science – Page 5

Scientific breakthroughs

Scanning Israeli news this week has a feel of a sci-fi fantasy. Most eye-catching of all is the assertion by a Tel Aviv University researcher, in a peer-reviewed article, that hyperbaric oxygen therapy can “reverse aging” by lengthening telomeres, the structures found at the ends of chromosomes, by more than 20% on average.

“This means we can start to look at aging as a reversible disease,” Prof. Shai Efrati said, as reported in the Times of Israel. Some gerontologists are skeptical of the claims and some suggest it could open a Pandora’s box of related health issues, but, from ancient times through the 16th-century conquistador Juan Ponce de León to, apparently, contemporary Israel, humankind has dreamed of and sought out a figurative or literal fountain of youth. Whether Efrati’s research will fulfil that dream will be watched closely.

And there are other scientific headlines this week.

Also coming out of Tel Aviv University is news that scientists have destroyed cancerous cells in mice by pinpointing affected cells with “tiny scissors,” while leaving everything around them intact and with no side effects. With trials possibly to begin in humans within two years, they are hopeful that this could be a revolution that could effectively cure cancer.

A third scientific bombshell comes from Israelis in Canada. Eliav Shaked and Roy Kirshon, expatriate biomedical engineers working in Toronto, are developing a speedy, non-invasive diagnostic for patients who are likely decades away from showing symptoms of dementia. While there is no cure yet for dementias like Alzheimer’s disease, the pair believe that an early diagnosis will not only permit individuals to prepare for eventual care but allow doctors to study the progression of the disease and thereby gain valuable insights.

In these pages, we frequently highlight Israeli technological and medical advancements but the news this week really seemed like a dream sequence from a futuristic utopia. Of course, none of these initiatives is a sure bet but they read like a hat trick against some of the most damning health challenges facing our generations.

Is it a coincidence that these are all emerging from Israel? It is no secret that the tiny state is a locus of a massively disproportionate amount of the world’s achievements in a range of fields.

Some books, like Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, by Dan Senor and Saul Singer, and many other observers have posited that Israel’s successes are achieved not in spite of the adversities the country and its people have faced, but as a direct result of them. So many of the scientific, social and economic advances that have come out of Israel in recent decades are civilian benefits redounding from military research and development, though Israel is by no means the only country for which this is case.

No less significant are the social impacts of compulsory service in a national defence force that some have called the least hierarchical in the world. Individuals who made life-and-death choices for themselves and their colleagues at age 19 or 20 may be less timid in taking major entrepreneurial or other life risks at 25 or 30 than an average North American or European at that age. Not to discount the value of peace and all the benefits it would bring, the circumstances in which Israel exists have created a thoroughly unique social and economic environment.

Coincidentally or not, also in the news this week was a vote at the United Nations in which 163 countries, including Canada, voted for a condemnatory resolution against Israel; five voted against. It is one of 17 resolutions expected in this General Assembly session targeting Israel, while just seven country-specific resolutions are expected to be aimed at condemning every other injustice on the planet. Canadian Jewish organizations and pro-Israel commentators are furious at Canada’s vote, which directly contradicts pledges made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, including during the last election campaign.

While many are appalled at the hypocritical obsession with Israel, and certainly Israeli diplomats are in the fray denouncing the vote, average Israelis, it is safe to say, remain sanguine. They have seen far worse attacks than that by the world community in the comparatively impotent global parliament that the UN General Assembly has become.

While it would be nice if the world judged Israel with moral measuring sticks commensurate with those we use for every other country, in the end it doesn’t seem to make much difference, thankfully. Even through the pandemic, Israelis have continued to try and turn science fiction into scientific reality. This week’s news alone included the possibility of cures for cancer, dementia and aging itself. And the benefits of such research do not accrue solely to Israelis, but to all of us – whether the nations of the world at the General Assembly recognize and appreciate that fact or not.

Casting positive impact

Aaron Friedland, creator and host of the podcast Impact in the 21st Century. (photo from Aaron Friedland)

If you’re looking for a new, uplifting podcast to cast away the oppressive weight of pandemic blues, consider Impact in the 21st Century, recently launched by Vancouverite Aaron Friedland. The Vancouver-based founder of the Simbi Foundation, which promotes literacy and education worldwide, felt it was time to give voice to the inspiring things that people are doing.

“There’s a lot of really bad news and horrible things going on and, as a species, we seem to be more interested in those stories,” Friedland told the Independent in a recent interview. “There are lots of podcasts available that celebrate big businesses and a very capitalist ideology. Our goal is to help showcase the amazing, impactful things that many brilliant people are doing and that often go unnoticed, and to mainstream what positive impact really means.”

