“What is the fate of personally acquired characteristics? Do they die with individuals or do they extend - at times at least - beyond the boundaries of the individual’s life into the life of succeeding generations?” This question appears in “The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics,” written by Paul Kammerer of the Institute of Experimental Biology of the University of Vienna, and translated into English and published in New York in 1924.

The whole story of Dr. Kammerer deserves the status of a great mystery novel. He died of a gunshot to the head under mysterious circumstances at the age of 46 in 1926 two years after his work was discredited by finding that the biological samples apparently proving his theory, that acquired characteristics could be inherited, were altered to fit the theory. He was called a fraud and his death was called a suicide. But there is reason to believe that Nazi agents tampered with the samples. Kammerer was hated by the Nazi’s for his socialist-communist views. He was planning to move to the Soviet Union to head an important laboratory in Moscow where his ideas were greatly accepted since they supported what was called the Lamarkian theory of evolution. The Soviet leaders saw in Kammerer’s work and in the ideas of Lamarck, a scientific basis for their actions: newly acquired characteristics of the Russian proletariat, allowed by the revolution, would be inherited by generations to come and lead to a new world order.

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck was born in 1744 in northern France to a family of soldiers and won distinction as one before he became a naturalist. Lamarck’s name is long associated with an evolutionary idea. He is credited as one of the first to propose evolution by which the form and diversity of life changes with time. His ideas were well known to Charles Darwin, who in fact, at one time, held similar ideas under the name of pangenesis. Darwin wrote about Lamarck: “he first did the eminent service of arousing attention to the probability of all changes in the organic, as well as the inorganic world, being the result of law, and not miraculous interposition.”

Lamarck’s theory saw evolutionary changes arising from use and disuse (a giraffe’s neck, a farmer’s muscles, the eyes of an animal living in pitch black cave) leading to changes in the individual that were than passed on to their offspring and so on to their descendents, an idea expressed in the title of Kemmerer’s book and the focus of his discredited work. Kemmerer was what is called, a Lamarckian and Lamarck ideas have long been cast aside by the scientific establishment. In spite of Stalin’s favoring Lamarckian theory, Lamarck’s ideas led to no better result in the Soviet Union, which allowed a murderous charlatan, Trofim Lysenko, to carry the banner of acquired characteristics.

But in fact many scientists today see a correspondence between Lamarckian and Darwinian ideas. After all, both theories call for response of the species to their environment as critical to the evolutionary changes even if Darwin’s theory, up to recently, is better supported by modern biology: random changes in the genome, that is, mutations, sometimes lead to improvement in the ability to survive and prosper, which gives advantage to the changed individuals. But times are changing for Lamarck and even Kemmerer.

Here’s a heading from Science News published on September 3, 2009: “Early 20th Century Evolutionist May Have Discovered Epigenetics,” which reports research that resurrects Kemmerer’s reputation and asserts the truth of his experimental results.

What is epigenetics? It is long known that genes are turned on and off by mechanisms that are internal to the species. How else could every cell in the body contain the same DNA and yet take the different forms cells must adopt – muscles, brain, skin, hair etc. How could the fertilized egg become the fetus without different chromosomes taking their turn at control? Epigenetics describes the chemical changes to DNA and the way that DNA is stored as controlling the evolution of the fetus into the fully formed baby.  But now scientists are finding that the external environment and the behavior of many forms of life, including humans, are also capable of causing chemical changes to DNA. An article in the September 5 issue of “The Economist,” titled “Don’t blame your genes,” is all about these DNA changes, about epigenetics. Here we learn of research demonstrating that overeating fats and sugars, while it does not change the basic sequence of the DNA (which is identical in every cell and unchanged since conception) nevertheless does cause chemical changes to the DNA. Certain genes can be turned on and off leading to changes in the cells, which can lead to diabetes.

 All of this is surprising enough but science has now taken the next step in research that demonstrated that several of these epigenetic changes in DNA can be passed on, that is, inherited. There is every reason to believe that many more of them will be uncovered, Here’s a heading from Technology Review published by MIT: “A Comeback for Lamarckian Evolution?” The article answers yes based on epigenetic discoveries. Biologists increasingly realize that evolutionary processes are controlled not only by changes in the sequence of bases in DNA (Darwinian) but also by chemical changes within that sequence (Lamarckian).

 Welcome back Monsieur Lamarck and watch out you young folks still bearing children – what you do and where you tread may affect the genetic inheritance of your descendents.   

            I grew up in a swirl of cigarette smoke. It killed my father at the age of 59 – two packs of unfiltered Chesterfields a day – at least that’s what the doctors say. I remember the day I came home one hot summer evening, a sixteen year old kid with a pack of Marlboros in my transparent shirt pocket, and my mother’s hostile response. I was already addicted from all the household second hand smoke. It took me almost two years after the 1964 surgeon general’s report on the dangers of smoking to give it up. I finally found a way, not by throwing out the pack but by telling myself I would not have a cigarette for one hour and discovering that the desire was no greater after that hour. Then another hour and the same experience and then two hours and then four hours and so on until I could go a day and see that the desire was the same as the first hour. For many years after stopping smoking I still could feel a powerful desire when taking a drink of bourbon. Addictions are tough.

