Why Does Slate Think Basic Biology is Esoteric?

The news for today is not that the Supreme Count unanimously ruled against patenting naturally occurring genes in the Myriad case. At least, I saw that as such an obvious no-brainer that my fingers will not type a sentence that unequivocally states that such an item is actual news. No, the surprising part was in the Slate article I read on it, ostensibly about Justice Scalia's ignorance of the science, a key paragraph clearly condemns us all:

To Scalia’s credit, the science in Myriad is convoluted, especially for someone who hasn’t taken biology in decades. Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the majority opinion, takes an admirable stab at elucidating it at the outset, explaining the basics of genes, chromosomes, and “the familiar ‘double helix.’ ” He even expounds upon nucleotides for a time, penning what must be the most esoteric sentence in the court’s modern history: “[T]he nucleotide cross-bars are chemically connected to a sugar-phosphate backbone.” (One suspects Thomas was less than enthused to be assigned this case.)

I'm left spluttering at the idea that a high-school biology sentence (which I italicized in the quote above) can be classified as "most esoteric" in any way. That is about as straightforward a description of DNA structure as you can get. It's probably at about the level of the letter Francis Crick wrote to his 5th-grade son describing the Watson-Crick DNA structure.

I don't want to name the particular author because it's not about that one author -- there's an editor, there's a readership, there's a whole culture implicated here, including me, because it's my job to let everyone know how this stuff works. It's about a whole culture that depends upon, even worships, science, and yet considers the word "nucleotide" to be excruciatingly esoteric, even boring. And that's the worst word in that sentence, folks. All of the other words are numbingly common. In fact, to me, those other words are the boring ones.

Power to the people through general biology and chemistry courses required for all college grads! Those courses are crucial. We need to understand how genes work, and I need to teach my students to the utmost end of my ability to prepare them for a world in which they will need to know DNA structure to understand Supreme Court rulings. Their language needs to include the word "nucleotide."

Also, the polticial angle in the wording of the headline: in my view Scalia is not being ignorant here -- he's being honest about his own limits in the face of complicated science. The article is clear on this, but the headline is not, and I have the feeling that an anonymous editor is more responsible for that tone than the byline author.

On the other hand, come on, the science is really not all that complicated, not compared to thousands of daily tasks. It's just that it seems complicated because it is not a daily task to you. That's fine, but we've got to try and address that, perhaps by making it closer to a daily task to use the word "nucleotide." You have a citizen's responsibility to learn biochemistry, just as I do to learn law. I promise not to be bored by law if you promise the same for my topic!

Morality in the Language of Barks

It appears that dogs can detect injustice and be upset about it:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/12/081208-dogs-envy.html

(Note that the article calls this "envy" but I prefer "injustice".)

Remember Jesus' parable in which the workers who only work at the very end of the workday get the same amount as those who worked all day? Well, it should be no surprise that the ones who worked all day were upset. Even a dog can detect that kind of injustice.

Just in the case of the parable, it's a graceful injustice, given as a good gift to those who don't deserve it. Being upset may be a natural reaction, but it's still not right!

Wonder what the dogs would think of that?

[This post cannot yet be translated by Google into "woofs" and "barks" for Man's Best Friend, but I expect that capability to happen soon ... ]

The Criminal Isomer

One of my readers has pointed out that most of my news posts seem to be about food. Since it appears I've found my voice in that respect, here's another food-related news item: it seems our county (King County) is considering outlawing trans fats. This makes about as much sense as banning all liquids from airplanes. (Oh, wait ... ) The worst of it all is it may change how local institution Dick's Drive In makes their fries:

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/texis.cgi/web/vortex/display?slug=transfat10m&date=20070710&query=trans+fat

Let me just make one simple point here. If trans fats are so bad that they must be outlawed, why is it that Dick's Drive In has prospered selling these things for decades? Why force them to change? Is the cost that hidden? Or are we making mountains out of molehills?

I don't doubt that trans fats are bad for you, but I doubt they're so bad for you they require government intervention.

