Making babies: highly questionable research

Is there any greater sign of the modern over-enlarged sense of entitlement than the ART ("assisted reproduction technology") business? [Yes, I know, I was lucky enough not to have go looking into that to have kids of my own, but high abortion rates means that it's not for a lack of embryos in the West that there is a shortage of babies born. Indeed, despite the problems inherent in international adoption, I would still prefer to see more of that than kids left in the pathetic orphanages that exist in some countries.]

There have been quite a few stories of interest about ART this lately, and some really bad reporting. This will be a long post.

First: Let's oversell "Two Mums is good". It was widely reported, as in this example from the Sydney Morning Herald short report, with the jolly title "Two Mums Better than Dad":

"..researchers found children born to and raised by lesbian couples were better off socially, academically and more competent than their peers."

All complete with happy photo of (impliedly) happy lesbian family, although as they are not identified, for all I know they could be a couple of Fairfax reporters who posed with the bosses' toddler.

Anyhow, the study was based on following 154 pregnant (from artificial insemination) lesbian women from the 1980's and comparing them to heterosexual families. Beginning to suspect this study might have some flaws? Your suspicions would be right. As economist blogger David Friedman notes, one obvious way it might be unreliable would be if the two groups of parents were not closely matched for other factors that may very well be relevant to having a "better off" child:

The two groups might differ in important ways other than their sexual preferences. Most obviously, since the lesbian parents had conceived via artificial insemination, their pregnancies were all planned and all desired. If the comparison group contained a significant number of children from unplanned and unwanted pregnancies, that might explain why more of them had behavioral problems. One could imagine a variety of other possible explanations as well—and the news stories did not provide enough information to confirm or reject them.

He then reads the paper and reports:

The two groups were not closely matched, due to data limitations, a problem that the authors noted. They differed strikingly in geographic location, since the lesbian couples were all recruited in the Boston, D.C., and San Francisco meteropolitan areas, while the data on children of heterosexual couples, coming from another researcher's work, was based on a wider distribution of locations. They were not matched racially—14% of the heterosexual couples were black, 3% of the lesbian couples were. They were not matched socio-economically—on average, the heterosexual couples were of higher SES than the lesbian couples.

As someone commented in the Sydney Morning Herald guessed:

This study may be more about the socio-economic than about gender! In that regard it simply confirms what we already know: advantaged parents are able to raise advantaged children. It is not that "2 mums better than dad". Rather, it is that "2 advantaged parents are better than 2 less advantaged ones".

David Friedman then finds another startling problem with the research:

Questionaires went, at various points in the study, to both mothers and children. But the conclusion about how well adjusted the children were was based entirely on the reports of ther mothers. A more accurate, if less punchy, headline would have read: "Lesbian Mothers Think Better of Their Kids than Heterosexual Mothers Do."

Friedman is not out to criticise the authors, as the inadequacies are there to see in the paper. It certainly seems to me, though, that the authors are not above overselling their report to the media, such as when they are quoted as follows:

"Our findings show that adolescents who have been raised since birth in planned lesbian families demonstrate healthy psychological adjustment and thus provide no justification for restricting access to reproductive technologies or child custody on the basis of the sexual orientation of the parents."

Hmm. Does that sound just a tad like they have the view that they have a message to sell? Their funding did come from lesbian friendly foundations. What a surprise.

I don't think many people expect lesbian couples to be atrocious at parenting; at the same time, this is a bit of peer reviewed research that proves nothing and is being oversold by its authors.

Second: Let's not report a survey that indicates some kids are not so happy about not knowing their Dad:

OK, OK, this is not a peer reviewed bit of research and it comes out of a conservative foundation and was partly conducted by a person with a personal interest in the issue. But it got a run in Slate, which was kind of brave of them, as it would clearly upset many liberals because, you know, everyone is entitled to get knocked up via an anonymous sperm donor and who are we to question whether that's a wise thing to do?

The report is a survey which compared attitudes between 3 groups: "18- to 45-year-olds includes 485 who were conceived via sperm donation, 562 adopted as infants, and 563 raised by their biological parents." Some of the findings:

Regardless of socioeconomic status, donor offspring are twice as likely as those raised by biological parents to report problems with the law before age 25. They are more than twice as likely to report having struggled with substance abuse. And they are about 1.5 times as likely to report depression or other mental health problems.