To date, Friedland has interviewed Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist and scientific educator; David Suzuki, an academic, broadcaster and environmentalist; Maryanne Wolf, a Jewish author and Harvard academic researching the brain; Ndileka Mandela, the granddaughter of Nelson Mandela; and Alex Honnold, a rock climber and subject of the movie Free Solo. “It’s so nice to be the one doing the interviewing, and the people I’m speaking with are such brilliant minds with brilliant insights to share,” Friedland said. “I feel deeply privileged to be getting that information firsthand.” The plan is to release a new podcast every two to three weeks.

The Royal Bank of Canada has sponsored Impact in the 21st Century, but Friedland said he’s always looking for more sponsors. “Our goal is to reach a point where we have enough podcast sponsors that, with each episode we release, we can build another Bright Box,” he said. The Bright Boxes, which cost $55,000 per box, are classrooms comprised of shipping containers, refurbished with solar technology and aimed at enhancing learning in overcrowded classrooms in places that have little or no access to electricity.

Friedland’s next podcast will be an interview with Canadian cultural anthropologist Wade Davis. His dream interviewees are Elon Musk and David Attenborough, but he’s biding his time until those happen. “It could be they’re not ready yet,” Friedland quipped. “We look for subjects who have a track record of creating longstanding positive impact, and whose vision and values really align with ours.”

Listeners can stream Impact in the 21st Century anywhere they access their podcasts, or online at simbifoundation.org.

Lauren Kramer, an award-winning writer and editor, lives in Richmond. To read her work online, visit laurenkramer.net.

Medical myth-busting

Medical myth-buster Dr. James McCormack speaks Nov. 22 via Zoom. (photo from too-much-medicine.com)

Dr. James McCormack is a bit of an anomaly as a voice in today’s medical debates. In a politically driven climate where most people tend to stand as either “all in” or “all out” with regards to their belief in science and research, McCormack’s approach is more pragmatic.

McCormack, a tenured professor in the faculty of pharmaceutical sciences at the University of British Columbia, a podcast host and a YouTube content creator, is a strong believer in evidence-based medicine. Well-known as a medical myth-buster, he dispels misinformation that often prevents doctors and their patients from making the most informed decisions possible. He will present some of his many thoughts and findings at the Jewish Seniors Alliance Virtual Fall Symposium Nov. 22, 2 p.m., which will be held on Zoom.

McCormack’s presentation will highlight some of the more common myths around what medications are actually effective and how doctors and patients can better work together to make evidence-based decisions. In a phone interview with the Jewish Independent, the doctor said his ultimate objective is to find out what the best available existing evidence is in healthcare to help doctors and patients make shared decisions on treatment plans.

This process is often “tricky,” he said, because of the many false conclusions and deceptive statistics that surround the medical field. For example, there are hundreds of clinical trials showing that statins, one of the most popular drugs in the world, help patients with high cholesterol, reducing the risk of heart attacks among 50-to-60-year-old patients from five percent to four percent.

“If you take a statin you can reduce your chance of a heart attack by about one percent,” he explained. “But what you will hear is that this is a 20% reduction in heart attacks – 20% is not a lie, but it’s misleading.

“If I come to you and say, ‘You have high blood pressure. That’s a silent killer. Do you want it to be treated?’ That’s not shared decision-making,” he argued. “If I said, ‘Your blood pressure is this number and your chance of a heart attack is 10% over the next 10 years and we can reduce it from 10% down to eight percent, what do you think of that?’ If that two percent seems like something you might want to consider, then we can try the drug, start with a low dose, make sure we don’t blow you away with any side effects, and then go from there.”

McCormack hinted at the large amount of medical misunderstanding around the world by noting his belief that at least half of all medical prescriptions are either wrong, unnecessary or the incorrect dose – a problem he says is driven by the challenges pharmaceutical companies face in getting their products to market.

“When a new drug comes onto the market, almost for sure the recommended dose is too high,” he said. “[Pharmaceutical companies] have to show that the medicine works. To show that it works, they have to recommend a dose that everybody responds to because, if you choose lower doses, you might not show enough people responding.”

He likened this process to attempting to estimate how much alcohol any specific person would need to drink in order to get drunk – a question for which there would be almost as many answers as there are people.

“This is a fundamental flaw in how we get a drug onto the market,” he said.

McCormack also brought up the alarming lack of evidence-based research on some of the most popular ideas in modern medicine and nutrition. Some of these myths include what we think about vitamins, the lack of evidence showing the health benefits of green vegetables like broccoli, and even our daily water intake.

“You see the same things with nutrition, where there are so many recommendations that are BS – like the idea of [needing to drink] eight glasses of water a day,” he noted. “Almost everyone in the world knows that’s the number of glasses of water you’re supposed to have every day, but there is not a single study that’s ever looked at that. It’s a made-up number mentioned by someone maybe 50 years ago, but it becomes incredibly powerful when everyone assumes it to be true. The evidence is pretty clear when it comes to water – you drink when you’re thirsty.”

McCormack became a myth-buster when, earlier in his career, he discovered a lack of evidence backing up the so-called facts that many of his mentors presented to him.

