by Salman Hameed

I'm back from the break and I'm catching up on good and the bad news. So lets start with a recent Pew survey on the views of Americans on IVF, Stem cell research and abortion. All three of these issues are deeply tied to politics and legal matters here in the US and also feature in science in religion debates. Here is the broad picture of American views:

I'm actually surprised that there isn't much difference in opinion between embryonic and non-embryonic stem cell research, but that may be because "stem cells research" in the news often now stands for embryonic stem cell research - as that is the point of controversy for some. At the same time, political and ideological leanings do make a bigger difference in embryonic stem cell research than for non-embryonic stem cell research:

As with abortion, men and women are about equally likely to say embryonic stem cell research is morally acceptable. Similarly, adults ages 50 and older are about equally likely as younger adults (18 to 49 years) to say that conducting embryonic stem cell research is morally acceptable. However, college graduates are somewhat more inclined than those with less education to consider this practice morally acceptable. 

There also are differences when it comes to partisanship and ideology. About three-quarters of Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party consider embryonic stem cell research either morally acceptable or not a moral issue. Republicans and Republican-leaning independents are more inclined than their Democratic counterparts to consider such research morally wrong. Similarly, self-described conservatives tend to see embryonic stem cell research as morally wrong more than either moderates or liberals do. 

Among the major religious groups, white evangelical Protestants are most likely to say embryonic stem cell research is morally wrong. However, in comparison to attitudes toward abortion, differences among religious groups are relatively modest.
...
A separate question on the survey asked about the moral acceptability of medical research using stem cells that do not derive from human embryos. The overwhelming majority of adults say that non-embryonic stem cell research is either morally acceptable (33%) or is not a moral issue (42%); only 16% say such research is morally wrong. 

There are only modest differences in opinion among social and demographic groups on this issue. For example, there are no significant differences in opinion on non-embryonic stem cell research by political party and only modest differences by ideology. However, moderates and liberals are somewhat more inclined than conservatives to say non-embryonic research is not a moral issue. And those with a college degree are more likely than those with fewer years of formal education to say that non-embryonic stem cell research is morally acceptable.

Read the full report here.

I haven't seen Muslim views on IVF and embryonic stem cell research, but here are opinions on abortion:

Some of this not surprising (though look at the difference between Pakistan and Bangladesh!). Also, too bad that Iran is not in this sample - as it is possible that their views would have stood out. However, at least 10% of respondents in 13 countries think that this is not a moral issues:

In 13 countries however, at least one-in-ten Muslims say abortion is not a moral issue. This view is especially common in some countries in the Middle East-North Africa region; 34% in Jordan, 22% in Egypt and 21% in Iraq say they do not consider abortion to be a moral question. 

Additionally, in 11 of the countries surveyed, at least one-in-ten Muslims volunteer that the morality of having an abortion depends on the situation. Half of Azerbaijani Muslims and more than a third (34%) of Muslims in Tajikistan take this view. Overall, this perception is most common in Central Asia and the Middle East-North Africa region.

Read the Pew report on Muslim views here.

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by Salman Hameed

Here is a nicely made short film that brings up an interesting question about personhood. The ending of this film is okay - but I think it raises some fascinating questions about death that can be examined in a follow-up film. [Spoiler: Read the next sentence after watching the short film. I think the detective at the end should really be charged with murder. But then can there be a primary and a secondary murder of the same person?]

Here is 16-minute film: The Final Moments of Karl Brant (tip from Jason Tor):

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by Salman Hameed

If you have a chance you should read at least on of the books by primatologist, Frans de Waal. I was introduced to his work with The Ape and the Sushi Master and have been a fan ever since. He works on the origins of morality and is a fantastic writer. His latest book, The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism among the Primates looks at the moral landscape today, including the debates between militant atheism and religion. From a review in Nature:

Frans de Waal's latest book, The Bonobo and the Atheist, is both an exceptionally good

read and a tour de force of scholarship. In it, de Waal states his argument for the evolution of human empathy with the sophistication of a well-grounded, risk-taking scientist who can venture into philosophy.
...
De Waal views extreme strains of atheism as getting “all worked up about the absence of something”, at one point using the fanciful device of a talking bonobo as his mouthpiece (hence the book's title). His view is that religion is undeniably in our bones — even though evidence of primate precursors seems less than substantial. This does not mean that he is pro-religion, however. The Bonobo and the Atheist is permeated with the ethos of secular humanism, using the Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch's The Garden of Earthly Delights — a vision of humanity freed from narrow moral constraints — as a touchstone for his arguments. 

In his discussion of empathy and morality, de Waal has little time for what he calls “veneer theories” that reduce altruism to 'natural' selfishness. As he shows, human altruism has analogues in a wide range of species, even though sterile ants' care for the offspring of their queen can hardly be labelled empathy. When dolphins assist humans struggling in the water, we may at least suggest some basic similarities. But when a chimpanzee, sharing more than 95% of our DNA, helps an unrelated member of its group to lick a wound it cannot reach, a type of empathy very near the human is surely coming into play. 

Many evolutionists favour chimpanzees as ancestral models. Whereas de Waal does look frequently to chimpanzees as exemplars of primate altruism, he champions the less violent bonobo — not least because its habitat, like that of our common primate ancestor, remains the tropical forest, whereas chimpanzees and humans have evolved into ecological generalists. 

De Waal looks to mothering and infant care by non-kin, a basic form of empathy discussed by primatologist Sarah Hrdy in Mothers and Others (Harvard University Press, 2011), as the foundation of human altruism and complex cooperation, and as his prime evolutionary building block for morality. He also emphasizes the importance of emotion in moral choices, citing the work of psychologist Jonathan Haidt, author of The Righteous Mind (Allen Lane, 2012). Haidt's empirical investigations of subjects' disgusted reactions to incest demonstrate that when it comes to morality, raw emotions trump rationality.

