Did the CIA spike a bakery in France with hallucinogens?

// August 27th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Drugs, Poisons, Sex and Reproduction, The Realm of Bizzare, Unethics

On August 15, 1951 a small town in southern France called Pont-Saint-Esprit briefly entered the twilight zone. Hundreds of people reported acute psychotic episodes and physical symptoms such as nausea. They experienced traumatic hallucinations, and 50 of those affected were put in asylums. Five died. The event was later traced back to pain maudit – cursed bread.

In 2009 American journalist Hank Albarelli cited evidence that it was actually caused by CIA experiments into LSD. His book A Terrible Mistakesuggests the mass hallucinations experienced that day was a government funded field experiment into the newly found drug.

There would be potential for LSD to be used as chemical warfare – sprayed onto an army it would turn soldiers into… well… I don’t know but with guns involved I think it would be bad. I’m not sure if his conclusion is correct, but his article makes a compelling argument.

I have to say, conspiracy theories really do it for me. I think they’re great. Nothing like a little paranoia to keep you on your toes. There are, however, other opinions on what caused the Pont-Saint-Esprit madness.

One explanation is ergotism. Ergot is a group of fungi (most prominently Claviceps purpurea) which grow on rye, wheat and related grain-producing when-I-grow-up-I-want-to-be-bread plants. The fungus produces a neat little cocktail of alkaloid drugs which cause spasms, diarrhea, nausea and hallucinations – similar to those experienced at Pont-Saint-Esprit that fateful day.

In fact, the psychosis could have been caused by ergot or LSD, both have similar symptoms. LSD was first derived from the ergot alkaloid ergotamine. Controlled doses of ergot poisons have been used to treat migraine headaches and control bleeding after childbirth. Accidental, and dangerous, ingestion of ergot was known as Saint Anthony’s Fire (not to be confused with Saint Elmo’s Fire) for the monks of Saint Anthony who were really good at treating it. Ergotism was also blamed for Agent Scully’s hallucinations in the episode Never Again, where she gets a badass tattoo with some red ink that could have been coloured with ergot.

Greek myth time! In Ancient Greece annual initiation ceremonies were held for the cult of Persephone and Demeter. Demeter was the goddess of grain, farming and plenty, a bit of an Earth mother goddess with rich wheat coloured hair and a flowing dress. She guaranteed a good harvest. She had a daughter called Persephone, who loved the flowers. One day when Persephone was looking at some flowers in a field, Hades the god of the underworld noticed her, opened up the ground and abducted her. When Demeter noticed her daughter was gone, she was stricken with grief and refused to bring the harvest.

Persephone was trapped in the underworld for months on end. Desperate for her hand in marriage, Hades would offer her food, but Persephone know not to eat the food of the dead or she would never be able to leave. However one day Hades offered her a pomegranate, her favourite dish, and she ate six seeds.

Up in the mortal world, the land was dying. People were starving, having never experienced such famine. No matter how they prayed to the goddess she would not bring the harvest. Seeing the despair of the people, Zeus the king of the gods went down to his brother Hades and asked if he could bring Persephone back to her mother. Awkward conversation ensued.

Hades finally agreed, but oh noes! Persephone had eaten the food of the dead! The six pomegranate seeds meant that she had to spend six months of the year in the underworld as Hades wife. The other six months she would live with Demeter her mother. That’s why we have the seasons – autumn and winter when Demeter mourns, spring and summer when Demeter is reunited with her daughter.

Anyhoo, to be initiated into the Demeter and Persephone cult was called the Eleusinian Mysteries, some mysteries including this myth with added details. I think some of the mysteries included the use of pomegranate as a contraceptive (the link between fertility and death, perhaps.) You also had to fast during the initiation, and afterwards you would drink a barley drink called Kykeon and great revelations would be revealed.

Kykeon, made of barley, quite possibly tainted with ergot. Revelation or hallucination, you tell me.

Frilled dinosaur Mojoceratops is groovy baby, yeah

// July 11th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Recent Research, Sex and Reproduction

Mojo: The libido. The life force. The essence. The right stuff. What the French call a certain… I don’t know what.