“I went looking for the evidence and I wondered why they were telling me this if [there was a lack of] evidence. It didn’t make any sense,” he said. “If good, smart people who are trying to do a good thing are telling me unintentional BS, why is that? So, ever since then, I’ve been very inquisitive.”

While he does his best to provide as much myth-busting content as possible to the public, McCormack warned that there’s no simple solution to helping patients understand the great nuances surrounding medical options.

“It’s very tricky,” he said. “Patients don’t feel empowered to make a decision because that’s not part of the ethos of how we do medicine. There are people who would say to their doctor, ‘Just tell me what to do.’ And that’s totally fine as long as the doctor or the pharmacist knows the best available evidence.”

While McCormack will share some of his key discoveries at the symposium, fans of his work can also listen to any of the 460-plus episodes of his podcast, The Best Science Medicine Podcast, which he has nicknamed The BS Medicine Podcast.

“We take the BS out of the BS,” he laughed, before emphasizing that he and co-host Michael Allan approach their shows with a sense of humour.

McCormack also produces various music video parodies on his YouTube channel under his own name. The videos, he said, are a labour of love. “I do [them] because I’m a tenured professor and I can do whatever I want,” he said, tongue-in-cheek. “Which is kind of nice.”

JSA members/supporters will receive an email with the Zoom link to join the virtual symposium. For more information on and to register for the JSA symposium, contact the JSA office at [email protected] or 604-732-1555.

Kyle Berger is Jewish Community Centre of Greater Vancouver sports coordinator, and a freelance writer living in Richmond.

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Editor’s note: This article has been amended from the print version to include more detailed information on how to access the event on Zoom.

We need to act earlier

Drs. David Fisman, left, and Jacob Moran-Gilad discuss climate change and future pandemics. (screenshots)

The Jewish National Fund of Canada recently brought together Toronto-based epidemiologist Dr. David Fisman and Israeli clinical microbiologist Dr. Jacob Moran-Gilad to discuss the relationship between climate change and potential future pandemics.

“It is important to remember that there are a lot of linkages,” said Fisman, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health and a physician at Michael Garron Hospital. Both climate change and viruses like COVID-19 share similar drivers, such as human population growth, environmental degradation and the need for expanded food production, he explained.

Rising temperatures around the globe create a more fertile breeding ground for infectious diseases and accelerate their evolution, he said. Furthermore, climate change is exacerbated by the tearing down of natural environments, which then brings humans in closer proximity to animal habitats – increasing the chances of diseases being passed on to humans from other species.

“We do have a lot of mouths to feed on the planet. Intensive factory farming has been a driver of some really important challenges in infectious diseases,” said Fisman.

It is crucial to act early, Fisman argued. “With climate change, there are different time scales than with the pandemic. You want to shut down the carbon increase way early. If we wait until we are in the soup, it comes with great cost,” he cautioned.

Trade and travel have been around throughout history, he acknowledged. The difference now, he said, is “turning the dial up on temperature, which makes everything worse.”

Moran-Gilad, chair of Israel’s national advisory committee for microbiology and member of the country’s epidemic management team, went through some of the possible ways to prevent the next pandemic.

“We are now all experts in flattening curves – as compared to four months ago – which shows how effectively we can disseminate information,” Moran-Gilad observed.

While not discounting the severity of COVID-19, he said it has not been the pandemic that people who study infectious diseases have been preparing for, one known in the scientific community as Disease X, which would cause a mortality rate of 10 to 30%.

“COVID-19, in this sense, can be viewed cautiously as a drill to the real thing,” Moran-Gilad said, adding that a pandemic of much greater magnitude “could occur in one year, 10 years or 100 years from now.”

About COVID-19, he admitted, “The dynamics of the disease are still not clear. Without a vaccine, we are going to see coronavirus with us for a couple of years.”

Moran-Gilad advocated for investments in scientific research in the area of pathogen discovery, to understand the viruses in animal hosts better, which, he said, could help prevent the global economy from experiencing the losses encountered this year. He recommended, as well, that further studies could examine whether human exposure had taken place before the outbreak emerged.

He warned, though, of the propensity of academic research in high-quality journals to stop printing papers on diseases once they recede from public consciousness. He said this happened with SARS and Ebola, and expressed hope that the legacy of COVID-19 would be a continuation of studies on the virus “or we will find ourselves unprepared for the next pandemic.”

Returning to the proverbial pachyderm in the room – climate change – the doctors did offer a glimmer of hope: action on the environment would bring with it a health dividend. Riding a bike instead of driving a car, for example, has health benefits and reduces emissions.

Extreme weather events also have a deleterious impact on health, and thus we would be acting in our own self-interest to address climate change, the scientists said. They noted that, in the Canadian response to COVID-19, all governments had to do was ask people to maintain a two-metre distance from one another and wear a mask in public, and people mostly did as instructed. The desire, then, would be that similar policy guidelines could be used to ward off environmental disasters.