Read the full review here.

Also, see Frans de Waal's TED talk, Moral Behavior in Animals:


And he recently got embroiled in a controversy when he criticized some of the New Atheists. Here is de Waal's response and this also nicely encapsulates his book:

Having heard the protests by prominent atheists against the excerpt published by salon.com (under the inflammatory banner "Has militant atheism become a religion?"), let me say that the role of religion and atheism covers only about 10% of my book. It is an important part, hence the book title, but needs to be weighed against the rest of my message. In order to discuss the biological origins of morality, which is its central theme, I need to get two groups out of the way. One is fundamentalist religion, for which morality comes from God. The other are the neo-atheists who, by labeling themselves rational and everyone else irrational, have closed the door to open and tolerant debate. Calling believers idiots can't possibly be a good discussion opener. This explains my stance against militant atheism (a label that is not mine, but Dawkins' by the way). 

My book is about how morality doesn't come from above but rather is an evolutionary product. I speak of bottom-up morality, in line with the ideas of some psychologists (Haidt), philosophers and neuroscientists (Kitcher, Churchland). The book is rooted in my research on monkeys, apes, elephants, and other animals, and my conviction that they show the beginnings of morality. I have written about this before, but now I am bringing religion into the mix. Even though I don't think religion is absolutely critical, it is also not irrelevant. The question how humans would fare without it is hard to answer for the simple reason that religion is universal. There are no societies that are not now and never were religious. 

Morality promotes cooperation. It asks us to put our personal interests on the back-burner and work for the common good. It is a complex system that religion and philosophy have tried to capture in simple rules (such as the golden rule or the ten commandments), but these rules provide only imperfect summaries. We like to think of morality as top-down, but this is merely a left-over of the story of God on the mountain top. There is no evidence that it started out as a top-down system. Science is rather coming around to the Humean view of morality guided by intuitions and passions. Looking at other primates, we recognize many of the same tendencies that underlie our morality, such as rules of reciprocity, empathy and sympathy, a sense of fairness, and the need to get along. Monkeys, for example, object to unfair distributions of resources (see the end of my TED talk), and chimpanzees do each other favors even if there is nothing in it for themselves. Bonobos are probably the most empathic animals of all, and the recent genome data places them extremely close to us.
...
Human morality goes beyond all of this, but ancient primate tendencies do play a crucial role. We have been indoctrinated that nature is "red in tooth and claw," and entirely selfish, but we are now learning about conflict resolution, cooperation, empathy, and the like, in our fellow primates. They are far more harmony-oriented than people realize. I don't necessarily call apes "moral beings," but we share with them an old psychology without which we'd never have become moral.

Atheism will need to be combined with something else, something more constructive than its opposition to religion, to be relevant to our lives. The only possibility is to embrace morality as natural to our species. Otherwise atheism will end up in the Big Black Hole that Thomas Henry Huxley created for himself in the 19th Century. He did not believe morality came from God, but also denied its possible evolution. He could not explain where it came from except for saying that we had to fight very hard against our own nature to become moral (which is of course an ancient Christian position related to original sin, and so on). In this, Huxley went against Darwin himself, who did see room for moral evolution, as explained in "The Descent of Man." To debate these important issues we all need to step back, stop shouting, and move beyond unanswerable questions about the existence of God. Atheists should be interested in this debate and I hope they will join in.

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by Salman Hameed

Should humans colonize Mars? What if we find Martian microbes living there? This is a tough question. We had a discussion of that in class. Like Sagan, I'm of the opinion that if we find life on Mars, then we should leave Mars for the Martians. Others, like Zubrin, have argued that we should not alter our plans for some pesky microbes. Then we Chris McKay who argues that if we find life on Mars, it will be our responsibility to maximize its potential to live. So at a time when Curiosity is beginning its experiments there, here is the first part of Living on Mars (there are 5 ten minute segments). Enjoy!



And as a bonus, if you are further interested in the topic, here is a lecture on the ethics of terraforming Mars by Chris McKay:

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by Salman Hameed

The moral issues surrounding science for military purposes are - to say the least - tricky. Here is a recent discovery of some correspondence that shows views of Einstein on science and war:

A cleanup of the archives of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in January yielded an unexpected treasure for the 95-year-old news service: hand-typed correspondence between JTA's founder, Jacob Landau, and Albert Einstein. Among the yellowing letters was a 20 January 1947 statement from Einstein on scientists' role in military research—a hot topic in the wake of World War II and the wartime use of atomic weapons.
“Non-cooperation in military matters should be a vital part of the moral code of basic scientists,” Einstein wrote, adding that keeping basic discoveries secret “would seriously harm science.” 

Einstein had expressed similar antiwar views prior to writing that letter, but it does shed new light on the physicist's views “on the relationship of science and state,” says Harvard University historian Peter Galison. Einstein writes, for example, that for science, “moral law is above any obligation to the state.”                      

This also reminded me of the brilliant Richard Feynman. He was part of the Manhattan Project and initially celebrated the success of the bomb - purely from the physics perspective. After all, here was a case that of mathematical equations leading to a physical reality. But when the pictures from Hiroshima came back, his reaction changed. Several years later, here he is talking about his role in the Manhattan Project:



Of course, the issue of the morality of nuclear weapons is very much alive in several of the Muslim-majority countries, including Pakistan and Iran. While we, as humanity, are playing with fire with nuclear weapon proliferation, the US still does not have much of a case to stop Iran (and previously, Pakistan and India) from obtaining nuclear weapons. So far, Hiroshima and Nagasaki remain the only instances of the use of nuclear weapons. I hope that it stays that way, but I don't think I can bet on that.

Time to watch some anti-nuclear Sagan again.

