File this under “not surprising, but still infuriating”:

Pope Benedict XVI said on his way to Africa Tuesday that condoms were not the answer in the continent’s fight against HIV, his first explicit statement on an issue that has divided even clergy working with AIDS patients.

The Pope went on to say, “You can’t resolve it (HIV/AIDS) with the distribution of condoms…On the contrary, it increases the problem.”

The full scale of that alarming statement is better understood in this context:

Africa is the one region in the world where Catholicism enjoys healthy growth.

According to Vatican statistics, the number of African Catholics grew by three percent in 2007 — despite competition from evangelical Protestant denominations and Islam — while populations remained stable elsewhere in the world.

In 2006, baptised Catholics made up 17 percent of the African population, compared with 12 percent in 1978.

In other words, don’t count the Pope’s influence out.

This is not the worst statement from a Catholic leader regarding condoms in Africa. One example from 2007:

The head of the Catholic Church in Mozambique has told the BBC he believes some European-made condoms are infected with HIV deliberately.

Maputo Archbishop Francisco Chimoio claimed some anti-retroviral drugs were also infected “in order to finish quickly the African people”.

In other words, Pope Benedict’s statement is just one part of a long misinformation campaign by the Catholic Church regarding condoms and their ability to prevent the spread of HIV.

Overall this isn’t really new news, of course, except that this latest statement by the Pope is his first on the subject of condoms since assuming the papacy. I doubt anyone was holding out hope that he would break with previous Catholic doctrine on this subject. Nevertheless, this is frightening. Combating HIV/AIDS is an uphill battle, although there have been some successes. But HIV/AIDS organizations already have so many challenges, from worn and underfunded public health infrastructure to the inherent difficulties in changing people’s sexual behavior. When one of the most influential religious leaders in the world comes through with what could only be described as lies (condoms make HIV/AIDS worse?) on the subject, he is perpetuating dangerous ideas that, in the long term, could cost people their lives.

For more information on international HIV prevention strategies that incorporate accurate information about condoms, visit the UK organization Avert.

As humans, we fancy ourselves to be unique creatures. That is why Jane Goodall’s landmark study of the chimpanzees of Gombe, Tanzania, in the early 1960′s caused such initial disbelief in the wider scientific community. Jane Goodall was the first scientist to observe the behavior of tool making and tool use by chimpanzees, which, by extension, made her to the first person to document the use of tools by any animal other than humans. Anthropologists had long defined human beings as “man the tool maker”, and, as the famed anthropologist Louis Leakey exclaimed in response to Jane Goodall’s initial report, “Now we must redefine tool, redefine Man, or accept chimpanzees as humans.”

We now know that several species of animals are capable of using tools. But a chimpanzee named Santino, living in captivity at the Furuvik Zoo in Sweden, has pushed our understanding of chimp behavior (and human uniqueness) forward once again. In a new study published in Current Biology, researchers documented Santino’s recurrent behavior of calmly collecting rocks and breaking apart chunks of the concrete in his zoo enclosure in the morning and then subsequently using the stockpile of projectiles to throw at zoo visitors later in the day. Santino is a 31-year old alpha male, and he never attacked the other chimps in his enclosure. He reserved his ire (and projectiles) only for humans.

This is amazing. Even recently, I read that one of the defining characteristics of humans is that we are capable of thinking about the future in an abstract way and making plans. And yet Santino directly challenges that idea. As one of the researchers quote in the Associated Press article stated:

“These observations convincingly show that our fellow apes do consider the future in a very complex way,” said the author of the report, Lund University Ph.D. student Mathias Osvath. “It implies that they have a highly developed consciousness, including lifelike mental simulations of potential events.”

In other words, Santino had thought about what he wanted to do and how he could do it. And he wasn’t acting in a blind rage but rather with premeditation, because several hours (and sometimes days) separated his stockpiling of weapons and his assaults on zoo visitors.

