Science, Causality & Genes

The inference of causality is rampant these days. Nowadays any whisper of correlation is a causal event, ask the epidemiologists. But causality is more akin to “if this then that” (IFTTT). Using an oft-repeated term, a quid pro quo. A reaction to an action. Newtonian more than Quantum. No fuzzy behavior as with the electron but more of an antimatter-matter relationship. A good old deterministic...Poof.

Defining causality is easy. A fact that delivers a verifiable consequence each time it is invoked. Flicking a switch turns the light on, that is causal. Pushing a button turns the motor on, again causal. But as you might extrapolate from the examples above, these are mechanical things. The mechanics and electrical circuitry are designed for a specific action or IFTTT. 

But now we haul off to the biological world and contemplate where the triggers are for causal effects? Where indeed? Perhaps the nearest example of such an event is a one-gene-one disease. Examples include; cystic fibrosis, sickle cell disease, Fragile X syndrome, muscular dystrophy, or Huntington disease.  

The concept of Gene therapy lies in replacing a faulty gene or adds a new gene in an attempt to cure disease or improve your body's ability to fight disease. 

These may be associated with Dominant gene mutations which are vertically transmitted from parent to child as in Huntington’s Disease or via a Recessive gene where it may skip generations. If you are interested in more look here: https://www.nature.com/scitable/topicpage/rare-genetic-disorders-learning-about-genetic-disease-979/ and here for the genetic therapies utilized thus far http://www.genetherapynet.com/JoomlaTest2/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=164:diseases-treated-with-gene-therapy-&catid=97:patient-information&Itemid=14 and yet more to come with the CRSPR technology that hopes to revolutionize healthcare in cancer management, cardiovascular and a whole host of other metabolic-related diseases; https://www.labiotech.eu/tops/crispr-technology-cure-disease/

The stumbling block in this hubris of “causality” suggests, we are still a long way away from that mountain we need to climb. Cancer, for instance, is a multigene-epigenetic-mesenchymal corrupted system of influence and a single silver bullet is not going to save the day. Adding to the complexity is the catacombs of multiple crosslinked-cross-talking pathways beneath the cell surface that invoke their own potential when blocked by small molecule antibodies. That cautionary statement must give us pause to reflect upon what to do? Work is underway to tease out the trees in the forest tying a yellow ribbon on each one as we delve into the forest in search of a cure.

That then brings up the casual semantics of the statisticians into the open. Where the science outside of the laboratories, is being marked down in percentages to the eyes of the beholders? Karl Pierson would have been happy to see his methods lauded and enriched with more analysis than has been done in any real science in the last 10 years so to speak. But disheartened at its abuse. With all the Regressions, T-tests, ANOVAs and MANOVAs sprinkled through most of the medical literature, a kernel of truth seems barely enough to ruffle the pure white undisturbed surface of the “scientific,” statistical landscape. The true question being; does “X” cause “Y?” The answer seems wanting in most of the medical literature that pervades the burgeoning load of journals proliferating faster than I can think, let alone write these words.

Relying on “p-value” SIGNIFICANCE https://jedismedicine.blogspot.com/2013/06/significance.html?spref=tw is fast becoming an albatross around the author’s neck as more and more non-statisticians begin to see the light thru the dark art of this field of doctored mathematics. I hear, recently someone proclaims that perhaps “we should not use the term “significant” with a p-value of 0.05. Indeed! But then the suggesting individual goes on to say, “we should perhaps use; less significant, fairly significant or most significant.” Tapering one’s bias into terminology through statistical manipulation will add another layer of opacity to an already opaque world in disguise.

Already the stark scientific world in cancer care has changed parameters for the Partial Response or PR when dealing with the drug effect upon cancer from >50% reduction in the size of the tumor to =30% as the definition (of a PR). And then in an obvious collapse of the norm, they proposed PFS (Progression Free Survival) as a surrogate to Overall Survival (OS). Read here: Progression Free Survival (PFS) https://jedismedicine.blogspot.com/2012/05/progression-free-survival-pfs.html?spref=tw The former can be massaged by using longer interim analysis to have a longer PFS. However, as many a study has shown that increasing PFS has NOTHING to do with OS in a large majority of cases. So why the change? It seems that utilizing the new surrogates leads to a host of quick, but unverifiable results rather than the tedious and methodical means of extracting the truest information. Today, once you get your p-value based on the selected variables and other flimsy outcomes, the publishers-a-plenty roll their rollers on their massive machines. And once the headline has been headlined and the Social Media has triumphed the unvalidated contrived result, who cares about what is on the 28 paged small-windowed retraction. Indeed, who cares because everyone seems to have attention deficit disorder these days. From the “scientists,” to the “marketer,” to the “consumer,” in one fell swoop. Yet even in these days of quarterly earnings, the long-lost art of tedium would still bear lasting fruit to the annual bonus of a manager and his or her longevity at the helm.

