angeles employs an array of mass spectrometry techniques designed to analyze testing samples. The technique identifies steroids by breaking up molecules and sorting the resulting fragments by mass. However, it may miss drugs like THG because THG may have been modified in such a way as to make detecting those characteristic fragments difficult to spot on conventional tests.

Doping Through Genetic Engineering

Don Catlin, the lab’s director, says that the detection of EPO and hGH abuse is particularly difficult because they appear only in minute quantities in body fluids. EPO increases oxygen delivery to the muscles, and hGH enhances muscle growth. When extracting EPO from urine, Catlin says, “the less there is of it, the more difficult it is to extract with good recovery.”

He adds, “Most of the drugs we’re working with have molecular weights of 300. EPO has a weight of 30,000 to 35,000, which is too large for our mass spectrometers to work on.”

Yet another challenge to testers comes from genetic approaches to enhancing performance. According to Theodore Friedmann, director of the Program in Human Gene Therapy at the University of California at San Diego, the promise of gene transfer methods to build skeletal muscle and increase red blood cell production means that anyone can dope their performance via genetic engineering.

“The genes are all available and you make them,” he said. “All it takes is three or four well-trained postdocs and a million or two dollars.”

In response, the WADA has added methods such as blood and gene doping to its list of prohibited substances. New tests are being developed to detect “gene” tampering, and blood tests, rather than urine tests, is already on its way to becoming the standard for catching dopers.

In spite of these challenges, researchers are confident that they will be able to face these increasingly sophisticated substances and delivery methods. Scientists are making strides by developing effective tests, streamlining existing procedures, and working with agencies such as the WADA to ensure that 21st century technology benefits, rather than compromises, the spirit of the ancient Olympics.

Also read: The Intersection of Sport and STEM

Causes and Treatments of Youth Violence

A man clenches his fist.

Young violence is a complicated topic with a range of different causes and treatments. Researchers from psychology, sociology, and neurobiology have teamed up to better understand this.

Published June 1, 2004

By Catherine Zandonella

Image courtesy of andranik123 via stock.adobe.com.

There’s no simple, societal Rx, for preventing violent behavior in children and adolescents. But the latest research findings in psychology, sociology and neurobiology suggest a three-tiered approach to unlocking solutions.

Youth violence plagues society and endangers children throughout much of the United States and the world. Its manifestations cross socio-economic strata, ranging from urban gang violence to school shootings perpetrated by children in middle-class and even upper-income communities.

Yet, the principal method of dealing with youth violence in the United States – punishment through the courts – appears ineffective. Although U.S. crime rates have dropped since 1993, the decline represents a return to a rate that’s much higher than most other Western countries. “We’ve been engaged in an experiment,” said James Gilligan, a prison psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, “and the results are in: It isn’t working.”

A better approach, one that combines the latest findings in psychology, sociology, and neurobiology, is needed. This was the conclusion of experts from each of these fields who gathered to share information at The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) conference, Scientific Approaches to Youth Violence Prevention, held at the Rockefeller University on April 24-26. Instead of punishment, these researchers suggested treating violence less like a moral problem and more like a public health issue that responds to intervention.

A useful approach for thinking about violence intervention is the public health framework: a three-tiered approach that first targets society at large, then susceptible individuals, and finally the afflicted persons. For violence, the first stage involves reducing risk factors such as social inequality, followed by intervention programs for at-risk youth, and thirdly, programs and pharmacotherapeutics for violent offenders

The Social Machinery of Oppression

This framework allows one to consider violence not simply as the physical act of aggression by one person on another, but also the everyday acts of bullying and neglect that can lead to violent behaviors. The framework includes structural violence characterized by economic, political, or social discrimination – in short, the social machinery of oppression.

No single intervention can stop youth violence. Instead, conference organizers arranged the talks around distinct prescriptions that, if all the “medicines” were taken, would decrease violence in society. “We really do believe that if all these (remedies) were followed, we would dramatically reduce violence,” said Donald Pfaff, a neurobiologist at the Rockefeller University in New York and one of the conference organizers.

Primary Prevention: Addressing Social Inequity

Violence can be traced to many causes, but societal inequity is perhaps the broadest root cause, said Richard Wilkinson, an epidemiologist at the University of Nottingham Medical School, England, who is renowned for his work on socioeconomic disparities and health. As societal inequalities increase, more and more people experience a sense of powerlessness and humiliation – and increasing stress – each of which may trigger violence.

Extreme social inequality can lead to acceptance of violent behaviors, including infanticide and genocide, said medical anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes of the University of California, Berkeley. Scheper-Hughes found that extremely poor Brazilian mothers invested little nurturing in their children and sometimes had to choose which ones would live. Brazilian society, she found, sometimes condoned the murder of street children because they were seen as “rubbish people.”