While much time and talk has been spent on the subject of intelligent life in other corners of the universe, we have so much more to learn about intelligent life on our own planet. As we start to understand more and more how intelligence is a continuum and that chimpanzees and humans have more in common than we previously imagined, I hope that we also rededicate ourselves to protecting this endangered species.

A fun article came out today in the Science Daily. Researchers applied the Stroop Test, a common psychological experiment in which subjects try to name the color of words like “purple” and “red” (see right). The scientists found that the brain activity was different between people who believed in God and those who didn’t.

Compared to non-believers, the religious participants showed significantly less activity in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a portion of the brain that helps modify behavior by signaling when attention and control are needed, usually as a result of some anxiety-producing event like making a mistake. The stronger their religious zeal and the more they believed in God, the less their ACC fired in response to their own errors, and the fewer errors they made.

“You could think of this part of the brain like a cortical alarm bell that rings when an individual has just made a mistake or experiences uncertainty,” says lead author Inzlicht, who teaches and conducts research at the University of Toronto Scarborough. “We found that religious people or even people who simply believe in the existence of God show significantly less brain activity in relation to their own errors. They’re much less anxious and feel less stressed when they have made an error.”

“Obviously, anxiety can be negative because if you have too much, you’re paralyzed with fear,” he says. “However, it also serves a very useful function in that it alerts us when we’re making mistakes. If you don’t experience anxiety when you make an error, what impetus do you have to change or improve your behaviour so you don’t make the same mistakes again and again?”

I started to think about why the religious subjects were less affected by their own errors. I imagine that belief in a protecting, benevolent God would be comforting – if you’re used to viewing the world through the lens that “it will all work out in the end” making mistakes won’t upset you.

But I’m also reminded of the words of humanist Edwin H. Wilson [edit: Corliss Lamont]: “This world is all, and enough.” Nontheists don’t believe in the supernatural or in the afterlife. We believe that this is the only life we get, and that it matters. Our behavior matters, our mistakes matter. Contrast that with Hugh Hewitt’s words as related in William Lobdell’s upcoming book Losing My Religion:

“Compared to eternity, we’re on this Earth for less than a blink of an eye. With that perspective, any suffering here is so minimal, and we won’t know why we even have that until we see the Lord. It will all be made clear, Billy, in less than a blink of an eye. I can wait. Heaven will be a wonderful place.”

A sense of calm can certainly be useful and important. But I care about this world and this life. Perhaps it would be a better place if we all took a less lackadaisical approach and started caring about our actions and mistakes.

Scientists in Virginia are reporting the second known case of a shark pup being conceived without any shark sex involved.

Scientists have confirmed the second case of a “virgin birth” in a shark. In a study reported Friday in the Journal of Fish Biology, scientists said DNA testing proved that a pup carried by a female Atlantic blacktip shark in the Virginia Aquarium & Marine Science Center contained no genetic material from a male.

Many around the Internet are hailing the new Shark Messiah, but as a skeptic I would have to personally witness the shark pup perform some miracles first.

But in all seriousness, this is a rather remarkable finding, and it raises so many questions, such as, is this a frequent occurrence in nature? What impact could this have on shark genetic health? Are there other animals as large as sharks that can reproduce asexually? Is there anything in particular that triggers this kind of reproduction in sharks?

I write this not to weigh in on a topic in science on which I am no expert, but rather to point out that those of us who do not believe in a creator of the universe or an all-powerful god or the supernatural still live in a world of mystery and wonder. No matter how much we learn about the world through science, there will always be more questions, more unexplored territory, more new ideas. The pursuit of knowledge is never ending, and I, for one, love the journey, even if there is no definitive destination, no end point where we can see that we know all that there is to know. I shudder to think of the complacency and stagnation that would come with such a time, when we lost the will to explore, whether it be the planet, the universe, or the DNA of a shark.