The reason I bring the issues of Gene therapy and statistics in the same paragraph is quite simply to arm the disarmed. Using gene therapy has its complications; unintended consequences to be sure. Deep Learning through Neural Network deployment to harness the “Gene Speak” between overexpressors (promoters) and (suppressors) is a difficult communication to decipher, let alone the Epigenetic chatter and its influence and the pleadings of the interstitial content with its Epithelial-Mesenchymal transitions. Read here: https://techxplore.com/news/2019-12-deep-gene-interactions.html Additionally the viral vectors used to transfer the gene into the DNA of an individual can have serious consequences. In regard to CRISPR editing, there are whole host issues that also need to be resolved before wholesale mainlining into science. Although a new study from Johns Hopkins seems to help the cause of the CRSPR technology, it is the first step and only used in mice. The scientists used a targeted gene epigenome editing approach in the developing mouse brain, Johns Hopkins Medicine researchers reversed one gene mutation that leads to the genetic disorder WAGR syndrome, which causes intellectual disability and obesity in people. This specific editing was unique in that it changed the epigenome—how the genes are regulated—without changing the actual genetic code of the gene being regulated. Read here: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-12-genetic-brain-disorder-mice-precision.html . One thing that we all must be cognizant about is that using the arbitrary probability methods of statistics would not be prudent in determining success. Failure, however, will be obvious to all. Failure may be due to a lack of incorporation of the genetic material in the genome, by antiviral antibodies against the viral vectors or other errors of methodology. Computational cataloging will help expedite the process as it has done in other sectors of human activity, as reams of data are processed to determine the causality in a disease. We will progress as we do in fits and starts. But the progress we do make, will only be through careful, methodical and tedious science.

I clamor because I am concerned. I write because I care, and I learn because I want to propel the young mind to greater heights than it thinks it can achieve. So, keep the faith in the tedium of real science and stay on the journey towards excellence.



Bon Voyage!

THE HUMAN FACTOR

The drumbeat for Artificial Intelligence is deafening. But when you look at the skinny, it all boils down to IFTTT. Doesn’t it? There is also this big overhang called the Big Data that seems to propose that the entire world’s knowledge is contained in a server somewhere from where the computational binary codes have determined the essence of life and death. Not so, it seems when you really look at it hard enough. And then you realize AI is about making a machine do the IFTTT with a select few variables. And that the machine does well. Let me give you an example that everyone will tout as their aha moment and immediately subjugate their humanness to the unfailing virtues of the AI. But hold on a bit, friend, hold on!

Can we translate the meaning of the human essence into a machine? Nope, not by any standard. Ah, but they say, in time, in time and soon. To that I am compelled to say, not so fast young Turk, not so fast. 

To give credit to the function of a machine working through the AI code of conduct, one needs to look at the Aircraft Autopilot for example. The entire premise of the Autopilot is based on four variables; Lift, Weight, Thrust and Drag. Compute those variables and all three X, Y, and Z-axis are easily manageable. At takeoff, the thrust outweighs both the parasitic drag and the weight drag on the aircraft. At Cruise, the lift created by the wings equals the induced drag and the weight of the aircraft. At descent, the thrust is diminished to allow the other mentioned forces to act accordingly and bring the aircraft transitioning to the landing phase. But what happens if a sudden force of moderate turbulence is applied to the aircraft? The Autopilot automatically disconnects, so the human can take over to override impact from the sudden change. Any sudden change in the wind parameters would raise the specter of a “Ding, Ding” followed by “wind shear” if the aircraft was so equipped with such a hardwired coded algorithm. So, if there are only a few, finite, known and calculated variables, the machine language codes well and delivers with flying colors. Add an additional insult to the quiet world of the AI and, then, you know who is the boss.  Autopilots need human managers who are fully prepped with nuances of machine shortcomings and failures. Sometimes, however, we the humans can take the autopilot’s beseeching warnings and hit the ocean or earth, with a ferocity of momentum and wonder, what gives? Humans too are fallible. That’s how we learn.

Remember HAL9000 from the 2001 Space Odyssey? We haven’t yet achieved full subservience to the red dot. Perhaps the example of the autonomous land vehicle crashing into pedestrians and fences itself is a reminder that machine-learned machines need to stay functional in the machine-machine world. Humans are unpredictable and therefore their drive for the unexpected is wrought with calamities. Touting the success of the Autopilot in the airplane and the boat and the cruise control in the car and comparing that to the wide world of a multitude of variables is hubris in a nutshell. The wide world has many rules from the Quantum mechanics to the Newtonian Laws to the Flows of Fluid and Thermal dynamics, to the continually in the motion of the living breathing planet, its aching tectonics, its atmospheric lifts, and its restless oceans. To punch in all those variables into the artificiality of a machine and expect it to perform with the agility and grace of multitasking, parallel processing human brain is asking for, way too much.

