Category Archives: Commentary

Cancer – Ho Hum

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Your smart phone reminds you – time for the annual test. You buy a capsule of nanoparticles – each one graphene with a tiny magnetic core, biodegradable and harmless, so available over-the-counter. If you’ve lost it since last year, you buy the corresponding wrist band to wear after swallowing the capsule.

Inside your body, the nanoparticles spread out. If they encounter some cancerous cells, they bind to them and mobilize some into your blood stream. Passing by the wrist band, they signal a positive result.

“Well, shoot,” you say. “I’ve got cancer. Better make an appointment – hmmm. I’m meeting friends for lunch on Tuesday. Let’s make it Wednesday.”

You don’t even need to see a doctor. Technicians slide you into a radio-frequency unit, maybe after another nanoparticle dose. Radio waves kill every cancer cell in your body – solid tumor, free-floating metastasized, it doesn’t matter – without damage to healthy cells.

“Better repeat the diagnostic test in a month,” the technician warns.

Yeah, yeah… You tap the new date into your phone and go merrily on your way.

Science fiction? Distant future?

Maybe not.

“This May, [Dr. Steven A. Curley, oncologist] filed protocols with the Italian Ministry of Health to test the radio wave machine on humans diagnosed with pancreatic and liver cancer. Pending approval in the fall, human clinical trials will begin in the spring of next year in Naples, Italy.”

The initial studies are aimed at proving the treatment is safe for humans. Success will mean trials to find out how effective it is.

Where did this idea come from? John Kanzius was a retired radio engineer, amateur radio operator, and dying of leukemia. Sick from chemotherapy, he became a citizen scientist, studied the latest cancer research, developed a radiofrequency-based concept to kill cancer cells without invasive surgery or chemotherapy, demonstrated the technique on hot dogs in his basement shop, dogged oncologists until he teamed up with Dr. Curley, and – well – read the story at newsweek.com. (Note how different it is from inventors of perpetual motion machines or pills to turn water into gasoline, who claim persecution.) Continue reading →

GMOs Revisited – Still Look Fine to Me

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tomato.svg.medProducts certified by Non GMO Project (by a private entity – proving the government is not the only source of such information) nearly tripled last year, and Whole Foods may require GMOs to be labeled in their stores, while Trader Joe’s and Chipotle have “sworn off”

GMOs, according to slate.com. But my opinion, expressed in previous posts about GMOs, has not changed. I see opposition to GMOs as increasingly irrational.

While philosophical concerns may appeal to some, fear of health effects seems to be the primary motivation for avoiding GMO foods. I have noticed no one worries about GMOs that manufacture medications.

I still find no compelling scientific evidence that GMOs are more dangerous than conventional foods.

Slate says “it’s true that the issue is complicated. But the deeper you dig, the more fraud you find in the case against GMOs. It’s full of errors, fallacies, misconceptions, misrepresentations, and lies… [Activists] defend drugs, pesticides, and non-GMO crops that are loaded with the same proteins [as the GMOs they condemn].” That’s a pretty strong statement.

The article goes on to discuss a few anti-GMO campaigns in detail, concluding that “the stories of papaya, Bt, and Golden Rice demonstrate, in several ways, that [health] concerns are unfounded.” If you’re worried I encourage you to read the article for yourself.

Slate also discusses pesticide resistance, which is a legitimate concern. Evolution doesn’t care where environmental factors come from, and weeds could become Roundup resistant. Shifting to crops that are naturally herbicide resistant also contributes to the future problem. A wise farmer will look beyond this year’s crop.

Slate also covered the super tomato: “Tomato lovers, rejoice, for science has achieved the impossible: the perfect supermarket tomato. The Garden Gem won’t bruise during shipping, it resists many of the major diseases that regularly decimate tomato crops… the Garden Gem is very different from every other supermarket tomato: flavor. It actually has it. Lots.”

Sounds perfect, doesn’t it? If your own garden tomatoes are suffering from blossom rot, like mine this year, this could be the answer. But the tomato industry (yes, apparently there is such a thing) has said “no” in what Slate calls “incomprehensible dysfunction in the tomato market.” Garden Gem would cost more, and the tomato industry does not believe consumers will pay more because they just won’t believe a supermarket tomato will taste better.

I bet they’d be cheaper than my garden-grown! (Dip into The 64 Dollar Tomato for a story crazier than mine.)

Our previous GMO posts are here.

Colorado High School Education

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An article in the Denver Post by Peter Huidekoper, Jr. explains that recent higher graduation rates aren’t being accompanied by improved educations. There are “…several high schools where the four-year graduation rate is impressive but the (low) ACT scores and (high) remediation rates are not.” Apparently the ACT test given in the 11th grade is the one remaining “…assessment that matters.” The article discusses examining the ACT scores for 2012 juniors, 2013 senior graduation rates, and remediation rates for those who entered a Colorado college the next fall.

The data studied by Huidekoper showed a clear correlation between ACT test scores and graduation and remediation rates. “For students with ACT scores 21 and above nearly 90 percent graduate and remediation rates are exceptionally low. Graduation rates decrease and remediation rates increase as ACT scores drop. Westminster High (in my home city) had an ACT average score of 16.3, a surprisingly high graduation rate of 76.9%, and “…most of those graduates who went on to college required remedial classes.”

The author gives many more examples of generally depressing data. The “…staggering statewide remediation rate of 34.2 percent does not include nearly half of the 2013 graduates who did not go on to college.” It is clear that there an appallingly small number of seniors who receive a high school diploma and are “college ready.” The author asks whether “…a diploma from a Colorado high school truly stands for something.”