            I’ve been a bit heavy from time to time but never had a big problem with food. But if there is Philadelphia Cream Cheese in the refrigerator, I can’t resist it. I’ll pile it on anything around and even eat it straight off a knife. I love that stuff and even as I try to stop – I can’t without running away from the kitchen and even out of the house. When I was a little kid, my Polish grandmother used to make an Eastern European treat – cream cheese cookies. Oh man, I can still taste them – soft on the inside and crunch on the outside. Had my brain become wired in some way? Had I become addicted to cream cheese? How ridiculous. Or is it?

            I don’t recommend reading all of David Kessler’s new book “The end of overeating – Taking Control of the Insatiable American Appetite,” The book is a bit “overweight.” But it is worth picking up for its central message that overeating and the obesity overeating leads to belong to the category of addiction. Kessler, who is a distinguished medical doctor, who has been the dean of medical schools and even commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration of the United States during the presidency of George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton, leaves no doubt that he is right about the connection between food addiction and the methods of the fast food industry. It’s all about making fat, sugar and salt with the right combination of chewable, melt-in-your-mouth, presentable, deliciousness.

            Kessler points to a reward center in the brain, the “far lateral hypothalamus.” A hungry animal, let alone a well fed animal, won’t put up with an electric shock to get some food. But stimulation of the reward center will cause even a well fed animal to put up with the painful shock to eat. That part of the brain, the hypothalamus, is supposed to maintain something called homeostasis to keep the body’s functions including weight, on a steady course. But this function can be overcome. The animal will not stop eating if this region of the brain is interfered with. The fast food industry has discovered that our brain’s homeostasis mechanism can be overcome by foods that are rich in fat, sugar and salt presented in ways known to do the job of addicting their customers. The word is palatability and you get a dose of it in most of the foods in fast food restaurants and in many processed foods bought in supermarkets. Kessler makes a convincing case that we would not be hungry beyond our caloric needs if our homeostasis mechanism was not overcome.

            Scientific studies show that animals are willing to work just about as hard for food with fat, sugar and salt as for cocaine. The science shows that the neurons in our brains activated by palatable foods, fat, sugar and salt, are part of the opiod circuitry, the brain’s primary pleasure center – the place where addiction to morphine and heroine take their effect. The pharmaceutical industry has figured out how to reduce our craving for drugs and for overeating, by acting on the same parts of the brain. But there are dangerous side effects and so the drug store doesn’t have a solution to our overeating.

            To paraphrase Kessler, many of us can not control our responses to highly palatable foods because our brains have been changed by these foods. The book is full of undeniable information showing how fast food, whether from a restaurant or a grocery story, is designed for palatability, the food scientist’s word for “you can’t get enough of it,” or, putting it another way, for increased profits derived from us eating more.

            Human Beings didn’t evolve with easy access to fat, sugar and salt. Kessler tells us that early human diets contained only about 10% fat and the sugar came mostly from fruits. Salt has not always been easily available. In fact, it has been so hard to come by in the past that’s it’s been an historical form of currency.

            My dear long gone grandmother meant no harm but she probably hard wired my brain for those sweet crusty cream cheese cookies, which even now I long for. Many kids and we adults are longing for all that sugar, fat and salt. Too many of us grab as much as we can leading to what the Canadian Parliamentary Information and Research Service calls an epidemic of obesity, which agrees with reports from the United States Center for Disease Control. Obesity leads to bad health, which is why Dr. Kessler, who played a large role in fighting the tobacco industry, is now applying his considerable talents to fighting the food industry.

            Kessler’s advice for us in this fight is to follow Alcoholic Anonymous. They say don’t take that first drink. It’s the first bite of that palatable combination of fat, sugar and salt that makes it so hard to stop, which then makes it so easy to overeat.

            New York City – 1980 – I had moved back from a rural area in upstate New York to subway cars covered with graffiti, moving through a graffiti covered trash filled junk pile of a city. (To this day, a wild flower on the side of a country road often appears to me like a piece of paper.) The beautiful red sun sets were caused by all the particles in the air and then there was that signature smell of pollution – you didn’t need to smoke to get lung cancer with that air. Squeejee men at the corners of busy streets washed car windows with filthy rags and threatened drivers to pay for their work. You couldn’t leave your car on the street, even with the hood chained down to protect your battery, without fear of returning to a missing tire or two – I lost one from my old beloved red four-door Dodge Dart with the slant six engine. Luckily I had a spare to put on and was able to drive away – otherwise leaving the car there with my right front tire missing would have meant they’d taken them all. And I remember putting a sign in the car’s front window - “radio already stolen.” Walking meant looking over your shoulder for the next mugger or worse.  Middle of the night gun shots were followed the next morning by a chalk outline of a body in the street. I remember three tough looking guys approaching me, a clearly not-tough college professor, while I waited on a lower Manhattan subway station. They hesitated only when they noticed I was with a friend, Mike Owen, a carpenter from upstate New York, whose visible strength and timely visit to the city saved me. This was only five years after the city had gone bankrupt and the famous  headline of October 30, 1975 in the New York Daily News “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” The president of the United States had refused to bail the city out of its financial crisis. Holding a New York City bond meant it likely you would lose your money.

