Yesterday evening I spent three hours in one of the 850 theatres in 28 countries that were screening John Adams’s opera Dr Atomic , live from the Metropolitan Opera in New York.
Gerald Finley as J.Robert Oppenheimer (Photo NY Met Opera)
I thoroughly enjoyed this modern opera. Set around the first U.S. atomic bomb tests in 1945, Dr Atomic explores the tensions, dilemmas, and decisions that occupied the minds of J.Robert Oppenheimer, his wife, and his project Trinity associates in the weeks, hours, and seconds leading up to the world’s first nuclear detonation.
Lines taken directly from declassified documents lent authenticity. As did a suitably sinister Atom Bomb, it’s crude complexity resembling a lash-up from a PhD lab, but radiating a pawl of edgy doom as it hung center stage.
Memorable moments along the way included the team’s sweepstake on expected explosive yield; Oppenheimer’s conservative estimate of 3kT (TNT equivalent) perhaps betraying a wishful regret that would later turn into his consuming guilt. And the other scientists, reluctant to put their money where their calculations had taken them – so massive, other, and beyond intuition were the predictions.
We also saw the quintessential moral dilemma that faces most if not all scientists at some point. When to speak up, protest, do-the-right-thing; take and act on the responsibility that knowledge has both blessed and damned you with.
Trinity
Predictably, the finale was charged with tension and poignancy. The begoggled cast stared into the audience/horizon for what seemed an eternity – as the minutes, then seconds, counted down to the detonation itself. In the final seconds, a translucent curtain descended between audience and stage with the typewritten words “give me some water” and we heard the stuttering voice of a Japanese child.
Originally, I wanted to draw attention here to Sarah Palin’s environmental credentials, lest the topic be short-changed amidst the lively discussion of her religious beliefs. This article by Britt Collins in the Guardian was the spur; liberally illustrated with quotes from Palin and others, it includes this passage – reproduced verbatim in Collins’ contextual frame with the quote attributed to Palin bolded:
She then wrote a piece for the New York Times, saying that these “magnificent cuddly white bears are doing just fine and don’t need our protection. If the ice melts, they’ll adapt to living on land”. That is a contention most scientists found reckless, given that polar bears have shown little ability to feed on land.
Endangered
But here I came unstuck, the issue being I can’t find the quote in the cited reference (New York Times). I found this article by Palin, titled ‘Bearing Up’, and covering the right topic – but the quote’s not there. Maybe it turns up eventually, but it’s an emotive quotation, not to be spread lightly, even on a blog with Zoonomian’s embryonic circulation. So while I’m not a Palin fan, and find her potential career progression deeply worrying, that’s not the point here.
It turns out the quote has itself been quoted on several blogs concerned with climate change, conservation, or just anti-Palin; sometimes there’s a reference to the Guardian – sometimes not; but all dated after the Guardian posting.
I guess the issue is how comfortable we are in relaying information which can’t be verified – at least in the short term, even when it derives from a normally trustworthy intermediary and supports our own motives.
Two real hoo-hahs have gone down in the world of UK science this week. At the British Association Festival of Science in Liverpool, the Director of Education at the Royal Society, Rev.Prof.Michael Reiss, appeared to support at least some discussion of creationism in school science classes. At the same festival, embryologist and TV science star Robert Winston stirred up journalists and festies alike with further criticism of what he sees as the irresponsible behaviour of the super-atheist clan (Dawkins, Harris, Hitchens et al). This post relates to the Reiss storm; here is a podcast featuring Reiss that accompanied his entry on the Guardian Science Blog on 11th September, and Reiss’s pre-presentation press brief from the BA.
Compatible?
Reiss’s comments are surprising and, given his position and the ammunition he is handing to less moderate interests, politically puzzling. The arguments for and against debate of non-scientific, non-evidence-based, and logic-deficient world views in school science classes have been done to death (the comments on Reiss’s statement on the Guardian Science Blog say it all).
My personal stance is that it is important in schools to explicitly state what science is not, as well as what it is. Science is not a methodology for analysing non-evidence-based beliefs, which includes most religious beliefs as self defined. It is a separate issue if a student wants to argue a religion is evidence based; that’s a good discussion topic for the religious studies class. There would be less angst all round if boundaries, rules, and definitions were more clearly defined in this way.
It is the duty of the educational authority (in the broadest sense of the term, but here including Michael Reiss) to agree the ground rules, and to instruct and enable teachers to relay them to children at the start of term. It boils down to making sure kids know up front what science is and what it is not.
There are two reasons this has not happened. First, the authority setting the rules is itself confused over what science is; and second, there is political comfort in maintaining that ambiguity in an atmosphere where the setting of any boundary is seen as an implied attack on anything lying outside it. The first weakness may be countered with a relentless appeal to reason, defense of the scientific method, and political lobby. The second requires political courage from our leaders, faced with the inescapable truth that the intellectually honest position, without vindictive or malicious intent, will be painful to some.
Those following my interest in Cluster Headache research and the broader issues of illegal drugs in pain control and other conditions (Criminally in Pain and Criminally in Pain – Update) may like to check out two recent articles from New Scientist magazine (for the first of the online articles you will need a NS subscription).
