Branson to launch stem-cell bank

Cord blood contains stem cells

Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson is set to launch a company which will let families bank and store stem cells from their child's umbilical cord.

Some believe the cells may be used in the future to treat conditions such as Parkinson's disease and cancer.

Sir Richard Branson on Virgin's stem-cell bank

A handful of UK companies already offer such a service - but obstetricians and midwives say there is "insufficient evidence" to recommend the practice.

It is thought a few thousand couples have already used stem-cell storage.

The service is sometimes promoted to parents through leaflets provided in GPs surgeries and antenatal clinics and also in pregnancy magazines.

Midwives feel under pressure to engage in an intervention that is not researched or accepted by the profession yet Sue Jacob Q&A: Cord blood banking Send us your comments

Parents can be provided with collection kits which are then taken for processing and storage but some companies send someone to collect the blood.

Virgin says its service is unique because it will offer a charitable element, allowing the NHS to use some of stem cells the company stores.

Sir Richard explained: "We will take an individual's cord blood and we will divide it in two.

"So, part of it will go into a national blood centre that anybody can get access to. And the other half will be put aside for the child."

He said this should help particularly high risk ethnic groups who are prone to conditions that can be treated with stem cells but who may have difficulty finding well-matched cord blood.

NHS services

The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said it strongly supported the need for an increase in public banks and international accessibility, which the Virgin Health Bank sets as one of its priorities.

But it said a prime concern remained the process of collection of the cord blood and the health of mother and baby.

An RCOG report published last year advised doctors and midwives not to take part in the blood collection as they needed to focus on the welfare of the mother and baby.

They pointed out that the NHS collects up to 2,000 cord blood samples every year for storage in a public bank that can be used by anyone who needs a cord blood cell transplant.

CORD BLOOD STORAGE One-fifth of stem-cell transplants are done in children and young people with leukaemia The chance of an individual using personal cord blood for a blood cell disorder before the age of 20 is estimated to be between 1/20,000 to 1/37,000 The NHS cord blood bank has about 7,000 donations

Cord blood storage is also carried out in families at high risk of a condition - such as Fanconi anaemia - which could be treated with a transplant.

Sue Jacob, from the Royal College of Midwives, said the majority of maternity units did not have a policy for dealing with the collection of cord blood, putting midwives in a difficult position.

Half of 267 midwives questioned in a survey by the college said they had been getting requests for the procedure.

She added: "Midwives feel under pressure to engage in an intervention that is not researched or accepted by the profession yet."

Belinda Phipps of the National Childbirth Trust said: "We are concerned about this new promotion of cord blood stem cells collection. The evidence does not show benefits for the baby.

"The method recommended and used by many commercial companies to collect stem cells risks interrupting the birth process, especially the third stage of labour, which is a particularly critical time for both mother and baby.

"Should parents wish to use such services they need to have access to all the information in order to fully understand the risks involved and make an informed choice."

UK is accused of failing children

Unicef says the study is the first of its kind for child well-being

The UK has been accused of failing its children, as it comes bottom of a league table for child well-being across 21 industrialised countries.

Unicef looked at 40 indicators from the years 2000-2003 including poverty, family relationships, and health.

One of the report's authors told the BBC that under-investment and a "dog-eat-dog" society were to blame for Britain's poor performance.

The government says its policies have helped to improve child welfare.

Unicef - the United Nations children's organisation - says Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child Well-being in Rich Countries is the first study of childhood across the world's industrialised nations.

CHILDREN'S VIEWS Parents should spend more time with their kids Megan, 9, Aberdeen What children say would make their life better Send us your comments

In its league table the Netherlands came top, followed by Sweden, Denmark and Finland.

Unicef UK executive director David Bull said all the countries had weaknesses that needed to be addressed.

"By comparing the performance of countries we see what is possible with a commitment to supporting every child to fulfil his or her full potential," he said.

'Dog-eat-dog society'

The authors say they used the most up-to-date information to assess "whether children feel loved, cherished, special and supported, within the family and community, and whether the family and community are being supported in this task by public policy and resources".

But they added: "The process of international comparison can never be freed from questions of translation, culture, and custom."

We simply cannot ignore these shocking findings Bob Reitemeier Children's Society Reaction in quotes Relative poverty explained

Professor Jonathan Bradshaw, from York University, one of the report's authors, put the UK's poor ratings down to long term under-investment and a "dog-eat-dog" society.