Mojoceratops was discovered when Nicholas Longrich from Yale University was looking at existing fossils from American Museum of Natural History in New York. They had been classified as another species, Chasmosaurus, but Nicholas believed they were something else. Dinosaur, thy name is Mojo.

Mojoceratops was about the size of a hippo and roamed the Alberta and Saskatchewan provinces of Canada around 75 million years ago. It nommed on plants only, like its relative the Triceratops. Anyone else having a flashback to the Land Before Time? Ducky was my favourite. That movie was epic. Anyway…

Most striking is the frill. All the Ceratopsids had frills, but Mojo’s was the largest and the most heart shaped. Nicholas thinks it was used for sexual courtship. The right side of the frill is larger than the left side, which indicates it was a display or weapon under intense selection. The same kind of asymmetry is also seen in deer antlers. Sexual selection fail though, the species only lasted for a million years. Did they lose their mojo?

Mojo means a talisman for attracting members of the opposite sex. Of course, Nicholas first came up with the name after having a few drinks. “It was just a joke, but then everyone stopped and looked at each other and said, ‘Wait — that actually sounds cool’ ” he said. Yes, yes it does. I think I have a new favourite dinosaur.

Longrich, Nicholas R. (2010). Mojoceratops perifania, A New Chasmosaurine Ceratopsid from the Late Campanian of Western Canada. Journal of Paleontology, 84 (4), 681-694

Female babies respond to pregnancy stress, male babies don’t

// May 2nd, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Recent Research, Sex and Reproduction

Image by bettina n

Being stressed is not good for a pregnant mother, but how the baby reacts to the stress depends partly on its gender. Research led by Vicki Clifton from the University of Adelaide is finding out how stress changes the way babies develop.

When you’re pregnant, I imagine anything can stress you out. Were I up the duff (which I am not), I would most certainly stress about demon possessions… I can’t help but think of Omen and the Ring.

But it’s not just the mind. Asthma attacks, smoking and pre-eclampsia can put pregnant bodies under stress. The mother can communicate that stress to the baby while it’s still in the womb. Cortisol, a molecule involved in stress, causes changes in the placenta – but only if the baby is female.

A female baby will slow her growth when her mother is stressed. How thoughtful! By growing slowly she takes less energy and nutrients from her mother, which the mother might need to recover.

In contrast, a male baby does not change his growth with a stressed mother. He just keeps growing as fast as he can.

At first glance, it seems like a smart move for the male baby. Mother is stressed, something might be wrong, better grow as fast as you can and get the hell outta there. Unfortunately it’s not a good option. If there’s a second stressful event, the male baby is at risk of pre-term delivery or dying in the uterus. A female baby who has curbed her growth has a better chance of surviving.

The Darwin obsessed among you might wonder what evolutionary advantage is made by females reacting better to stress. If you have any ideas let me know, because I’m stumped.

Female fiddler crabs have sex with the neighbours

// April 20th, 2010 // No Comments » // Recent Research, Sex and Reproduction

Fiddler crabs may be little, but they have one big appendage, the CLAW! A weapon if ever there was one. Like a lance or an over-sized boxing glove, something about it just screams MAN. So it fits that male fiddlers are the gender so endowed.

Females have two little feeding claws. No giant claw. No weapon of any kind. Unless, of course, you count her good looks and killer form. Turns out that’s all she needs.

This research comes from the ANU (me own university), and there’s apparently a fiddler crab expert here that I have to meet. His name is Richard Milner, and the paper was published in Biology Letters.

Richard N. C. Milner*, Michael D. Jennions and Patricia R. Y. Backwell (2009). Safe sex: male−female coalitions and pre-copulatory mate-guarding in a fiddler crab Biology Letters (6), 180-182 : 10.1098/rsbl.2009.0767

Fiddler crabs live in burrows, which are a place to hide when predators come along. Burrows are in high demand, and males will fight for squatting rights. Females can’t fight without a big-ass claw, instead they take over empty burrows.