In his closing remarks, Fisman praised the Japanese approach to fighting the pandemic by avoiding closed and crowded spaces. He also called into question the opening of bars in certain regions of Canada before opening schools. And he stood for an aggressive testing approach.

“There are vaccine candidates that look amazingly promising,” said Fisman. “It’s very hard to fly and land an airplane while we are building it. A positive outcome of the current pandemic would be if vaccine development could be done proactively.

“Our ultimate challenge as scientists,” he concluded, “is to show people what an alternative universe looks like and why it is important to take early and immediate action.”

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Searching for a COVID cure

University of British Columbia’s Dr. Tirosh Shapira, left, spoke at a June 18 Temple Sholom-hosted webinar emceed by Rabbi Dan Moskovitz. (screenshot)

“COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 has a different type of genetic material than we have. It is an excellent saboteur … and can mutate easily. Thus, if we develop a drug against it, we will likely, over time, begin to see some resistance,” University of British Columbia microbiologist Tirosh Shapira told a Zoom audience in a June 18 webinar.

“In my research,” he said, “instead of looking for one drug, I am looking for four. I am trying to create a cocktail similar to what is applied with treating HIV. We are looking for drug combinations.”

There is an added level of complexity involved in seeking such combinations, he noted, as certain drugs can negate the effects of others.

Shapira is among a select group of Canadian scientists hunting for a cure to COVID-19. He earned his PhD from Australia’s University of Queensland, where he specialized in molecular toxicology for global food security. Before devoting his efforts to COVID-19, his research at UBC led to a novel treatment against tuberculosis and the development of methods to improve drug discovery.

To the web audience hosted by Temple Sholom, Shapira spoke on the topic of drug development in British Columbia, particularly as it pertains to the new coronavirus. He also provided an overview of modern drug discovery and a look at the advanced facility for virology research at UBC.

“Viruses are a large array of different agents,” explained Shapira, “each with unique characteristics, and depend on their hosts in order to replicate and create more copies of themselves … they vary greatly. However, some share similar properties.”

Knowing, for example, the similarities of the common cold and SARS, scientists can gain a better understanding of how the biology of COVID-19 might play out. This type of application led to the discovery of the effectiveness of the drug Remdesivir against the MERS virus, for instance.

Citing the history of combating viruses through treatments, Shapira showed a graph of the downward trend of infections from tuberculosis, starting in the late 19th century. He used this to elucidate the factors needed beyond drugs to control an epidemic, such as economics, sanitation and education.

“On a global scale, sanitation and containment are extremely important for an immediate response to an immediate threat,” he said. “Understanding SARS-CoV-2 is based on understanding similar viruses. The best way to defeat new viruses is through social adjustments.”

Shapira distinguished between the classical and modern approach to drug discovery. The classical approach, he said, is to look under a microscope and examine what is there, while the modern approach considers all possible compounds and is less concerned about the biology.

According to Shapira, the modern approach essentially throws everything at a problem. This, in turn, reduces the research bias on the part of the scientist, has fewer developmental pitfalls and is more “statistically robust,” thereby making it more likely for discoveries to pass clinical trials.

Biology, he hastened to add, is still important – the quality of the test model will determine the quality of the outcome. “Good, sound biology brings good, sound compounds that are good pharmaceuticals,” he said.

When considering how to target a virus, Shapira told the online group that a researcher will look at known antivirals, U.S. Food and Drug Administration-approved drugs, drugs in clinical trials and natural products, the source of most new antibiotics and antivirals.

Drug development is a complex, multi-stage process which has greatly advanced in the past 20 years, he said. In the United States, for example, it begins with pre-clinical trials in labs and with animal testing. Next come clinical trials focusing on safety and efficacy, before moving to randomized testing. Afterwards, there are FDA trials and ultimately production.

UBC’s FINDER (Facility for Infectious Diseases and Epidemic Research), where Shapira conducts his research, has an automated workstation and screening microscopes that handle the large workload of sorting through tens of thousands of compounds without introducing human error.

Due to restricted access to the highly infectious coronavirus, research in Canada can only be performed at a limited number of contamination-free facilities, which also include the University of Toronto and the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg.

In their studies, UBC’s researchers use lab-grown organs in a dish and a live virus, explained Shapira. FINDER has previous experience with this model from the outbreak of the Zika virus. At FINDER, the UBC team screens the thousands of compounds with collaborators around the world.

Shapira, the only microbiologist conducting research on the COVID-19 virus in British Columbia, estimated that there are 200 biologists and another 2,000 people working on various studies, including in economic areas, related to COVID-19 in Canada.

“SARS-CoV-2, despite being a present threat, will pass,” said Shapira. “But other infectious diseases will emerge in this age of easy travel. Preparedness is key. We will gradually reopen as we are better able to monitor the spread of the virus. We will find a treatment.”

Sam Margolis has written for the Globe and Mail, the National Post, UPI and MSNBC.

