The Independent reports that autism, traditonally seen as a much more male condition, might be more common in girls than previously realised:

Autism is an overwhelmingly male diagnosis – it has been described as the “extreme male brain”. Boys with the diagnosis outnumber girls by between 10 and 15 to one…

But in the developing story of autism – interest in which has increased hugely in the last decade – girls have been neglected. That omission will be remedied this week with the first conference on autistic spectrum disorders in women and girls. One aim will be to examine whether the condition has been underdiagnosed in females – and what links there may be with eating disorders.

According to Janet Treasure, professor of psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry, King’s College, London, around a fifth of girls diagnosed with anorexia have autistic spectrum features and 20 to 30 per cent may have exhibited rigidity and perfectionism in childhood. Anorexia has been called the female Asperger’s (the mild version of autism).

This is a guest post by Sarah Ismail. Sarah blogs here.

A one year old baby boy, who can be known only as Baby RB for legal reasons, was born with a rare genetic condition called congenital myasthenic syndrome and has been in hospital since birth.

Now, the hospital wants to withdraw Baby RB’s life support, because they claim that his quality of life is so low that it would not be in his best interests to try to save him. So his parents are going to the High Court- with his mother reported to be supporting the hospital’s bid. The parents are ‘amicably separated’ but both are reported to have spent long periods of time at their son’s bedside.

The father’s lawyers argue that Baby RB’s brain is not affected. He can see, hear and interact, and enjoys listening to music and being read to. They are submitting footage to the court, which they say show’s Baby RB playing with his toys. Christopher Cuddihee, a solicitor acting for the father, told The Sunday Telegraph: “This is a tragic case. The father feels very strongly that Baby RB has a quality of life that demands the trust should continue to provide life-sustaining treatment. “The father clearly adores his son and hopes to demonstrate to the court that the trust’s application should be rejected.”

Now for my reactions to this case. I just can’t believe that the hospital would even consider withdrawing the life support, especially when you consider that people with Baby RB’s condition ‘can expect to live a relatively normal life with medication,’ according to BBC News. Yes, Baby RB appears to be severely affected by his condition, but the most important thing to remember is that this is not his fault. He did not ask to be born with his condition, and I certainly don’t think he deserves to die as a result of it.

Dr. Aarathi Prasad’s programme, Is It Better to be Mixed Race?, airs tonight at 8:00pm on Channel 4. In a preview article for the Sunday Telegraph, Dr. Prasad, a geneticist, writes about the science behind mixed-race people and asks whether or not their genetic diversity is beneficial:

So are these differences significant and, more to the point, are they significant enough so that when they are brought together, there might be tangible benefits for people who are mixed-race? The answer from some scientists who still do what could be called “racial science” appears to be yes on both counts. Dr Mark Shriver, who studies human origins at Penn State University, is interested in ancestry, variations in skin and hair colour, facial features and height….

Shriver’s work has uncovered something else that is very interesting. He finds that mixed-race people are more symmetrical than the rest of us, and being more symmetrical translates into being more attractive, having less infection, being less stressed, and having greater genetic diversity. Professor Bill Amos at Cambridge University has also been studying the genetic basis of human disease. He finds that in humans, an individual’s level of genetic diversity can predict with astonishing accuracy how likely they are to survive parasites and infectious disease. In a recent study in Kenya, he found that low levels of diversity were strongly associated with death before the age of five.

Although this is only one study, it is interesting:

“Shisha is an Arabic water-pipe in which fruit-scented tobacco is burnt using coal, passed through an ornate water vessel and inhaled through a hose.

The Centre for Tobacco Control Research said it was difficult to know exactly how much carbon monoxide one cigarette produced, due to the differences in smokers’ inhalations.

But measuring carbon monoxide in exhaled breath showed a normal non-smoker’s level to be three parts CO per million parts of air (ppm) (3% of blood not working properly), a light smoker to have 10-20% of blood not working properly, and a heavy smoker 30-40%.”