The School-to-Prison Pipeline

Oversized school populations also are seen as a breeding ground for youth violence. While schools with several thousand students are common in much of the United States, John Devine, a conference organizer and researcher at the Center for Social and Emotional Education in New York, says these large institutions can lead to a “school-to-prison pipeline.”

At the same time, the increased militarization of schools – the presence of metal detectors, surveillance cameras, and police officers patrolling hallways – serves to further the sense of victimization among the students. A better prescription would be smaller, less militarized schools in which teachers and counselors devote more time to communicating with students, offering greater opportunities for positive visions of development.

One reason schools are so important is that early childhood has a major impact on behavior and the developing brain. “Children as young as two years show dominance hierarchies, assuming roles of leaders and followers,” reported W. Thomas Boyce of the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley. Boyce found that about 20% of children are physiologically “highly reactive” to stressful situations, making them more likely to become either victims or perpetrators of violence.

Boys as young as four and five years are primed for aggression, said William Pollack of Harvard Medical School, when society tells them to suppress their emotions — by being told “boys don’t cry.” Pollack is working with boys to develop new “initiation rites” that encourage “healthy vulnerability,” sustained through connection to caring adults, rather than a classic belief in stoicism.

A Supportive Environment for Girls

New York University Professor Carol Gilligan reported on the female equivalent of these rites of passage. Girls are socialized between the ages of nine to 13 to silence their honest “inner voices” and conform to their perceived expectations of boys, girlfriends, parents, and society at large. Instead, said Gilligan, “we need to offer girls a supportive environment to be themselves.”

Sensitivity to the experiences of pubertal girls can help reduce violence against them, reported Holly Foster, a sociologist at Texas A&M University. She found that early onset of puberty was linked to increased verbal and physical abuse from boyfriends.

Instead of targeting all violence, a more cost-effective approach would be to target the most lethal forms of violence. “Why pick up the whole dog just to wag its tail?” asked Franklin Zimring of the School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. Instead, Zimring suggests that since the majority of homicides are committed with guns, stricter gun laws and enforcement would reduce the death toll of youth violence.

The role of the mother or primary caregiver in the development of an individual at risk for violent behavior is becoming clearer from animal studies. In rats, maternal licking and grooming of pups in the first few days of life are critical to the creation of lasting patterns of neural development, conferring nurturing behavior when the pups reach adulthood, found Michael Meaney, a neuropsychologist at McGill University in Montreal.

Providing the bridge from rats to humans, Peter Fonagy of the University College London said that negative mothering is a major determinant of violence in children.

The Role of the Bystander

Unfortunately, many youth violence-prevention programs are unproven – some are even counterproductive, reported Peter Greenwood, former RAND employee who is now a violence prevention consultant. “What’s common in the most successful programs is they don’t focus on the child, rather they focus on the home environment and the mother or primary caregiver,” he said.

While the Bullying Prevention Program has been proven effective, many such programs ignore a crucial component – the role of the bystander, noted Stuart Twemlow of the Menninger Department of Psychiatry at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Bullying is not exclusively a human activity. Chimpanzees form groups and engage in violence against one another to both enhance their social status and thwart bullying, said Harvard University anthropologist Richard Wrangham.

Turning to the question of how genes interact with environment to produce aggressive behaviors, Donald Pfaff, a neurobiologist at the Rockefeller University, offered an overview of genetic influences on aggression in animals. The effects of genes can depend on when and where in the brain the gene is expressed, the gender and age of the offender, the type of opponent, and the type of aggression.

Twin studies can help distinguish between genetic and environmental determinants of violence, said Essi Viding of the Institute of Psychiatry in London. Viding found that in antisocial 7-year-olds, callous and unemotional traits were about 80% genetic. If these youths can be identified early, perhaps with a genetic test on cells from a cheek swab, one could target programs for them. “Genes are not a blueprint that determines outcome,” said Viding, “but rather they act together with other risk or protective factors to increase or reduce the risk of disorder.”

The Role of Alcohol Use

One well-known risk factor is alcohol use. Alcohol is involved in more than half of all violent assaults. Drinking alcohol relaxes most people, but “a small subpopulation goes berserk,” said Klaus Miczek, professor of psychology and pharmacology at Tufts University in Massachusetts and one of the conference organizers. He believes it may be eventually possible to identify genetic markers in individuals that are prone to aggressive alcohol-related behavior.

Far from deterring violent behavior, punishment is by far the most powerful stimulus of violent behavior, said James Gilligan, a prison psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the conference organizers. “Today’s prisons treat humans like animals,” said Gilligan, “and then we are surprised when prisoners act like animals.”