Successful launch of Ofek 16

(photo from Ashernet)

On July 6, using a Shavit-2 rocket, Israel successfully launched the Ofek 16 reconnaissance satellite into Earth’s orbit. The first Israeli satellite (Ofek 1) was launched in 1988. Investment in this field produces strategic defence systems, but also innovations that assist industries in coping with various technological obstacles. Israel is one of 13 countries in the world with full space capabilities (launching satellites), alongside the United States, Italy, France, Japan, India, the United Kingdom, Ukraine, China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and South Korea.

Inspiring achievers honoured

Dr. Paige Axelrood and Ivan Sayers were among the 25 British Columbians honoured with a 2020 BC Achievement Community Award. (photos from BC Achievement Foundation)

On April 27, Premier John Horgan and Anne Giardini, chair of the BC Achievement Foundation, named this year’s recipients of the BC Achievement Community Award. Among those honoured were Jewish community members Dr. Paige Axelrood and Ivan Sayers. “These days more than ever, our communities are made stronger by British Columbians who go above and beyond,” said Horgan. “Thanks go to all of the BC Achievement 2020 Community Award recipients for helping build a better province for everyone.”

“It is an honour to celebrate the excellence and dedication of these 25 outstanding British Columbians,” added Giardini. “On behalf of all of us at the BC Achievement Foundation, I thank each of them for strengthening their communities and inspiring others to community action.”

As the founder of the Scientist in Residence Program, Axelrood developed and built an educational program to support teachers and help students discover their inner scientist. Elementary students across the Vancouver School District have experienced real science and discovered the natural world through the Scientist in Residence Program. Axelrood’s vision to partner teachers with scientists to facilitate hands-on, inquiry-based lessons has helped change the delivery of science education.

Sayers is the honorary curator of the BC Society for Museum of Original Costume and curator emeritus, Museum of Vancouver. Specializing in the study of women’s, men’s and children’s fashions from 1700 to the present, Sayers has produced historical fashion shows and museum exhibitions all over western North America. A lecturer and mentor, his fashion shows have supported countless nonprofits over the years.

The BC Achievement Foundation is an independent foundation established in 2003, whose mission is to honour excellence and inspire achievement. This year’s selection committee members were Mayor Lee Brain of Prince Rupert, Mayor Michelle Staples of Duncan, and past recipients Lolly Bennett, Aart Schuurman Hess and Andy Yu.

The recipients of the 2020 Community Award will be recognized in a formal presentation ceremony in Victoria, in the presence of Janet Austin, lieutenant governor of British Columbia. Each recipient receives a certificate and a medallion designed by BC artist Robert Davidson. For more information on the award and its recipients, past and present, visit bcachievement.com.

Studying the “love hormone”

Oxytocin, a peptide produced in the brain, may bring hearts together – or it can help induce aggression. (image from Weizmann Institute)

During the pandemic lockdown, as couples have been forced to spend days and weeks in each other’s company, some have found their love renewed while others are on their way to divorce court. Oxytocin, a peptide produced in the brain, is complicated in that way: a neuromodulator, it may bring hearts together or it can help induce aggression. This conclusion arises from research led by Weizmann Institute of Science researchers in which mice living in semi-natural conditions had their oxytocin-producing brain cells manipulated in a precise manner. The findings, which were published in Neuron, could shed new light on efforts to use oxytocin to treat a variety of psychiatric conditions, from social anxiety and autism to schizophrenia.

Much of what we know about the actions of neuromodulators like oxytocin comes from behavioural studies of lab animals in standard lab conditions. These conditions are strictly controlled and artificial, in part so that researchers can limit the number of variables affecting behaviour. But a number of recent studies suggest that the actions of a mouse in a semi-natural environment can teach us much more about natural behaviour, especially when we mean to apply those findings to humans.

Prof. Alon Chen’s lab group in the institute’s neurobiology department have created an experimental setup that enables them to observe mice in something approaching their natural living conditions – an environment enriched with stimuli they can explore – and their activity is monitored day and night with cameras and analyzed computationally. The present study, which has been ongoing for the past eight years, was led by research students Sergey Anpilov and Noa Eren, and staff scientist Dr. Yair Shemesh in Chen’s lab group.

The innovation in this experiment was to incorporate optogenetics – a method that enables researchers to turn specific neurons in the brain on or off using light. To create an optogenetic setup that would enable the team to study mice that were behaving naturally, the group developed a compact, lightweight, wireless device with which the scientists could activate nerve cells by remote control. With the help of optogenetics expert Prof. Ofer Yizhar of the same department, the group introduced a protein previously developed by Yizhar into the oxytocin-producing brain cells in the mice. When light from the wireless device touched those neurons, they became more sensitized to input from the other brain cells in their network.

“Our first goal,” said Anpilov, “was to reach that ‘sweet spot’ of experimental setups in which we track behaviour in a natural environment, without relinquishing the ability to ask pointed scientific questions about brain functions.”

Shemesh added that “the classical experimental setup is not only lacking in stimuli, the measurements tend to span mere minutes, while we had the capacity to track social dynamics in a group over the course of days.”