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by Salman Hameed

Our next Science and Religion lecture at Hampshire College is tomorrow (April 12th) by Margaret Race. She will be talking about Astrobiology, Life, and Planetary Protection. Join us at the talk if  you are in the area.
[P.S. I will also be talking about astrobiology and science & religion today (April 11th) from 4:30 to 5:30pm on The Foxy Brown show (hosted by Tania Halder Hart) on the UMass radio station WMUA 91.1FM. If interested, you can find the streaming here]

Here is the announcement:

Astrobiology, Life & Planetary Protection:  Implications on Earth and Beyond

by 

Margaret S. Race

 SETI Institute, Mountain View, California http://www.seti.org/

Thursday, April 12th at 5:30pm

Franklin Patterson Hall, Main Lecture Hall

Hampshire College

Abstract:
For centuries, humans have gazed at the heavens and wondered whether we are alone. Only in the past 5 decades have we been able to use science and technology to search for evidence of extraterrestrial life. As astrobiologists seek to learn more about the origin, evolution, distribution and fate of life on Earth and beyond, we also confront an array of challenging questions about the nature of life and its long term sustainability. Practically, this means that the development of guidelines for responsible exploration and planetary protection now requires a truly interdisciplinary approach, combining advances in science and technology with input from ethical, legal, and societal perspectives. Coincidentally, these deliberations about space exploration and the search for ET life also bring an interesting perspective to current debates about emerging technologies  and scientific progress  here on Earth.

Biographical Statement:
Margaret Race is Senior Research Scientist at the SETI Institute. http://www.seti.org/ Her work focuses on the scientific, technical, legal and societal issues of ensuring that missions to Mars and other solar system bodies do not either inadvertently bring terrestrial microbes along, which would complicate our search for indigenous extraterrestrial life, or return any microbes to Earth. Her interest in extraterrestrial organisms is linked closely to her long term ecological research on exotic and invasive species. She is also actively involved in education and public outreach about astrobiology. Since her early work with the Environmental Protection Agency as a Public Information Specialist, and her tenure at San Francisco television station KQED, Dr. Race has had a strong interest in the communication of science via the mass media. She especially likes to work with journalists and educators as they develop materials about complex, controversial issues in space exploration and environmental protection. Her enthusiasm is infectious, and her work ensures that our spacecraft won't be.

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by Salman Hameed

Stem cell research shows up Presidential politics here in the US. But it has been going on in Malaysia, Turkey, Egypt, Iran, etc. Even embryonic stem cell research - the bone of contention in the US - is progressing without controversy in some of these Muslim countries. In case, you are interested, you can check out the official Malaysian Guidelines for Stem Cells Research and Therapy (pdf) and it also has a section on ethnics.

Now here is a news item about four women stem cell researchers from Qatar (tip from Don Everhart):

One of the first steps taken by the collaborations was to form the International Programme on Stem Cell Science and Policy, charged with examining the ethical and religious issues involved in stem-cell science, relevant to Arab culture, and engaging with local communities. Five years on, the plan is bearing fruit. 

Hamda Al-Thawadi, Halema Al-Farsi, Heba Al-Siddiqi and Sarah Abdullah joined the Qatar Science Leadership Program (QSLP), a QF initiative that aims to groom Qataris to take leading roles in Qatari science and one day steer its ambitious national programme of research. 

The QSLP sends students to train at some of the best universities in the world. And 2011 saw Al-Thwadi and Al-Farsi go to one of France's largest universities, University Paris-Sud 11, Al-Siddiqi go to Harvard Stem Cell Institute in Massachusetts and Abdullah go to the University of Cambridge in the UK. 

At the Qatar International Conference on Stem Cell Science and Policy held this past week in Doha, Al-Thawadi, Al-Farsi and Al-Siddiqi presented their research on ovarian cancer and obesity-related diseases. Al-Thawadi practiced medicine for two years before applying for the QSLP. "In the past there was only one path for a medical doctor, treating patients. But when QF started this programme, they created a new path for doctors or graduates interested in science," she says. "This is a perfect chance for Qatar to create home-grown researchers."

And Al-Siddiqi is a co-author on a paper published in Nature Cell Biology just this past month:

The first research paper Al-Siddiqi's co-authored was published in Nature Cell Biology in February 2012. "It felt amazing, especially after all the hours of hard work," she says.
Al-Thawadi and Al-Farsi decided to work on ovarian cancer as it is highly prevalent in the Middle East. Al-Thawadi incubated cancer cells in culture with Protein C, a coagulation factor, to test its effect on thrombosis of ovarian cancer cells, which led to a significant increase in metastasis. "This gives us a clue to outline preventative measures for thrombosis in ovarian cancer patients," she explains.

This is actually pretty neat! Read the full article at Nature Middle East.

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by Salman Hameed

Actually everyone must speak up against assassinations. But the news that another Iranian physicist has been assassinated is deeply troubling. I'm not in favor of nuclear weapons and there should every effort to eliminate them. But targeted killings of scientists associated with a nuclear program? How should we think about it?

First of all, this is illegal. This is extrajudicial killing and should have no place in a civilized world. While Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapon, the killing is most likely associated with a country that already has one (Israel or the US). So a moral argument to preserve world peace in this case is already out the window.

Second, should scientists speak up against it? Yes. When scientists are persecuted anywhere in the country, journals like Nature and Science write editorials about it. The same is true when scientists have been fired from their jobs or, in the recent case of Turkey, when the Turkish government decided to exert undue influence on its Academy of Science. Shouldn't there be an outrage when a physicist is assassinated because of his association with a uranium enrichment program (which by in itself is not illegal)? We haven't seen it so far. This is not the first assassination of an Iranian scientist either:

The scientist, Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, was a department supervisor at the Natanz uranium enrichment plant, a participant in what Western leaders believe is Iran’s halting but determined progress toward a nuclear weapon. He was at least the fifth scientist with nuclear connections to be killed since 2007; a sixth scientist, Fereydoon Abbasi, survived a 2010 attack and was put in charge of Iran’s Atomic Energy Organization.