Instead, Gilligan advocates the creation of “anti-prisons” – locked, safe, residential settings where prisoners undergo therapeutic and skill-building programs. A successful pilot program in San Francisco reduced the re-arrest rate by 83% among males who attended the program for four months. Support programs for violent individuals make sense because they increase rewards for nonviolent behavior, said Howard Rachlin, a behavioral economist at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

A variety of drugs can be used to control violent behavior, but all of them were developed to target other afflictions. These include mood stabilizers such as lithium, antidepressants like SSRIs (serotonin selective reuptake inhibitors), Ritalin, beta-blockers such as propranolol, and anti-epileptic drugs. Antiandrogens can control sexual impulses, but they don’t work in all individuals and suffer from low compliance.

Adolescence: The Last Window of Intervention

Finding new drugs is complicated by the fact that violence is classified as symptom rather than a disease, presenting regulatory hurdles, speaker Berend Olivier of Utrecht University in the Netherlands reported. In studies of the numerous neurotransmitters involved, what has been missed, added Klaus Miczek, is careful attention to when these chemicals come into play. For example, serotonin levels drop after aggression initiation. Dopamine levels rise after the behavior terminates, while corticosterone levels dictate termination of violence and recovery.

“We are all looking forward to the era when we can prescribe medications based on the patient’s genotype,” said Jan Volavka, an expert on the neurobiology of violence at the Nathan Kline Institute at New York University. He discussed two promising routes to this goal. A genetic test could determine which individuals have low levels of the enzyme catechol-o-methyltransferase (COMT), making them more prone to violence. A second test could look for low levels of the enzyme monoamine oxidase A (MAOA). If children with low MAOA are subject to maltreatment, they have higher risk of antisocial behavior. However, these children turned out fine if raised in a nurturing environment.

Androgenic hormones clearly predispose to aggressive behaviors in a wide variety of animals and in humans. Alarmingly, anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) — popular amongst teens for muscle building — may have lasting harmful effects in the brain, said Marilyn McGinnis of the University of Texas, San Antonio.

Both positive and negative experiences during adolescence can have a lasting effect because the brain is so plastic, said Ronald Dahl, an adolescent psychiatrist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the conference’s keynote speaker. For youths already disposed to violence, said Dahl, adolescence could be a “last window” of intervention.

Also read: Mind, Brain, and Society: The Biology of Violence

Talking Teaching: A Case for Standardized Testing

A student uses a pencil to fill in a bubble on an exam.

While the United States’ education system is unique in many ways, embracing the proven, standardized testing practices of countries like South Korea can lead to better outcomes for American students.

Published June 1, 2004

By Rosemarie Foster

Image courtesy of Achira22 via stock.adobe.com.

In France it’s the Baccalauréat. In Germany it’s the Abitur. In those countries, these are the standardized exams that every student must pass to graduate high school and attend college. But in the United States there’s no such requirement – at least not on a national level. Only two states have standardized “exit exams” that students must pass before moving on to the next grade or graduating: the Regents Examinations in New York and the North Carolina Testing Program. Despite a public school system that is generally quite good, statistics show that U.S. students lag behind their European and Asian counterparts by as many as four grade levels in such fields as math and science.

“Students in those countries know a lot, lot more. So we’ve got a problem,” asserted John H. Bishop, PhD, associate professor of human resource studies at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations of Cornell University. He is also executive director of the Educational Excellence Alliance, a consortium of 325 high schools that is studying ways to improve school climate and student engagement.

At a meeting of the Education Section at The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) in April, Bishop argued that accountability strategies, such as external exit examinations aimed at raising student achievement levels in math and science, do indeed work.

Why Can’t Johnny Do Algebra?

Bishop proposed several reasons for the poor showing of U.S. students in math, science, and reading. The first: lower teaching salaries. “We pay our teachers terribly compared to other countries,” said Bishop, who noted that this is particularly true for high school teachers. A typical high school teacher in Korea makes more than twice as much per hour ($82) as his American colleague ($37). There may, therefore, be less incentive for qualified individuals to teach when they can get better paying jobs elsewhere. Bishop suggested that by raising standards and expectations for teachers and paying them more, we’ll get better teachers, and students will have a greater opportunity to excel.

Reason number two: In the U.S., credentials earned yield immediate rewards from employers, but “employers don’t reward learning as much as is the case abroad,” contended Bishop. Students who learn more than others with the same credentials do not get better jobs that reflect their greater capability and effort when they graduate. It takes a decade for the labor market to discover that they are more productive, and to reward them for their effort. As a result, students are encouraged to do the minimum necessary to get the credentials, and no more.

A third and widespread influence on student performance in the U.S. is pressure by peers against studying. Research has shown that students are more likely to be harassed by their classmates if they are gifted, participate in class, are often seen studying, and spend several hours a day doing homework.