            Airplanes can go into a spiral, known among pilots as a “death spiral.” Once it begins, the spiral reinforces itself and only ends when reaching the ground. John F. Kennedy Jr., his wife and her sister lost their lives in a Piper Saratoga 32 in such a spiral. All spirals are self reinforcing and many saw New York City in a downward spiral with disorder reinforcing disorder – anarchy, the likely outcome unless the military came in. And would Gerald Ford pay for that?

            Maybe there was a cheaper way to get out of New York City’s spiral. In 1982, an article was published in the Atlantic Monthly, a magazine dedicated from its 1857 onset as focused on “ideas.” The authors had an idea entitled, “Broken Windows.” They proposed that signs of disorder, abundant in New York City in 1980 induced more disorder and crime. The idea took hold with people in charge of the transit authority and the police department in New York City, leading to a zero tolerance quality of life policy. The police stopped responding only into serious crime and began to focus on the disorder of New York City: public urinators and drinkers, subway toll jumpers, squeejee men, and graffiti “artists,” – all behavior interfering with public order, even if not apparently dangerous, became important enough for the police to pay attention to. 

            New York’s disorder and crime dropped year after year, a change ascribed to following the “Broken Windows,” idea. Many others in law-enforcement followed suit, a trend thought to have contributed to the reduction in petty and even serious crime in North American cities. But there have been many who felt that the idea has been given too much credit – much of the decrease in crime could be ascribed to economic factors, reduction in drug addiction and other changes as the 80s moved into the decades to follow. There has never been any direct evidence for the “Broken Windows” idea, until now. This uncertainty, led three Dutch social scientists from Groningen to conduct a series of experiments that many believe settled the controversy. They published it in the December 12, 2008 issue of “Science.”

When junk advertisements were put on bicycles that had been left in a place with a sign saying graffiti not allowed but with walls covered with graffiti, these people littered the area with the junk advertisements to a far greater extent than in the identical space with clean walls. In another experiment, a sign informed bicycle riders not to chain their bicycles to a fence with another sign nearby not to trespass in a certain area. When bicycles were chained to the fence, far more people disobeyed the trespass sign than when the same number of bicycles were left at the fence but not chained.  When shopping carts were left around in a parking lot with a sign to return shopping carts, almost twice as many people littered the parking lot with junk advertisements left on their windshields than compared to when no shopping carts were left around. And another experiment – fire crackers are prohibited in Groningen. When people heard fire crackers going off where they were retrieving their bicycles, they littered again nearly twice as much as when this noise was absent. 

And one last test: an envelope with an exposed five euro note was easily seen and accessible in a mail box. You guessed it. Nearly twice as many people stole the five euros when the mailbox was covered with graffiti.

            This Dutch study, highly regarded for the statistical rigor used in the interpretation of the results and the design of the experiments, has added to the increasing evidence that one approach to reducing vandalism and petty crime, and serious crime as well, is to follow the “Broken Windows” idea. 

            Have you seen the increase in graffiti in the subways recently?       

Last night my wife and I walked over to the Hudson River and joined a crowd to watch the Macy’s fireworks display. It was quite a beautiful show, and also America beating on its chest and throwing its chin up. The good will was palpable, the cops were friendly, and glances over to the New Jersey side of the river drew good natured chuckles at the feeble fireworks attempts of our poor neighbors. We’re the winners and it felt good. Altruism was in the air. We’d work together, sacrifice for each other. It felt good to be part of the winning team.

In the June 5 issue of Science Magazine there is an article by an anthropologist with evidence that many small conflicts between relatively small groups were driven by climate changes ten thousand and more years ago. Those groups that worked more effectively together, in which the individuals were more altruistic in their behavior, watched out for each other, sacrificed themselves for the group, tended to win the battles. The winners grabbed the losers’ women and so whatever were their customs or even genetic proclivities that made them successful in war were passed on to their descendents. And those descendents had the stuff to win and grab more women and so on until here we are today, thousands of year later, descendents of those winners, at least according to the anthropologists, feeling altruistic toward each other, ready to back each other up in war, while we watch our power demonstrated by the fireworks. Fireworks can’t help but remind us of the power brought to bear by technology for the purpose of war. We stand in awe of our power, when we work together, to beat those who are against us.

