APLS 2000, Darwinian Medicine, Complexity, Sociobiology in D.C.

I had never attended APLS (Association for Politics and the Life Sciences) but wanted an audience to force me to arrange my thoughts. I sent an abstract that supported my talking about complexity theory as a foundation for evolution and let me make prophesy very much along the lines suggested by Bob Wright in "Nonzero" or Howard Bloom in "Global Brain." Surprise! I found later that I could have talked about clinical sociobiology in a friendly zone for once and perhaps the last time in my life!

High praise for the APLS meetings:

APLS has a web site for this and their two earlier meetings. The URL is "http://www.aplsnet.org" and gives you the abstracts and speakers. You can visit the APLS site and read abstracts of the approximately 130 papers that were given. Speaker's affiliations and their zip codes or email addresses are given on the web site but not in their program.

The program was a surprising weave on weapons control, environmental management, bioethics, and (of all things!) sociobiology! Indeed, a contingent from Europe gave 3 panels on the "Comparative Reception of Sociobiology," Ullica Segerstrale was much in evidence at the meetings and as a plenary speaker, Ed Wilson was equally visible on Thursday and Friday, and the European Sociobiological Society had their final business meeting Thursday evening, voting themselves out of existence as they also voted to merge with ISHE (International Society of Human Ethology). The collage of topics was refreshing and violated the assumption that all papers at a conference must be on the same theme. APLS had a living internet with modules of people tracking across one another. (Perhaps there is a market for organizations to organize meetings and peddle blocks of time and rooms concurrently to any number of different groups?)

I stayed a day and a half, leaving Friday at 1pm. Because of my son's birthday and his recent engagement, I rolled 450 miles to Boston on Saturday afternoon in 9 hrs. while absolutely regretting then and now the conflict in my schedule.

Personal bits and pieces about the meetings:

Confronting Past and Future: The Challenges of Adaptation
Dr. Sam Hines, Dean Humanities and Social Sciences, College of Charleston, was a permissive yet effective chair, much in the style demonstrated by Bill Irons at HBES in June. Hines opened with a short plea that we save 10 minutes of our 30 for questions but laughed gracefully when I suggested that he worked for the government, confiscating 33% of my assets and redistributing them!

I opened the panel and did the selfish thing with "Future Sense: Complexity Theory and Mobilizing Our Adaptations," showing 100 slides in exactly 30 minutes. I'm not sure anyone of the dozen present understood my rushed talk but they liked the pictures!

Jaco Verveling, Ministry of Transport Department, the Nederlands, discussed internet techniques for reducing human travel. Cross cultural research reports that, regardless of culture, the time that people spend traveling is relatively constant regardless of the technical development of their culture. High technology means that people travel further but for no greater amount of time. Can the 'net produce an illusion of movement? I'm not so sure. Research shows that exercise has antidepressant effects so I often advise my clients to get away from monitors and televisions and get outdoors. Jaco and his team may have to duplicate not only the visual cues of exploration but the physical ones as well, perhaps like the ski videotape that Norditrak sells with some of their machines.

Louise Comfort from Pitt speculated about the possibilities in complexity models for planning mass transportation; Alessandra (Sandy) Lippucci talked nearly as fast as I had but about "Autopoiesis and the Social Sciences: Strategies for Self-Steering" She has a 35 pp. manuscript that she will share if you ask nicely (lippucci@mail.utexas.edu)! "Autopoiesis" is said to mean "self writing poetry" and is used in the past 5 years to describe biological evolution and ontogeny. Good talk; I want to read her paper.

Ullica Segerstrale ("Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond") highlighted the moral and technical displays shown by Gould, Lewontin, and Ed Wilson in the mid '70s and the ensuing 25 years. Ed sat next to me in the front row (what a treat!), jotted some notes, and then commended her highly even though he disagreed with some of her findings. Her book puts flesh, muscle, and costumes on some of the opposing characters during those turbulent decades. I recommend it strongly to biologists, psychologists, and historians.

Segerstrale tends to view the past 25 years as a "tempering" that produced a better science, John Alcock (not at the meeting) is said to have a book describing sociobiology as an irresistible "juggernaut," but Ed feels the public debates "held up research terribly." Still, things appear to be settling down. As Ed points out, he has a thousand students while Gould & Lewontin have recruited none to their ways of thinking and their circle is getting older.