"In a society which is very unequal, with high levels of poverty, it leads on to what children think about themselves and their lives. That's really what's at the heart of this," he said.

The UK government said its initiatives in areas such as poverty, pregnancy rates, teenage smoking, drinking and risky sexual behaviour had helped improve children's welfare.

Welfare reform minister Jim Murphy said the Unicef study was important, although it used some data which was now out of date.

CHILD WELL-BEING TABLE 1. Netherlands 2. Sweden 3. Denmark 4. Finland 5. Spain 6. Switzerland 7. Norway 8. Italy 9. Republic of Ireland 10. Belgium 11. Germany 12. Canada 13. Greece 14. Poland 15. Czech Republic 16. France 17. Portugal 18. Austria 19. Hungary 20. United States 21. United Kingdom Source: Unicef Key points at-a-glance Methodology behind report

"Hopefully it leads to a wider conversation about what more we can do to eradicate poverty," he said.

Unicef's league table drew on sources including the OECD Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the World Health Organization's survey of Health Behaviour in School-age Children (HBSC) aged 11, 13 and 15.

For the UK, the HBSC survey is taken from responses of residents of England only. Unicef also said some PISA indicators for the UK should be treated with caution because of low sample response rates.

The Children's Society launched a website to coincide with the report, www.mylife.uk.com, which allows children to answer a series of surveys about their lives.

Chief executive Bob Reitemeier said: "We simply cannot ignore these shocking findings.

REPORT CATEGORIES Material well-being Family and peer relationships Health and safety Behaviour and risks Own sense of well-being [educational] Own sense of well-being [subjective] Unicef report in full (1.5MB) Most computers will open PDF documents automatically, but you may need to download Adobe Acrobat Reader. Download the reader here

"Unicef's report is a wake-up call to the fact that, despite being a rich country, the UK is failing children and young people in a number of crucial ways."

The Children's Commissioner for England, Professor Sir Al Aynsley-Green, said: "We are turning out a generation of young people who are unhappy, unhealthy, engaging in risky behaviour, who have poor relationships with their family and their peers, who have low expectations and don't feel safe."

UK REPORT FINDINGS UK child poverty has doubled since 1979 Children living in homes earning less than half national average wage - 16% Children rating their peers as "kind and helpful" - 43% Families eating a meal together "several times" a week - 66% Children who admit being drunk on two or more occasions - 31%

Colette Marshall, UK director of Save the Children, said it was "shameful" to see the UK at the bottom of the table.

Shadow Chancellor George Osborne accused Chancellor Gordon Brown of having "failed this generation of children".

"After 10 years of his welfare and education policies, our children today have the lowest well-being in the developed world," he said.

reposted from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6359363.stm
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Action plan for killer asteroids

By Jonathan Fildes Science and technology reporter, BBC News, San Francisco

Nasa is tracking many asteroids

A draft UN treaty to determine what would have to be done if a giant asteroid was on a collision course with Earth is to be drawn up this year.

VIDEO AND AUDIO NEWS - A large asteroid could endanger life on earth

The document would set out global policies including who should be in charge of plans to deflect any object.

It is the brainchild of the Association of Space Explorers, a professional body for astronauts and cosmonauts.

At the moment, Nasa is monitoring 127 near-Earth objects (NEO) that have a possibility of hitting the Earth.

The association has asked a group of scientists, lawyers, diplomats and insurance experts to draw up the recommendations.

The group will have its first meeting in Strasbourg in May this year. It is hoped the final document will be presented to the UN in 2009.

"We believe there needs to be a decision process spelled out and adopted by the United Nations," said Dr Russell Schweickart, one of the Apollo 9 astronauts and founder of the Association of Space Explorers.

Known threat

The threat of an asteroid hitting the Earth is being taken more and more seriously as more and more NEOs are found.

In the US, Congress has charged Nasa with the task of starting a more detailed search for life-threatening space rocks.

"Congress has said that Nasa's efforts to date are not sufficient to the threat," said the US space agency's Dr Steven Chesley.

"They have changed Nasa's targets so that the cataloguing and tracking of asteroids is part of its mandate."

Congress has asked the agency to mount a much more aggressive survey.

At the moment, Nasa tracks all objects greater than 700m (2,300ft) in diameter. The agency's new goal is to track all objects greater than 70m (230ft) in diameter.

To do this, the agency needs to use a new suite of telescopes.

Alternatives include building a new Nasa-owned system or investing in other proposed telescopes such as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) or the Panoramic Survey Telescope & Rapid Response System (Pan-Starrs).