I suppose it will give the anti-smoking people something to do. Designing new posters, calling for film scenes with shisha to be rated 18+, and walking around the streets badgering people about their habits.

Johann Hari highlights a worrying development in Cambodia:

“Up until this year, the world was making remarkable progress in whittling down this disease. Since the year 2000, seven of the worst-afflicted countries in sub-Saharan Africa have slashed malaria-deaths by 50 percent. It has a great knock0on effect too: for every £1 spent on malaria prevention, Africa gains £12 in economic growth, because people can work instead of lying sick and dying. It was a sign that aid, matched by good African government, can produce inspirational results.

But then something began to change – at first imperceptibly – in the forgotten forests of Western Cambodia, where the Khmer Rouge held their last stand-off. The drug that is most effective at treating malaria is called artemisinin: it shocks the parasite out of your system and saves your life. But in South-East Asia, horrified doctors have discovered that the malaria parasite is becoming resistant to it. In a Darwinian arms race, it has begun to evolve a way to beat the treatment. It is taking twice as long to work – and soon it will have defeated the medicine altogether.”

Hmmm…:

“GIVE Richard Dawkins a child for a week’s summer camp and he will try to give you an atheist for life…

The five-day camp in Somerset (motto: “It’s beyond belief”) is for children aged eight to 17 and will rival traditional faith-based breaks run by the Scouts and church groups.

Budding atheists will be given lessons to arm themselves in the ways of rational scepticism. There will be sessions in moral philosophy and evolutionary biology along with more conventional pursuits such as trekking and tug-of-war.”

This doesn’t seem particularly problematic to me. We already have camps with religious themes, while the children are just there to have fun and marshmallows, so won’t really care what they are being told. However, it will give more ammunition to those who accuse Richard Dawkins (and others) of turning atheism into a religion.

this is a guest post by Yasmin Khan

In a recent blog entry I alluded to the prospect of utilizing science diplomacy to help promote world peace. Following President Barack Obama’s ground-breaking speech in Cairo, it now seems that dormant rhetoric will soon be put into imminent action.

Intentions to support scientific initiatives in the Islamic world as part of Obama’s vision for promoting peaceful relations between the United States and countries with a Muslim majority were revealed, as highlighted in David Bruggeman’s recent blog entry on Science Diplomacy and the Cairo Address.

It seemed too good to be true a couple of months ago when Dr. Vaughan Turekian, Chief International Officer for AAAS and Director for the Center for Science Diplomacy, foretold in his talk at Harvard how a new era of science diplomacy might be afoot.

Most people don’t believe that others are biologically inferior because of the colour of their skin. However, you do get a few racists, like Charles Murray, who try and claim some link between (for example), intelligence and skin colour. In a neat article, Gracchi highlights these misconceptions and lies, and explains why they are scientifically unsound:

“The heart of this is an argument that scientifically the concept of large races- based on geographical units and imagined cultural communities- make about as much sense as the sun circling the earth does, and it is based on the same kind of data- not scientific proof or experiment but the supposition that an apparant distinction (skin colour in this case) is a real one. What goes on above the skin, as Stephen Jones argues, doesn’t tell you much about what goes on below.”

There has been much written about the upcoming vote on the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill, especially about the proposal to liberalise abortion further in Northern Ireland. Sarah however has spotted a little-discussed government amendment, which, if passed, raises a serious issue of medical ethics (ironically a restriction of same right that the government wishes to defend; namely the right of a person to decide what happens to their own body).

If the amendment is passed, tissue samples for creating human/animal embroys can be taken from people who are not considered mentally capable of making their own decisions. Now, obviously there are some areas (such as financial ones), in which it is right for carers/relatives to have a degree of control, as that might be the only practical situation. I cannot, however, see any rationale for this. As Sarah points out:

Leading learning disability charities said they knew little about this amendment to the Bill, which has, not surprisingly, received very little publicity… if this amendment to the Bill is passed on Wednesday, it will not only sweep away 25 years of progress in medical ethics. It will also sweep away too many years of hard work by Disability Rights campaigners to convince the mainstream world that we are human, too, and that they should do Nothing About Us, Without Us.