Reversing course from the machine to the human again, there are some who believe that AI will replace humans in healthcare? Perhaps the best we will get will be predictive analytics with percentages and potentials, but not what is needed to help save the human from a malfunctioning code in their genes. Even delving into reading X-Rays and diagnosing disease from the images is based on the IFTTT. Feed-in a million X-Ray images and code them with the disease accordingly and then let the AI figure out the diagnosis of the presented image. The missing context that humans rely upon is well, missing. The “mass” in the lung could be benign or malignant, it could be infectious or a fungal ball, it could be scar tissue or rampant virus, it could be fluid or the beginning of something really malicious. Context matters. Someone would say we can code for that as well. Ok then how about the overall state of the human being, one asks? We can code for that as well. Ok, how about human feelings? We can do that as well, by coding their facial characteristics? Ok, how about their fears and the subsurface emotions coursing their veins? Even humans can’t figure that out? Actually, with a little communication, we can. But one gets the message that the many existing variables that prevent the false negatives and the false positives from embracing the predictions by subjugating themselves to the zero is nigh impossible. But the trials and the beat will go on. We might succeed one day, but not today.

There is something to be said about the human factor. It might be messy, it might be chaotic, it might be fractured, it might also be grand as well or it might be the cause of a lot of human follies and the start of a learning process to make better that which is flawed and that, as they say, is the greatest of gifts contained within the 3-pound flesh solidly protected by its osseous protective confines. From the powered flight of the Wright Brothers to the behemoth million-ton flying machines controlled by a few levers upfront is a long way in hundred-plus years. The pace of progress accelerates as mundane tasks are relegated to the machines with the IFTTT and the human brain conceives ideas for the future! We live on ideas. We grow with ideas. We are the ideas that make the world go around.

“Second star to the right and straight on ‘til morning!’”

Steady as she goes!

SOCIOPATH & TRUST

I woke up from a nightmare. At least it felt like a dream about this monster. Well, he did not exactly look like a monster, but his actions were more like one. His balding lack of integrity was hidden beneath the baseball cap. He seemed affable enough to warrant one’s reflection. His smile was disarming but lurking somewhere in the deep furrows of his piercing eyes was the coldness that comes from a nature foreign to most human beings. The dream went on in some circuitous ways, without any coruscating droplets hanging a rainbow before my eyes. Stark reality, it seems, was in play. Everything in nature seemed like a sparingly decorated stark modern home. Nothing homely or comfortable or full of the memories from the past. Just here and now and bland.

We were in a restaurant with his wife, who seemed amiable enough and seemed to hide her insecurity behind memorized verses from famous poets, but she had a sharp tongue to match her fleeting frown to his cold stare that seemed to gaze at nothing in particular. We had to be seated several times to the complaints of the man. Both their sudden change of demeanor showed up like erratic flashes of lightning bolts, covered hurriedly by the dark impenetrable cloud of grey. The couple were strangely human but not so in their actions. They were disarming with their brief smiles and terrifying in their silence.

The dream went on, now we were at a funeral and she, the wife showed, what seemed genuine, a sadness in her eyes and the very next moment a hushed giggle. A classic personality disorder that would fill a psychiatrist’s hour and then some. The man in the baseball cap told tall tales of other people. He used easy words to disparage and gently vilify without showing any signs of vehemence. His woman nodded in silence and filed in words to enhance his statements. It was a classic dance between Ralph and Jack described by William Golding in the Lord of the Flies. Unsettled evil lurking beneath with restrained hostility and a hidden but easily provoked maleviolence. Like Ralph and Jack, this man and his woman had the feral qualities of the “beast” that exists in such humans.

We were suddenly transformed to an office setting, where he now appeared to be comforting me while I was in some feeling of distress. A strangeness overtook me as he leveled uncustomary compliments towards me. And just as swiftly, the forked tongue of this serpent had wrapped around me and I was back seated before him willingly agreeing to some nuanced version of reality that he had put before me. Thankfully all nightmares are life limited and I found myself in this multilevel home with the walls leaking water and the roof bowing under the weight of a deluge from above. Water was weakening the structure as the scaffolding groaned under the weight of this torrential storm. A good structure, like character will stand the test of these storms. The structure remained erect and secure, albeit wet. A safe refuge. It weathered the storm. The darkness passed.

The next moment I felt as if I was flying under my own powers, bending metal to the will of my mind. And then as suddenly that dream dissipated.

I realized what my nightmare was conveying to me, that there are people in this world who take pleasure in harming others. These are the 4% of the populace. One in 25 people have this affliction. These are the sociopaths next door, that we never find out. They are geared from their earliest waking moments through their gradual descent from possible lack of good nurturing, to cause harm to others. Others to them do not have meaning. Others merely exist to be exploited at their hands.

I woke up in a sweat! The nightmare became a memory that finds its way into my mind, jogging the wheels of reality from time to time. It is a distant past that fades with each passing night but the lessons it taught me, remain true to this day.

