one great keynote speech

Ever since I encountered the peas and Mendel, genetics have (has?) fascinated me. And then I took a class in psychology and got even more interested. The whole idea of genetics, penetration of inheritance and dominant alleles seemed so logical at the first glance. I like logic. I like to calculate prediction. It all seemed so easy with the green and yellow peas.

Then I took psych 201, and genetics 401... and then the waters got muddled. Why? Well, mainly since there are many alleles that work together (I know, so odd... duh). And the notion that penetrance is very variable (in many cases). The fact that many diseases, or illnesses or syndromes (which ever word to choose) are multi-factorial reared its head made things less black and white and more grey.

It's one of the reasons I guess I like the Glenn Close infomercial as much as I do. I know, it's not really a "Glenn Close infomercial". It's the "Bring change 2 mind infomercial". About diagnosable mental illnesses. And the stigma associated with this type of illness. Mainly (?) due to all the wonderful movies and books about serial killers and other heinous criminals who usually suffer from a mental illness and therefore makes it easy to easily think that "the person diagnosed with either illness is therefore unfit and dangerous to either society or people around them". Not that this is necessarily untrue in certain cases. However, looking at the statistics the person mostly likely to come to harm is the person affected by the illness... and the family by proxy (mainly due to stigma as well as being the responsible one for the care taking... and therefore also affected by stigma).

I admire Glenn Close (she also was Keynote speaker at the Conference of Neuroscience 2010 in San Diego in November 2010). (in the last link, you can click and hear the speech, which is one of the best ones I've heard....If you have time, I really recommend it. Especially since her sister and nephew are speaking too - very powerful. And the principals in the end - about 1 hour in the video, just in the end of the speech. The doctors in the discussion part of the opening also mentions the fact that the number of suicides in the US today is still very high - and wonder what would happen if it wasn't as much of a stigma associated with mental illness... and, as I previously mentioned above, that most people affected by these type of illnesses do harm to themselves primarily, not others.) In fact, I admire all of the people in the infomercial who wore the t-shirt either saying "Name of the illness" or "relative of illness". And all this in the middle of Grand Central Station in New York, and being filmed to put on country wide tv spots.

Main problem, imho, would be that people "know" that mental illness is genetic, and inherited, and therefore if you tell someone that someone in your family is affected... it means you may be affected too... and that makes you a loony... (or, as some of us would like to call it - an affected individual). And who wants to be with a non-perfect person who is genetically at risk for being ill? Never mind the little thing that a) it can be medicated and treated b) penetrance is usually not 100% so you don't know if you are the person affected... or might never be... if this makes a difference?

This may be one of the reasons why it's so hard for people who go through things like this to tell friends (or others). "Out themselves and others". It's so much more than only telling of "my father had a heart attack" (don't many people get that?) or "my mother has high blood pressure" (that's affected by weight and stress, right?)... not to mention that telling about your family means you're telling "someone elses secret while explaining what you go through". Not an easy thing to deal with.

Numbers mentioned in the speech are that 1 in 4 is affected by mental illness, when you consider families. Interesting. It's like that everyone has a drunk uncle/aunt at the wedding party.... right?

(note; I know this is a few months late, I just forgot about writing a post about it back in November)

Hockey pool week 20

(In my Inbox earlier tonight.... " *cough* hockey pool update *cough* ") ... Thanks for the reminder Cath!! :)

So, the abysmal (hrm) I mean Wonderful week of 20 in this hockey pool sees us with Bob being the winner of the week; Woho! Lavaland coming in on a second place, Cath and Thomas sharing third (very close with 26 points), Ricardipus fifth, ScientistMother and myself barely not sharing last place with Gerty (only one point difference so.... not too far at all there).

Overall the slopes are looking better than last week.... Lavaland in a certain lead, Bob getting into second place (Ricardipus moving back a place to third). A gaggle of geese in the middle (trying out when I can use this wonderful phrase) and Thomas picking up the best slope for the week (if you look at the picture imho). Gerty and I are feeling the pressure (well, I am at least... dropping from my nice slopes in the beginning and all... hmmm.)

(and I am really terrible at making graphs in numbers.... sorry about this non-fancy one).

dress rehearsal of the call...

I found out a while back that the mother of one of my friends was released from the hospital since "there was nothing more they could do, the chemo didn't work". My friend doesn't know when to leave her current location - she doesn't live in the same city - and to go back to her parents and be with them. It's not across the ocean but the dilemma is the same... when do you leave all you have to go back to family? When to take out that saved vacation, the unpaid leave, or simply leaving the job behind to your co-workers?

(rest gone to poof due to too private stuff. but it¨s why I haven't been posting for a while. need to figure out things.)

non sequiteur [Goddag yxskaft]

I like the Scandinavian saying much more - "Goddag, yxskaft" - it has a whole story behind it. I've tried to find the translated version somewhere but failed and figured I could make my own translation to share the fun*.

A man is sitting by the road working on a shaft to an ax; you know, carving with a knife and trying to make it smooth and fit properly. He has slightly bad hearing and when he sees a man walking towards him he decides what he will answer, since he already knows (he thinks) what the questions will be.

A: He'll ask "what are you doing?" And I'll answer "shaft for the ax". Then he'll ask "how far to the city?", and I'll answer "2 kilometers" and then he'll ask "which way to turn to get to the city" and I'll say "towards left".