We have to stand-up and condemn these assassinations. The world is becoming a tricky place. I have written about ethical and legal problems with the drone program and the fact that these issues are not getting as much attention as they should. This assassination precedence directly affects scientists. I hope we will all speak up against it! 

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by Salman Hameed

The issue of morality often gets entangled with religion. But the origins of certain behaviors that we term 'moral' can be traced in our evolutionary pasts. Of course, one can argue that those characteristics are part of the natural world because of the laws put in place by God. At the same time, the search for the origins of those laws (like any other scientific question) falls under the purview of science, and the following talk is about that. Here is primatologist Frans de Waal talking about Morality without Religion. By the way, if you haven't read his books, you should definitely check those out. He is an excellent writer. I was hooked on to his books after reading The Ape and the Sushi Master: Cultural Reflections of a Primatologist.

Here is the Tedx talk by Frans de Waal. Also note the fascinating videos of chimps from the Yerkes Archive.

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by Salman Hameed

This semester I have been co-teching a class on Astrobiology with microbiologist Jason Tor and planetary astronomer/geologist Darby Dyar. It has been a lot of fun, and tomorrow, in our last class, we are looking at the ethical implications of the discovery of microbes on Mars. If we have a sure sign of detection, do we continue to send landers on Mars and risk further contamination from Earth? Would humans retain the right to explore and colonize Mars? Can we - from Earth - ever claim even a piece of Mars, or does Mars belong to the Martians, and we have to follow the Prime Directive, and let it evolve on its own? These are indeed difficult questions but we have to address them soon as we are sending more and more sophisticated instruments to detect Martian life (For example, see the recent launch of Mars Science Laboratory). What do you think? If we detect life on Mars, should humans still colonize the planet in the future?

Coincidentally, there is a fascinating article by Carl Zimmer in today's New York Times that talks about bioethics related to microbes that make up our own bodies:

Welcome to the confusing new frontier of ethics: our inner ecosystem. In recent years, scientists have discovered remarkable complexity and power in the microbes that live inside us. We depend on this so-called microbiome for our well-being: it helps break down our food, synthesize vitamins and shield against disease-causing germs. 

“We used to think of ourselves as separate from nature,” said Rosamond Rhodes, a bioethicist at Mount Sinai School of Medicine. “Now it’s not just us. It’s us and them.”
For bioethicists, one of the most important questions is what our microbes can reveal about ourselves. Studies have revealed, for example, that people who are sick with certain diseases tend to have distinctive collections of microbes. Someday we may get important clues to people’s health from a survey of their microbes. Professor Rhodes argues that this sort of information will deserve the same protection as information about our own genes. Your germs are your own business, in other words. 

But that is only one side of the issue. As scientists get to know the microbiome better, they are also looking for new medical treatments: after all, most antibiotics were first discovered in bacteria and fungi. Michael Fischbach, a biologist at the University of California, San Francisco, and his colleagues have discovered a wealth of promising druglike molecules made by microbes in human bodies. 

 It may even be possible to use the bacteria themselves as living drugs. Doctors have treated hundreds of patients suffering from gut infections by giving them so-called fecal transplants: the bacteria from healthy people can create a stable ecosystem that drives disease-causing microbes to extinction. In their more speculative moments, scientists have proposed using microbes to treat obesity or autoimmune diseases. Some researchers are even genetically engineering microbes to make them more effective.
Manufacturers already add beneficial bacteria, called probiotics, to a range of foods. But regulating a microbe is trickier than regulating a molecule. Probiotics can multiply inside us, and can later escape to colonize new hosts. When a doctor prescribes engineered microbes for individual patients, the ethical questions will extend far beyond them, to their families and communities.         

Microbes defy a simple notion of individuality. They are essential to our biology, and they travel with us from birth to death. Yet they also flow between us, and can be found in water, food and soil.

Read the full article here. It seems like we are here to provide a warm and safe environment for the microbes to thrive. May be we should respect our masters on Mars as well :)

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by Salman Hameed

This is from a couple of years ago, but it is still a fascinating piece that complicates the usual relation of science & religion, and also of our general impression of Iran. At a time when embryonic stem cells research is a hot-potatoe issue for US politics, it is interesting to see the reaction in Iran. Yes, part of this has to with the definition of the beginning of life in Islam (often considered at 4 months - instead of at the time of conception), but still, this provides an nice insight into the dealings with science in deeply religious societies. By the way, evolutionary biology is also included in biology textbooks and we found the same positive reaction when we interviewed a few Iranian medical doctors who recently arrived in the US.

In any case, here is the segment on Iran's Stem Cell Fatwa from Frontline (Tip from Abu'l-Rauhan Al-Biruni):

Watch Iran: The Stem Cell Fatwa on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE/WORLD.

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by Salman Hameed

I have written multiple times before about the fact that the use of drones by the US raises a number of ethical issues as well as questions about the efficacy of this strategy. On top of all that, a few months ago the CIA made the preposterous statement that in the past year or so there have been 0 civilian casualties. In this context, it was refreshing to see a sane oped piece in the NYT on this topic. Titled, For our Allies, Death from Above, it illuminates some of the ground realities of this form of warfare. It focuses on a jirga of tribal elders held in Islamabad:

The meeting had been organized so that Pashtun tribal elders who lived along the Pakistani-Afghan frontier could meet with Westerners for the first time to offer their perspectives on the shadowy drone war being waged by the Central Intelligence Agency in their region. Twenty men came to air their views; some brought their young sons along to experience this rare interaction with Americans. In all, 60 villagers made the journey. 