This would represent something of a flagship breakthrough in the US; one likely to ease the path for other controversial treatments such as psilocybin for cluster headache. It would also represent a significant shift in what Doblin sees as the “the fear, the paranoia and the pathology of how the DEA [Drug Enforcement Administration] looks at things”. In this regard, the installation in November of a Democratic administration under Barack Obama, whose supporters, Senators Kennedy and Kerry, in 2007 endorsed the setting up of a medical marijuana facility, would be seen as a good thing – albeit politically motivated. Doblin shared the commercial insight that irrespective of the legal position there is still the task of motivating pharmaceutical companies to develop treatments based on drugs that are often both unpatentable and competing with their own products.
On a personal note, during my first visit to Venice Beach last week, it was a depressing endorsement of the ‘anti’ lobby to find hot-pantied girls with cannabis plant wristbands openly soliciting passers-by to partake of ‘medical marijuana’. Fascinating stretch of beachfront, but not helping the science go forward.
The second feature by Rachel Nowak (NS 6Sept 2008) describes the inadequate provision of opioids for the treatment of pain in terminal patients living in countries outside Europe and the USA. Nowak refers to issues addressed at two recent forums: the World Congress on Pain, and the World Cancer Summit, and cites the statistic that less than 1% of Indians get the morphine they need. Key messages are that the emphasis has tended to be on prevention of abuse rather than the positive applications of opiates (some resonance here with the previous article) , and that restricting prescription priviledges to doctors only is unworkable in regions of Africa and Asia.
Latest Update 15th September 2008
Federal Court Rules Against Bush Administration’s Subversion of California’s Medical [Cannabis] Laws
With reference to my post Criminally in Pain, this Guardian article shows just how messed up the medicinal cannabis story has become in the USA. In a nutshell: the State endorses, the Federal Government prohibits. Not helping the debate over Psilocybin and headaches.
Latest position 15 September 2008
Federal Court Rules Against Bush Administration’s Subversion of California’s Medical [Cannabis] Laws
Earlier this year I captured some thoughts on the plight of cluster headache sufferers and issues raised by research into a particular drug for its treatment. I’ve updated the original article with only a few changes as, unfortunately, nothing much seems to have progressed….
While society vacillates over the role of controlled drugs in medicine, the devastating pain of cluster headache is driving some sufferers to the ‘magic’ of the psilocybin mushroom, turning them into lawbreakers of the highest order.
More Than A Headache
Imagine being taken out of normal life for two or three months every year and, for an hour or more every day, having metal spikes driven through your eye socket and into your brain – all with no anaesthetic!
The metal spikes are dilating blood vessels pressing against the trigeminal nerve, sending an acute, disabling pain down the side of your head; but the analogy well describes cluster headache – a rare but devastating condition for its 10,000 or so UK sufferers.
Drugs are of some help, when they work, but side effects can be serious and unpleasant. As a result, some self-tagged ‘cluster heads’: a highly motivated collective of networked self-helpers, are pushing the boundaries on what they’re prepared to try for some respite. And that can include self-medication with unconventional substances like the psilocybin found in ‘magic’ mushrooms, a practice carrying its own side-effects – of a legal nature.
There are similar, more widely publicised, issues around medicinal cannabis, another drug that despite its illegality sufferers find effective for a variety of conditions from nausea to multiple sclerosis.
It’s not just recreational consumption of the psychedelic neurotransmitters psilocybin and psilocin found in the mushrooms that’s banned, but serious research too. That’s the case in the USA and the UK, where, as a Class A drug, psilocybin users and would-be researchers alike risk lengthy seven-year prison terms.
Despite this gloomy background, there was a ray of hope in 2006, when Harvard researchers Dr Andrew Sewell and Dr John Halpern published survey results taken from 53 cluster sufferers who were also illicit users of psilocybin and LSD.
Psilocybe cubensis (Wikicommons)
The positive indicators from the study were put forward as justification for full clinical trials, with a view, ultimately, to the drug attaining legal prescription status. Yet, two years on in 2008, with the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) still refusing trials, it doesn’t look like psilocybin will be joining the list of approved cluster headache remedies afterall.
Sewell and Halpern put the reluctance down to over politicisation of the ‘War on Drugs‘. And for sure, this does look like an inflexible policy approach holding back the valid scientific study of psychedelics, leaving legitimate patients as the real victims.
Until that changes, probably the best advice for sufferers persisting with mushroom self-medication is to keep one bloodshot eye firmly on the door.
Find Out More
Here’s a video of a guy suffering a Cluster Headache attack. Not pleasant.
OUCH – Organisation for the Understanding of Cluster Headache
Interesting video interview from February 2013 that discusses use of psychedelic drugs and particularly psilocybin for medical applications including treatment of depression and helping end-of-life cancer patients: Dr. Robin Carhart-Harris – Psychedelics as Medicine | London Real http://www.londonreal.tv/episodes/dr-robin-carhart-harris-psychedelics-as-medicine/
Feb 2017
In The Atlantic: The Life-changing magic of mushrooms https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/12/the-life-changing-magic-of-mushrooms/509246/?
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