Sometimes fireworks do the kind of damage done in war. As usual on any July 5^th in the United States the news is replete with reports of the many accidents with fireworks, which kill, maim and even decapitate. There’s little reason to be surprised considering that the chemicals used in the weapons of war are identical to those found in fireworks. The explosive power of fireworks sometimes shows itself on an unintended large scale demonstrating the value for war such as this video taken in Holland: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6126121898177679789 

Before explosives came on the scene we had limited capacity for inflicting death per unit time. With explosives we’ve become much more efficient. The value of explosions in war has driven inventive characters to come up with many new ways to make explosions. But whatever the explosion, even nuclear bombs, their fundamental nature is identical: produce a large volume of hot gas in a short time.

            Human beings must love war, considering how much war has been a part of the more than one hundred thousand year history of our species. Homo sapiens we are called meaning in Latin, wise or knowing man, and we come in many varieties often at war with each other. We have big brains and certainly the power from the big brains is combined with our aggression to overwhelm other forms of life and over the years of our existence, to overwhelm each other.

So we stand near the river watching the beautiful colorful display realizing the connection between the display and use of the identical technology in war. Is it possible to avoid war? Mark Twain had strong opinions about war. Here is a quote I found on the web (http://www.twainquotes.com/War.html): Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception.”

And Twain, in 1910, went even further in “War Prayer,” a piece so shocking that Harper’s Bazaar would not publish it. I recommend picking up the book combining Twain’s words with John Groth’s drawings - a perennial imprint from HarperCollins.

            Look in the mirror. Looks like you – but it’s not you. It’s your mirror image. What’s the difference? Left and right are exchanged. My shirt buttons are on the right side of my shirt. His are on the left. He’s got his watch and wedding ring on his right hand. And he’s a mimic – always doing exactly what I do. Who is this guy? I wonder what he does when I’m not around – what his life is like. He certainly looks like me but is not quite the same.

            When the great French scientist Louis Pasteur (who was later to give us Pasteurization of milk and vaccination against rabies and the debunking of spontaneous generation of life among other great discoveries) was still in his twenties and hardly known, he was trying to figure out how to help French wines avoid tartrates, crystals that form in wine. Although they are harmless, it is annoying to have something requiring chewing come along with the smooth flow of the wine. Pasteur had a microscope. Others had microscopes also and had looked at the tartrate crystals but no one had noticed what Pasteur noticed. Some of the crystals were mirror images of other crystals. Pasteur picked up each crystal with a pair of tweezers and looked at it under the microscope. He put each mirror image type crystal in separate piles, so he had two piles. He then dissolved each pile in some water and did an experiment that showed that the molecules in each pile were mirror images of the molecules in the other pile. Yes, just as you and I have mirror images that are different from us, many molecules also have mirror images that are different. So what?

            Scientists know that the original molecules on earth billions of years ago, which evolved to become life, to become eventually us, had mirror images, and that both mirror images, just as for Pasteur’s crystals, were present in equal amounts. But the problem is that in all living organisms, whenever a molecule has the possibility of a mirror image, only one mirror image is present, just as each of us has a mirror image that is not independently alive. In fact, if you look at the molecules in the food we eat and all the molecules that we are made of, only one mirror form is there. Sure, you can use scientific methods to reflect the molecule in a mirror and see its image – but the image, just as our image in the mirror is only a reflection. It can not be found in something alive.  

            People want to know why and how this happened, considering that both mirror images of the molecules from which life evolved were there to begin with. Why not have life made of both mirror forms? And would that mean that we would all have twins running around, twins that were our mirror images. What a weird idea.

            In Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass”, Alice innocently wonders at one point whether looking-glass milk is good to drink. I’m afraid it’s not good to drink Alice because when life is made of one mirror image, the other mirror image is not compatible with our biological mechanisms. We couldn’t digest mirror image milk. If mirror image people were walking around on earth, we would have to have different farms to feed them with mirror image cows and pigs and, well you get the idea. This is serious business because sometimes the mirror images of a molecule can have different effects on people. The reason for this is the same as trying to put a left and right handed glove on your right hand. The pharmaceutical industry has to be careful about this. It all came to a head in the late 1950s when a drug given to women for morning sickness during early pregnancy, thalidomide, turned out to cause defects; otherwise healthy children were born with all kinds of heart breaking birth deformations. The drug companies had marketed both mirror images of the drug. One mirror image did the intended job – the other caused the birth defects. There is now a multi-billion dollar industry doing what Pasteur did, separating mirror image drugs, but not with a pair of tweezers.

            But some drugs are still sold as mixtures of mirror image forms because dangerous differences are not found. One example is ibuprofen (Nurofen, Advil, and Motrin). For this drug the body takes the mirror image that is not a pain killer and converts it to its mirror image, the pain killer. That conversion would be tough to do for you and your mirror image but is sometimes possible with molecules. So the drug company can sell the mixture. But for every drug marketed, for which mirror forms are possible, the question has to be asked how do the two mirror forms differ in their effect on the body.   