The meeting was organized as a traditional jirga. In Pashtun culture, a jirga acts as both a parliament and a courtroom: it is the time-honored way in which Pashtuns have tried to establish rules and settle differences amicably with those who they feel have wronged them.
On the night before the meeting, we had a dinner, to break the ice. During the meal, I met a boy named Tariq Aziz. He was 16. As we ate, the stern, bearded faces all around me slowly melted into smiles. Tariq smiled much sooner; he was too young to boast much facial hair, and too young to have learned to hate. 

The next day, the jirga lasted several hours. I had a translator, but the gist of each man’s speech was clear. American drones would circle their homes all day before unleashing Hellfire missiles, often in the dark hours between midnight and dawn. Death lurked everywhere around them. 

When it was my turn to speak, I mentioned the official American position: that these were precision strikes and no innocent civilian had been killed in 15 months. My comment was met with snorts of derision. 

I told the elders that the only way to convince the American people of their suffering was to accumulate physical proof that civilians had been killed. Three of the men, at considerable personal risk, had collected the detritus of half a dozen missiles; they had taken 100 pictures of the carnage. 

In one instance, they matched missile fragments with a photograph of a dead child, killed in August 2010 during the C.I.A.’s period of supposed infallibility. This made their grievances much more tangible.

And then the aftermath which all of us should read and think about:

Collecting evidence is a dangerous business. The drones are not the only enemy. The Pakistani military has sealed the area off from journalists, so the truth is hard to come by. One man investigating drone strikes that killed civilians was captured by the Taliban and held for 63 days on suspicion of spying for the United States. 

At the end of the day, Tariq stepped forward. He volunteered to gather proof if it would help to protect his family from future harm. We told him to think about it some more before moving forward; if he carried a camera he might attract the hostility of the extremists.
But the militants never had the chance to harm him. On Monday, he was killed by a C.I.A. drone strike, along with his 12-year-old cousin, Waheed Khan. The two of them had been dispatched, with Tariq driving, to pick up their aunt and bring her home to the village of Norak, when their short lives were ended by a Hellfire missile. 

My mistake had been to see the drone war in Waziristan in terms of abstract legal theory — as a blatantly illegal invasion of Pakistan’s sovereignty, akin to President Richard M. Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia in 1970.
But now, the issue has suddenly become very real and personal. Tariq was a good kid, and courageous. My warm hand recently touched his in friendship; yet, within three days, his would be cold in death, the rigor mortis inflicted by my government. 

And Tariq’s extended family, so recently hoping to be our allies for peace, has now been ripped apart by an American missile — most likely making any effort we make at reconciliation futile.

This is madness. Unfortunately, ethical, legal, or humanistic arguments at this stage are not going to outweigh the ease of this form of warfare for the US. Other nations (Iran, Israel, Pakistan, India, China, etc.) are already working on drone technology, which is relatively simple and affordable. A simple deterrence model probably will not work in stopping these aerial extra-judicial assassinations. Can this be outlawed just like chemical weapons or the use of land mines? It will take time - but people have to wake up to the implications for the widespread use of drones for assassinations.

Read the full NYT article here.   

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by Salman Hameed

Last year, Kevin Anderson and I had started a series of film autopsies of films (for example, see autopsy of "Splice" here and "Inception" here) . Well, Film Autopsy is back! And now it's high-tech with the help of Smith College and their video technology administrator, Jeff Heath. We are still in the process of improving the visuals - but hey - anything is better than the movie stills with Ken Burns effect.

I will posting these autopsies here as well as on the Film Autopsy blog. Clearly, not all of the movies are relevant for science & religion. So I will post those off-topic autopsies as additions to the regular daily posts. But if you are interested in films, I hope you will enjoy the reviews of films.

The first one is Project Nim. Of course, this movie is relevant to some of the ethical issues we have talked about here on Irtiqa, and I already had a post about the film here. But here is an exchange with Kevin Anderson as part of our new Film Autopsy:


Project Nim Film Autopsy from kevin taylor anderson on Vimeo.

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by Salman Hameed

There is a fascinating new study out that shows that there were two waves of original human immigration to Asia. The Aboriginal Australians are descendants of the first wave, about 62,000-75,000 years ago, whereas, most modern Asians are linked to the second wave about 25,000-38,000 years ago. Fascinatingly, this was found by sequencing the DNA from a 100-year old lock of hair donated by an Aboriginal Australian. While there was a considerable effort was made by researchers to seek permission of Godfields Land and Sea Council, a body based in Southern Australia that represents Aboriginals living in the area where the original lock of hair was collected.

Nevertheless, this raises a number of issues (from Nature):

The study also raises broader consent issues over body parts of indigenous people held in museums, says Kowal. Many collections are returning bones to these groups, but the British Museum in London, for instance, generally excludes hair and nails from its repatriation policy. Such specimens are a valuable tool for studying the genomes of people from around the world, including populations that no longer exist, argues Willerslev.

So who has the authority to give permission for such genetic investigations? Furthermore, it changes the ethical dimensions may appear to change if the specimen is considered archaeological rather than biological. For example, a Danish bioethical review board didn't think it was necessary to review the hair-lock study as this was an archaeological specimen. To their credit, the researchers still went the extra mile to seek permissions from the relevant populations. But that will not always be the case, and it is essential to create some firm guidelines on this.

This issue is important and it comes up often with Native Americans in the US. Here are some earlier posts on the topic:
Disputes over Native American Remains
Blood Samples Back to Yanomamo
Havasupai Tribe and the Ethics of DNA Research
Skeletal Remains and the Issue of Cultural Affiliation

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by Salman Hameed

I did not see this one coming. A few days ago I had a chance to see Project Nim, the new documentary by James Marsh of Man on Wire fame. The film is about a chimp names Nim Chimpsky who was raised amongst humans (and arguably, as a human) to see if he can learn language and construct grammatical sentences (in sign-language). His name, of course, was a play on MIT linguist, Noam Chomsky, who believes that humans have an innate ability for language. Project Nim was set out to show otherwise. Unfortunately, it ended up separating a chimpanzee from his mother, and then shuttling him from one human home to another, often with dire consequences. The movie is not really about science. In fact, some of the critics have complained that it would have been nice to see the science as well. Sure. But I think the movie is more about humans who became a  part of Nim's life.