"I don't care if you eat French fries," said Seattle City Councilmember Sally Clark, a member of the health board. But when they're fried in trans fat, she said, "I end up paying for your heart disease. It's costing us money."

My question in response is, how do you really know, and how much of an extra economic burden can be traced to trans fats? There's a hidden cost to government regulation, especially if it's of something that doesn't need to be regulated. And I don't want my council members turning everything into a monetary calculation. If you want to get down to that, the atoms in each human body is worth, what, 93 bucks or something? Just because you can put a number on it doesn't mean you've correctly assessed risk.

What's next? The ATF becomes the ATFTF (Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Trans Fats)?

The chemistry behind this is that trans fats are artifically formed isomers of real fats: they're real fat twisted just a bit. Flipping a real fat (a cis fat) into a trans configuration actually only takes a small amount of energy, the amount required to break and re-form a carbon-carbon double bond. In fact, even in wholly natural substances, regular heat is enough to flip a few of those bonds. Therefore, a trace amount of the unsaturated fats will have isomerized and turned into trans fats. Depending on how the ban is worded, we could be outlawing ... pretty much everything with fat.

Come on, then. We all need some fats for our cell's membranes. Or as a friend of mine used to say, we need enough cholesterol to make sure our arteries don't start collapsing from lack of wall structure.

All I can say practically is, I will be watching very closely how any ban is worded, and I will vote accordingly. Scary, I know. Oh, and I can blog about it. That should at least lower my blood pressure. Thanks, blogspot. Think of how much money that just saved the community at large!!

SPLENDA IS MADE FROM SUGAR

There. I said it. I disagree wholeheartedly with the outcome of the following case, as the Associated Press reports:

PHILADELPHIA - The maker of Splenda on Friday settled a lawsuit over its disputed advertising slogan — “Made from sugar so it tastes like sugar” — just after the jury reached a verdict that would have gone against the market-leading artificial sweetener. Merisant Co., which makes rival Equal, accused the makers of Splenda of confusing consumers into thinking its product was healthier and more natural than other artificial sweeteners. Splenda’s marketer, McNeil Nutritionals, countered that it simply has a better product backed by superior advertising.

Now, I think the substance of the settlement is a lot of money and a small-type "Does not contain sugar" printed on every yellow Splenda box. Immaterial. The English language demands that someone should be able to say that a product in a chemical reaction is "made from" the reactants of that chemical reaction. Regardless of what the lawyers say, I'm a chemist, and as a chemist, if I wanted to make Splenda, here's the recipe (from ChemWiki):





The molecule in the upper left corner is sucrose/table sugar. You do 8 things to it, and then you get the molecule in the lower right corner, which is Splenda. They don't look that different because the only difference is in the three chlorine (Cl) atoms substituted onto sucrose. Spot 'em if you can. (There's also differences in the chirality of at least one carbon center, which is a difference in the arrangement of atoms, not a difference in the atoms themselves.)



If I can start with sugar in the lab, and add three chlorines onto it with 8 steps, and get Splenda out of that, then I reserve the right to say Splenda is "made from" sugar. In fact, "sugar" is a general term for this class of molecules. Splenda is a "sugar" that happens to be tri-chloro-substituted, so the company would be correct to promote their product as "a sugar"! If that doesn't set the lawyers off I don't know what will.



I think Splenda settled partly because they don't want it to be emphasized that Splenda has three chlorines in it. When you hear "chlorine," you think "pool water smell," or "green hair," or in my case, "strange sneezing allergy to water." But don't forget that simple old table salt = sodium + chlorine. Three halves of salt molecules are put onto sugar to make Splenda. That is the most straightforward way to describe it. Other than, oh, I don't know, using the words "made from."



In the current blog vernacular:



Splenda. Is. Made. From. Sugar.

(I had to use that format at least once in my life.)

Arrow Through the Sun, your watchdog against chemical semantic injustice. Now back to your irregularly scheduled blog.