Western medicine starts to catch up

A friend pointed me toward this article about researchers curing diabetes in mice (thanks, J!). Here's the essence:

In a discovery that has stunned even those behind it, scientists at a Toronto hospital say they have proof the body's nervous system helps trigger diabetes, opening the door to a potential near-cure of the disease. Diabetic mice became healthy virtually overnight after researchers injected a substance to counteract the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas.

It takes my mind in several directions at once. First, there is the obvious: The possibility of a cure for diabetes! This disease is a large and growing problem for people the world over. If we can figure out a way not just to control it, but to eliminate it, that is huge.

Interestingly, it was sent to me with the subject line, "Massively cool application of pain management." I have some experience with pain management, so the particular type of treatment going on in this research is also of interest to me (as my friend knew). It is pretty neat to be able to apply what we know about calming down pain nerves to a metabolic disease like diabetes. Given the compartmentalized understanding of the body offered by Western medicine, these types of "crossovers" seem vaguely magical.

Which brings me to the third and most interesting comment arising from this news. I have been learning a bit about Chinese medicine lately, and cannot help noticing that what these Western researchers have discovered has been (in essence) known by Eastern medicine for millennia.

In Chinese medicine, there are ten major organs, and they come in five yin/yang pairs. They are the kidney/urinary bladder; liver/gallbladder (or pancreas); heart/small intestine; spleen/stomach; and lung/large intestine. You can also add the pericardium/triple-burner (ie, there are actually twelve major organs. Western medicine does not recognize the triple-burner). Each of these pairs is linked to a major functional system of the body, such as the digestion, nerves, muscles, skin, etc.

It happens that the system linked to the liver/pancreas organ is the nervous system. When I read that article, I immediately noticed the connection. Of course, diabetes might have its origins in neurotransmitter dysfunction. Makes sense at some level because these systems are connected.

Of course, Chinese medicine knows nothing about neurotransmitters, action potentials, genes, prions, or stem cells. But it does know about some links in the body system that Westerners are just getting around to discovering. I see great potential in combining the methods of viewing the body that have evolved in different parts of the world.

A good friend said recently (in response to the one-sentence challenge -- see below): "Test all your assumptions and all your theories against experiment; the more obviously true your assumption and the more intuitive your theory, the more carefully you should test it." This is absolutely true relative to the body. Our body is so close to home that we never really look at it carefully. I have found layers and layers of connection and surprising experience just by suspending the "obvious" and "intuitive" knowledge I have about my own body.

I hope Western medicine will do so too, because a lot of it is based on faulty assumptions and on experiments that haven't gone deep enough yet. These Canadian researchers who were willing to work on the nerves in order to treat diabetes have taken an important step in suspending assumptions about what might be linked to what.

Carl Sagan Blog-A-Thon

Today is the 10th anniversary of Carl Sagan's death, and hence an apt time for a blog-a-thon devoted to his memory.

Sagan's gift was to inspire science-minded people of all ages, especially kids. As an elementary-school student, I watched the TV series Cosmos on many afternoons, thrilled to see how science simultaneously applied in everyday life and touched the deepest mysteries of the Universe. The notion that the mundane and the profound are not so separate remains deeply meaningful to me.

How many kids decided to become scientists at least partly because of Carl Sagan? I have never seen an estimate, but I suspect it is a sizable number. Sagan filled an important role: The scientific humanist, the defender of learning as a means of elevating the human spirit. He is missed today, for he has no obvious replacement.

I had the opportunity to meet Carl Sagan when I visited Cornell as a high school senior, considering whether or not to attend the school. My dad got a friend of his (a physics professor) to call Sagan's secretary and set up a meeting. I got about 10 minutes of Sagan's time, which seemed like both an eternity and a split second to myself as an awkward 17-year-old. One thing that sticks in my mind from that meeting is that I was amazed at how tall Sagan was. Not that he was a giant, but somehow I had the impression from Cosmos that he was a small guy, perhaps because he looked so gentle and benign and his turtleneck and corduroy blazer. In fact, he was close to 6 feet. I also recall having difficulty thinking of words to say to him, and can barely remember the content of our conversation. But I distinctly remember that for a period of about 2 weeks after that, I would grin involuntarily whenever I thought of that meeting. And I find myself doing it again today as I write about the memory. :-)

So thank you, Carl. You had an influence on me. You ignited the spark in me that seeks the connection between the personal and the cosmic, the body and the mind. The truly human.

The One-Sentence Challenge

This looks like fun. Jamais Cascio of Open The Future listed me as a person he'd like to see answer Richard Feynman's "one-sentence challenge": If all knowledge about your field were about to expire, what one sentence would you want to pass on to the future? (Feynman said about physics, "Everything is made of atoms.")

I couldn't figure out what my field was exactly, so I skipped that part, and just came up with this sentence:

The only freedom that can never be taken away from us (and hence our only area of true control) is our response to a situation.

Here are some people I'd like to pass this challenge on to:

Janis Cortese
Sidra Vitale
Fazia Rizvi
Sharon Casteel
Lyn Millett
Bruce Sterling

Be careful sneering at futurists

From Bruce Sterling: "The only thing worse than a futurist who overpromises is a futurist who over-delivers."

Behavior trumps technology

Today I saw a fascinating talk by a fellow at IDEO, a design firm focused on human-centered and sustainable design. He related a very interesting tale.