Implicit in the movie are ethical questions associated with the treatment of apes - our closest relatives. Can we keep them in cages? Can we keep them captive at all? What about testing for new vaccines? After all, we would like to test on some animals before humans, and chimpanzees are the closest.

These are tough questions. The Spanish parliament has already called for granting humans rights to apes. This means that any thing you can't do to humans, you can't do to apes either. I tend to agree with this and hope that at least a complete ban on testing on apes is implemented soon. This month's Scientific American has an editorial endorsing a ban on testing on chimps:

In April, McClatchy Newspapers ran a special report based on its review of thousands of medical records detailing research on chimps like Bobby. The stories painted a grim picture of life in the lab, noting disturbing psychological responses in the chimps. Then, in June, Hope R. Ferdowsian of George Washington University and her colleagues reported in PLoS ONE that chimps that had previously suffered traumatic events, including experimentation, exhibit clusters of symptoms similar to depression and post-traumatic stress disorder in humans.
That chimps and humans react to trauma in a like manner should not come as a surprise. Chimps are our closest living relatives and share a capacity for emotion, including fear, anxiety, grief and rage.
Testing on chimps has been a huge boon for humans in the past, contributing to the discovery of hepatitis C and vaccines against polio and hepatitis B, among other advances. Whether it will continue to bear fruit is less certain. Alternatives are emerging, including ones that rely on computer modeling and isolated cells. In 2008 pharmaceutical manufacturer Gla­xo­Smith­Kline announced it would end its use of chimps.
In our view, the time has come to end biomedical experimentation on chimpanzees. The Senate bill would phase out invasive research on chimps over a three-year period, giving the researchers time to implement alternatives, after which the animals would be retired to sanctuaries.

Read the full editorial here.

In the mean time, go and see the documentary, Project Nim. It is very well done. In fact, if you are going to see one chimp movie this year, see this one. Here is the trailer for the film:



Related posts:
Apes are humans too...
Ecological ethics and the interconnectedness of species
More on the call for rights for apes
Rights for apes threaten Dembski's uniqueness

Read More »

by Salman Hameed

There was always division within the Obama administration about how to approach Pakistan. People like John Kerry and others were advocates of a deeper socio-economic involvement, whereas others in the administration have been arguing for taking a harder stance. There was a profile of John Kerry in the NYT Magazine and it talked about his anger after hearing of an American drone attack soon after he left Islamabad after fruitful negotiations. The article was not about US foreign policy in Pakistan, but it demonstrated the fissures within the Obama administration.

The post Bin-Laden postures clearly show that the Kerry faction has lost influence - at least for the time being. All nuance towards Pakistan, including the acknowledgement of a deeply complex and intertwined history of US and Pakistan involvement in Afghanistan, has now been set-aside. The discussions in news media now usually focus only on the fact that the US is giving so much money to Pakistan and is only getting betrayal in return. No mention of how Pakistanis view US drone attacks and civilian casualties, the costs of maintaining a sizable fraction of the army on the Afghan border, the retaliation attacks by the Taliban inside Pakistan since the US invasion of Afghanistan, and the impact of regional politics. Yes, Pakistan's domestic policies are in shambles, and the army and the ISI have also been playing with fire in continuing to harbor militant groups that have been working against India. Nevertheless, this is a complex picture in a very complex region (see an earlier post: Popular Science as a Guide to Popular Geopolitics)

It is therefore rare to see an article in NYT that takes a sensible approach to the issue of drone attacks and to the region as a whole. The issue of drones has come up again as CIA has made a ridiculous claim that for a year there has not been a single civilian casualty in drone attacks in Pakistan (by the way, even if this fairytale was true, we still have to address the legality and ethics of drone attacks to begin with). I think this strategy may be effective in the short run, but will end-up alienating the larger segment of Pakistani population. It will be a losing strategy if US exchanges turmoil in Afghanistan (population 30 million) with turmoil and anti-Americanism in Pakistan (population 180 million). And this is roughly the point of this oped in NYT:

Over the past two years, America has narrowed its goals in Afghanistan and Pakistan to a single-minded focus on eliminating Al Qaeda. Public support for a counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan has waned. American officials dealing with Pakistan now spend most of their time haggling over our military and intelligence activities, when they should instead be pursuing the sort of comprehensive social, diplomatic and economic reforms that Pakistan desperately needs and that would advance America’s long-term interests.

In Pakistan, no issue is more controversial than American drone attacks in Pakistani territory along the Afghan border. The Obama administration contends that using drones to kill 10 or 20 more Qaeda leaders would eliminate the organization. This is wishful thinking.

...

 Moreover, as the drone campaign wears on, hatred of America is increasing in Pakistan. American officials may praise the precision of the drone attacks. But in Pakistan, news media accounts of heavy civilian casualties are widely believed. Our reliance on high-tech strikes that pose no risk to our soldiers is bitterly resented in a country that cannot duplicate such feats of warfare without cost to its own troops.       

Our dogged persistence with the drone campaign is eroding our influence and damaging our ability to work with Pakistan to achieve other important security objectives like eliminating Taliban sanctuaries, encouraging Indian-Pakistani dialogue, and making Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal more secure.

Reducing Al Qaeda to a fringe group of scattered individuals without an organizational structure will only succeed if Pakistan asserts control over its full territory and brings government services to the regions bordering Afghanistan.