These fiends are also to large degree cowards, fearful for their own person and their personal wrongfully attained gains. They lash out at others to benefit their plans, pointing fingers at others while gaming the system for their own purpose, while having no remorse in harming others to achieve their aims.

These are the Sociopaths. And history is replete with them. Those that dabbled in high stakes and got caught with their hands in the cookie jar include the following: In Finance names like Bernie Madoff and Rajaratnam, in Medicine, Dr. Kermit Gosnell, in Pharma, Martin Shkreli, come to mind.

Based on that dreadful nightmare, I researched about sociopaths and so allow me to share some of the tricks they use:

1.    Feigned Empathy. These monsters will drop a tear as an emotional expression at a funeral when the death of the person means absolutely nothing to them. They will act out sadness over an unknown person to show others how empathic they are to someone’s else’s tragedy, trying to prove their virtuous self. They will use the other person’s distress and claim it their own. They will virtue signal anything to the targeted victim to bring him or her into their fold of blinded ignorance.

2.    Exploit Weakness. Most humans are gifted with a sense of truth and justice based on Natural Laws. Every one of us has a weakness, be it gullibility, desire to be someone’s friend, desire to do good, honesty, virtue, giving comfort to others etc. These monsters exploit these gifts. If you are honest, they will vilify other’s lack of it, If you are giving comfort to others, they will mention someone else as being poor in that regard to give false sense of admiration directed at you and simultaneously say the same about you behind your back. They will cultivate your weakness into a full-blown friendship to win your trust. They will always try to gain a level of control over anyone who is susceptible to their sweet-nothings, by boldly promising to kill the beast of their own creation and resident in themselves.

3.    Temper Strength. They will constantly undermine your strengths under the pretext of “helping” you get better as a person. Always undermining your strengths and exposing and amplifying your weaknesses with “friendly” corrective mechanisms. They will try to show they are sophisticated and strong but your strengths are actually your weakness.

4.   Surrogacy. To further emphasize their point of views, they usually have a very select cabal of one or two others that whisper the same messaging so as to reinforce the designated points of view. These surrogates are usually their partners in some previous crimes, hence joined at the hip for self-preservation. In doing so, they will reward these surrogates with other’s ill-gained money. This monster man and his woman type live their lives, firing volleys from other’s shoulders, shielded from reprisal by convincing others to do their bidding.

So, what did I learn from that nightmare?

1.    Trust no one without verification. Listen to them. These monsters will unknowingly express their inner thoughts and potential focus of harm. Listen to advice from those close to you before according them the benefit of acquaintance, then continue on with your research into their modus operandi and keep listening to their words and watching their deeds. Depending on your own strengths and weaknesses, your honesty, and gullibility, your desire to be nice and friendly to others, these nasty sharks will slowly worm their way into your life. Their persistence and cleverly disguised methods win over most skeptics. They are relentless and gauge your response constantly, adjust accordingly, because their eyes are always on the prize; your life’s worth. The monster in my dream never wanted to be seated with a window or door behind his back, indicating he had done harm to others.

2.    Beware of those constantly heaping praise on you.

3.    Beware of lofty promises.

4.    Beware of those desperately wanting to be in your friend circle, with no friends of their own.

5.    Beware of those who tell you they are very selective in having friends or have none at all, but they want to be in your circle.

6.    Beware of false pretense, false empathy, false bravado, false rhetoric, it shows if you keep an open mind.

7.    Beware of someone who exploits others to show their prowess in managing people.

8.    Beware of someone who demeans your long-term friends. Their fear is that those closest to you will find them out.

9.    Beware of giving away trust for a false kind word.

-->And teach your children the same.

"SIGNIFICANCE"

When significance had meaning

It was quite significant

Numbers meant something

Words held meaning.

History was history

Unconsoled and real

The past was magical

A teaching comfort.

But, no more

History needs tweaks

Statues need demolishing

Books rewritten and relearning.

Nothing is significant

Nothing has meaning

Only that which is implied

Repeated often, falsehood turns to legend.

The man of Statistics

Lives by manipulation

Reaching for Outcomes

That remain meaningless.

The man of Medicine

Lives by some numerical value

His patient dies

From that same numerical Value

A new Medicine is born

Filled with high praise

Lauded for its magical value

Tested in society, where it fails

No harm comes to the innovator

As she lives the dream

Beset with hubris

Concocting another miracle 

The man of Politics

Lives in his cagey bubble

Cajoling and promising

Tethered to the pols of similar “significance.”

The man of Science

Rewards himself with finery

Consenting to an aura of respect

Deeply rooted in statistical significance

The man of Cloth

Measures the winds of change

Is inspired by 

The men of Statistics and Politics

The average Working Man

Comes home to a cold meal

Living a diminished life

And is disdained by the lot

What has become of Society?

What has become of Society?

What has become of Society?

What happened to Society?

ABOVE ALL QUESTION!