Burrow-owning females would be sitting ducks for homeless males to come and kick them out, if it weren’t for the male next door.

Male fiddlers will defend the territory of nearby females. The study showed that if the intruder is a male, the neighbour will try to fight him off 95% of the time. That compares to just 15% of the time when the intruder was female. So male fiddlers like to be surrounded by female fiddlers. Go figure.

When picking a sexual partner, female fiddlers chose a neighbour who shares a territory border with her 85% of the time. The remaining 15% was made up of strangers, burrowless males and non-neighbour residents.

Part of that could be convenience, as females are at risk of predation while they search for a mate. Part of it could be gratitude. Part of it could be white knight syndrome, in which the big manly fiddler roughly dispenses of all piddly competition to claim the hand of the fair maiden. Damn I have a problem with personifying animals.

It boils down to one thing: Fiddlers exchange sex for protection. It makes me wonder whether some human relationships amount to much the same thing. Give me your thoughts and complete the following: Humans exchange sex for

Sexy smoky eyes prevented infections in Ancient Egypt

// April 11th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Poisons, Recent Research, Sex and Reproduction

Today I made a new video about how Kohl eye makeup may have prevented eye infections in Ancient Egypt.

Ancient Egyptian Eyes Saved Lives from Captain Skellett on Vimeo.

The video was sparked by a recent letter published in Analytical Chemistry which you can read here (at least, see the abstract. You have to pay for the rest).

Did the Ancient Egyptians know about this property? The researchers seem to think so, some of the lead compounds found in kohl do not occur naturally, and must have been man made by early chemists. The Ancient Egyptians believed that kohl around the eyes would give people protection from the gods, and it was prescribed by physicians to prevent eye infections.

Still, nowadays you should check that any Kohl you’re going to use is lead free, because you could be at risk of lead poisoning. Besides, with hygiene and antibacterials, eye infections aren’t such a big problem.

Cola lowers sperm count, study doesn’t show

// April 7th, 2010 // 5 Comments » // Science Communication, Science at Home, Sex and Reproduction

The headline “Cola lowers sperm count, study shows” popped up on ninemsn recently. Usually I don’t pay much mind to ninemsn, but they had a grizzly story about a Russians who drowned a girl, then served her as meat with a side of potatoes to her friend. They plead guilty and said they had done it because they were drunk and hungry, but they HAD POTATOES! Once they drew me in with that story, I checked out the other headlines and stumbled across the cola article.

And I quote: “If you’re trying to have a baby, it might be a good idea to keep an eye on your partner’s cola intake, as a Danish researchers have found that big cola drinkers can have sperm counts up to 30 percent lower than normal.”

I have issues with the cola article.

The research paper is in the advance issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology, and you can read it here. They found that people with a high cola intake had lower sperm count. That doesn’t mean drinking lots of cola CAUSES low sperm count.

Towards the end it reads: “High-quantity consumers of cola or caffeine had an unhealthier lifestyle, which has previously been associated with poorer semen quality”. So is the low sperm count because of the cola or the lifestyle? The researchers considered the diet factor and wrote that it did not explain the correlation, but the report didn’t include any details on how they considered diet so it’s impossible to say if it was accurate.

High cola intake and low sperm count could both be caused by an unhealthy lifestyle. Other things that could cause them are discussed in the report, which reads: “High caffeine and cola consumption may also be related to in utero exposure to caffeine, working in a sedentary position, being less physical active, or being more stressed, variables that have previously been associated with poorer semen quality. Unfortunately, we did not obtain information about these factors.”

Any of these things or something else entirely could cause both high cola intake and low sperm count. Although drinking lots of cola can be correlated to having a lower sperm count, it damn sure doesn’t mean “cola lowers sperm count, study shows.” The study doesn’t show that at all, to me it doesn’t say anything that we didn’t already know.

Granted, ninemsn did write at the very bottom that the results couldn’t be separated from other lifestyle factors. Still, the article still reads like it’s big scary news. Going at it with an angle like “Ooh, don’t let your husbands drink cola, ladies” is just bad science. Walk the plank.