Via Andrew Sullivan, Razib at Gene Expression has posted this speech which Obama gave in 1994. Its not that long so I’m posting the whole thing after the jump because it sums up my views on this. I will say though that I think Obama is being unfair when he accuses Charles Murray of racism.

I think that Murray is one of those rare thinkers who put forward these opinions because he was genuinely searching for the truth. For instance Obama argues against welfare reform which Murray also propagated, but which according to a lot of serious people has played a big role in getting black people in the inner cities out of poverty. The fact it hasn’t been accompanied with health care reform is another matter.

Also in Murray’s favour is the fact that he was one of the few right-wing thinkers/pundits who saw the brilliance# in Obama’s post Rev. Wright speech on Race.

My review of John McWhorter’s book, ‘Losing the Race’ is also relevant. Anyways, the speech is after the jump.

Today is the big day people!!! If the scientists in Switzerland at CERN get anything right, we won’t get sucked by a massive black hole. It’s a funny video though… that’s something I suppose.

Ok, so its a bit of a tablody headline… *cough*… but you never know?
On Wednesday:

The most powerful physics experiment ever built, the Large Hadron Collider will re-create the conditions just after the Big Bang in an attempt to answer fundamental questions of science and the universe itself.

Tabloidy headlines aside, the scientists say that nothing big can theoretically be destroyed. But who belives in scientists eh? Certainly not Sarah Palin and she may be the American Vice President soon.
Look out for a flurry of similar headlines in tomorrow’s papers. Let’s hope they know what they’re doing. A good BBC piece on the whole experiment is here.

Angela Saini points out that:

Physics World has reported that physics in China is booming. Chinese scientists now publish more papers than the UK and Germany. In fact, at the current rate, by 2012 it will be churning out more physics articles than the entire number of science articles published by US researchers.

Werner Marx, an information scientist from the Max Planck Institute in Germany, said, “Usually scientific development in nations does not show such a strong acceleration as we have seen in China, so it will be interesting to see how it responds and develops in the future.”

Well, it won’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what the impact of that strong acceleration will be. By the way, Angela is a friend and a new blogger, writing mostly about science. Go check out her blog.

Justin has started blogging for a new blog by Greenpace about nuclear power, called Nuclear Reaction. I contribute monthly to Greenpeace anyway, so happy to give it a plug. But his introductory post states this:

With nuclear, not a day goes by without a jaw-dropping news item. The industry news is chock full of ‘NO WAY!’ moments. Much of it is darkly, surreally comedic. If you were to write a sitcom that involved some of the nuclear incidents I’ve blogged in the last few weeks, the show would bomb as too far-fetched.

By now some of you might have seen the government’s new £10 million campaign highlighting the number of alcoholic units in drinks, which was launched because it was felt that people were underestimating the level of alcohol that they were consuming. Larger glasses and stronger beers and wines have become increasingly common, and this was an attempt to get people to estimate their consumption correctly.

There are two problems with this campaign.

A straw poll on your views about this tricky ethical issue please.

Gordon Brown recently brought the subject of transplants back into the news by supporting a similar system to the Spanish, who have the highest organ transplant rate in the world. The system is effectively an ‘opt-out’ arrangement and deceased patients with no specific instructions are ‘presumed’ to have given consent for their organs to be used.

The argument for:

More and more patients are dying on transplant waiting lists. Many of these people are young, with congenital conditions like cystic fibrosis, primary liver cancer or autoimmune kidney disease meaning they need new hearts, lungs, livers and kidneys. Less people are dying in road traffic accidents due to improved road safety, but this results in a decreasing source of healthy organs.

Gordon Brown seems to be heading for a big increase in nuclear power:

“The plans, part of Gordon Brown’s first programme as PM, are said to be aimed at cutting carbon emissions and getting the best energy mix for the UK.