“Getting in with the peer group requires a lot of time. If you’re doing five hours of homework a night, you’re not spending enough time hanging out,” explained Bishop.

Leveling the Playing Field

Why are the studious so unpopular in the U.S.? Athletes are valued more because their success is viewed as an asset to the school. But scholarly students, Bishop maintained, aren’t seen as contributing to the overall good of the school. Indeed, their success only forces others to keep up. Those who harass them, therefore, are trying to bring them down to a lower level, in hopes of dropping the standard.

In Europe and Asia, external exit exams force everyone to do well, explained Bishop. The stakes are higher: Without passing them, students can’t excel and attend university. In an environment where rank is based on achievement on such external exams, students are not competing with each other. Rather, as a group they are all motivated to achieve at a high standard. Data show that the exams work: Countries that require students to pass national external examinations to graduate have higher science and mathematical literacy than nations without these tests.

In the U.S., class rank and grade point average are given more weight. Since these rankings position a student relative to the rest of the class, it behooves the “bullies” to harass hard-working students as a means of advancing their own standing.

Bishop advocates a combination of the GPA and external exams. “The purpose of an external exam is to create good teaching and to engage the students,” he said. Having to give grades encourages the teachers to mentor and motivate their students to do well in class. Adding external exams helps everyone aspire to a common standard that can level the playing field.

Evidence that Testing Works

Data comparing scholastic achievement between U.S. states support Bishops contention that standardized testing results in better student performance. End-of-course examinations taken by eighth-grade students in New York and North Carolina are linked to better reading, math, and science literacy, compared to students who didn’t take these exams.

Studies also show that end-of-course exams can increase the likelihood of students going on to college and getting better paying jobs. These tests were especially motivating for C students, who were more likely to go to college if they graduated from a school in a state that required them to pass end-of-course exams. The test had less of an effect on the A students because they probably would have gone to college anyway.

Where Do We Go from Here?

Source: OECD, Education at a Glance 2003

The answer to the question of how to improve our educational system isn’t an easy one. While requiring a student to pass end-of-course exams can certainly help, Bishop contended that other elements of the educational environment need to change, too.

One problem is “out-of-field” teaching. Many of America’s teachers do not have college degrees in the very topics they are teaching. “We have teachers who lack a basic understanding of what they’re trying to teach, and they often screw it up,” asserted Bishop. “You have to know your subject so deeply that you can figure out how to make it interesting.” New York State, which fares well in national rankings of student competence, has one of the lowest rates of out-of-field teaching in the country.

Teachers also need better instruction in how to teach. And they need to be more receptive to what works: Many teachers don’t want to use established teaching techniques because they’re considered “scripted.”

Bishop also supports more basic research in the field of education. “We need to spend the kind of money on research in education that we spend on research seeking a cure for cancer,” he emphasized, acknowledging that the high cost of conducting such studies is often a deterrent.

The news is not all bad: Math and science literacy among American students has increased one to two grade levels in the last several years, but could be even better. “I’m actually amazed at how well our kids do considering the difficulties we start them out with,” said Bishop. “But the good news is that we’ve made marvelous gains.”

Also read: Embracing Globalization in Science Education

For the Public Good: Policy and Science

A night shot of the U.S. Capital Building in Washington D.C.

While many conjure images of beakers and Bunsen burners when thinking about science, it’s also important to consider the policy implications.

Published June 1, 2004

By Eric Staeva-Vieira

Image courtesy of Worawat via stock.adobe.com.

Hypotheses are derived; experiments planned; results recorded. But what do the Washington elite think? The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) recently spoke with a newly minted Ph.D., Ginny Cox (Weill-Cornell ‘04), about her aspirations to examine the crossroads of science and politics as an AAAS science policy fellow.

Can you tell us about your story?

I came to graduate school after attending Wake Forest University, where I majored in Biology. At Cornell Medical College I joined Dr. Mary Baylies’ lab, where I used Drosophila Genetics to study the mechanisms that cells use to communicate with one another. While I enjoyed working in basic science research, I also noticed problems outside the lab: specifically, a growing intellectual divide between policymakers and scientists. I felt the need to become actively involved in the policymaking process and to work to educate policymakers and the public about basic science and its impact on society.

How did you become interested in politics?

Involvement in politics seemed like a natural extension of my interest in policy. One particular event I participated in was a Capitol Hill Day sponsored by the Joint Steering Committee for Science Policy (JSC). During this day, groups of scientists met with Congressional Members and their staffs to increase awareness of biomedical research and the continuing need to support funding for this research. It was an exciting experience to talk to lawmakers about my work while learning more about the lawmaking process that underlies federal biomedical research funding.