We know that Iron does not turn to gold. We do, don’t we? And that Stone cannot be converted to plastic. No disrespect to either the stone or plastic. Both are held in equal regard. After all billions of pounds of stone is the fundamental foundation of the Pyramids and plastic is the modern-day ubiquity, hailed and maligned simultaneously.

But if you did believe in alchemy and magic then this is the right place for you to come and be exorcised. 

From John Ford’s movie, “The Man who shot Liberty Valance” comes the age-old quote “when the legend becomes fact, print the legend." There is so much truth oozing out in those words, especially in these modern days in this age of highly evolved civilization. Snarky as that might sound to some and others, it is the elemental truth of the day, these days.

Manipulating someone takes a calm shrewdness and calculated but persistent endeavor. It happens in everyday life, be it in science, politics or even and perhaps especially in medicine. We will deal with the two bookends around politics and you are free to draw your conclusions on the politics of today. I will not lurk there to ruin anyone’s day.

Science is real. It is based on empiricism. It is also based on trial by error. In that solemn enterprise it also is fleeting. The empirical methods change, and a more robust mechanism is realized. Take the Wright Brother Flyer for instance. A trial by error by ingenious bicycle makers that cost at least one life in the process of powering the first flight, today, we have arrived at behemoth aircraft weighing millions of pounds, capable of carrying hundreds of passengers far, far away from their homes and back. Each step of the way to here, there were errors and each error made for a more robust innovation. Learning from errors is how science advances. Science changes as new tools of empiricism emerge. Thus, emergence is nothing more than gaining a new solution to a tired old problem. In the case of the Wright Brothers, it was that man can fly on powered aircraft. But they also stood on the shoulders of Otto Lilienthal, the German aviator who soared several times on non-powered gliders. And innovation is nothing more than building on the past.

The alter ego of science is pseudoscience. Even joining the two words is blasphemous at best. Science is purported to be reality based on the current assessment of available information seen through the lens of expectation. The term pseudo is the forced evil twin who imposes restrictions on science by creating false legends and then printing them as science. Let me give you a few short examples;

1. The Food Plate was boasted as the nutritional equivalent harbinger for good health and endorsed by none other than the largest of the medical societies. Turns out that 60% carbohydrate base in that pyramid created an untold calamity of obesity and chronic illness such as diabetes, hypertension, stroke, heart attacks and cancer. So much for Nutritional guidelines. Given the green light, breakfast became a sugar haven for children via colorful sugary cereals and other delights. Adults meanwhile pursued the sugar through cans full of colas to meet their Average Daily Requirement. The Legend had been printed and it took many a year to realize the damage done.

2. Blood Letting was the manifest therapy of most maladies, when a doctor was faced with an insurmountable illness and no known therapeutic modality was available and few were other than poltices. Sometime the first and last resort of action was “blood-letting.” But let us not judge too harshly, “blood-letting” started by the Egyptians in 1000BC and continued on till the setting sun of the 19thcentury. A lot of harm there was done, except for those with undiagnosed and in those times possibly unknown, patints with polycythemia or those with Hemochromatosis, those few might have been helped. This treatment might also have been the proximate cause of death for some Presidents of the United States, including George Washington.

True Science is about questioning. It is about the wrong questions not about the right answers that knowledge is furthered. It is about skepticism. It is about advancing the knowledge and not about prostrate obedience. Today, some crafty individuals have taken the mantle of establishing organizations for the sake of minting large sums of money from various segments of society using the art of pseudoscience. These carpetbaggers have a unique mechanism of action. They create a product in vacuum and then become the arbiters of expertise. They decide another’s aptitude based on false empiricism. These few have grafted themselves into positions of power and have merged with larger powers, by convincing others that they alone hold the right and might to determine what’s right. In so doing they have amassed large sums of money for themselves and used that accumulated wealth to further their plans through lobbying for more control. They cite their false legends (self-created body of information lacking scrutiny or veracity) and print them as fast as they can to parade them as evidence. They are indeed a body of falsehood and evil. One such example in the medical field is the false promise of continuous certification and the maintenance of such certification. These organizations are folded under the umbrella of the American Board of Medical Specialties and they are under fire for falsehoods, coercion and other bad acts against physicians in general. The ugly truth of their large sums of monies held in places offshore and the large salaries commanded by the few that work in this organization to keep this false enterprise going, is the premise of the multiple legal actions against them.

Then there is the influence of statistics in medicine, which has been of equal harm in patient care. Medicine is practiced mostly under the best known and available evidence. That evidence is both of scientifically validated in nature, as well as intuitively known to those practicing the art and science of medicine in caring for the patients on a daily basis. Unfortunately, as the tools of statistical rigors were massaged over time, and means of means became the means to determine benefit of certain medicines, intuition has atrophied under guide of guidelines and wisdom has become a shell of its former self.