Koalas catch Chlamydia

// March 27th, 2010 // 4 Comments » // Sex and Reproduction

Sitting up in their gumtrees, watching the world with little eyes set above the kind of nose you’d expect to find in a craft store. The koala’s fuzzy gray head is adorned with furry white ears, and the end result is a huge bundle of cute that makes you want to squeal.

Of course, being an Australian I know our cute koala isn’t as cuddly as it looks. Okay, it is when you actually get to cuddle one at the zoo. Otherwise they’re just plain vicious. Behind those fuzzy paws are some serious claws. They’re surprisingly fast on the ground, and they grunt in the night like a bush pig in a trap. Freaking terrifying to a twelve year old in a tent, let me tell you.

All the same I like koalas. They be fearsome.

Over a mug o’ rum this week, a friend told me an alarming tale about koalas. She said they catch Chlamydia because they are so promiscuous. It gives them a runny bottom, and makes them infertile.

I haven’t found much evidence that koalas sleep around. But they do have weird special sexual organs. Instead of having one head, a koala penis has two. The female has two internal vagina (vaginas?). The sciencey term for the double dippers is “bifurcated” and lots of marsupials are that way endowed. In fact the echidna penis has four heads!

As for Chlamydia, yes, koalas catch it. There are two strains which infect koalas. C. pneumoniae which humans can also catch, and is one of the leading causes of pneumonia in the world, and C. pecorum which some other animals get and causes urinary tract and respiratory infections. Although 40-70% of koalas test positive for Chlamydia, less than a quarter of them have symptoms at any one time. (Just to be complicated, the C in those names stands for Chlamydophila, a separate but very similar genus to Chlamydia. Same thing, different word says I.)

Chlamydia is a bacteria which acts like a virus. It has the usual cell wall, DNA, RNA, protein concoction that bacteria are so fond of, but unlike most bacteria it can’t grow by itself. To reproduce it has to hijack the machinery of another cell (like a human or koala cell). That’s how viruses roll.

It’s bad news for the koalas, as the cure for Chlamydia is a course of antibiotics taken daily – hard to do in the wild.

Meet half-hen half-rooster all-awesome chicken

// March 14th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Sex and Reproduction, The Realm of Bizzare

While we’re on the topic of gender bending animals, this chicken is half-hen and half-rooster. Epic.

Ed Yong wrote about it a couple of days ago, but apparently it was a very complex paper and I didn’t get his explanation. So without further ado, have some speculation from yours truly!

In humans, most of your cells are gender neutral. Sure, they’ll have the sex chromosomes in there, good old X and Y (or just XX if your a lady pirate like m’self). But those chromosomes don’t much matter to them. It’s hormones that control development. Pump in some female hormones and a man will grow lovely lady lumps. Pump male hormones into females and they’ll get a chestal region of the flat and hairy variety. Hormones hormones hormones.

Chickens are not people.

Chickens don’t have X’s and Y’s. They have Z’s and W’s, where ZZ=male and ZW=female. A bit like frogs, which are also a gender murky species imho.

In a chicken it matters what the cell is. If a chicken with ZW chromosomes is pumped full of male testosterone, it still looks like a hen. I think. That’s my understanding! Not to say that hormones have absolutely no effect, they’re still an important part of chicken life. They’re just not as important for defining gender when the chick goes through puberty.

The chicken above is the result of an experiment where they injected some female cells into a male embryo. One side ended up with more female cells and the other had more male cells. Voila.

DNA dating websites – the genetics of love

// February 5th, 2010 // 3 Comments » // Just for Fun, Sex and Reproduction

A new brand of “scientific” dating has sprouted up. It draws on an idea wrote about in the Chemistry of Kissing – basically, you have more snap, crackle and pop with someone who has an immune system very different to your own. Through your genes combined, the resulting offspring will have a stronger, more diverse immune system giving them an evolutionary advantage. Now this idea has been monetized to bring you GenePartner DNA Matching, because love is no coincidence.