In your opinion, what are the major issues for U.S. science policy?

Since globalization has become a driving force in the world economy, U.S. science policy also must extend beyond its borders. Improving vaccines and treatments for diseases that impact developing countries should be a central concern because improving health among the global poor has direct consequences for political stability in those countries. Closer to home, we need better policies concerning human embryonic stem cell usage and non-reproductive cloning. Laws passed in New Jersey and California have opened the door to state-by-state funding for human embryonic stem cell research, but more states need to pass such legislation.

Also, now that we are in the genomic era, scientists and policymakers need to unite to improve public education with regard to genetic testing. Much of the fear associated with genetic testing could be removed by putting better protective measures in place to safeguard an individual’s genetic information and to inform people of both the benefits and limitations of genetic testing.

It was once remarked: “Scientists best serve public policy by living within the ethics of science, not those of politics. If the scientific community will not unfrock the charlatans, the public will not discern the difference — science and the nation will suffer.” What are your thoughts on this statement?

Dr. Ginny Cox

Science and the nation will suffer more if scientists abstain from the public policy debate. Accompanying an increase in the complexity of technology has been an increase in the complexity of arguments about how to best regulate it. Those individuals who best understand the technology — scientists — have a responsibility to educate the public and lawmakers as to the basic principles of this technology. By distilling these complicated scientific issues to a more understandable level, we can arm policymakers with the facts, allowing them to make the best decisions possible.

How can scientists best serve the public?

By staying informed about socially contentious issues in their fields, and by reaching out to everyday people to answer their questions about scientific issues. Last year I met a pair of businessmen while I was staying at the Chicago Sheraton during the annual Drosophila Research Conference. They wanted to know why thousands of people were meeting to discuss fruit flies.

I explained to them that many of the first insights about the genetic basis for embryonic patterning had come from flies, and that new discoveries in such diverse fields as stem cell biology and neuroscience continue to be made using flies. By taking the time to explain our research to people, we can make science more accessible on an individual basis and dispel those mad scientist myths.

Also read: What Makes Science of Interest to the Public?

Quirks and Quacks: Bernard Shaw and Medical Ethics

Reflecting on ethical considerations posed by the famous Irish-born satirist nearly a century after his play critiqued aspects of the medical profession.

Published April 19, 2004

By Jennifer Tang

Image via Wikimedia Commons.

You’ve invented a “miracle cure” for tuberculosis. Unfortunately, you have limited supplies of the drug and have room for only one more patient. You must choose between saving the life of a penniless doctor dedicated to helping the poor or a talented but dissipated artist whose neglected wife attracts your eye. Who would you save?

That’s the “dilemma” facing the protagonist of The Doctor’s Dilemma, George Bernard Shaw’s 1906 satire on the medical community and the conflict between the arts and sciences. To examine the play’s treatment of medical ethics and its relevance to today’s physicians, The New York Academy of Sciences (the Academy) co-sponsored a panel discussion and play at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, on March 30, 2004. The event, The Doctor’s Dilemma: Quirks and Quacks, was co-sponsored by the Martin E. Segal Theater Center, the Bernard Shaw Society, and the City University’s Science and the Arts Program.

After actors from the Juilliard School of Drama read three scenes from Shaw’s play, a panel discussion was held with Mark Horn, MD, MPH, director of medical alliances at Pfizer’s Alliance Development; Howard Kissel, senior theatre critic for the New York Daily News, and John T. Truman, MD, MPH, Professor and Deputy Chairman of the department of pediatrics, Columbia University/Children’s Hospital of New York-Presbyterian. Rhonda Nathan served as moderator.

A Lifelong Skeptic

Kissel opened the discussion by stating that Shaw’s portrayal of doctors was too harsh. “Shaw was cantankerous and his plays were often designed to provoke controversy,” he said. The first scene, in which a group of doctors congratulate a colleague on his knighthood, rapidly turns into a debate over which medical procedure is superior. While the lead character believes that germs must be coated with a chemical in order for the body’s immune system to fight them, a surgeon believes that nearly all diseases are caused by blood poisoning, and yet a third says diseases can be avoided by cutting out everyone’s nuciform sac.

Shaw’s implication is that doctors promote their procedures to gratify their ego or their wallet rather than the needs of the patient. “Shaw counted doctors among his friends, but also remained a lifelong skeptic toward the medical profession,” Kissel said.

While Horn agreed that Shaw had “a contemptuous attitude toward doctors,” he thought the play was a parody that remains timely and contains some uncomfortable truths about medicine. For example, the play’s premise—how a doctor decides whom to treat when there is a limited supply of medicine—echoes the “health care rationing” of medical services offered by today’s HMOs.