Washington should support a new security campaign that includes jointly controlled drone strikes and combines the capabilities of both countries. Together, the American and Pakistani governments can fashion a plan that meets the objectives of both without committing to broader joint campaigns that would not be politically viable at the moment.

Read the full article here.

Also see earlier posts:
Ethics, Morality, and Legality of Robotic Wars
Sorting through some of the post Bin Laden mess in Pakistan
Drone Strategy in Pakistan Being Questioned
Obamas's blind spot in his Pakistan-Afghanistan Strategy

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A few weeks ago Science had an article about a movement against keeping dolphins captives in zoos and aquariums, and to give them equal rights as "non-human persons". It is now widely recognized that dolphins are quite smart, social animals (some have passed the mirror test of self-recognition) - and there is a strong case to think of them at par with apes (including us). But here is the conundrum: Scientists have been able to figure out that dolphins are smart while working with them in captivity - and now these very results form the argument against further research on them in aquariums.

This is a fascinating and important issue. This issue reminded me of the search for microbial life in Mars. There is so much effort devoted to finding life on the Red planet, and indeed, such a find would be tremendous not only for science but also for the larger perceptions of humanity. But the find will also immediately present us with serious ethical challenges. What if bacteria and viruses from Earth impact evolution of life on Mars? Do we have the right to be present on the planet of Martians? (we could have gotten permission from sentient beings - but it may be hard to do so with bacteria). A successful research program on life on Mars may end up cutting-off on-site research on Mars. That is not only okay - but also fair. Mars, in that case, will be for Martians. We will have to come up with clever ways to continue research without endangering Martian lifeforms and without leaving our footprints there.

I think the same is true for the case of dolphins. Yes, we have figured out that dolphins are smart with research on captive dolphins, but now we have to give respect to the smart species - and be clever (ha!) about finding ways to continue research without limiting their freedom.

Here is an excerpt from the article:

Taking a cue from the Great Ape Project, a collection of scientists and advocates who have argued that chimps and their relatives deserve basic legal rights (Science, 1 April, p. 28), Marino banded together with other scientists, activists, and philosophers to draft a “Declaration of Rights for Cetaceans” in 2010. It states that no cetaceans—a group that includes whales and dolphins—“should be held in captivity … or removed from their natural environment.” Instead, live cetaceans should only be studied in the wild. Marino and her allies have gathered more than 3200 signatures and hope eventually to bring the declaration before the United Nations. “We want to use this as a jumping-off point for changing policy,” Marino says. “We need to move the science to a place that doesn't compromise our ethics.”

This may be painful for humans, but the right thing to do. Read the full article here (you may need subscription to read the article). 


Also see earlier posts:
Apes are humans too...
Ecological ethics and the interconnectedness of species
More on the call for rights for apes
Rights for apes threaten Dembski's uniqueness

Read More »

by Salman Hameed

On Saturday, I had a chance to see the Danny Boyle (yes, of 28 Days Later, Slumdog Millionaire fame) production of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The play is being performed on National Theater Live in London, but a number of movie theaters are showing it live (I saw at Amherst Cinema). If your town is showing it, please go and see it. It is absolutely phenomenal!

This production is based on a play by Nick Read and is presented from the perspective of the Creature, who gets more and more erudite as the play progresses. Frankenstein was written in 1818, and perhaps the first fully realized science fiction novel. But it is a timeless piece of literature (you can read the book here). We can see it today in light of all the developments in genetics and synthetic life experiments.

The play by Nick Read features some phenomenal acting - both by the person playing Victor Frankenstein and the creature. In a bold creative experiment, the two main actors exchange their roles in the second version of the play. The acting is so amazing, that I cannot imagine the guy playing the creature in a different role. So I may end up seeing the play again with the swapped roles for the two leading actors (the two version alternate from night to night).

Much of the play centers on issues that are of concern to Irtiqa (i.e. of science, religion, and ethics). After all, Frankenstein is playing God by creating "man" with the help of electricity. It is fascinating that the concept of electricity was still relatively new at the time of Mary Shelley - but here she is writing about the potential of using it as a spark for life. The creature compares himself to Adam. He even gets a chance to ask his creator the reason for his creation - and laments that "I did not asked to be born". This is the creation story for the age of science!

The novel is set in backdrop of Romanticism. We see the creature initially as pure and noble, but it is the civilization that corrupts him. To leave no doubt about this, there is a fantastic scene when the creature quotes from Milton's Paradise Lost. Indeed there are parallels between Victor Frankenstein and the satan in Paradise Lost. The play is indeed a cautionary tale about science and modernity, and a caution against science being in the wrong hands.

Pride is the culprit.

But the play is also about the need for love and the fear of being alone. The desire for a community. Or at least a companion. Now that he was born, all that the creature wanted from Victor Frankenstein - his creator - was a companion.

Everything in this production of Frankenstein is meticulous. Stage design, writing, acting - all of these are of very high calibre. This, in fact, was a more emotionally moving experience than watching the very good movie version of Jane Eyre - which is in theaters right now (check it out too).

Go see Frankenstein. I think I will be watching the second version on May 7th.

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by Salman Hameed

Human cloning is so far a fictional question only. Though, Raelians - a UFO religion, did claim to have cloned a human baby in December 2002, but most people treat their claim with skepticism. Nevertheless, there is general feeling that there is something fundamentally wrong for humans to clone themselves or to artificially create humans. Of course, the creation of Frankenstein is the first image that comes to mind. But these definitions of "artificial" are changing fast. For example  in vitro fertilization (IVF) is now mainstream - and I don't think many people have serious problems with that (yes, with the exception of the Pope).