 

The Raisin Debate in the Supreme Court

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Why did the Supreme Court get involved in a dispute about raisins? George Will explained in an editorial that the Agricultural Marketing Agreement Act passed in 1937 was one of the New Dealer responses to the Great Depression. The law required farmers to turn over a significant portion of their crops to the government, which would theoretically drive up prices. Something called the “Raisin Administrative Committee” was formed by regulation in 1949, and that committee accused Marvin and Laura Horne of refusing to turn over a million pounds of raisins. The government wanted the Hornes to pay $700,000 for their failure to comply.  Justice Elena Kagan wondered during the arguments whether this case involves “a taking or it’s just the world’s most outdated law.” Will’s answer is: both. “The law has spawned more than 25 ‘marketing orders’ covering almonds, apricots, avocados, cherries, cranberries, dates, grapes, hazelnuts, kiwifruit, onions, pears, pistachios, plums, spearmint oil, walnuts and other stuff.”

The New York Times reports that the Supreme Court ruled that actions by the raisin committee “…amounted to an unconstitutional taking of private property by the government.” The Hornes successfully defended themselves arguing that the program violated “…the takings clause of the Fifth Amendment, which says private property may not be taken for public use without just compensation.” Eight justices agreed and Sonia Sotomayor dissented. Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Elena Kagan joined Sotomayor in dissenting that the “Hornes should be relieved of the obligation to pay the fine and associated civil penalties.” Breyer wrote that he would have returned the case to lower courts. In his concurrence with the majority Justice Thomas, perhaps showing that even Supreme Court Justices can use puns, “…said such a move would be a fruitless exercise.”

I enjoyed Will’s closing sentences. “Progressives say, ‘Government is simply the name we give to the things we chose to do together. That is not how the Hornes are experiencing government.”

If Your Job Were a Video Game, Would You Play It?

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Our recent Great Recession drew attention to declining participation in the workforce – that is, a growing percentage of our population is unemployed by chance or by choice. The trend started before the last days of Bush 43’s administration – consider the regional depression that accompanies the demise of Youngstown steel mills since the late 1970s. Continuing automation – robots and software, from hospital operating rooms to fast food outlets – is replacing workers. The self-driving car, a true auto-mobile, “could soon threaten driving, the most common job occupation among American men.”

So says Derek Thompson in The Atlantic. (Enter World Without Work in your favorite search engine – the article inspires quite a few responses.) America’s most valuable company in 1964 was AT&T employing over 700,000 workers. Today’s communications giant of similar value is Google, employing 55,000.If the trend continues, the world will look very different at the end of the 21st century than it does today, but “the signs so far are murky.”

Why do people work?

  • For money, of course. Thompson points to the 19th century as a possible model of a time with few wage-jobs, but I have trouble envisioning a nation of subsistence farmers arising. Even if it did, some cash is needed (I think it was in the 19th century, too.) People need food, housing, and also a share of their society’s norms, and money buys those things.
  • For “a routine, an absorbing distraction, a daily purpose… Many people are happier complaining about jobs than they are luxuriating in too much leisure.” Most jobs aren’t fulfilling – Thompson asks, if your job was a video game, would you play it? But unemployed people – including retirees – watch TV rather than pursue their dreams. Even crummy jobs provide structure within a community, and human beings are social animals.

Continue reading →

Building a Safer, Cleaner Nuclear Reactor

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I had an opportunity to read a copy of Popular Science while waiting for a doctor appointment, and I had forgotten how much I had liked that magazine as a young adult. There were several interesting articles, but the one titled “Revive the Nuclear Dream” was fascinating. Two young scientists, Leslie Dewan and Mark Massie, have been working on nuclear power generation since they found articles about reactor research performed at Oak Ridge at an MIT library in 2009. One subject was molten salt reactors, and it intrigued them that using liquid uranium fuel instead of solid fuel eliminates the chance of a meltdown. “So they dusted off the Oak Ridge design and got to work. Today, their start-up, Transatomic Power, is poised to build a new, even better molten salt reactor.”

The idea has some very compelling possibilities. Fuel rods from light water reactors, the design used at existing U.S. nuclear power plants, have to be replaced when only four percent of the uranium has been converted to energy. The molten salt reactor will convert 96 percent of the uranium into energy and generates 75 times the amount of electricity per ton of uranium. Of course another advantage is there is less waste to manage. Even better is that their reactor could run on spent fuel from those other reactors.

The article describes how the reactor works. Uranium salt is liquefied by heating it to 500 degrees C, and the molten salt is pumped past zirconium hydride to slow down the neutrons and induce fission. The krypton and xenon that poisons light water reactor fuel rods is continuously off-gassed. “You basically simmer the reactor like a Crock-Pot for decades…The fuel salt flows through a loop with a drain that is blocked by a freezer plug, a chunk of electrically cooled frozen salt. If the reactor loses electricity, the plug melts, and the fuel drains into a tank where it cools and solidifies.” That feature makes the design “virtually accident proof.”

The big hurdle for the technology is that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission doesn’t have a framework for licensing “advanced reactors.” The coal and natural gas lobbies see nuclear as a threat and some environmental groups will fight anything labeled “nuclear.” The two young scientists want a regulatory pathway developed, but good luck with that. We may still be developing smart and ambitious entrepreneurs, but we haven’t found a way to make government bureaucracies lobby-proof, efficient, or courageous. China would probably welcome the technology, but Dewan says they want to succeed in the U.S. I think we should think of ways to help them. My first contribution is this commentary.  Meet the two impressive people by watching the video on the home page of their web site.