For $99 US you get a kit so you can take a saliva sample and send it back to them for analysis. Two weeks later you’ll have your results, they’ll build up a profile for you, and you can start finding your perfect genetic match! *love*

What a service they offer too! They match partners based not only on how attracted you will be to them, but also how attracted they’ll be to you.

Plus they give you the probability of a successful pregnancy – which just feels like jumping the gun a bit to me. Really, you haven’t even MET the person and you want to know how likely it is you’ll get pregnant. I understand it’s super-important to some people, but it’s a bit ridiculous to expect a test like this to tell you about such a complicated thing as fertility.

The other bonus they list is that their site will prevent inbreeding. Then again I think the chances of accidentally inbreeding are pretty small. The world’s a big place, and most people know to look for a partner outside of their living room.

Honestly, DNA Dating, what will they think of next? Is there anything else they can cram science into in order to sell love?

Actually it reminds me of Gattaca, where they have booths set up where you can analyse stolen DNA from your lips after a kiss, or from the hair sample you swiped, if you’re that way inclined.

Arr!!! I think there be nothing wrong with the old fashioned method of kissing people, it’s cheaper! Who’s with me?

Catching cancer part two – HPV infection versus the face of Tasmanian Devils

// January 2nd, 2010 // 5 Comments » // How Things Work, Sex and Reproduction

Following on from yesterday’s post about the Tasmanian Devils, this is all about HPV – a highly infectious virus that can cause cancer (well, sort of. Read on.)

The Human Papillomavirus is crazy infectious – around three out of four women will have it at some time in their lives. That’s a LOT of people considering it’s transmitted sexually – ‘specially when you consider people who get married before sex and nuns and what not. It’s spread by skin to skin contact in the genital region, so a condom won’t completely protect you. Cling wrap all around the nether regions is what you need to stop this ninja virus. The stealthy, sneaky sonbich could be anywhere, including in your cells right now.

HPV infects the epidermis and can cause nothing, warts, or cancer. Most HPV just loiters around and is eventually cast out by your hard-core immune system, making you a lucky carrier! Some forms of HPV cause genital warts, an unpleasant and unattractive affliction which is nevertheless treatable. Other types are associated with cervical (and anal, vaginal and penile) cancers. Cervical cancer is the second most frequent cancer in women worldwide.

How does a virus cause cancer? Well, to put it simply, it messes with the cell cycle. Before your cell divides, it checks that things are okay – it checks the DNA for any mistakes (p53 is a protein involved in this) and it makes sure it has enough proteins to go ahead without making more mistakes (pRB is the man for this.) The virus produces two proteins – E6 and E7 that bind to p53 and pRB respectively, and inactivates them. This means your cell can replicate without the proper checks (good for the virus), leading to more cancerous changes. p53 in particular is a famous tumor suppressant, and messing with it can lead to out of control replication and chromosomal instability. In some cases, the virus DNA can insert itself into your normal DNA – then there’s no getting rid of it.

The journey to cancer takes around 10 years and a number of other cell mutations. Very different to the Tasmanian Devil face tumors in which the cancer is directly infectious. When I say “HPV causes cancer” I actually mean certain types of HPV can cause pre-cancerous changes in a cell which could one day lead to cancer. Think of it as the first mutation…

Freaked out? Well good news! There is a vaccine! Two actually, Cervarix and Gardasil protect against HPV types 16 and 18, which cause 70% of cervical cancers. Gardasil also protects against most genital warts by coinkidink. That doesn’t mean you can stop getting pap smears ladies. Still gotta do that. Sucks to be us.

This is a very cool vaccine though – in one generation of women (in the developed world they immunised at the age of 12, hope it’s available to developing countries as well), we could eliminate 70% of cervical cancer cases. That’s freaking fantastic! Oh, and HPV isn’t the only virus that can lead to cancer. Hepatitis can cause liver cancer, and Epstein-Barr Virus, lymphoma. We’ve got vaccines against Hepatitis viruses too!

A parting tip, swanky statistics available from WHO. And don’t type HPV into google images. Not cool guys… not cool.