            Some scientists think that in the early evolutionary period of life, both mirror forms of life coexisted but somewhere along the line, one won out over the other – a competition for resources or even a fight. Some scientists think that we may eventually find fossils of the losing mirror image life forms and other scientists think that discovery of life on other planets may uncover a mirror image world. Many scientists disagree. Nobody knows the answer.

            Google “death” and get nearly 700,000,000 million hits – there seems a fair interest among us in this subject, more for example than in “sex,” which elicits about 80,000,000 hits. Put “sex and death” together in a Google search and you’re down in the noise level compared to the Google hits for each one alone. But, in fact, sex and death are connected. In French the connection is made with their phrase: “la petite mort,” although not directly connected to the origin of death.

A friend of mine, who lives on a mountain south of Inverness, heard the following (approximately) on CBC: God gave Man the option, in the beginning, of having kids or not. If not, Man gains immortality. If yes, Man will be mortal. We all know the choice Man made and what the species has to do to have kids: sex and death.

            Many of our ancestors had different versions of the origin of death. Here’s the essence of one from the Abenaki Indians, which seems to blame women. The story claims that the original woman and the original man argued. She said that death would be abolished only if a stone thrown in a river would float. Her male partner wanted the decision to be based on the ability of a buffalo chip to float. She was worried that without death there would not be enough food for everyone. They had agreed that she would have the last word on everything. She wanted to change her mind when her own child was about to die but was not allowed to.

            Here’s another one blaming women from the Dinka in southern Sudan.  In the beginning a rope linked the earth and the sky, which were much closer than they are today. Anyone who died could climb the rope to be reborn. A woman pounding grain killed a bird. The bird’s mother was so enraged that she severed the rope in revenge, bringing death to the world.

            From the Buran people in another part of Sudan, we hear about human laziness as the cause of inevitable death. In the beginning there was neither death nor disease. But one day there was an exception – a single man became ill and died. The people felt that the sky knew what to do and sent a worm to ask the sky. A lizard who hated the people decided to take the opportunity to claim that he was the messenger of the sky: “Wrap the corpse in cloth and bury it.” said the lizard. The worm returned with the true advice of the sky:”Hang the corpse in a tree and throw mush at it until life returns.” The worm explained that the lizard lied to them and that they should promptly unbury the corpse. But the people were too lazy and so death forever after remains on earth.

            How about this one from southern Africa: The moon sent the Hare to earth to tell men that just as she (the moon) died away and rose again, so mankind should die and rise again. The Hare out of forgetfulness or malice told mankind that in contrast to the moon, man should die and rise no more. When the moon heard about the false message, she became enraged and took a hatchet to split the Hare’s head, but missed and hit his lip – hence the “Hare-lip.”

            Here’s another from Vanuatu (New Hebrides) in the South Pacific, which seems to blame the young: An old woman took her grandchild while she bathed in a spring. He dutifully waited on the shore. Since the time was right for her, she used the opportunity to crawl out of her old skin but discovered on returning that her grandchild was afraid of her – did not recognize her. So she put her old skin back on and told him: “You were afraid of me. If you had not been afraid of me we should all crawl out from our old skins and so be young men and women again; but you were afraid of me, so we shall no more shed our old skins, but we shall therefore die.”

            According to science, sex is the cause of death – to be more specific, sexual reproduction is the reason we die. Biologists know that the individuals of all species which reproduce sexually are destined to die. A highly regarded book, “Sex and the Origins of Death,” by William R. Clark, Professor Emeritus of Immunology at the University of California, Los Angeles, says it all in the title. A biologist’s view of death can be found on the web under “George Wald: The Origin of Death.” In essence science supports the view that for the first billion years of life, there was no inevitable death. Oh yes, death could occur by some accidental event but not like it is for us, inevitable death. The reason is that single cell and some multi-cell living species reproduce by fragmentation or budding of the whole living entity. These forms of life still today face no inevitable death.  However, as soon as reproducing machinery became separated from other parts of the body, or as science puts it, the soma from the germ, there is no reason for the soma to continue after carrying out its function of bringing the germ to its “mate.” When we look in the mirror we see the soma. But what really matters, biologically, is the germ we carry. In that sense “we” are immortal in our germ but not in our soma. Welcome to old age.

Mark M. Green (w12thstreet@gmail.com) is a member of the Canadian Science Writers Association who lives in New York City and South West Margaree. Earlier columns can be found at http://blogs.poly.edu/markgreen.    

            What if someone offers you a deal on a beautiful apartment in an ideal location where you always wanted to live? The apartment is occupied by a 90 year old woman. If you pay the rent until she dies you will then own the apartment. Andre Raffray is only 47, so he bites, but the 90 year old lives to 122 and he dies at 77. The woman was Jeanne Calment of Arles, France and you can find her in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest person who has ever lived.