Said and done. the passing man (B) comes up to the man with the ax (A).

B Good day ['Goddag']
A Shaft for an axe ['yxskaft']
B Eh, that's a long one
A 2 kilometers
B Are you a bit drunk? (maybe more "are you not screwed on properly" or 'are you a bit turned/crazy]")
A Towards the left

In short, person A and B are not communicating. In the story of course, it's said that A doesn't have proper hearing (i.e. deaf) but other explanations are offered. I mean, clearly he has already decided what the other person will ask... and therefore... he answers without listening or trying to listen to what B says.
Sometimes I wonder about the focused listening and actually paying attention to the person talking to you. (And also the added not scattered "I'm texting/reading email/shuffling paper but sure I hear what you say" since it's not the same thing as listening and acknowledging you've heard what the other person said.) Simply stated: "actually listen to what the other person is saying and confirming that".**

When I was in high school we were even taught this thing called "How to communicate; Sender and Receiver". In order for the communication to run smoothly, the Receiver has to pick up on something that the sender said, often actually repeat parts of it to make sure the Sender understands that the Receiver has listened and therefore acknowledges that sentences.

(Fairly common practice if you do short wave radio transmission or even have been in the military. "Go to the hill to the left! -Hill to the left, yes sir") Many people are taught part of this as "just repeat the last sentence or some words to indicate you are listening to A". (Note, some people will use this as a ruse to pretend they are communicating. Actually, they are simply making the other person feeling good/avoiding being called out on not paying attention but it's not as obvious as not even trying to feign interest.)

It's not as complicated as I make it in text. It's not something you need to do every time, but - most often when there is a conflict between people - there is a disconnect between what person A said and what person B thought they heard. Not to mention, what A heard B say in response to the interpretation of what A said.... or what A thought B said....***

When you think about it like this, it's amazing there aren't more implosions all over. Or maybe there is?!

And yes, I would like to point out that it isn't always crucial what B answers but that B acknowledges what A said. There's a difference. And that not answering at all usually means that the Sender doesn't know anything since it is hard (impossible?) to know what someone thinks if they don't say anything. Being heard is more important than being ignored. Best of all though, is being understood. Of course, as I have stated before, we do not live in a perfect world...


*fun might be a bit overstating it but it's an explanation of the saying if nothing else
** meeting notes could be one example of this... where it is in writing "this was decided" since everyone might not agree on what they remember being decided...
*** sometimes a "third party" - an Interpreter/Listener - can be helpful to suss out the difference between "what A said" and "what B heard"

Playing (paying?) doctor

I bought the Atlantic for my recent transatlantic flight and got some interesting stuff to ponder up there in the blue wonder… One of the articles made me think yet again about the problems regarding the “working with/in pharma” (also known as "evil pharma" or "Pentex") and since I am – sort of – working in pharma now, have worked with pharma before (all in all more than three different companies and various outcomes*) I think it would be one of those things we scientists should be honestly talking about. Not to mention the publishers, as mentioned in the article for example.

It’s not only the MDs who get fringes and benefits from working with a special company… in order to be more likely to write a prescription with that specific drug" (sometimes not even intentional)… no… there are a bunch of PhDs doing some (imho) things on the shadier side of murky.

It’s all part of the “full disclosure thing” . I’m sure it happens in the lab not joined with the company too, it’s just that I am annoyed with all this “put your name under this article and we’ll give you some money for your research”. I can’t say I’m shocked – just tired that people who live on having “a good reputation” would go for this. And the damage that is done to the reputation of a whole community in the end...

And then the poor medical writers, I guess part of me would want to call them “ArtDirectors” or “Publicists” since they do more of the “polish and sell” than “telling the truth” or even "telling the whole story". Again, it would be a better feeling in me if the journals that publish this would be open about it, pull the papers and – especially now in this day and age when all different kinds of people go out on the internet to get informed decisions(tm) - make up their mind about stuff it would be very important to make it clear that some of these articles are Retracted and not telling the whole story.

Then again, I live in fantasy land where words like integrity and honesty are valid words that are cared about. I do know though, that the words money and successful are often more important and the driving force for plenty … not that they are mutually exclusive... but they aren't really hard-linked all the time in the world I see.

I'm left with the qoute from the end of the article: “They are well-paid technicians who perform a specialized service for their clients, often without a whole lot of agonizing about the ethics. Even if writers were to cultivate a little moral anguish, they probably could not do a lot with it. Like lobbyists, public-relations consultants, and hit men, medical writers are instruments in a much larger enterprise. Their moral problem lies in the structure of the job itself.”

It might be a bit harsh, then again – I never said I wanted to be a grey scale person all the time.



*I could say that one company wanted the study to get pulled, i.e. not published since the desired effect [they'd wanted] wasn’t observed. One company sort of wanted some of the data pulled and not mentioned even done… since it was “difficult to sell it as a good spin” and one company said “let’s just show what we got and live with it – it’s not like other companies have 100% success rate either”. As long as you are aware of what you are ok with as a scientist (and for your track record) I think you should be fine. But it is always important to suss out details BEFORE agreeing to do a study that will take time and effort and if you won’t be able to publish unless you get the desired outcome – be sure you are ok with that… [read; have some other research going at the same time]