Many if not most, bowed to the gods of statistics as more and more massaging of a poor result in empiricism was heralded as the Second Coming against disease. But as all things are shaped by time, this one too has lost favor under tighter scrutiny. More physicians are trying to dig into the roots of the given answer and not just the colored leaf shown. Meanwhile the creators of this logic continue to march and berate those that defy their “Evidence.” Unfortunately, the emergence of truth is never timely, yet it always raises itself in the face of unseemly and irreverent acts.

Science is meant to be questioned at every step of the way, not swallowed as a pill of satisfaction. It is to be teased, pulled apart piece by piece to unearth that which will hold verification and can then be validated until newer tools and information emerge. We as humans advance by standing on the shoulders of giants to see that which cannot be seen. And each giant of the field learned his or her wisdom peering at what others were doing or had done. Watson and Crick advanced the DNA helix, not through the force of epiphany but on the crystallographic radiograph by Rosalind Franklin. Marie Curie had Antoine Henri Becquerel to rely upon as her muse. There is passion and persistence in remarkable discoveries as there is passion and persistence in great art too. It took Leonardo Da Vinci 13 years to finish the “Mona Lisa” painting and get the face to smile and smirk at the same time.

The quick fix methodology of the pseudoscientist, who are forever in a hurry, because charlatans do not want to be exposed nor do they want to lose the prize, do not care for the truth. Their aim is the financial prize.

Indeed, above all question! No one has said it better than this wonderful physicist Richard Feynman, “I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned.”

HUMANS TRAPPED BY AUTOMATION

Our minds 

resolve to adapt to our surroundings fairly quickly. Imagine my surprise when the Air Asiana jumbo jet came crashing down on San Francisco's Runway 28L in pieces strewing metal and bodies all over the runway. It was a shock of disbelief. In this day and age where Auto throttle and Autoland features are redundant in the airliners, why would this happen?

The answer was quite simple, horrific as it was; The Pilots had relied on automation to the point of dependency. They had been managers most of their pilot life in the airlines and given the redundancy of the equipment and it’s stellar history, well, the corporate offices of the airlines, figured it better for the aircraft to do its magic without the interference from the pilot. Sure enough the Instrument Landing System on the SF Runway was out for maintenance and the pilots were given instructions for a straight-in “Visual Approach” to the Runway 28L, that they were unable to manage.

The excerpts below on Air Asiana flight #214 are from the NTSB: https://youtu.be/zTXDalv7kNQ

“The flight was vectored for a visual approach to runway 28L and intercepted the final approach course about 14 nautical miles (nm) from the threshold at an altitude slightly above the desired 3° glidepath. This set the flight crew up for a straight-in visual approach; however, after the flight crew accepted an air traffic control instruction to maintain 180 knots to 5 nm from the runway, the flight crew mismanaged the airplane’s descent, which resulted in the airplane being well above the desired 3° glidepath when it reached the 5 nm point. The flight crew’s difficulty in managing the airplane’s descent continued as the approach continued. In an attempt to increase the airplane’s descent rate and capture the desired glidepath, the pilot flying (PF) selected an autopilot (A/P) mode (flight level change speed [FLCH SPD]) that instead resulted in the autoflight system initiating a climb because the airplane was below the selected altitude. The PF disconnected the A/P and moved the thrust levers to idle, which caused the autothrottle (A/T) to change to the HOLD mode, a mode in which the A/T does not control airspeed. The PF then pitched the airplane down and increased the descent rate. Neither the PF, the pilot monitoring (PM), nor the observer noted the change in A/T mode to HOLD.

As the airplane reached 500 ft above airport elevation, the point at which Asiana’s procedures dictated that the approach must be stabilized, the precision approach path indicator (PAPI) would have shown the flight crew that the airplane was slightly above the desired glidepath. Also, the airspeed, which had been decreasing rapidly, had just reached the proper approach speed of 137 knots. However, the thrust levers were still at idle, and the descent rate was about 1,200 ft per minute, well above the descent rate of about 700 fpm needed to maintain the desired glidepath; these were two indications that the approach was not stabilized. Based on these two indications, the flight crew should have determined that the approach was unstabilized and initiated a go-around, but they did not do so. As the approach continued, it became increasingly unstabilized as the airplane descended below the desired glidepath; the PAPI displayed three and then four red lights, indicating the continuing descent below the glidepath. The decreasing trend in airspeed continued, and about 200 ft, the flight crew became aware of the low airspeed and low path conditions but did not initiate a go-around until the airplane was below 100 ft, at which point the airplane did not have the performance capability to accomplish a go-around. The flight crew’s insufficient monitoring of airspeed indications during the approach resulted from expectancy, increased workload, fatigue, and automation reliance.”