Ed, however, counts students of Evolutionary Psychology as his allies; I'm not so sure. EP gets lots of coverage in texts since '96 while sociobiology still does not. Even the Human Behavior and Evolution society avoids the term after formerly displaying it in their name and on their journal. Sociobiology is about the biological foundations of social behavior. It is also about trait variation, produced by epigenesis (variation in genes interacts with variation in opportunities), EP assumes genes to be constant in an imagined "universal human nature." Thus, Gould and others may in fact have succeeded in pulling down Ed's banner. And people are still ambivalent to hostile about genes and culture; check with your nearest anthropologist or ask some of the Europeans who lived through their own war in regard to these matters!

"The Comparative Reception of Sociobiology, 1975-2000: I"
Vincent Falger (Nederlands), Peter Meyer (Germany), E. O. Wilson, Pierre Jaisson (France), & Harald Euler (Germany) summarized the political storms in their respective nations. Sociobiology had a low key introduction into France until it was noticed and loved by 2 right wing writers. The political left then united against it and kept funding out of sociobiology until '93 when L'Express picked up on the matter. There was an immediate denial from the CNRS (equal in power to the USSR Academy of Science; both agencies not only provide funding but also determine the national priority for that funding). In '93 Jaisson still had the only book in French on sociobiology! (Incidentally, Jaisson wryly noted that Lamarckism was still alive in Paris in 1959! The audience laughed. However, Lamarck made some fundamental contributions to our understanding of biology and is credited for inventing the word and concept but today is a foil and a device that triggers laughter. Too bad.)

Euler described the German experience that had been conditioned by some ideas from Haeckel who was not only a great biologist but also a racist and imperialist who translated Darwin into Haeckel's concepts. The book, "World Riddles" was published for 1 DM and was a best seller in 25 languages in 1900, second only to the Bible. 500,000 copies were sold in Germany! Hitler later copied much of it into "Mein Kampf."

Euler explained that in Germany, "ethology" applies to animal behavior and "psychologie" is restricted to humans and is heavily introspective, mentalistic, and spiritual. In the '70s students became less Marxist and psychology is now "OK" with some of the ideas of sociobiology while anthropology is still "resistant."

Business Meeting: European Sociobiological Society. Peter Meyer chaired, Hans M.G. von der Dennen, and Vincent Falger were also at the front table.
- Ed Wilson was given a classic antiquarian text on biology and a lifetime honorary membership in ESS.
- ESS has produced 10 special interest volumes on topics in sociobiology.
- 20 new members were added to ESS by vote.
- The bank accounts were reviewed; Falger noted that his books were open to inspection to anyone.
- Their next item of business involved their merger with ISHE; ESS has 210 members, ISHE has 400. Their by laws are similar. The merger was approved earlier by ISHE officers; those present tonight also approved the merger.
- "Sociobiology" will not be incorporated into ISHE's title although Johan van der Dennen of ESS is the new vice president of ISHE. ESS also received overtures from HBES but rejected them.

This was probably one of the strangest meetings I have ever attended. That is, they induct 20 new members and close up shop? I'm not sure any of these fine people were happy about their outcome but they managed it with grace and logic. Remarkable!

Friday morning plenary: LeRoy Walters, Kennedy Institute of Ethics, Georgetown Univ., spoke on "A Perspective on Recent developments in Gene Therapy." He described the lack of public or federal scrutiny of gene transplantation research. He highlighted Jessie Gelsinger's recent death at Penn from his receiving an "adenoviral vector," intended to influence liver disease. At the time, Jessie was responding well to medication and did NOT require an adjustment in his treatment. He was not told, nor were his parents, of the high likelihood of negative reactions, including death. Instead, he was told his participation might benefit sick children in the future. Further, his ammonia levels were elevated just prior to transplantation, a clear contraindication for continued treatment. Gelsinger was in a coma before his father could arrive.

My understanding from Walters is:
- Of 900 "adverse events" in this research, only 5.6% were reported to NIH. It is called "therapy" but only one study, by the French in 2000, reports a beneficial outcome from gene transplantation.
- The FDA monitors private transplantation research and protects company confidentiality, has little ability for active monitoring of research, and is much better organized for analysis of data that has already been collected. Information is hidden to protect stock values and to confuse competing companies that might benefit.
- NIH supervises research done by public institutions with federal money. However, NIH then becomes responsible for monitoring the research that it sponsors.