Delving into the role of oxytocin was sort of a test drive for the experimental system. It had been believed that this hormone mediates pro-social behaviour. But findings have been conflicting, and some have proposed another hypothesis, termed “social salience,” stating that oxytocin might be involved in amplifying the perception of diverse social cues, which could then result in pro-social or antagonistic behaviours, depending on such factors as individual character and the environment.

To test the social salience hypothesis, the team used mice in which they could gently activate the oxytocin-producing cells in the hypothalamus, placing them first in the enriched, semi-natural lab environments. To compare, they repeated the experiment with mice placed in the standard, sterile lab setups.

In the semi-natural environment, the mice at first displayed heightened interest in one another, but this was soon accompanied by a rise in aggressive behaviour. In contrast, increasing oxytocin production in the mice in classical lab conditions resulted in reduced aggression.

“In an all-male, natural social setting, we would expect to see belligerent behaviour as they compete for territory or food,” said Anpilov. “That is, the social conditions are conducive to competition and aggression. In the standard lab setup, a different social situation leads to a different effect for the oxytocin.”

If the “love hormone” is more likely a “social hormone,” what does that mean for its pharmaceutical applications?

“Oxytocin is involved, as previous experiments have shown, in such social behaviours as making eye contact or feelings of closeness,” said Eren, “but our work shows it does not improve sociability across the board. Its effects depend on both context and personality.”

This implies that, if oxytocin is to be used therapeutically, a much more nuanced view is needed in research: “If we want to understand the complexities of behaviour, we need to study behaviour in a complex environment. Only then can we begin to translate our findings to human behaviour,” she said.

Participating in this research were scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Psychiatry in Munich, including research students Asaf Benjamin and Stoyo Karamihalev, staff scientist Dr. Julien Dine and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Oren Forkosh of the Chen lab; Prof. Shlomo Wagner and postdoctoral fellow Dr. Hala Harony-Nicolas of Haifa University; Prof. Inga Neumann and research student Vinicius Oliveira of Regensburg University, Germany; and electrical engineer Avi Dagan.

Jewish microbe hunters

During the Nazi regime, all references to the great physician-chemist Paul Ehrlich were suppressed. In the 1990s, he was featured on the German 200-mark bill. (photo from the internet)

In the 17th century, the Netherlands was a country of great tolerance, having welcomed the Jews driven out of Spain and Portugal, including renowned physicians. Not coincidentally, this was the Dutch Golden Age, a time of breathtaking advances in the arts and sciences. It was there that the first microscopes were invented. To the eyes of Antoni van Leeuwenhoek in the town of Delft in the 1670s were revealed a veritable zoo of subvisible microorganisms previously inconceivable to even the most fevered imagination.

Throughout the 18th century and well into the 19th, there was speculation among medical men about the possible relation of microorganisms to disease. Certain varieties of these tiny beings seemed to appear in the organs or blood of patients with certain diseases. But there were endless questions: Could these creatures, so primitive, come into being by themselves (“spontaneous generation”)? Were they the cause of disease or were they the product of the diseased body? Could a pathogenic microbe of one disease transform into that of another disease? In diseases known to be infectious, were microorganisms the culprits, transmitted from a diseased body to a healthy one, there to germinate?

A breakthrough heralding the Heroic Age of the “microbe hunters” came in 1840 with the publication of Pathological Researches by the Bavarian medical doctor Jacob Henle, a descendant of rabbis. Using technologically advanced microscopes and deductive analysis of case histories, Henle declared to the medical world: “Contagion is matter endowed with individual life which reproduces itself in the manner of animals and plants, which can multiply by assimilating organic material and can exist parasitically on the sick body.”

A year later, the Polish-German Jew Dr. Robert Remak published the first of his observations that cells – of any living organism, including microbes – can arise only by division of parent cells. Thus, Remak helped put to rest the concept of “spontaneous generation.”

photo - Microbe hunter Ferdinand Cohn in the front piece of one of his books — Microbe hunter Ferdinand Cohn in the front piece of one of his books. *(photo from the internet)*

Humankind’s war against transmittable diseases accelerated dramatically in the second half of the 19th century. In the German city of Breslau (today Wroclaw, Poland) the botanist-microscopist Dr. Ferdinand Cohn published his Bacteria, the Smallest Living Organisms in 1872. As the undisputed master of the classification of subvisible life, Cohn elucidated that, while a microorganism of one disease may undergo various transformations, it remained the microorganism of that specific disease and not of another.

Robert Koch, a student of Henle and a protégé of Cohn, of Protestant background, discovered the tuberculosis bacterium and elucidated the mysterious life cycle of the anthrax bacillus.

Such dramatic advances led to the discovery of links in the chain by which the various pathogenic microorganisms are transmitted, and then to measures to break those links: cholera by drinking water contaminated by sewage, sleeping sickness by the tsetse fly, childbed fever by the contaminated hands of doctors and midwives, malaria (literally “bad air” in Italian) by mosquitoes.