Is not youth supposed to replace age?  There’s a wonderful madrigal claimed to be written by Shakespeare describing the differences between youth and age, which ends with:

“Age I do abhor thee, - Youth I do adore thee; - O! my Love, my Love is young! – Age, I do defy thee — - O sweet shepherd, hie thee, - For methinks thou stay’st too long.”

            Apparently the sweet shepherd did not follow Shakespeare’s instructions for Madame Calment, did not “hie thee,” and instead applied the instruction to Monsieur Raffray. Maybe Madame Calment defied death by her healthy life style. One web site reported that she gave up smoking at the age of 119 and only because her blindness made it too difficult to light a cigarette. She is also reported to have ascribed her longevity, among other things, to avoiding brawls, plenty of olive oil poured on everything she ate as well as rubbed into her skin, red and port wine and nearly two pounds of chocolate eaten every week. At 85 she apparently took up fencing and was riding a bicycle at 100.

            Shakespeare was hardly alone in his understanding of the conflict between youth and age. Mozart’s opera “Idomenco” set in Crete in 1200 BC has youth replacing age as the central theme. On his victorious return from the Trojan Wars, Kind Idomenco of Crete is obliged to kill the first person he meets on landing (in order to settle his debt to Neptune, god of the sea, for having saved him from a storm). This first person turns out to be his beloved loving son, Idamante. There are many twists and turns in the story but in the end Neptune is satisfied by Idomenco giving up his throne to Idamante – Youth replacing age satisfies the gods.

            Is it any wonder that myths abound throughout the centuries in which some mystical-youth-restoring-drink will allow the aged to replace themselves – a fountain of youth. One has never been found and aging appears relentless. But modern science has joined the chase and plenty of money is being poured into trying to understand the biological basis of aging – why we age and how it might be stopped or delayed.

All science agrees that there is a genetic basis for aging, that there has to be aging, a view first taken about half a century ago, by the still living George C. Williams, who has been called a “visionary evolutionary biologist,” and Peter B. Medawar, who won a Nobel Prize for another of his interests.

Williams’ argument was that Darwin’s theory favors passing on genes that help us early in life, when we are reproducing and passing on our genetic makeup, even though these genes may hurt our chances of survival later in life. Our genetic makeup “doesn’t care” if we age, that is, if we decay after our reproducing years are over. Medawar pointed out that if a mutation occurs in our genes, which has a harmful effect only later in our life it will probably be passed on because those who have this harmful gene will already have passed through the years of having children. The genes harmful to life as we age therefore accumulate with the consequences we all see and feel.

Recent research supports Williams’ and Medawar’s ideas especially in discovering that genes in certain kinds of worms act to enhance reproduction while at the same time contributing to the worm’s decay as it ages. And these genes are related to those found in human beings.

Consider nature’s love of youth over age. We eat organic matter, which means eating carbon atoms in their various states – sugar, fat and so on. Much of what we eat is broken down into small molecules with two carbon atoms each, molecules that are produced by organelles called mitochondria found in each of the cells of our body. Every time one of these two-carbon-atom molecules is produced, two carbon atoms are ejected as carbon dioxide – exhale. The change yields the energy that sustains our lives:  but it is not the two newly arrived carbon atoms that become carbon dioxide. They have to wait their turn. The carbon dioxide is first formed from two carbon atoms which have arrived earlier on the mitochondrial scene. Youth replaces age on the biomolecular level.

Youth replaces age – period!

Mark M. Green (w12thstreet@gmail.com) is a member of the Canadian Science Writers Association who lives in New York City and South West Margaree. Earlier columns can be found at http://blogs.poly.edu/markgreen.   

             In most of what you bother to inspect on supermarket shelves, sugar is a popular and cheap chemical added to our food. In many foods, it has actually become the major component. I took a walk around the corner and grabbed some items in a 24 hour grocery. In all of these, ‘”sugar” in one form or another is what you are buying - Coca Cola, Dr. Pepper, Sprite, Fanta, Aunt Jemima Syrup, Ketchup, Smuckers Jam, Skippy Peanut Butter among so many others, and especially to take note of is HERO Raspberry Preserves, which is predominately sugar while stating on the label, “sugar free”. In none of the above is sugar listed as an ingredient - its presence is masked by terms like: fructose corn syrup, polydextrose, maltodextrose – all of which and tens of other names are nothing more than sugar. And I forgot to check out the breakfast cereals – the champions of sugar use.

            In 1971 the average American took in 102 lbs of sugar each year. The number now is pushing up toward 150 lbs. Why all the sugar? Because we are addicted to it – it tastes great and you get a rush – glucose goes right to the brain. That’s the answer.