The Poor Doctor versus the Brilliant Artist/Scoundrel

Truman noted that Shaw presented the conflict in terms of class and profession—the “poor doctor” versus the “brilliant artist/scoundrel.” But Shaw’s play harks back to an era when health care decision-making was influenced by the idea of ‘social utility.’

“In those days, if you wanted to get a kidney transplant, there was a ‘scorecard’ determining whether or not you would get it. You were rated according to what you had to offer to society, and that determined whether or not you got a kidney transplant,” he said. Such reasoning (based on Social Darwinism) is obsolete today, he felt, although the wealthy continue to have more options to receive better treatment than the poor.

In addition, the play’s satire on “medical fads” (the doctors each promoting their new procedures like salesmen), still holds up well today, according to Horn. He pointed out how “current styles of intervention” are a fact of health care and how medicine is constantly changing. For example, there has been a radical reassessment of coronary disease in recent years, and such once-heralded procedures as hormonal replacement therapy have been scrutinized.

Truman observed that the doctors in the play represent different schools of thought. “In the field of ethics, these doctors favor their own procedures because they may have an ‘unconscious bias’ toward their own specialty,” he said. He told an amusing anecdote about Rudy Giuliani, who reportedly visited several doctors during his treatment for prostate cancer. When he went to a radiation therapist, the doctor suggested radiation therapy; when he went to a surgeon, the doctor suggested surgery. “That does not mean doctors are bad; they do believe they have the correct solution,” he said.

What Does it Mean to be a Human Being?

Kissel cautioned, however, that we should remember when the play was written. “In the last 50 years, medicine has been miraculous,” he said. Shaw’s play was written at a time when many medical procedures were still unsafe, and it was not uncommon for people to die from them. Hence, the debate over vaccines in the play did not involve big companies like Pfizer, but vaccines that had been manufactured by farmers.

The panelists also questioned whether Shaw’s delineation of the line separating the arts and sciences remains true today. Are there irreconcilable differences between these two branches of human thought? Will they remain forever at odds?

Horn commented that artists and scientists are different in terms of temperament and this difference creates a barrier in communication. When human beings speak another language, he said, they might resort to “contempt, which would serve as a camouflage to hide feelings of fear over what they don’t understand,” he said.

“Nowadays, the arts have gone off in so many weird directions that the gap between art and science is much less than it was in Shaw’s time,” Kissel added. To him, the issue appeared to be more about humanity. “I think the more important question posed by the play is, what does it mean to be a human being?”

Also read: Avoiding Bias and Conflict of Interest in Science

Tapping into Ancient Urges for Food and Love?

A young woman plays a ukulele.

“After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.”
-Aldous Huxley, Music at Night

Published March 1, 2004

By Linda Hotchkiss Mehta

Image courtesy of offsuperphoto via stock.adobe.com.

Can music be reduced to mere brain anatomy and electrochemical interactions within the neural templates through which we experience it? Or will what we learn from science simply reinforce a reality the poets have intuited all along?

A group of scientists came together in Venice in October 2002 to take a look at what is known about music through the neurosciences. This area of study is providing insights into higher cognitive function through the mechanisms of musical perception and processing in the human brain. These scientists, many of whom are musicians themselves, approach their work well aware of the incredibly complex process that results in artistic expression and perception.

One broad question that has been explored is a perennial one about intelligence and musical ability – is musical aptitude an integral part of a person’s general cognitive potential or does it exist on its own, a separable and different type of intelligence?

Obviously, general intelligence alone is insufficient – plenty of demonstrably intelligent people never develop into excellent musicians, even when provided with an early music education. But must one be intelligent to be an accomplished musician? Evidence suggests that high general mental aptitude is necessary if special aptitudes (dare we say talent?) are to be fully developed.

In other words, the answer is yes: General intelligence and musical aptitude probably are linked. Furthermore, children who participate in musical activities show a higher degree of “mental speed” (a measure of mental aptitude) than their peers. So these findings have wide implications: Questions about how musical training can enhance general mental aptitude and what neuroscience can tell us about the effectiveness of various pedagogical techniques for musical training are of vital interest.

A Developmental Approach

Only a developmental approach could illuminate these questions, and The Neurosciences and Music, a volume in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences resulting from the meeting in Venice, focuses on neural development in both musicians and non-musicians, seeking to clarify questions about the development of higher cognitive function, in general, through the lens of the development of musical abilities, specifically.

Contributing scientists explore the mechanisms of human perception of the components of music (pitch, timbre, rhythm and harmony), the development of musical abilities, and the fate of musical abilities within the contexts of cognitive disorders in children and of dementia in the aged.