On the other side are the Lion Air and the more recent Ethiopian Airliners that were both struck with tragedy. Both seemed to be the result of a new automated system: The Maneuvering Characteristics Augmentation System (MCAS) is an automated safety feature on the 737 Max 8 designed to prevent the plane from entering into a stall, or losing lift.
https://phys.org/news/2019-03-ethiopian-airlines-mcas-boeing-max.html

The potential of the new automation seems to have played a part, at least in the Lion Air information and the flight paths and behavior of both aircraft, on Radar seem to be identical, indicating the ghost of the MCAS automation within the silicon chips may have created the maladies that either crew of the two airliners were untrained or unable to handle. Important to note, a flight crew had successfully interrupted the automation from the MCAS system in a previous flight prior to the Lion Air tragedy.

Lion Air:  
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-46373125

Ethiopian Airline: 
https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/10/africa/ethiopian-airlines-crash-boeing-max-8-intl/index.html

“Click, Click and Click, Click” is what the Chief Pilot of the American Airlines stated in this great video, “The children of the Magenta Line.” It is worth a watch and explanatory of our continuous dependence to a greater degree on automation.

https://vimeo.com/159496346?ref=tw-share

or click on the Blue icon "Watch on Vimeo"

Children Of The Magenta Line from SKYbrary on Vimeo.

Tesla on the ground seems to be having some trouble on the roadways as well. It seems that the cohabitation of robotics and humans has to be synchronized to the degree that both sides; the silicon chips and the Grey Matter, have defective understanding and that the Grey Matter side better be better prepared to reconcile any anomalies that might arise in the chip algorithm command. “Click, Click and Click, Click” to disconnect the Autopilot and fly by hand while resolving the anomaly.

The other side of this automation in keeping personal data safe is also wreaking havoc; routinely we hear of data breaches in the digital medical record keeping business. Millions have their personal data exposed those who will sell it for nefarious reasons. Increasingly the younger generation by a 55% margin seems to think that allowing giant digital corporations to know everything about their personal life is ok, since, they do “nothing wrong.” The fallacy of this thinking is blatant if one is to reason through. Innocence is determined by the current vogue in thinking. What is acceptable in the 2010s may be considered lunacy in the 2020s. So imagine your chagrin when all the “clouds” are combed over and voila, your innocent mischief is now considered a crime against humanity. The #Metoo scenario with the advent of past and present digital records is playing out even against those who initiated this form of societal justice. Real-Time video manipulations and other assorted nefarious tricks are creating animosity amongst the best of friends. Sad reality from such nefarious actions abound in the world today.

1. It is perhaps not necessarily being a luddite that one gains some protection, but from common sense usage of the grand scale digital universe. Keep your personal information to yourself. (FYI)

2. Personal Information in today’s world is equivalent to your life’s work and acquired assets.

3. Monitor Automation but don’t let it rule you.

4. Keep a healthy respect for all automation. Be it in aircraft, cars or even medical devices.

5. Remember the Software was written by humans.

6. When in doubt, OVERRIDE the automation.

7. A single nucleotide misplaced/inserted/ deleted can cause a calamity of cancerous proportions, so can a single digit inserted/deleted/misapplied can cause the algorithm to cause the robotic maneuver to stop dead in its tracks.

Above all learn the discipline of Reason and Critical Thinking. Life is short and Learning is fun. Read, write and spread that honest joy around.

SILVER SPOONS & ILLNESSES

Silver spoon feedings have an allure of wisdom, intelligence and success conferred upon the parents because of their diligence and hard work in paying for them without regret. With silver spoons come some very surreptitious little gremlins that I plan to explore today with you. You may not like what you read, but then I wasn’t one to walk behind the piper either. So here it goes.

THOUGHT # 1

My first thought was, why are younger adults being diagnosed with Colon cancer? Provocative as it is, it is also very true. About 140,000 cases of Colon Cancer are diagnosed every year in the United States and of those 90% are in the older adults, here defined as over the age of 55 years. However, the 10% of the younger adult their incidence seems to have escalated. 

 "The 2017 ACS study found that for adults ages 20 to 39, colon cancer incidence rates increased by one percent to two percent per year through 2013. In adults 40 to 54, rates increased by 0.5 percent to one percent per year from the mid-1990s through 2013. The death rate among young adults ages 20 to 54 has been increasing since the mid-2000s"

This is not only alarming but also gaining attention as a serious health risk for the entire nation. So, what gives? Why did the rate of colon cancer in the young ones suddenly jump? Although many explanations were advanced, such as genetics; a common one when all else fails, perhaps alcohol and cigarettes; a catchall in almost any cancer. There seems more to this conundrum than meets the eye. To my simplistic thought it is the increased “colonic transit time.” What that means is that there is a slower transport of digested and undigested food through the colon that causes the colonic crypt Stem cells to come in contact with the foods for a longer time and the altered microbiota because of the modern “open the box, filled with carbohydrates and other wonderful processed chemicals" diet. The stem cells have unlimited growth potential and create a fast growing difficult cancer to treat, on the other hand the cells higher up on the crypts have the growth potential limited and thus can create large polyps without turning into cancer through similar contact. In addition to that little change there is also the fact that the younger adults sit for longer time gazing fondly at their latest tech marvels that delivers oodles and oodles of useless information and after their eyes have become accustomed to thicker reading glasses thrust upon them, they add more misery by spending the rest of the time playing video games in their armchairs. So not only the poor diet, the changed microbiome in their gut (that’s a few trillion bacteria in the intestines) and then to add insult to injury a slow transit of this fecal mass through their colons because of sedentary status.