As a group, the donor offspring in our study are suffering more than those who were adopted: hurting more, feeling more confused, and feeling more isolated from their families. (And our study found that the adoptees on average are struggling more than those raised by their biological parents.) The donor offspring are more likely than the adopted to have struggled with addiction and delinquency and, similar to the adopted, a significant number have confronted depression or other mental illness. Nearly half of donor offspring, and more than half of adoptees, agree, "It is better to adopt than to use donated sperm or eggs to have a child."

Of course, there may well be biases in the selection of the subjects here (although I haven't read anyone pointing out precisely how yet), and it's not "peer reviewed", but is it all that surprising that some adults from anonymous sperm donation would worry about things like whether someone they meet might actually be their half sibling? This is particularly so in America, which for some reason is still allowing anonymous donors to remain anonymous all their life. (This has been changed in Australia and much of Europe, with the result that very few men are now willing to be sperm donors. In Australia, the donor can't even be paid!)

Everyone knows that adopted kids, as adults, often feel that the fact of their adoption is an important issue about their life, hence all the shows and stories about the desire to re-unite with their biological parents. It makes many of them feel more complete.

So it should be no surprise at all that many sperm donor kids should feel the same way.

I reckon there is likely to be more truth and accuracy in this study than the lesbian parent one.

Of course, if you are going to allow companies to provide this service, the anonymity should be illegal. It is cruel to deliberately create a kid with this uncertainty in its future.

Yet, of course, it wasn't mentioned in the media much at all.

Third: just how many defects does ART create in babies?

There was some reporting of a new study that at first sounds like it should be a big worry for those considering IVF:

Slightly more than 4% of babies born via assisted reproductive technology such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) may have major birth defects, such as heart and urogenital tract malformations, according to a new study...

The major birth defects seen in babies born via IVF and/or ICSI included heart defects and malformations of the urogenital tract, such as hypospadias (an abnormality in the position of the opening of the urethra in boys). In the study, 110 children had genetic disorders, including six children with Beckwith-Weidemann syndrome, which is marked by body overgrowth, and may increase risk of certain cancers. Five children also had bilateral retinoblastoma (cancer of the eye's retina).

Children born via assisted reproductive technology had a five times higher rate for minor birth defects such as angiomas (a benign tumor of small blood vessels causing a red growth on the skin). Angiomas were twice as common in girls as in boys, the study found.

But:

U.S. experts are quick to point out that these risks are not much different from what would be expected in the general population. And the risks are much lower than what has been found in some other studies of babies born as a result of fertility treatments.

This research came from surveys in France, and the lead authors Geralidine Viot (see above link) is quoted as saying:

"our results are not so different from the general population and I consider them rather reassuring as some previously reported studies showed increased risk of major malformations around 9% to 11%," she says.

Wait a minute: why is so much discrepancy between the rate of defects in these studies? Just how hard is it to record defects from babies from IVF?

And what's going on here: in the report of this study from The Independent, we read:

The study, the largest of its kind, found evidence of a higher-than-expected rate of serious congenital abnormalities.

Research leader Geraldine Viot said: "We found a major congenital malformation in 4.24pc of the children, compared with the 2-3pc that we had expected from previous published studies.

"This higher rate was due in part to an excess of heart diseases and malformations of the uro-genital system. This was much more common in boys.

Those comments regarding what they expected from previous studies doesn't seem to match the earlier quote, where she was relieved that their rate was half that of previous studies.

There's some explaining that needs to be done about all this. There are studies from Australia indicating defect rates "twice" that of naturally conceived children, and an American report from 2 years ago that found:

The CDC reports that certain birth defects -- including heart wall problems and cleft lip/palate -- may be two to four times more common among babies conceived with assisted reproductive technology (ART) than babies conceived naturally.

They are also keen to note:

The study doesn't prove that ART was to blame for the birth defects.

"Subfertile women might have a higher risk of having a child with a birth defect regardless of whether infertility treatments are used," write Reefhuis and colleagues.

So it may not be the ART process itself that "causes" it, instead it may be the decision to use ART to get a baby with a higher risk of a major defect when your natural infertility would have prevented it. Well, I hope that IVF clinics make this subtle "it's not us, it's you" distinction known to their clients.

In fact, it seems to me ART doctors are dead keen to downplay the significance of increased rates of defects. For example, this is from the Melbourne Herald Sun report on the recent French study:

Dr John McBain, Melbourne IVF director and head of reproductive services at the Royal Women's Hospital, said the definition of "major" congenital abnormalities was contentious, and included conditions such as clicky hips and club feet.

He said it was difficult to compare the health of children conceived naturally and through ART.