Scientists studying visual imagery have developed techniques for identifying and quantifying the perception of a visual experience, including mental image-making during the act of reading. Because the image a subject observes while reading is black marks on a page, bearing no resemblance to the image conjured up in the brain by the written words, the scientist/observer cannot “see” the mental image of the subject, and this process can only be observed through the traces of brain-imaging techniques.

Using the same brain-imaging tools, scientists can watch what happens neurologically while a person processes music. In one experiment, subjects listened to music while electroencephalography was used to trace brain responses. Musical phrases with syntactically inappropriate endings elicit early right anterior negativity. Shakespeare understood this intuitively: “How sour sweet music is,/When time is broke, and no proportion kept!/So is it in the music of men’s lives.”

Musicians vs Nonmusicians

A group of skilled musicians showed no significant differences from nonmusicians when presented with tasks designed to assess perception of melody, structuring of harmony, and more complex musical presentations. The subjects were asked to judge the similarity of musical selections and the degree of completeness of a piece of music and to identify the musical emotion expressed. Non-musicians demonstrated an ability to use the same principles as musical experts as they listened to music, which suggests that the capacity to enjoy music is universal and not dependent on training.

Even young children with no musical training demonstrate innate musical knowledge when tested with “inappropriate” chord progressions (not dominant-tonic, which is experienced as a normal, or authentic, cadence) through electric brain potential responses. The brain structure in which this response occurs is also involved in processing the syntax of language, which suggests that this aspect of musical ability is something that the human brain is already structured to do.

Cultural Differences

We are also led to wonder about cultural differences in music perception. Interestingly, when the rhythmic differences between French and English were compared to French and English classical musical themes, rhythmic patterns similar to those of the spoken language were found in the music of each culture. When language perception is tested independently, listening to one’s native language elicits a different neurological response than does listening to an unfamiliar language.

But music perception is dramatically different. In spite of the apparent link between a culture’s language and its musical rhythms, studies that compared the responses of subjects to music of their native culture with their responses to unfamiliar music found that differences depended more on the subjects’ musical expertise than on their familiarity with the music. This is good news for Yo-Yo Ma’s Silk Road Project, because it suggests that appreciation of another culture’s music should not be out of reach for most people.

More Grey Matter

The neuroanatomical differences that do exist between musicians and non-musicians may instead reflect the complex motor and auditory skills required for performance on an instrument and learning musical repertoire, as well as the processing feedback necessary to monitor a performance. Musicians have more grey-matter volume in several brain areas compared with non-musicians and even compared with amateur musicians, probably because intensity of practice affects these differences.

Another means of elucidating the neural events underlying imagery and perception is to study the function of persons with brain injuries in precise locations. It turns out that both perception (of music as it is played) and the capacity to form a mental image (in the absence of audible music) are damaged when the associated brain structure is damaged, which demonstrates that both processes depend on the same neural territory.

Wordsworth alludes to this human capacity in his poetry: “The music in my heart I bore,/Long after it was heard no more.” Without this capacity to imagine musical tone and timbre accurately and vividly enough to use them in new arrangements, after all, Beethoven would have lost the ability to compose when he lost his ability to hear.

As scientifically defined by Ian Cross of Cambridge, “music embodies, entrains, and transposably intentionalizes time in sound and action.” Most of us, however, think first of the emotional response music engenders. Poets have described music as the language of angels and the food of love, a medium with “charms to soothe a savage breast.” Many people experience “chills” or “shivers” when certain musical phrases are played and describe this experience as euphoric. These responses can be elicited fairly reliably even in a laboratory, where the associated psychophysiological responses can be measured.

The Pleasure of Music

It appears as though the pleasure we derive from music occurs because our neocortex can reach ancient neural systems involved with basic biological stimuli linked to survival. Perhaps the capacity to make and enjoy music is the happy accident of skills acquired and refined for more basic needs: nourishment and reproduction. The poets anticipated the scientists by centuries, in linking music with the ancient urges of love and food.

The poets also speak of music’s power to help us reduce stress: “Music alone with sudden charms can bind/The wand’ring senses, and calm the troubled mind,” wrote William Congreve. As scientists discover more about the links between the immune system and stress, the stress-reducing mechanisms of music might be a fruitful area for research.

The contemporary composer Karlheinz Stockhausen observed that “sonic vibrations do not only penetrate ears and skin. They penetrate the entire body, reaching the soul, the psychic center of perception.”

Stockhausen believed that the ratio between the unknown and the known has remained pretty much the same over time: The discoveries of science may explain much, but new questions are perpetually raised. Thus wonder will never die, and the poets may have the last word. What better words than these from Alfred, Lord Tennyson: “Let knowledge grow from more to more,/ But more of reverence in us dwell;/That mind and soul, according well,/May make one music as before.”