Pan-Starrs is a wide-field telescope being developed at the University of Hawaii, whilst the LSST is a proposed ground-based instrument being developed by the not-for-profit LSST corporation based in the US.

Nasa estimates that there are about 20,000 potentially threatening asteroids yet to be discovered.

"Out of those thousands, there will be without question many that look like they might hit the Earth with a high enough probability that the public and everyone else will be concerned," said Dr Schweickart.

"This has gone from being an esoteric statistical argument to talking about real events," added Dr David Morrison, an astronomer at the Nasa's Ames Research Center.

Future plans

The UN draft treaty would establish who should be in charge in the event of an asteroid heading towards Earth, who would pay for relief efforts and the policies that should be adopted.

In addition, it would set out possible plans to deflect the object.

Ideas could include hitting the asteroid with a spacecraft or rocket to deflect its orbit.

Other less destructive proposals include a "gravity tug" that would simply hover over the asteroid and use gravity as a "towline" to change its path.

But any decision to deflect an NEO could come with its own set of conundrums for the UN, as changing its path may simply alter its final target.

"It's important to understand when you start to deflect an asteroid that certain countries are going to have accept an increase in risk to their populations in order to take the risk to zero for everyone," said Dr Schweickart.

It is difficult decisions like this that can only be addressed by the UN, the Association of Space Explorers believes.

And it is under no illusion that the process can be sorted out quickly.

"You have to act when things look like they are going to happen - if you wait until you know for certain, it's too late," said Dr Schweickart.

Experts who will draw up the treaty include Lord Rees, the English Astronomer Royal and head of the Royal Society; the ex-director of science at the European Space Agency, Roger Bonnet; and former UK government advisor Sir Crispin Tickell.

The proposals were outlined at the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting in San Francisco, US.

reposted from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/6370817.stm
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Submitting a Podcast to Think Humanist

How to submit your Thought for the day

If you′d like to offer your own secular TFTD, the rules are quite simple.

Think of an ethical issue and present your case in an interesting and imaginative way.
Your script should be no longer than 400 words, or about 2 minutes in length.
Make it topical or timeless - don′t navel gaze or rant.
Record it as an MP3 file and when you′re happy that it′s as good as you can make it, please use the form below to let us know and we will send you instructions for submitting your TFTD.

We′ll listen to it and if it′s suitable, we′ll let you know before we podcast it.

reposted from: http://www.thinkhumanist.org/podsub.php
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Humanist Ceremonies - Gillian Stewart

Gillian Stewart talks about Humanist Ceremonies - how humanist funerals differ from religious funerals.

Thought For The Day - Transcript - Gillian Stewart - 17th February 2007
I’m not telling you anything new when I say that religion has been around for a long, long time and, historically, one of its roles has been to mark the various rites of passage that humans experience in their lifetimes.

So why now, at this time in our history, do we need a secular alternative? The answer is quite simple really, in this day and age people expect and indeed demand choice. It’s no longer acceptable just to say ‘That’s the way it’s always been done’, because as humans we are constantly striving to find better, more suitable alternatives to pretty much everything in life, and that includes living!

And humanism offers a real way of being in the 21st Century, because it’s basic philosophy is about treating each other and the world we live in with respect – issues that have certainly always been relevant, but I would suggest never more so than at this point in our history. Amazingly there are still a great many people out there who haven’t even heard of humanism, let alone know what it means, so as a celebrant who conducts a variety of non-religious ceremonies I consider myself to be on the front line of offering people a positive experience of humanism.

So what’s so different about a humanist ceremony you might ask? Well many people comment that our ceremonies are extremely enjoyable and this applies to our funerals in particular, which you might find a strange thing to say! I think what is meant by that is that what we offer is a very real and very personal tribute of the person who has died and those close to the deceased find great comfort in that. When conducting a funeral ceremony I always meet with members of the family and hopefully friends of the deceased too. The more people I can speak to, the more honest a picture I can build up of the person who is being remembered, warts and all! Understandably there are often tears, but there can often be laughter too, because I’m focusing on the life of that person, not just their death. Hilary Stanton Zunin once said “The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief”, and of course it is deeply sad when someone that we love has died, but the fact that they lived and enriched the lives of those around them deserves to be celebrated too.