            It is reported that when the Persians invaded India 500 years before the birth of Christ they discovered “the reed which gives honey without bees.” Apparently the Persians greatly appreciated the taste because about 1200 years later when the Arabs invaded Persia sugar cane was growing in what is now Iran and a technology existed for extracting the sweet principle of the plant, sucrose.   After another approximately 500 years European Crusaders returning from their battles talked of a new spice they’d come across. Sugar consumption in Europe increased over the intervening centuries while the price of sugar fell. In the fourteenth century sugar is reported to have sold in current prices in the range of $50 a pound quite a bit more than we pay now. In fact it was so expensive that only nobility could afford it and in an ironic twist, it seems that rotten teeth came along with great wealth, quite a change from today. Having rotten teeth, shown by a mouth full of black teeth was a sign that you were wealthy and in fact some people were proud of their black teeth, but apparently not Elizabeth I who tried to hide hers, caused by her love of sugar. 

It is said that sugar didn’t start to rot our teeth, the hoi polloi, the masses, the great unwashed, until the late 1880s when Coca Cola was invented by Georgia resident John  Pemberton who was interested in patent medicines. According to a Wikipedia site, Pemberton made many health claims for his product and marketed it as ‘delicious, refreshing, exhilarating, invigorating’ and touted the drink as a ‘valuable brain tonic’ that would cure headaches, relieve exhaustion and calm nerves. The presence of cocaine in early versions certainly didn’t hurt wanting more. But nowadays, sugar, in addition to caffeine is addictive enough. The combination certainly works with soft drinks contributing to the fact that sugar consumption in the late 1880s was less than a few percent of what it is now.

            Getting used to sugar caused great difficulties for the French during the Napoleonic Wars of the 1800s. Their source of sugar was the West Indies, and British naval power shut down this connection. Luckily for the French sweet tooth, in 1747 a German chemist discovered that sugar, sucrose, could be obtained from beets. This discovery led to Napoleon’s development, many years later, of an industry based on obtaining sugar from beets, a hardy plant suitable to the European climate.         

Sucrose supplies, what is known as “empty energy” or calories without other nutrients. The most serious and unquestioned drawback to our high sugar consumption derives from this. Since modern sedentary lives, in which we only walk from the house to the car, require less than about two thousand calories a day and a substantial part of our diet consists of nutritionally empty sucrose, we must eat that much more to get the essential nutrients. We don’t mind that, and get fat. And, there appears to be good evidence now that high sugar intake and the resulting chronically high production of insulin by the body lead to increased cholesterol and heart disease and stroke.

            Now here are some words from a 1972 column, which I wrote for a college newspaper, when the United States had a draft for the Vietnam War:  “Even if sugar’s only deficiency were tooth decay, the price is phenomenal. We now spend two billion dollars per year on caries repair and it would be eight billion if all people were treated. Army surveys show that every 100 inductees require 600 fillings, 112 extractions, 40 bridges, 21 crowns, 18 partial dentures and one full denture – most of the damage deriving from high sugar intake. Sugar, a ubiquitous food additive in the American diet, is a highly suspect and over-consumed chemical, which may someday face restriction.”

            Well, here we are in 2009 and the sugar steam roller is still barreling along.

Mark M. Green (w12thstreet@gmail.com) is a member of the Canadian Science Writers Association who lives in New York City and South West Margaree. Earlier columns can be found at http://blogs.poly.edu/markgreen.  

            2 – Ask your local librarian to obtain a copy of the October 26, 2007 issue of Science magazine and see if the picture of the man on page 546 looks like someone you know. The picture is projected to look like a Neandertals man based on genetic information obtained from fossils by a German team of scientists who claim that with this genetic character in modern humans there is a reasonable probability that, “you get classically Irish-looking red hair and pale skin.”

            3 – The records of Lutheran churches for 18^th and 19^th century Finnish farmers and fishermen, studied by English scientists, reinforced earlier research showing that giving birth to boys seems to take more out of the mother than giving birth to girls. After a son is born, the following children tend to have lower birth weights. In the new studies the church records showed that the younger sisters of these boys were less likely to have children than girls with older sisters. A psychologist at Clark Institute in Toronto believes the effect of the older brother is biological, which is expressed by the English researchers as “something to do with the physiological cost of producing sons.”  My opinion is that nobody knows what is going on but that something is.

            4 – Dr. Frank M. Berger, who invented the first mass-market psychiatric drug Milltown, which was followed years later by Librium, Valium and Prozac, died in 2008 at the age of 94. Andrea Tone of McGill University in her book “The Age of Anxiety” said that Milltown was the first psychiatric drug with wide cultural impact. Indeed, in “Mother’s Little Helper,” Mick Jagger with the Rolling Stones sang: “There’s a little yellow pill.”   http://www.keno.org/stones_lyrics/mothers_little_helper.htm  

            Berger is reported to have been a self-effacing man who believed that health care should be easily available to all citizens – the Canadian ideal.  He also is reported to have strongly disapproved of the drug ads you see today in the mass media. A friend of Dr Berger’s is quoted in the New York Times: “He firmly believed that you should give people the scientific information on a drug, and that’s all – without the pitches and extras.”