Also read: Music on the Mind: A Neurologist’s Take

An Entertaining Approach to Science Education

Who said that science can’t be fun? These scientists let lose for the night to both entertain and educate their audience.

Published June 1, 2003

By Dennis Gaffney

Image courtesy of Chalabala via stock.adobe.com.

It’s about an hour before Helen Davies is scheduled to sing in the basement grotto at the Cornelia Street Café in New York’s Greenwich Village. The crowd hasn’t yet filtered into the long and narrow bohemian space, with its low ceilings, candle lighting, and tables the size of pizza pies.

By day, Davies is a professor of microbiology. Performing, though, as her stomach reminds her, is not the same as teaching. “I guess you’d say I have butterflies,” admits the professor, who is 77 years old. “That’s a gastro-entomological term.”

Davies is part of the February edition of the monthly “Entertaining Science” series, which aspires to mix a little science, the spoken word and some music in a café setting. Tonight, Davies does all three when she steps onto a stage not much larger than a hospital gurney and sings “Leprosy,” written to the tune of the Beatles hit “Yesterday:”

Leprosy…
Bits and pieces falling off of me.
But it isn’t the toxicity
It’s just neglect of injury.
Suddenly,
I’m not half the man I used to be
Can’t feel anything peripherally…

Davies, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, usually uses such songs – “I have about 40, but I’m happiest with 12,” she says – to provide mnemonic devices to medical students who must memorize mountains of minutiae about infectious diseases.

Song as a Mnemonic Device for Medical Students

From left: Nobelist Roald Hoffman, Professor Helen Davies, and filmmaker Daniel Conrad.

A good example is “Gonococci,” a homage to bacteria that cause gonorrhea. Davies wrote the lyrics to the tune “She’ll be Comin Round the Mountain When She Comes.” This evening, Davies asks just the men in the audience to sing the second stanza from the song sheets she has distributed:

Let’s not clap for gonococcus named for Neisser
Which infects when to your life you add some spice sir.
Prostatitis, urethritis,
And Epididymitis
You can get it many times, not once or twice sir.

The audience breaks into laughter as often as it breaks into song. It’s just the kind of performance that Roald Hoffmann, the playful master of ceremonies for “Entertaining Science,” loves to schedule. “We’re not trying to teach science as much as we’re trying to have fun with science,” explains Hoffmann, who is a poet and a popularizer of science – as well as a Nobel Prize-winning chemist. “For me, the arts are a complementary way to understand this beautiful and terrible world around us.” Robin Hirsch, one of the café’s owners, has compared the combinations of art and science that Hoffmann has scheduled to “atomic particles colliding together.”

Benoit Mandelbrot, largely responsible for fractal geometry, told stories about fractals at the evening titled “The Smooth and the Wildly Rough,” held last September. “I discussed the eternal fight between the rough and the smooth,” says Mandelbrot, who is in attendance this evening. “There’s no good story without conflict.”

Poetry, Music, Film, and More

Food, wine, and…all that jazz.

Sharing the stage with him that September night was poet Emily Grosholz, who read poems sparked by high-level mathematics. Experimental musician Elliott Sharp played fractal-inspired music on his electric guitar. A program last December included a Columbia University chemist who described his research on the biochemistry of vision. A colleague then joined him on stage and the two each dazzled the crowd with magic tricks – hence the evening’s title, “Now You See It, Now You Don’t.”

“The evening must have two elements,” Hoffmann says. “It has to have a theme and then two or three performers who are loosely connected.” The connection this February evening is familial. The warm-up act to Davies is Daniel Conrad, a one-time molecular immunologist who has become an experimental filmmaker. He also happens to be Davies’ son.

The filmmaker began the evening by discussing how films are structured like organisms – pretty academic stuff. Then he showed two of his films, which featured the poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, a classical music soundtrack, the buildings of Spanish architect Antonio Gaudi, views of Canada’s Queen Charlotte Islands, and super-imposed dancers who moved more like organisms than humans.

A Free Meal

Clearly, the films are more art than science. All the performers, regardless of their fame, are paid with only a free meal, which they eat upstairs in Cornelia Street Cafe’s restaurant after the show. While waiting for dinner, Mandelbrot explains why he regularly attends the series. “All my work is between fields, so the people I feel most at ease with don’t have a devotion to just one field,” he says. He’s referring to the dozen people at the dinner table, who, lubricated by a few complimentary bottles of wine, converse about the pianist Glenn Gould, Lyme disease, grandmothering, Tourette’s syndrome, and choreographer George Balanchine.

“People have told me we could fill Carnegie Hall with this series,” says Hirsch. “But there wouldn’t be the same sense of play. There would be too much at stake. Besides, Helen would have to worry about singing perfectly in tune.”

Also read: Neural Harmony: When Arts Meets Neuroscience

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