Each and every one of us has a unique part to play in this world, and our ceremonies focus on that uniqueness. And whether I’m welcoming a new life into the world, celebrating the joining of two lives in marriage, or remembering with joy and compassion the life of a loved one, I do so with the utmost respect because we are all the same and basically that’s what humanism means to me…being human. I wonder what it means to you?

Details: Gillian Stewart

My background lies in Nursery Nursing and over the years I have worked at the Queen Mother's Special Care Baby Unit at Yorkhill Hospital in Glasgow, at a Nursery School and Family Centre in Fife, and along with 2 other women run my own successful private Nursery business.
In 1987 our son Roy was born. Unfortunately he had a serious heart and lung condition, which meant that his life was limited. Sadly Roy died when he was just 4 years old and my husband and I were devastated. This loss, along with other painful losses of both my parents, gradually led me towards humanism.
When we suffer such losses it makes us question what life is all about, and I decided that I wanted to use my experiences positively and in a way that would help others. So I started working with the families of children with life-limiting illnesses at Rachel House Children's Hospice in Kinross. It was a truly wonderful experience and I learned so much.
However there finally came a point in my life where I had to think about moving on and when I discovered humanism it felt like the last piece in the jigsaw puzzle had fallen into place, and since becoming a humanist celebrant I have been both challenged and fulfilled in the role of conducting non-religious ceremonies to mark the important events that occur throughout our lives. Whether it's a baby naming, a wedding or a funeral, my aim is to create a personal and memorable experience for everyone involved. www.humanism-scotland.org.uk
Download the transcript of this Thought For Today

20-02-2007 (1.38 MB)
Download Gillian Stewart - Duration: 3:01

Freeze 'condemned Neanderthals'

Small pockets of Neanderthals clung on in the south (Image: Gibraltar Museum)

A sharp freeze could have dealt the killer blow that finished off our evolutionary cousins the Neanderthals, according to a new study.

The ancient humans are thought to have died out in most parts of Europe by about 35,000 years ago.

And now new data from their last known refuge in southern Iberia indicates the final population was probably beaten by a cold spell some 24,000 years ago.

reposted from: BBC
my highlights / emphasis / comments

The research is reported by experts from the Gibraltar Museum and Spain.

They say a climate downturn may have caused a drought, placing pressure on the last surviving Neanderthals by reducing their supplies of fresh water and killing off the animals they hunted.

Sediment cores drilled from the sea bed near the Balearic Islands show the average sea-surface temperature plunged to 8C (46F). Modern-day sea surface temperatures in the same region vary from 14C (57F) to 20C (68F).

In addition, increased amounts of sand were deposited in the sea and the amount of river water running into the sea also plummeted.

Southern refuge

Neanderthals appear in the fossil record about 350,000 years ago and, at their peak, these squat, physically powerful hunters dominated a wide range, spanning Britain and Iberia in the west to Israel in the south and Uzbekistan in the east.

Our own species, Homo sapiens, evolved in Africa, and displaced the Neanderthals after entering Europe about 40,000 years ago.

Neanderthals held on at sites like Carihuela (Image: S Fernandez Jimenez/J Carrion)

During the last Ice Age, the Iberian Peninsula was a refuge where Neanderthals lived on for several thousand years after they had died out elsewhere in Europe.

These creatures (Homo neanderthalensis) had survived in local pockets during previous Ice Ages, bouncing back when conditions improved. But the last one appears to have been characterised by several rapid and severe changes in climate which hit a peak 30,000 years ago.

Southern Iberia appears to have been sheltered from the worst of these. But about 24,000 years ago, conditions did deteriorate there.

This event was the most severe the region had seen for 250,000 years, report Clive Finlayson, from the Gibraltar Museum; Francisco Jimenez-Espejo, from the University of Granada, Spain; and colleagues.

Their findings are published in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews.

Rare event

"It looks pretty severe and also quite short," Professor Finlayson told BBC News.

"Things like olive trees and oak trees that are still with us today managed to ride it out. But a very fragmented, stressed population of Neanderthals - and perhaps other elements of the fauna - did not."

The cause of this chill may have been cyclical changes in the Earth's position relative to the Sun - so-called Milankovitch cycles.

How Gibraltar might have looked in Neanderthal times More details

But a rare combination of freezing polar air blowing down the Rhone valley and Saharan air blowing north seems to have helped cool this part of the Mediterranean Sea, contributing to the severe conditions.

Gorham's Cave on Gibraltar shows evidence of occupation by groups of Neanderthals until 24,000 years ago. But thereafter, researchers have found no signs of their presence.