Walters recommended that (1) NIH and FDA use the same rules for research on humans, (2) make research completely open to public access, and (3) improved monitoring. (He was less interested in the effect of consequences to investigators who conceal information or who harm their subjects and saw no application of the concept of "manslaughter" to the incident at Penn. A "balance of consequences" analysis suggests the rewards to investigators to be substantial and more certain than sanctions are for being wrong or causing harm. Unless this aspect is corrected, investigators will still have incentive to hide things; adding committees will lead to more clever investigators, not more ethical ones.)

Friday Morning Panel: "Darwinian Medicine: Applying Evolutionary Thinking to Medical Research and Decision-Making," organized and chaired by David Paxson.

Randy Nesse reminded us that the strategy of using cross species comparisons to understand human disease was originally defined by Erasmus Darwin in 1794 in "Zoonomia." Nesse discussed some of the ways that evolution confuses physicians.
- Evolution builds reproductive success, not comfort
- There are trade offs for any change
- Evolution is slower than cultural change
- Evolution is sequential. This week's change depends on the platform that was build last week
- Evolution is stochastic. There is a random quality to decisions that occur.
He surveyed 120 deans of medical schools, 44 responded. Generally, they had no expertise on their faculty, no money to buy expertise, and saw no need to ask for it. Nesse put up a web site to collect research suggestions.

Ed Wilson noted that neuroscience is finally within the "citadel of the human mind" and now asks, "I'm inside, what do I look for?"

E. O. Smith reviewed substance abuse and evolution in terms of "mismatch"

Paul Ewald commented that hygiene, vaccines, and antibiotics were generally ignored until they solved a major public health problem. He argued that any pathology that exerts high fitness costs, shows temporal changes, and has low twin concordance might be the result of an infection. His ideas are a refreshing (and important!) alternative to the reflexive knee jerk we emit when we blurt "mismatch" in regard to varied human diseases. Buy his books!

Boyd Eaton observed that diabetes, heart disease, melanoma, asthma, depression, hip fractures, and breast cancer are more frequent now than 20 years ago. He also lamented contradictory research on diet, exercise, vitamins, and varied treatments and he complained about the lack of a paradigm in health research. (While enthused about Ewald's view, Eaton again reached for "mismatch" in some of his discussion! As someone observed about evolution, whatever comes first is the environment for whatever comes second. "Mismatch" is so plausible and established that it can blind us to other possibilities.)

This section started with 40 in the audience, peaked at 62 (Dave Paxson's exact count!) when Randy and Ed spoke, dropped to 45 after Wilson left and dwindled to 20 (Paxson swears 30. Dunno why we differ. Heck! Let's go with his number) stout hearted bottoms at the end of the 3rd hour. The audience --- e. g., Frank Miele from Skeptic Magazine, Amy Parish from University College, London --- was as interesting as the speakers. Dave Paxson did a remarkable job assembling this panel on "Darwinian Medicine." Segerstrale may someday write about it!

On the other hand, I feel some ambivalence about "Darwinian Medicine" as well as "clinical sociobiology." Both labels may be ignored in the long run because genomic research will produce tools and may solve public health problems without any need to talk about gradual changes and adaptations or to admit our kinship with flies. At least, that seems to be the way the money is going in regard to genomics research and the continued economic suicide committed by any investigator who puts "evolution" in the title of a grant proposal! As Frank Miele pointed out, some 90% of Americans still accept supernatural explanations for creation. Research will let them get tools for use in healing but without changing their stories.

Further, no dean will reorganize the medical curriculum into Darwinian categories. Again, whatever is first becomes environment for whatever is second and there may be a "Darwinian neurology" or a "Darwinian GYN" but not a Darwinian anything that erodes historical disciplines, whether in psychology or in medicine. Too bad, the boundaries need redefinition and perhaps we need a meteor! However, a nondestructive option is that of the "Georgetown Family Systems Therapy." The leadership developed their own network of affiliated clinics and their own training programs that grew from research and texts by Murray Bowen and Michael Kerr. Darwinian medicine might trace a similar path.

Finally, I'm curious about next year. There are rumors that Gary Johnson, the APLS Exec., is moving on. I also know that Dave Paxson is a gifted organizer and has been doing it all of his life. He will also retire from state service in 3 years. Might he be recruited into a stronger role for APLS, HBES, or comparable organization?

Replies:

Abstract for Future Sense:Complexity & Mobilizing Our Adaptations, by James Brody, 09/06/00

| Behavior OnLine Home Page | Disclaimer |

Copyright © 1996-2004 Behavior OnLine, Inc. All rights reserved.