In connection with a project, he had the opportunity to interview a man who drives a 1987 Toyota Corolla, while his wife drives a 2005 Prius. Know who gets better mileage? He does! He gets about 48 miles to the gallon, while she gets closer to 34.

Now, first of all, 34 mpg for a Prius is truly awful. Another person I know regularly gets more than 50 mpg on hers. An explanation is offered below.

The key fact to focus on is how the HECK he can get 48 mpg on a 1987 car! It turns out he is a keen student of driving technique. He explained to the IDEO guy that he has a set of very stict guidelines that he has honed over the years to completely optimize the efficiency of his car's engine. The list includes things like braking very slowly, accelerating very gently, and never driving above 55 mph. Impractical or not, it's hard to scoff at 48 mpg from a regular old car.

So my guess is that his wife has lousy driving technique. She does jackrabbit starts, slams on the brakes, weaves around on the freeway so she's never going a consistent speed (although it's always over 70), etc. Given that most people with Prius's get way more mileage, that's a big indicator that....

It's our behavior, not our technology, that is inefficient. The technology is already here, folks! We jsut aren't using it very well.

Have you noticed how many articles lately have been pointing to conservation as the #1 effective measure in reducing energy usage? We'd rather invest in flashy new technologies, though. Turning down the heat, buying compact fluorescent lightbulbs, and insulating the hot water heater aren't very sexy. That's not to say we should stop investing in solar, wind, and wave energy. But we might look a little closer to home for a first line of defense.

Altering behavior is actually harder than deploying new technology in some cases. But I would suggest that getting 48 mpg from a 1987 Corolla should be enough inspiration to convince a few people to turn their gaze inward and consider their own contributions to the problem. I know I can think of some areas in my own life that would benefit from altered behavior. After all, I only get 35 mpg on my 1999 car!

Unlearning through learning

One of greatest things about going back to school is having the opportunity to refine some of the things learned earlier. In particular, I have been expanding and honing my understanding of how to do homework.

I was a science major in college. I mostly studied on my own, as did most of my classmates for at least some of the time. Although science students form study groups to get the problem sets done and cram for tests, there are two major forces driving toward individual study for those who are serious students, not just trying to pass the classes.

First, you've really got to know the material by yourself. You will have to solve the problems on your own on the exam, so you might as well practice on your own with homework sets. And if you intend to become a scientist or engineer, you are expected to have fairly complete individual mastery of the material. Furthermore, it is well known that people don't really learn material that requires intense concentration (like difficult math) when they are in a group setting. In the end, you just have work with it, work on it, puzzle it over, and chew through it... by yourself. (And it's well worth the effort for those interested in the subject. Others may be less convinced).

Second, working individually is good preparation for the actual process of science, where it is critical for results to be replicated by independent researchers. That is the whole basis for validity in science, so you need to train scientists who are comfortable and proficient doing things on their own. Arguably, individual study is important for the integrity of science.

This model is completely false in business school. The majority of assignments are done on teams, and even for those that aren't, collaboration and sharing information are totally normal. In fact, it is widely recognized that for business assignments, you learn more when you do it with other people. You will actually get less out of an assignment if you go off and do it on your own. And sending 30 students off to replicate the same work indvidually--- what a colossal waste of time! :-)

Futhermore, shared solutions not only tend to produce results better than the sum of the parts, but this method too supports the actual process of business, which is a shared enterprise. Companies aren't just operating in a vacuum, they are part of their own industry, part of their supply chain from raw materials to customer, part of their local communities, part of the global economy, and part of the ecosystem. It is actually counterproductive to promote separatist ideology about such things.

I don't mean to imply that scientists are completely separate-- they too are very much a part of a collaborative community that doesn't advance without collective participation. But it's a different sort of thing than business. Through school, I am seeing how the very process of doing assignments is a microcosm of the larger industry process, be it one of replicating individual results or one of producing group results.

From the horse's mouth

The December issue of Washington CEO magazine features Gifford Pinchot and BGI, the school he founded.

Full article here

Green Curriculum

At this visionary school where sustainability and profitability dovetail, students learn a new business ethic for the 21st century

On 9/11, Gifford Pinchot, acting as a consultant, met with an “incredible brain trust” he’d assembled. The group’s purpose was to participate in a creative session identifying promising investments for the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund. Among the advisors there that day were alternative energy consultant Amory Lovins, co-founder of the Rocky Mountain Institute and co-author of the book, Natural Capitalism; Janine Benyus, author of Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature; Joe Romm, a former senior Department of Energy official; renewable energy consultant Joel Makower; and Anita Burke, head of sustainability for Royal Dutch Shell.

But the group never got to its subject. Instead, it took up that morning’s traumatic terrorist attack and its implications for their lives. For Pinchot, the meaning quickly crystallized. He and his wife, Libba, had long talked about starting a school to teach social entrepreneurship. Now Pinchot, his mischievous side full throttle (could he entice them into participating?) had a captive audience for exploring the idea. “I planned for half a day with those folks,” Pinchot would later recall, “and I got four.”

The result was the Bainbridge Graduate Institute (BGI,) a school offering a pioneering MBA in Sustainable Business. Now in its fifth year, it is an innovation lab, business incubator, and support system for eco-preneurs and change agents who want to make corporations more socially and environmentally responsible. Pinchot’s vision: transforming business education.

Why change business education? .....