            5 – There is wide agreement that the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has become greatly politicized during the eight years of the Bush administration, that is, scientific information has been pushed aside for political reasons. The political influence on the EPA has even been reported in the trade magazine, Chemical and Engineering News, which is no enemy of the chemical industry. We see statements like: “It’s quite sad what’s happened to science at the EPA. It’s very shortsighted,” and “EPA is under-investigating in research on a wide range of emerging science needed to understand and mange current environmental problems.” The head of the EPA since 2005 is reported by public health advocates to be a yes-man to the Bush White House in not allowing California’s request to regulate automobile emissions and in not tightening national air standards for small particles, which is predicted to “sicken and cause the death of millions of Americans.” An article in the May 12, 2008 issue of Chemical and Engineering News reports that scientists are afraid to reveal the political interference with scientific findings of the agency.

            6 - You might want to stay off binging on those sweet donuts and your constant companion of Coca-Cola or other sugary soft drinks after hearing that a Princeton University professor found that rats appear to become addicted to sugar. Not only are withdrawal systems found in the behavior of the rats that are similar to those found in alcohol and drug addiction in humans, but also changes in the brain structure and chemistry associated with addiction to cocaine, morphine and nicotine are also seen in the “addicted” rats. Check out rats’ sugar addiction on Google.

Mark M. Green (w12thstreet@gmail.com) is a member of the Canadian Science Writers Association who lives in New York City and South West Margaree. Earlier columns can be found at http://blogs.poly.edu/markgreen.    

            Is there? Maybe, and in fact Voyager 1 is carrying a phonograph record with sounds and images of life on earth, like the old corked bottles with a message cast into the sea. (http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/spacecraft/goldenrec.html).  In not that long a time on a galactic scale, Voyager 1 will be within a couple of light years (the distance light travels in a year is around six trillion miles) of a distant sun and there may be planets around that star. Might there be life on one of these planets to appreciate this golden phonograph record? If Voyager 1 is still traveling at near the speed it is now, it will take about 42,000 years to reach “nearby” to that “near” star.

            From what scientists know about the planets in our own solar system finding life similar to that on Earth is not likely. However Voyager 1, on its path to interstellar space, was diverted to take a look at Titan, a large moon of the planet Saturn, an object in space that was discovered in the earliest days of telescopes in 1655 by a Dutch  astronomer, Christiaan Huygens. In 1980 the Voyager space craft reached Titan, which has been called a planet- like moon because of its size and density. Unfortunately it was not able to see much because Titan is covered by a dense hazy atmosphere, the only moon in our solar system with a real atmosphere and one consisting mostly of nitrogen. Nitrogen is the main component of Earth’s atmosphere. But Titan’s atmosphere is much denser than our own and since Titan is smaller than Earth its gravity is less. I saw a prediction that human flight on Titan could be possible by simply flapping wing-like objects attached to our arms. However, the absence of oxygen makes life as we know it impossible there. And this goes without mentioning the fact that Titan’s surface temperature is in the range of negative 200 degrees C. But what have been discovered of its atmosphere are large amounts of organic molecules.

            The glimpse of Titan by the Voyager mission stimulated further looks at this moon of Saturn. In 2004 a combined spacecraft, Cassini-Huygens, reached the vicinity of Titan with one craft circling the moon and the other actually making a successful landing. The information from both of these space ships has only pulled us closer to wanting to discover more about this strange place, which contains oceans of frozen water, plains with boulders rising into hills and mountains, and rain clouds composed of the kinds of hydrocarbons we find in natural gas. These hydrocarbons, exposed to the Sun’s ultraviolet rays mix with each other and with the nitrogen in the atmosphere to form complex organic molecules that have long been suspected, from experiments on Earth, to be the precursors of the molecules of life we know. Scientists ask if Titan is a look back in time, billions of years ago, to Earth before life arose.

            How special are Titan’s properties? How possible is it that life exists elsewhere than our Earth? No one knows, but prominent astrophysicists have speculated, based on the number of planets associated with all the suns in the universe, that the probability ranges from moderate to high that civilizations exist in our galaxy with which communication might be possible. Right now large discs probe the skies for radio waves that might constitute communication from those about whom we can ask the question: what might they look and be like? And more and more we discover using increasingly sensitive probes that there are far more planets out there than we believed possible. Will radio waves emanate from one of them? One thing we can be sure of is that any signal sent will take quite awhile to get here over the large number of light years that must be traversed, a distance that would make it impossible for anyone of us to reach those alien civilizations.

Mark M. Green (w12thstreet@gmail.com) is a member of the Canadian Science Writers Association who lives in New York City and South West Margaree. Earlier columns can be found at http://blogs.poly.edu/markgreen.