To such defensive measures were added an arsenal of aggressive weapons. In Berlin in the 1890s, the Jewish doctor Paul Ehrlich was instrumental in developing serums. The watery part of the blood (after coagulation) of an animal that has fought off a toxin-producing disease such as diphtheria contains powerful antitoxins that can be injected into a diphtheria patient. A brilliant and imaginative chemist, Ehrlich pioneered techniques for selectively staining specific microorganisms to distinguish them under the microscope. This principle inspired him to develop the world’s first chemotherapeutic agent – the arsenical compound Salvarsan, known popularly as the “magic bullet,” which homed in on and destroyed the spirochetes of syphilis. (Ehrlich’s coreligionist Albert Wassermann developed the blood test for the disease.)

A general optimism prevailed as the new century dawned that humankind would soon be free of all serious infectious disease. But there was a missing piece in the puzzle.

It had been known since ancient times that people who survived a given disease were wholly or partially immune from an attack by the same disease. In 1798, the English physician Edward Jenner showed that deliberate inoculation with the pustules of relatively benign cowpox (vaccination, from the Latin vacca, cow) protected the person from attack from the far more virulent and deadly smallpox.

Among the great triumphs in the war against transmissible disease was the development of a new kind of vaccination by the French chemist Louis Pasteur, a devout Catholic. Pasteur showed how inoculating a patient with killed or attenuated (weakened by drying or other techniques) pathogens such as rabies activated the natural immune system against a subsequent all-out attack by the fully virulent disease.

But here was the rub. Unlike the microorganisms of tuberculosis, cholera, diphtheria, syphilis and so many other diseases, no one had ever seen the agents of smallpox and rabies. Pasteur speculated that they were microorganisms beyond the range of the most powerful microscopes.

Around the turn of the 20th century, the Dutch microbiologist Martinus Beijerinck showed how the fluid of an infected plant, after being strained through the finest filter, was able to infect healthy plants. This was an important breakthrough, but Beijerinck erred in assuming the culprit wasn’t composed of solid matter. He called it virus, Latin for poison.

That no one had seen a virus made the fight more difficult. Between 1918 and 1920, as the Spanish flu claimed more lives than all the battlefields of the Great War in the preceding four years, the medical profession mistakenly attributed it to an opportunistic bacterium, visible under the microscope.

The limit of what could be seen was dramatically pushed back with the invention of the electron microscope in the early 1930s, by which viruses, hundreds of times smaller than bacteria, were exposed to the light of day. It appeared that Pasteur was right after all in postulating that the agent of rabies was a microorganism.

image - One of several U.S. postage stamps commemorating the polio vaccines of Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin — One of several U.S. postage stamps commemorating the polio vaccines of Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin. *(image from the internet)*

But not quite. Research later in the century showed that viruses – unlike living entities (organisms) – can’t multiply or reproduce on their own. Viruses turned out to be packets of genetic material – DNA or RNA – that penetrate, commandeer and destroy living cells in order to multiply.

Poliomyelitis, the dread crippler caused by an enterovirus, was checked in the 1950s (and is now virtually eradicated worldwide) thanks to two vaccines developed independently by the American Jewish medical doctors Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin. (The virus was cultured using the foreskins of circumcised babies.)

AIDS, hepatitis, SARS, Ebola and now corona – new virulent viruses keep emerging. And the weapons to fight them – vaccines, tests, serums, pharmacological “magic bullets” – are in the enduring spirit of the great Jewish microbe hunters.

Dr. Frank Heynick is the author of Jews and Medicine: An Epic Saga (KTAV Publishing House, 2002, still in print). There are some 500 publications of his in the United States and Europe, ranging from academic to popular-scientific, many on the history of medicine and allied fields, including the crucial Jewish role. He lives in New York and has taught the history of medicine at New York University.

Desert not a wasteland

Monument Valley in Utah. (photo from CBC Radio)

Having always lived in and around rainforest, CBC Vancouver’s Matthew Lazin-Ryder said the desert is a place he still struggles to fully understand.

“The desert has always seemed to be an imaginary place,” said Lazin-Ryder, contributing producer of the radio-documentary What Happens in the Desert. “My only contact with the desert has been in movies, storybooks, religious metaphors and things like that. The closest I have ever gotten to the real desert is having spent a little time in New Mexico, but, even then, I don’t think I was in true, scientific desert. My impression of what the desert was in my imagination was different than reality.

“One thing I wasn’t prepared for in my time in New Mexico was how cold it got at night, because it can get really cold. The imaginary desert in my mind was always hot – nights are sweltering, empty spaces, desolation.”

photo - Matthew Lazin-Ryder, contributing producer of the CBC radio-documentary What Happens in the Desert — Matthew Lazin-Ryder, contributing producer of the CBC radio-documentary What Happens in the Desert. *(photo from CBC Radio)*

In the radio documentary, which is an episode of the CBC Radio show Ideas, Lazin-Ryder explores various perceptions of the desert, stemming from culture, such as movies, novels and poetry, which often only portray one aspect of the landscape.