However, in an interesting new development, scientists are also now reporting another site, from south-east Spain, which has yielded evidence for the late survival of Neanderthals.

In a study published in the journal Geobios, Jose Carrion, from the University of Murcia, Spain, and colleagues analysed pollen from soil layers at Carihuela cave to determine how vegetation had changed in the area during the past 15,000 years.

During the course of this work, they also obtained ages for sediment samples from the cave, using radiocarbon dating and uranium-thorium dating.

Sediment layers containing stone tools of a style known to have been made by Neanderthals were found to date from 45,000 years ago until 21,000 years ago.

Caution needed

The radiocarbon dates are "raw", and do not exactly correspond to calendar dates. They cannot therefore be compared directly with those from Gibraltar, which have been calibrated with calendar dates.

Neanderthal bones have also been excavated from these sediment units, including a male skull fragment which could potentially be very recent. But Professor Carrion is extremely reluctant to draw firm conclusions about the site based on the evidence so far.

Pollen records the environment in which Neanderthals lived (Image: S Fernandez Jimenez/J Carrion)

Spanish archaeologists carried out a detailed excavation of Carihuela between 1979 and 1992. But the cave is currently closed due to a dispute between national and regional governments over rights to dig at the cave.

"The human bones have been recovered in different excavation campaigns over 50 years. The relationship between them and the dates I provide must be treated with caution," Professor Carrion told BBC News.

He added that sediments in parts of the cave could have been churned up, mixing old bones in with younger material. He suggested Carihuela should be re-excavated to resolve some of the controversies surrounding the site.

Clive Finlayson suggested the late Neanderthal dates from Carihuela might agree well with those from Gibraltar after they were calibrated.

16 Mind-Blowing Microphotographs of Living Things

If you ever played with a starter microscope set as a kid, you may have felt the amazement of creating a miniature world simply by placing a drab little speck of matter under its objective lens. That same sense of wonder surely drove the winners of the 2006 Olympus BioScapes Digital Imaging Competition, an annual contest for the best microphotographs of living (or once living) things.

Click here to see the photos.

reposted from: SciAm
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Why altruism paid off for our ancestors

Humans may have evolved altruistic traits as a result of a cultural “tax” we paid to each other early in our evolution, a new study suggests.

The research also changes what we knew about the genetic makeup of our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

The origin of human altruism has puzzled evolutionary biologists for many years (see Survival of the nicest).

In every society, humans make personal sacrifices for others with no expectation that it will be reciprocated. For example, we donate to charity, or care for the sick and disabled. This trait is extremely rare in the natural world, unless there is a family relationship or later reciprocation.

One theory to explain how human altruism evolved involves the way we interacted as groups early in our evolution. Towards the end of the Pleistocene period – about 12,000 years ago – humans foraged for food as hunter-gatherers. These groups competed against each other for survival.

Group dynamics

Under these conditions, altruism towards other group-members would improve the overall fitness of the group. If an individual defended the group but was killed, any genes that the individual shared with the overall group would still be passed on.

Many researchers reject this model, however. One reason is that competition between individuals is likely to increase if a group becomes isolated, and any altruistic behaviour would then decrease an individual’s level of fitness compared with other members.

Biologists also assume that hunter-gatherer groups around this time period would have been insufficiently genetically related to favour altruism. In other words, die when defending the group and your genes die with you.

Ancient ways

Now a new study by Samuel Bowles at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, US, breathes new life into the model. Bowles conducted a genetic analysis of contemporary foraging groups, including Australian aboriginals, native Siberian Inuit populations and indigenous tribal groups in Africa.

The genetic variation found within these modern-day groups was analysed and then used to estimate the kind of genetic variation that would have existed in ancestral populations of hunter-gatherer from the Pleistocene and early Holocene (150,000 to 10,000 years ago, combined). “These modern groups live today as most scholars believe our distant ancestors did,” Bowles explains.

He calculated that early human individuals were likely to be substantially more related to each other than previously thought. But Bowles found bigger genetic differences than expected between discrete groups of ancient peoples. These conditions would have favoured altruistic behaviour, says Bowles.

Challenging times

Bowles also worked out that early customs such as food sharing or monogamy could have levelled out the “cost” of altruistic behaviour, in the same way that income taxes redistribute income in society. He assembled genetic, climactic, archaeological, ethnographic and experimental data to examine the cost-benefit relationship of human cooperation in ancient populations.