"The children born from assisted conception have more rigorous physical examinations," he said.

This is self interested excuse making, if you ask me.

And funnily enough, when you go to the glossy IVF Australia website and search it for terms such as "birth defects", "congenital defects" or "birth abnormalities", you score nothing that talks about increased rates of these for IVF babies. (That's not to say that they don't give appropriate information to those who contact them, but I would be curious as to how they explain the risks, given the apparent conflict between results of studies over the last decade.)

I remain very cynical about virtually all aspects of "Assisted Reproductive Technologies", but it's a good little earner I'm sure.

A jelly education

Jelly clinic: how to deliver a quiver | Life and style | guardian.co.uk

This article from The Guardian, by a couple of authors flogging their book about jelly, does make some interesting points:

Jelly is the ultimate party food, an animal-based dessert that predates Christ and was eaten by Henry VIII for both the first and second course of his 1521 Garter Banquet.

Jelly predates Christ? Given the lack of refrigeration, how did they get them to set? Or is this just a Brisbane-centric lack of understanding, as I guess in many countries leaving it out overnight may well be enough. What about this claim:

Slap a jelly on your dinner table and guests will be hypnotized by its lewd wobbling and your kitchen prowess.

Easily hypnotised, those English.

I like the start of the next paragraph:

The origins of jelly are shrouded in mystery..

Wait a minute. This article has already referred to "before Christ" and "mystery." Clearly, this is material for the next Dan Brown novel. The secret of the origin of jelly is almost certainly being covered up in the foundations of the Temple in Jerusalem. I can see an important plot revelation already: you know those bits of paper being stuck in the Wailing Wall? - they're jelly recipes! You heard it here first.

The article then explains more history:

With sugar wildly expensive, sweet jelly became a potent status symbol. It remained at the centre of the tables of the rich and powerful well into the early 20th century. Ingredients, moulds, ice for refrigeration and the labour to clarify weird gelling agents like hartshorn and the swim bladders of sturgeon were all expensive.

I think this is something to share with the kids with great gusto when they are next served jelly: "You're eating like a King or a millionaire, you know!" "Bill Gates has swimming pools filled with jelly, it always impresses his guests."

A final important point:

Yes, jellying today is ridiculously simple. But you must respect the jelly.

We always stand to attention and salute while the bagpipes play during the ceremonial Presentation of the Jelly at our house.

Time for the annual "why are there so many movie sequels this summer" post

Film - An Old Pairing - Summer and Movie Sequels - NYTimes.com

AO Scott talks a lot about how many sequels there are coming out this year, but I get a distinct sense of deja vu while reading it. Doesn't an article like this appear in one of the major American media publications every summer?

Which is a pity because: oh my God why are there so many sequels to movies that don't deserve sequels coming out this year?

Of the bunch, perhaps I will see Toy Story 3, but even then I am not holding my breath; even though I loved the first Toy Story and am generally a pretty big fan of Pixar, I found Toy Story 2 very forgettable.

There is one sequel worth waiting for this year, and that's Voyage of the Dawn Treader. But it's a Christmas release, so it at least its not coming out with all the summer sequel dreck.

By the way, the first trailer for VDT comes out with Toy Story 3, and will be released on the web this Thursday. Yes, the fact that I know that is evidence of my Narnia fanboydom, I guess

All praise the Mockingbird

BBC News - Why is To Kill A Mockingbird so popular?

As this year is its 50th anniversary of publication, maybe there will be more articles like this around.

The only thing I find odd is this:

On the eve of its 50th birthday, To Kill A Mockingbird still has a generation of schoolchildren transfixed, while regularly figuring high on lists of the country's "favourite books".

A poll for World Book Day placed it fifth, behind Pride and Prejudice but ahead of the Bible. A similar BBC one puts it sixth.

I can only assume that more women answer World Book Day polls than men.

Parasites as friends

How the parasitic worm has turned

I've mentioned before the apparent benefits of having a good dose of intestinal worms for your immune system. The story has been turning up in various forms for a few years now, but it's apparently discussed recently in a Science article:

Professor Roberts, whose work is published in Science, explains: "It is like a three-legged stool - the microbes, worms and immune system regulate each other.

"The worms have been with us throughout our evolution and their presence, along with bacteria, in the ecosystem of the gut is important in the development of a functional immune system."