“An example we use in the documentary is Monument Valley in Utah, which, if you’ve seen a western film, it’s in so many movies,” Lazin-Ryder, who is a member of the Jewish community, told the Independent. “So, Monument Valley is that part of Utah, with red sand and rock, with these big towers of rock jutting out of the middle of the desert. John Ford, legendary western director, shot over 10 movies there at Monument Valley and lots of other classic western movies have used the backdrop of this valley as the setting.”

However, while it may seem that many films are shot in Monument Valley, most are actually shot in less-known locations in states like Texas, California and Arizona.

“It’s never specifically that this movie or story is taking place in Monument Valley,” said Lazin-Ryder. “It just becomes a symbol of the desert, which is a stand-in for an alien place, an exotic place, a place that you’ve never been to.”

From a religious perspective, the experts Lazin-Ryder interviews often speak of duality, where the desert is both a place where God is absent and where God is felt the strongest.

“The desert, in the Old Testament, is a place of deep spirituality and is also, for the Israelites, the place where they encounter God, where God travels with them,” he explained. “In the Christian New Testament and Christian culture later on, the desert becomes a place, not of exile and separation from God, but a place you go to escape civilization and to connect with God. Simultaneously, it’s a place where there are dangers … and the devil lives there and there are poisonous creatures, and it’s a place of death, wasteland and absence of God. But, at the same time, the desert is the place, both for the Israelites and early Christians, a place to go to connect with God.

“In a sense,” he said, “the desert, through its absence, represents God, because you can’t fully describe God – you can’t fully describe absence. The desert represents this strange relationship that we have with God, in a religious metaphor – at the same time that God is everything, God is nothing, and indescribable.”

In the documentary, Lazin-Ryder talks about the way the desert is portrayed in science-related and apocalyptic movies – movies that portray the future world as a desert; that climate change, if it continues apace, will leave the whole earth a desert.

“The seas will dry up, the forests will die and everything will be desert waste … which is not particularly an ecologically valid prediction … but, it’s a helpful metaphor for people to think about the dangers of climate change,” he said.

“The other thing is that, when talking about climate change and things like switching to less carbon-intensive energy, the desert becomes a very easy thing for people to say … ‘Hey! You know what would be great? Let’s just put a whole bunch of solar panels and windmills and stuff in the desert, because that’s empty land and it gets a lot of sun.’ You can Google it – there are all kinds of plans that people have pushed, to put acres and acres of solar panels in the Mojave Desert, the Sonoran Desert or the Sahara Desert.

“It’s this kind of a science-fiction idea that, hey, we have these empty spaces on the earth – let’s absolutely fill them with solar panels and windmills. But, the problem with that is – it comes from this thinking about deserts as though they are empty, ownerless places, absent of life. And, the problem is that that’s not true. Deserts are full of life, of plants and of animals that have adapted in interesting ways. And, we also don’t quite understand the place that deserts have in the broader ecosystem, in terms of the carbon cycle.”

While we hear in the news about desertification, in actuality only some deserts may get bigger and others drier, he said. Very few reports talk about the fact that some deserts may get wetter and, in a sense, shrink.

Desert systems are intricate and delicate and we, as humans, often only notice a change when it is already too late. Lazin-Ryder gave the example of the Joshua trees in the Mojave Desert that are dying, and the efforts to preserve them.

“Those kinds of problems are expected to increase as climate change goes on,” he said. But, talking about the desert as merely land available to fix the problems that we have created, “neglects the fact that they are not absent, marginal places. They actually have a place in the world. Deserts are a natural thing that should exist on the earth,” he said. “And there will be increasing pressures to put things in the desert, to put people in the desert, to grow food in the desert – despite the fact that they are as important and as under threat as places like the rainforests and wetlands that we’re trying to preserve. So, on one hand, we’re afraid the future might become desert, but, on the other hand, we may want to think about how to preserve the deserts we already have, as there are many threats to the desert.”

Lazin-Ryder hopes listeners of the documentary will gain a better grasp of the nuances of the desert. For most people in the West, he said, “interaction with the desert is in an imaginary sense … either in religious texts, fiction or movies.” The show tries to get people to consider “what those metaphors and symbols do to our thinking – not just about the desert, but of all the natural world; in what places are worth preserving, celebrating, and what places we think of as marginal, empty, dead or inherently bad.

“We get lots of stories told to us all the time, about what parts of the earth are good or bad,” he said. “I think, ultimately, beyond whether we’re talking about deserts, dry land or wet land, my ultimate hope is that it helps people think about the stories that we tell ourselves about the natural world, versus trying to gain an understanding about how the natural world actually works.”

To listen to What Happens in the Desert, visit cbc.ca/radio/podcasts/documentaries/the-best-of-ideas.

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.