In his model, members of a group bearing genes for altruistic behaviour pay a "tax" by limiting their reproductive opportunities to benefit from sharing food and information, thereby increasing the average fitness of the group as well as their inter-relatedness. Bands of altruistic humans would then act together to gain resources from other groups at this challenging time in history.

For example, an injury may be one of the costs of defending the group during an intergroup conflict: a broken leg could be fatal for an individual who may starve through being unable to obtain his own food. But food sharing would make it less of a risk for individuals to participate in these conflicts, Bowles says.

One-woman men

The archaeological and ethnographic data he used showed that 13% to 15% of foragers died from wars, which were common between groups. Bowles’s mathematical models suggest that altruism must have been a significant factor in these populations. Although Bowles admits that he has found no evidence for any gene for human altruism, he says that if such a genetic disposition were to exist, group conflict would have played an important role in its development.

Monogamy would also level the playing field within the group, he showed in his statistical analysis. “Monogamy limits the ability of the stronger or more aggressive males to monopolise copulation,” says Bowles. “Humans are very unusual in this way.”

Bowles’s paper is original, says Robert Boyd at the University of California, Los Angeles, US, who wrote an accompanying paper. A model of the evolution of altruism based on group selection is now more plausible, he says. “I am still not completely convinced, but I am much more willing to entertain the hypothesis,” he says.

Journal reference: Science (vol 314, p 1569)

reposted from: New Scientist
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Best scientific advice must be used to understand bird flu risks

The Government risks not being properly prepared if a future outbreak of avian flu were to result in a human influenza pandemic the Royal Society warned today (6 February 2007).

The Royal Society said that the Government has still not taken onboard the recommendations of last year's joint Royal Society and Academy of Medical Science report on preparing for a potential influenza pandemic. According to the report, "Pandemic influenza: science to policy", the Government is not making the best use of independent scientific advice when making critical decisions on issues such as the stockpiling of antiviral drugs.

Dr John McCauley, a member of the Royal Society/ Academy of Medical Science working group on pandemic influenza, said: "Hopefully this particular outbreak has been contained and it is important to stress that the risk of the virus spreading to humans is minimal. However, should a bird flu virus become able to adapt to humans, it could leave us facing a flu pandemic. There have been three pandemics in the last 100 years, one of which killed 40 million people in 1918. It is important that everything possible is done to ensure that doesn't happen"

The Royal Society and Academy of Medical Sciences report recommended that:

• DEFRA should set up a vaccination committee to advise the department on the development of its vaccination strategies across all animal diseases, including avian influenza.
• The virus must be carefully monitored so we can understand how minor changes or mutations to the virus can potentially affect its ability to spread. As the virus mutates its ability to be transmitted between animals, animals and humans or potentially between humans may also increase.
• A leading influenza specialist should be appointed as a high-level adviser to government ensure that its monitoring and response to such outbreaks is based on the best scientific advice
• The Department of Health and the vaccine industry should continue to evaluate the use of whole virus vaccines and monitor the results of ongoing trials of whole virus vaccines against H5N1
• The Department of Health should revisit it its decision to stockpile only one anti-viral Tamiflu in light of emerging scientific evidence that H5N1 can develop resistance to this drug

reposted from: http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/news.asp?id=5883
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Love thy neighbour - so you can kill the others off

IT HAS been dubbed the Samaritan paradox. Why have we evolved to do altruistic things like giving blood or caring for the sick without expecting them to do the same for us? Bizarrely, it could be because it makes us better at waging war.

Samuel Bowles, an economist at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, studied modern hunter-gatherer groups along with archaeological evidence of early human conflicts and data on climate and other environmental variables from about 150,000 years ago. He concluded that the struggle for survival faced by early humans was so severe that war among groups and the wholesale destruction of localised populations was common (Science, vol 314, p 1569).

Bowles then constructed a mathematical model that pitted groups with genes for altruistic behaviour against groups without. Altruism protects the group against the costs of combat, he says. For example, one of the consequences of an inter-group conflict may be a broken leg - a potentially fatal injury for the person affected, as it would leave them unable to forage. Food sharing would mean they could survive, ultimately making it less risky for the group to go to war.

Biologists have long written off differences in survival between groups as an important driver of evolution, as natural selection works on genes, not groups. But Bowles's model incorporates gene differences, making his idea more plausible, says anthropologist Robert Boyd of the University of California, Los Angeles.

From issue 2582 of New Scientist magazine, 16 December 2006, page 18

reposted from: NewScientist
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