Professor Grencis adds: "If you look at the incidence of parasitic worm infection and compare it to the incidence of auto-immune disease and allergy, where the body's immune system over-reacts and causes damage, they have little overlap. Clean places in the West, where parasites are eradicated, see problems caused by overactive immune systems. In the developing world, there is more parasitic worm infection but less auto-immune and allergic problems.

"We are not suggesting that people deliberately infect themselves with parasitic worms but we are saying that these larger pathogens make things that help our immune system. We have evolved with both the bugs and the worms and there are consequences of that interaction, so they are important to the development of our immune system."

I don't know: it seems he is suggesting that catching them is a good idea. Here's more:

Intestinal roundworm parasites are one of the most common types of infection worldwide, although in humans increased hygiene has reduced infection in many countries. High level infections by these parasites can cause disease, but the natural situation is the presence of relatively low levels of infection. The team's work suggests that in addition to bacterial microflora, the natural state of affairs of our intestines may well be the presence of larger organisms, the parasitic roundworms, and that complex and subtle interactions between these different types of organism have evolved to provide an efficient and beneficial ecosystem for all concerned.

There's no mention of how you might get the benefits of a gut full of worms without actually having a gut full of worms, but I am sure someone must be thinking about it.

Colebatch on debt

Fiscal time bomb yet to explode

The quite spectacular looking fireball re-entry of the Japanese Hayabusa space probe can be viewed on this Youtube:

Leave Kanty alone!!

I think I might have read this a few months ago when it came out, but forgot to post about it.  Philosophy Professor Eric Schwitzgebel did a post listing Kant’s most peculiar and'/or odious views.   (I knew about his view of masturbation as being worse than suicide, but the Professor extends the list, and indeed one of the comments also throws in racism.)

Of course, there might be some excuse making to be found in the state of science was at the time.   Still, despite my general high regard for him, Kant did have some spectacularly odd views.  It also turns out that one writer has suggested that Kant wrote under the influence of a “massive left prefrontal tumor” which biologically prevented him from having proper empathy for people when he wrote his major works.

Somehow, I think that’s an unlikely scenario.  Reason can lead philosophers to all sorts of spurious and silly conclusions, as shown in my recent posts about the idea that people (even with the most “normal” lives) should logically think it would be better if people didn’t exist.  In that case, maybe it is excessive empathy that is leading to the result, but the conclusion is just as silly as anything Kant wrote.

Another Chinese problem

An increase in the use of prostitutes (and the number of bisexual men) is being blamed for some pretty startlingly bad figures on the recent rise in syphilis in China:

Syphilis was almost wiped out in China 50 years ago, but has increased 10-fold over the past decade to emerge as one of the country's top five infectious diseases, the China Daily said, quoting the ministry of health.

The rate of mother-to-child transmissions jumped alarmingly to 57 cases per 100,000 newborns between 2003 and 2008, from a previous seven cases per 100,000, it said.

What's the rate in Australia, I wonder? This site paints a very mixed picture:

The rates of syphilis in Australia are about 10/100 000, nearly double that in New South Wales, and up to 140/100 000 in the Northern Territory, with a national indigenous rate of 300/100 000.  Despite remaining fairly stable in the heterosexual community, syphilis rates continue to rise in homosexually active men.  Other groups in Australia at risk of syphilis include rural and remote indigenous communities and those from overseas. Most infections are detected in the late latent phase, when the patient is asymptomatic, having passed the early infectious stages unrecognised and undiagnosed. 

The total rate in China, according to this graph that was in the New England Journal of Medicine article that is that basis of this story, indicates a rate of about 20 per 100,000.   So, in fact, the national rate is not all that huge, although I see that some Shanghai is a particularly bad place for it.  But the sharp rise in congenital cases is remarkably steep.  According to the NEJM:

…more than half of pregnant women with syphilis have a spontaneous abortion or stillbirth; and babies with congenital syphilis may have serious, irreversible sequelae with rates of death in infancy of more than 50%

That’s pretty sad.

Crowe stories

A rude awakening

The Sydney Morning Herald has run a story from The Telegraph by the author of a new book on the now (as I understand it) existing-in-name-only Dreamworks studio.  It's all pretty interesting, but as we all love a "Russell Crowe is a vain, preening idiot" story, it's mainly worth reading the bits near the beginning about him, such as this:

While filming [Gladiator] in Morocco, he walked off the set twice. For ''fun'', he challenged crew members to foot races only to lose and then complain for days that he couldn't ''run in the sand in sandals''. Years before the actor would become famous for the kind of short-tempered fuse that launched airborne telephones in the direction of hotel receptionists, his diva antics were already at a remarkably impressive level: upset that his assistants' pay wasn't high enough, he placed an angry call to Gladiator  producer Branko Lustig at 3am. Lustig, in turn, called Spielberg in Los Angeles: ''Steven, I'm leaving. Russell wants to kill me.'

