Overtures

The value of information

It seems that entrepreneurs in the west have capitalized on medical discoveries and teachings from ancient India without giving much credit to the source. That shall be no more. As a result of this 'piracy', the Indian government has undertaken a significant effort towards putting all available information in the public domain in a number of 'western' languages (English, Spanish, French and German) and Japanese. The information obviously had already been documented (in old 'textbooks") but it has existed mostly in Sanskrit, Arabic, Tamil, Persian and Hindi -- none of the languages or media pertinent for the European or US Patent Offices.

So now begins the task of putting all of this information in a database. No one will be able to call any of it their 'own' and capitalize on it. One estimate suggests that 80% of the previously awarded patents in US on medical plants originated out of these teachings.

I applaud the effort by a society and government to protect their IP. But knowledge itself has little value. We have tons of it and we are constantly creating more and more of it in all forms. I believe that productizing, packaging, marketing, selling and building successful businesses out of this knowledge comprises the remaining 99.9933% of the effort. Hopefully, the government of India will also invest in making the locals succeed in becoming successful entrepreneurs in the same way as many have become in the west out of this 'gold mine' of medical data. Why not! alternatively medicine is on an upswing.

For more, read  India hits back in 'bio-piracy' battle

Sanjiva, Orinda, Dec 9, 2005

Persistence of Schizophrenic Genes

A recent study published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society (November 2005) and conducted in Britain suggested that creative and unconventional thinkers tend to be more sexually successful.  The researchers extrapolated this behavior to genes that are related to schizophrenia and concluded that schizophrenia confers mating advantage in people (makes them more attractive, they have more sex and more babies, etc) and therefore allows the gene to persist in the gene pool (since the gene tends to run in families).

Hmmm!

I think it is a wild stretch.

No, I don't.  I think it explains it all and clearly too.

I know this is totally made up.

No its not.  It is so scientific. 

...

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20051207/hl_nm/creativity_tied_sexual_success_dc_2

Malaria, Bill Gates & a Technology Roadmap

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation recently donated over $250M towards research on Malaria.  The money is primarily directed at two efforts: a) development of a Malaria vaccine, and b) development of more effective drugs to treat existing infections. 

This was a significant philanthropic move by a single foundation or individual towards a disease that affects the third-world (mostly Africa) and has proven to be a challenge to control.  But more than the amount of donation or the cause, what was impressive to me is the 'Malaria Vaccine Technology Roadmap' and an associated global collaborative forum that resulted from this initiative.

This initiative comes with a clear vision (to save children under five in sub-saharan Africa from Malaria-related deaths, implying that the research will only focus on p. falciparum which is the most virulent of all Malarial forms) and strategic goals (to produce a v1.0 of vaccine by 2015 which will be 50% effective against severe infections and a v2.0 of vaccine by 2025 which will be 80% effective against severe infections...)

There are a number of stakeholders involved in this effort (research institutions, pharma companies, foundations, etc.) and its 'culture' appears to be completely collaborative and result-oriented.  This is no longer knowledge for knowledge's sake.  Success will not be measured by 'winning scientific achievement awards'.

Malaria has been researched for decades, although most of the effort has been primarily an R&D pursuit by the academics.  The pharma companies have little interest in a disease which affects people in the third world that can barely afford food let alone diagnostics and treatment from these debilitating infections (of which Malaria is only one of many).  Their efforts are also hampered by a parasite that has been very elusive to the immune system by constantly altering its physical form and antigenic nature (see antigenic variations in Malarial parasite below).  The challenge to produce an effective vaccine, therefore, is enormous.

For once, a project of such significance towards saving lives has many stakeholders and drivers (and a roadmap) to ensure that the results can be measured and achieved.  I have rarely seen such an organized, goal-oriented and collaborative effort in medical research.  Its about time.  Way to go Bill!! 

-Sanjiva, Orinda, Dec 3, 2005.

http://www.forbes.com/personalfinance/philanthropy/2005/10/30/malaria-gates-philanthropy-cz_ec_1030malaria.html

http://www.malariavaccineroadmap.net/pdfs/stake_summary.pdf

http://www.brown.edu/Courses/Bio_160/Projects1999/av/malaria.html

On Intelligent Assembly

Having read some more on this debate and pursued discussions with passionate and opinionated friends and colleagues, I am coming to realize that the debate on 'Intelligent Design' must  'evolve'.  I assert that the real nature of the debate should not focus on Intelligent Design but on 'Intelligent Assembly'.  This is essentially the 'Unifying' theory that brings together 'Darwinism' (explaining lots of phenomenon, such as the presence of Cytochrome P450 across the phylum) and 'Creationism' (offering deep and enriching explaination for 'eyeballs' and watches).   It is much easier to accept the assertion that 'some' parts 'evolved' and 'others' were 'designed' and an overall assembly process occurred. 

Remarkably, these two theories come together (at least in my mind) around the same time as the unification of the Theory of Relativity and Quantum Mechanics (into a 'String' theory most of which still remains to be proven but what the heck)-- which now concludes that we are all in a two-dimensional world and experiencing 'holographic' illusions with the third-dimension interacting with quarks, gravity, time, etc. (http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=0002B59B-5B5C-1359-9B5C83414B7F0119)   

I love it because thinking of myself in a two-dimensional world and having holographic illusions of having been 'creatively' assembled and evolved simplies a lot for me.   

I feel Unified.

Sanjiva, Orinda, 11/11/2005

On Intelligent Design

A few years ago I came across an abstract in Scientific American that described the discovery of a few additional steps (Post Transcriptional editing of m-RNA) that occur during protein synthesis that lead to the generation of two different functional proteins from a single gene in two different cell types in the human body.  This brief and seemingly innocuous study shook some very fundamental beliefs that I had up until that point -- primarily that one gene encodes one protein.  Over the years, Molecular Genetics has attempted to corroborate the evolutionary theory proposed by Darwin through discoveries such as Cytochrome p-450 in cells across various species.  But this one was difficult for me to grasp in the context of Evolution.  As an engineer, I know a 'hack' when I see one and this one looked like a hack.   However, as I started to question what I long believed as a student of Science and began to wonder whether we weren't in a lab and part of an elaborate experiment in the universe (friends told me to read The Hitchhiker's Guide series), I still stayed away from the often political and religious Creationist vs Darwinism debates.

That is until now.  There have been a number of recent articles and debates on Intelligent Design vs Evolution with the assertion that the theories related to Evolution cannot satisfactorily explain a lot of phenomenon and that we need to reconsider the possibility of Intelligent Design that has led to life.  When I think about it, even in the context of Darwinism, what we previously accepted as supporting arguments for the theory can easily be questioned and at times the theory seems like a house of cards. 

While I have not recently explored the politics and agendas behind the Intelligent Design supporters, conceptually I am in support of it -- at least to the point of ensuring that students understand that Darwinian theories are simply that with little that can be proven and there is much outside of it that cannot be explained by those theories. 

Having studied symbiotic and parasitic relationships between species, I also do not believe that all such 'design' is intelligent since at times it does not seem to work all that well.  But that is another debate.

 

Prof Speaks at 'Intelligent Design' Trial <http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20051017/ap_on_re_us/evolution_debate>

Intelligent Design

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligent_design>