Now here is review of a fascinating new book, Unnatural: The Heretical Idea of Making People by Philip Ball, that looks at the origins of our reaction to artificially created humans. Interestingly, it even raises the possibility that human cloning may get accepted as mainstream (I'm not sure if it is advocating this position - but it is certainly taking the idea seriously). It looks like a great out-of-the-box thinking book. Here is a review from Nature (you may need subscription to access it):

In Unnatural, science writer Philip Ball explores the history of our fascination with — and fear of — creating artificial people, from ancient folklore to today. Tracing a clear path from medieval alchemists' homunculi to routine assisted conception is a feat. Through his impeccable research, Ball successfully argues that the tenacious myths of the past that surround the making of people or 'anthropoeia' (his coinage) affect life-science research today.

Ball traces the concept that nature is good and techne is bad back to Aesop's and Ovid's Prometheus, maker of humanity from earth and water, and provider of technology to man. After Prometheus came recipes for making miniature humans called homunculi. Starting in the Middle Ages, initially as a cure for childlessness, the art of homunculi-making evolved into a debate over whether the miniscule men had a soul. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's nineteenth-century poetic play Faust raises this spectre. Deploying the biological equivalent of alchemy, Faust's former assistant, Wagner, creates his homunculus: a tiny super-being with magical powers who is trapped in a glass vessel, doomed to remain captive without the capacity to become a proper man. In 1818, Mary Shelley published Frankenstein, appropriately subtitled 'The Modern Prometheus', in which her eponymous scientist unintentionally constructs a monster, by unexplained means, from human parts. There are also golems — the animated beings of Jewish folklore, made from clay and brought to life by religious magic for the purpose of imitating God's creation.

Ball distills out of all this a set of universal myths surrounding anthropoeia that are deeply ingrained in society, resulting in the widely held view that artificial people-making is unnatural and deeply wrong — heretical, as in the book's subtitle. His thesis is that humans fear that uncovering forbidden knowledge will result in either divine or other retribution. Prometheus, Faust and Frankenstein all pay a heavy price for their transgressions into anthropoeia. Even today, Ball points out, societal and cultural debate is pervaded by the belief that technology is intrinsically perverting and thus carries certain penalty.

But his point is that we are getting to a place where some aspects of 'anthropoeia' (I do like this new word...) are becoming reality - and yet a well-informed debate has not taken place. In particular

As scientific knowledge accumulates and makes some acts of anthropoeia more and more plausible, the challenge for the public will be to separate fact from fiction. For example, Ball ends his literary tour with Aldous Huxley's novel Brave New World. In 1931, the book's in vitro production of embryos in the Central London Hatchery and Conditioning Centre was pure conjecture by Huxley, based on the scientific forecasts of his day. Today, in vitro fertilization (IVF) is mainstream medicine — more than four million babies have been born using this technique. But the technology still has its critics, including within the Vatican. On the awarding of the 2010 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine to IVF pioneer Robert Edwards, Ignacio Carrasco de Paula, head of the Pontifical Academy for Life, stated that the award was “completely out of order”, as without IVF there would be no market for human eggs “and there would not be a large number of freezers filled with embryos in the world”.

...

The challenge for innovative biological research is that, until it translates into real benefits, it is often viewed with mistrust and worse-case scenario imagery. In reality, once products and services are released into society, they are adopted by a few enthusiasts and then, if successful, by the wider community. In the 1970s, for example, anxieties were rife about the unfounded threat that IVF posed to human welfare and dignity, let alone whether a test-tube baby could ever be wholly human. Yet the first IVF baby, Louise Brown, was just like everyone else, so IVF became socially acceptable. We cannot predict whether human cloning will proceed in the same manner, so the past is our only pointer.

Absolutely fascinating. As far as some recent relevant films on the topic are concerned, check out the post on the excellent film "Moon" from 2009 and Splice from last year. Of course, you can also watch countless other films on this theme. By the way, Danny Boyle is directing Frankenstein for National Theater Live - and it looks phenomenal. It will be shown in movie theaters as well. I will have a post on it after I have a chance to see it.

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We are familiar with Stephen Jay Gould's separation of science and religion as two Non-Overlapping Magistaria (NOMA) - basically investigations of the natural world on one side and the questions of morals and meaning on the other. It works in some cases, and falls apart in others (there are no referees to enforce the boundaries). But I recently encountered Friedrich Schleiermacher's (1768-1834) three spheres of human life - and I think they are interesting. He divides them as follows:

a) Practical reason (science) or knowing

b) Morality/human action or doing

c) Religion

So I find interesting that he placed morality issues outside of religion. Much of Gould's NOMA gets into trouble when you start looking at scientific studies of the origins of morality, etc. But then what does Schleiermacher (hmm...it takes a while to spell out his name...) think or religion? Well, he considers that the the universe and its relation to humans is described through these three spheres. For the first two,"knowing" and "doing", humans are at the center (i.e. we look at the universe from the human perspective). Whereas, for religion, it is the way the universe acts on us. In this way, religion is our intuition of that action. Or in other words, religion, for Schleiermacher, is rooted in a fundamental experience of being related to the universe as a part within a larger whole. The essence of religion then is the "sense and taste for the infinite". This is mystical/Sufi (and to a certain degree, Sagan, I might add :)) stuff.

What I like about this is that it reduces the chances of clash between science & religion - as religion is now bounded primarily in personal experience (William James can also help on this) and its centrality is to humans have to be looked in a completely different way than science and morality (this way it also avoids Euthyphro's dilemma - "Is what is morally good commanded by God because it is morally good, or is it morally good because it is commanded by God?").

Some food for thought.

But if one does not subscribe to this mystical vision of the infinite, then this may appear to be yet another place where religion is ceding ground.

I ran into Schleiemacher's views on religion while listening to Teaching Company's (as usual) fantastic lectures on Skeptics and Believers: Religious Debate in the Western Intellectual Tradition by Professor Tyler Roberts.

Also see:

Dennett and problems with Gould's NOMA

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