You might be saying, he can’t be right? It cannot be so simple? But as I said before it is my thought and you are reading it. There might be some fallacy in this simplistic logic but new data seems to corroborate what I just said and here it is… (READ) https://academic.oup.com/jncics/article/2/4/pky073/5301781

A very simple and easy cure is to add some healthy fresh food to the diet, reduce the caloric amount to 2000 or less a day, unless you are a body builder or training athlete and learn the art of daily walks, runs and a trifle bit of weight training. Stop eating the carbohydrates rich foods period. Our bodies were designed for feast or famine because that is how hunter gatherer social contracts came to be. Now there is a constant state of feast and the body has not had its equal measure of protection from the famine as in involuntary famine. So, here is another tiny bit of a pearl; Fast for short periods, it keeps the microbiota stress levels low and the colon doesn’t have all this junk flowing through like flood waters every day.

THOUGHT  # 2

Switching gears, I came across another thought. Why are children getting more and more allergies every year? The experts have all sorts of explanations about the air and the water and the foods and the allergists have a field day, fielding hundreds of younger patients walking through their doors sneezing bucket full of their inhales. So, one SHOULD wonder why?

Applying the Occam’s Razor to this whole thing, I find an easy and simple understanding behind this scourge. There is 1 in 13 children who has allergy to one or more foods. Centers for Disease Control & Prevention reports that the prevalence of food allergy in children increased by 50 percent between 1997 and 2011. Between 1997 and 2008, the prevalence of peanut or tree nut allergy appears to have more than tripled in U.S. children. Alarming to say the least. Again, one has to ask the question, WHY?

The Silver spoon comes to mind. The society is so fearful of infections that parents treat their children as bubble children. “Don’t touch that, don’t eat this!” A common refrain. Children are kept away from peanuts and other foods because of the risk of allergies. Airlines don’t even hand them out, in case someone might touch the feared hypersensitizing monster out of the shell. But it appears that, that might be the very cause of the allergies later. The young child never having being exposed to the offending agent, when he or she finally comes in contact with it, the antibodies come out in droves. The B cells having ever tasted the offending epitope realize the body is under attack, liberate tons of immunoglobulins, and the battle ensues within as the T cells arrive to partake in the battle royal.

Why would the Immune cells be so primed, you might ask?  Easy Watson! We as a society are correctly concerned with viruses and their wrath. The FED and the States have mandated various and sundry vaccination schedules on the children. These vaccination schedules incorporate multiple doses of vaccines starting from the age of zero to 9 years. The immune system is jazzed to protect against these viruses but anamnestic responses to other antigens because of minor mismatch between the viral shell and the say the peanut epitope can cause a horrendous hypersensitivity reaction (or anaphylaxis) landing a child in the hospital needing emergency epinephrine. Parents with children with allergies carry expensive Epipens (There is story of financial fraud upon patients here that has been reported through the years) as a safeguard against such an event to save their child’s life.

How do we fix this problem? Perhaps let children be children and let them play outdoors, breathe fresh air, feel the earth and experience the antigens in small doses to be resistant to such maladies when they grow up. A study about exposure to cow’s milk at an early age 2-4 months reduced the risk of cow’s milk allergy later in life, sets the stage well. Ruchi Gupta, MD wrote an editorial suggesting exactly this, that early exposure even during pregnancy if a mother consumes peanuts the child will grow to have no risk of developing the allergy to the peanuts later due to the antibodies exposed to the infant and their immune system's recognition of the same through the placenta. (READ)
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20541249 

Perhaps the Austrian doctor was right when he wrote that children who eat their boogers have stronger immune systems. It was further corroborated by the American Society of Microbiology and reported in this study by the NIH paper (READ). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25344244

We are well past the time of the wisdom of the Azande people of Central Africa who believed that the burnt skull of the red bush monkey was an effective treatment of epilepsy as equally we are well past the pronouncement that early through late life avoidance of peanuts (for instance) prevents hypersensitivities. Quite the contrary, small exposures strengthen the immune system against the potential allergen and the immune system recognizes the allergen and accepts it rather than rejects it. The current treatment after acquiring an allergy to a food substance is to desensitize it by slow incremental addition to the food product in the diet. There that should tell it all!

Silver Spoons have their unintended consequences and we need to be aware of them. Let the children be children and go explore the world in more than a thousand different ways. As far as experts go, Chekov said it best,“When the ground beneath shifts, the first it fells are those that stand tallest in it.”

As Spock said, “ Live long and Prosper.”