But by far the most detailed first hand account of, shall we say, Crowe's personality "issues" was by Jack Marx in 2006, and happily it is still available at Fairfax.

Why bother existing, revisited

I could put this as an update to my post a few days ago about philosophers (and others) who think it's not such a bad idea for people to just, you know, go away from the universe, but who's going to notice if I do that?

Hence, I'll point out here that the ridiculously productive blogger James Lilek has also visited the story, with pretty much the same reaction that I had, but expressed in wittier form:

You have to love this: let’s say everyone agreed not to have children. Then is there anything wrong with this scenario? The obvious answer is “yes; no children” but since the childless future with no humans at all, just birds and fish and bugs, doesn’t mean any human suffering, then the net amount of suffering is reduced, and we can all have a party. This is also an argument for smothering everyone under 15 so they don’t suffer broken hearts and angsty 20s, which happen to everyone. But don’t worry; he’s just asking questions.

It's all worth reading.

Depends how you define "disaster", I suppose

This is, of course, a very fair and reasonable blog, and although it has long decided that the world ought to be working hard to urgently limit CO2 reductions, it's not above pointing out some of the confusions and exaggerations which occur on my side of the argument.

Hence, regular readers might recall that in January this year, I noted that papers talking about the effect of loss of glaciers in the Himalayas on water flow in Indian and Chinese rivers seemed to be using some pretty confusing figures which were hard to reconcile.

Well, my confusion was justified, it seems. Nature reports on a new paper which tries to put the issue of glaciers and water flow in that area more into perspective. It starts with the heading "Global warming impact on Asia's rivers overblown", which appears to be part of environmental journalists new campaign not to be caught exaggerating again, even when the thing they are reporting on is quite seriously bad. Here are some extracts:

Although global warming is expected to shrink glaciers in the Himalayas and other high mountains in Central Asia, the declining ice will have less overall impact on the region's water supplies than previously believed, a study concludes.

It's an important finding, says Richard Armstrong, a climatologist at the US National Snow and Ice Data Center in Boulder, Colorado, who notes that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change had previously predicted dire restrictions on water supplies in Asia. "There clearly were some misunderstandings," he says.

Yes, well, OK, but while the current study did find that the importance of glacier meltwater is not so important for some rivers, it's still pretty important for others:

The researchers behind the latest study began by calculating the importance of meltwater in the overall hydrology of five rivers: the Indus, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra in India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, and the Yellow River and the Yangtze in China¹. The authors found that meltwater is most important to the Indus, with a contribution roughly 1.5 times that from lowland rains. In the Brahmaputra, meltwater flow is equivalent to only one-quarter of the volume supplied by lowland rainfall, and, in the other rivers, it forms no more than one-tenth of the input.

Furthermore, the study found that in the Indus and Ganges basins, glacial ice contributes only about 40% of the total meltwater, with the rest coming from seasonal snows. In the other three rivers its contribution is even lower.

OK, so with some model's predicted changes to rainfall/snow, what effect might AGW have?:

Climate change will therefore have two effects, Immerzeel says. One will be to reduce the contribution of glaciers to total run-off. The other will be to change weather patterns, including rain and snowfall. Combining these and looking at averages from five climate models, Immerzeel and colleagues concluded that the change in upstream water inputs will range from a decrease of 19.6% for the Brahmaputra to a 9.5% increase for the Yellow River. The latter, he notes, is due to increased winter rains. "The Yellow River depends only marginally on meltwater," he says, "and, on average, the models project an increase in winter precipitation in the Yellow River basin."

What this means, Armstrong says, is that river flows are dominated by seasonal rains. "The glaciers are tiny, compared with the monsoon," he says.

All sounding relatively comforting, kind of, until you hit the next paragraph:

Nevertheless, the study concludes that climate change will reduce water supplies enough that by 2050, declines in irrigation water are likely to reduce the number of people the region's agriculture can support by about 60 million — 4.5% of the region's present population.

So the previous over-estimation of how many in India may be badly effected by AGW within 40 years is downgraded to a mere three times as many as the population of Australia.

How very comforting for them.