It would be for the private sector to initiate, fund, construct and operate new nuclear plants and cover costs of decommissioning and waste management.”

What do people think about this? Is this our only option if we want to cut down on oil and gas, or is it too dangerous?

Boris Johnson has an article in today’s Daily Telegraph on overpopulation in the world and how policy makers are ignoring the potential consequences:

Science legend, James Watson, who won the Nobel for discovering DNA along with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins, has put his double helix in his mouth:

The 79-year-old geneticist said he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really.”. He said he hoped that everyone was equal, but countered that “people who have to deal with black employees find this not true”. [Link]

Yikes. The Science Museum has cancelled his forthcoming sell-out speech. I can’t disagree with their decision, they explained they do not shy away from controversy but in this regard he had “gone beyond the point of acceptable debate”. Let’s take a closer look.

This has been around for some time and it’s a real favourite of mine. It’s a conversation with God. It’s not real (or could be depending on your point of view) but it’s always food for thought and a good conversation starter. It’s a touch long but worth a read, enjoy.

Scary and fascinating in equal measure is this new study (speculation really given that anything could happen in the next 100 years let alone 1000) funded by the Bravo TV station. The ‘findings’ are certainly food for thought: one day we’ll all be brown!

India’s polio rates have soared and most new cases are Muslims.

This picture is part of a set documenting the campaign to rid the world of polio, taken by my favourite photographer, Sebastiao Salgado. India is one of the six countries deemed ‘at risk’, along with Pakistan, Somalia, the DR of Congo, Nigeria and Sudan.

Recent reports from the UNAIDS foundation have estimated that 5.7 million Indians are living with the potentially fatal HIV virus. The statistics were collated at the end of 2005, making India the nation with the greatest number of HIV carriers. It is closely followed by South Africa, where one in ten adult population is infected with the virus.

The epidemic is unevenly distributed across India, with just six states accounting for 80 per cent of the estimated cases. The epidemic is thought to have spread from high-risk groups, such as sex workers and injecting drug users, to the general population.

Whilst campaigns to step-up condom use amongst sex-workers has helped, the general reluctance to promote barrier contraception and sex education amongst the general population has slowed down the fight.

As DrMonkey says, it is irrelevant whether India takes the top spot or not, the real problem is feeling that “promotion of condom use and safe sex will only increase promiscuity.”

Admirable and virtuous charity organisation, The World Bank, seems to have been caught telling fibs about malaria in Africa and India.

The Lancet carry an international report claiming that the WB (no, not the channel that shows Smallville) have published fake figures and have squandered millions on useless medicines. It also alleges that the WB have welched on a pledge to commit $300-$500 million in Africa. The Bank says this is poppycock and are investing one beelleeon dollars over the next few years. (more…)

Hundreds doctors on the NHS, of Indian origin, are planning a demonstration outside the Department of Health on Friday to protest against recent changes to immigration laws. The change may hit up to 15,000 international medics.

The Guardian explains:

The Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants said that an estimated 15,000 international trainee doctors seeking posts or working on short-term contracts will be unable to complete their training and be forced to go home because of a law brought in as part of last month’s overhaul of immigration, which ruled that junior doctors from outside the EU should only be eligible for jobs that cannot be filled by a “homegrown” candidate.
…
Dr Billoo Joy, from Kerala, India, came to England two years ago, and is on a two-year contract in Norwich which will not be renewed. “I am still around £2,000 in debt from doing my Plab [the test to allow doctors to practise in the UK] and paying rent. It’s been a real struggle. I didn’t expect further uncertainty.

“If I had been told four years ago that this would have been the case I never would have come, but now if I go back to India I will have lost that training and will have to start again with no hope of paying off my debts. Before it was difficult to get a job. Now it’s impossible.”

While I see the need to encourage home-grown doctors, the government has quickly passed the law without any regard for the doctors already here. They are left stranded, unable to finish their terms or pay off debts, because employers have been told to overlook them.