Of course, precise predictions of changes to rainfall is one of the rubberiest areas of climate science at the moment, but still, it would seem a fair bet that one of the worst hit areas from human induced climate change will be the relatively helpless poorer people in parts of Asia.

Mysterious programming

I see that in 2008, I mentioned how enjoyable I was finding the BBC's current incarnation of Robin Hood. (One suspects it gives much more pleasure than Russell Crowe's movie version.) It's one of those rare programs that is sufficiently sophisticated for adults, yet is enjoyable for the younger family members too.

After the traumatic ending of series 2 (it really was a surprise, and quite moving, and if you have no intention of watching it, you can find out what happened here), I was aware that a third series was in production and was on the look out for it on Australian TV.

Well, sad to say, ABC has decided to run it on ABC2, which I don't always think to check on Saturday night, and as a result I've come in late to this series 3.

I still think it's a good show, although it's probably right that it ends with this series. It's hard to see where else it could go.

Free speech in Kuwait

Kuwaiti activist's detention extended until June 21

A Kuwaiti court on Monday extended the detention of Kuwaiti lawyer
and columnist Mohammad Al Jasem until June 21.

The court said that it would hear the testimony of an investigation
officer on the case that has divided the Kuwaiti society and sparked
international calls for the release of the 54-year-old detainee.

Al Jasem, charged with damaging national interests, told the court
that his detention was illegal and his team of lawyers called for his
immediate release, according to Kuwaiti media.


The court kept the defendant in police custody, but agreed to have him
examined by a medical team to assess his health condition. His family
said that he had had heart problems in the past.

The public prosecutor last month imposed a gag on the coverage of the
trial of Al Jasem who last November was detained for 12 days in a
separate case initiated by the Kuwaiti prime minister who accused him of
slander.

I assume America, which took more than a little effort to help this place, is making representations.

Helen's legacy

Gosh, it's been a slow news week as far as I'm concerned. There just hasn't been anything much that I have deemed blogworthy.

But, Colbert's handling of the Helen Thomas resignation amused me:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Helen Thomas's Reputation
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Fox News

I also thought that the next segment on Colbert, in which he dealt with the Israeli "aid flotilla", was pretty remarkable in that it managed to be funny without being offensive, and even featured the Israeli ambassador to the US in one of Colbert's interviews which manage to amuse but let some real information and commentary in too.

Reversable eunuchs

BBC NEWS | Europe | 'I was chemically castrated'

In light of Poland introducing compulsory chemical castration for some sex offenders, the BBC has this interview with a Canadian sex offender who found his voluntary undergoing of the procedure quite helpful.

Interestingly, he talks about how, now that he is out of jail but still undergoing the chemical castration, he has a girlfriend, and he's trying to work out how to tell her about his background. (His plan is to stop the treatment at some point.)

Talk about delicate topics to bring up over your dinner date!

MRI videos

I forget what I was looking for when I found these, and they have been around for some time.

But - here a few videos about MRIs that interested me:

* here's a staged demonstration of the powerful magnets in them;

* here's what appears to be the un-staged consequences of forgetting about the powerful magnets;

* here is the latest in Japanese MRI's (it's silly, but I still find it pretty funny.)

Philosopher thinks himself out of existence

Should This Be the Last Generation? - NYTimes.com

This is kind of amusing. Peter Singer looks at the big question of whether it is better to exist or not exist, and notes one recent ultra pessimistic book:

Schopenhauer’s pessimism has had few defenders over the past two centuries, but one has recently emerged, in the South African philosopher David Benatar, author of a fine book with an arresting title: “Better Never to Have Been: The Harm of Coming into Existence.”

Singer sounds quite sympathetic to the arguments, but in the end outs himself as an optimist after all. That's a shame in the way; I would find it quite funny if he joined a philosophical movement that seemed to want to apologise for drawing breath, and causing a new icky human life form to trod the earth.

Reasons he drinks

It's interesting to read Christopher Hitchens explaining in detail his drinking routine, and his very cheery view of the habit.

An odd connection

Gut bacteria may contribute to autism - health - 07 June 2010 - New Scientist

Children with autism appear to have a characteristic chemical signature in their urine which might form the basis of an early diagnostic test for the condition.

The finding also adds weight the hypothesis that substances released by gut bacteria are contributing to the onset of the condition.

The researcher is keen to point out that this has nothing to do with the discredited idea that vaccination causes autism.

More research is coming:

The next step is to confirm the results in a much larger group of age-matched children, as well as following high-risk children from birth in order to identify whether there are markers that precede the development of autistic symptoms.