State Rep. John LaBruzzo, Republican of Louisiana, believes that he has the answer to poverty:

Worried that welfare costs are rising as the number of taxpayers declines, state Rep. John LaBruzzo, R-Metairie, said Tuesday he is studying a plan to pay poor women $1,000 to have their Fallopian tubes tied.

He says that his proposed voluntary program would reduce the number of people “that are going from generational welfare to generational welfare” and could also include tax incentives for people with college degrees to have more children.

The Roman Catholic Church has already condemned the plan, with Archbishop Alfred Hughes calling it a form of eugenics. He goes on to say: “Our lawmakers would do better to focus on policies that promote education and achievement to counteract poverty and the bigotry of low expectations.”

Is it eugenics? Let’s look at the plan: Rep. LaBruzzo has identified a population, people living in poverty, for which he believes reproduction is undesirable. He proposes a solution: offer them sterilization in exchange for $1,000. And given the desperation of poverty and the current hard economic times, I expect that the sum of money would be a powerful incentive for many people to accept sterilization. Thus, Rep. LaBruzzo would meet his goal of reducing the rate of reproduction in the target population that he deems unworthy. So yes, I call that eugenics, for even though sterilization is not forced by the government, the incentive of money in desperate economic circumstances is powerful enough that the sterility of the recipients would essentially be bought. Is that free choice?

I would like to think about this plan for a moment in the context of the following paragraph from Humanist Manifesto III:

Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience. Humanists ground values in human welfare shaped by human circumstances, interests, and concerns and extended to the global ecosystem and beyond. We are committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity, and to making informed choices in a context of freedom consonant with responsibility.

Does this plan treat people as having “inherent worth and dignity”? Absolutely not, not when Rep. LaBruzzo is telling people that the solution for them and for society is that they don’t reproduce. He isn’t talking about reducing population in general; he even mentions that there could be tax incentives for people that he considers to be desirable to reproduce more. He wants to target a particular population that he regards as having less worth and dignity than the rest for sterilization. That strikes me as grotesque.

All people should have access to tubal ligation or vasectomies as part of reproductive choice and comprehensive health care. But no one should be faced with the decision to accept money that may very well be desperately needed in exchange for giving up the ability to reproduce. Perhaps Rep. LeBruzzo could find some money instead to improve health care and education for the residents of Louisiana? I’m not holding my breath.

The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that the California Supreme Court ruled doctors cannot withhold care to gays and lesbians based on their religious beliefs. The case concerned a lesbian couple that was denied fertility treatment by Christian doctors. The court ruled that California’s civil rights law that bars discrimination based on sexual orientation extends to medical care, and that doctors must not deny a procedure to some that they offer to others.

I think this ruling strikes a good balance between the right of doctors to practice medicine in a way that doesn’t violate their faith and the right of patients to receive medical care indiscriminate of their sexuality. The ruling does not dictate that doctors must perform any procedure they find incongruent with their faith, only that if they do offer a procedure they must do so for everyone.

Think of it this way, using race instead of sexuality: it’s the difference between refusing to artificially inseminate anyone because of religion as opposed to refusing to artificially inseminate a particular person just because they’re black. At that point I don’t think your religion should protect you anymore.

Michael Leavitt, secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services, responded on his blog to concerns that a proposed HHS regulation would surreptitiously redefine abortion to include a variety of contraceptives, such as birth control pills, the morning after pill and the IUD. He claims:

An early draft of the regulations found its way into public circulation before it had reached my review. It contained words that lead some to conclude my intent is to deal with the subject of contraceptives, somehow defining them as abortion. Not true.

This statement, however, has failed to reassure pro-choice organizations. As quoted in the LA Times, the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Cecile Richards, said:

“Secretary Leavitt’s vague comments on the draft HHS rule do nothing to reassure Americans that the administration is not considering redefining abortion to include forms of contraception, thereby jeopardizing women’s access to basic healthcare.”

The regulation in question is allegedly intended to protect the religious freedom of health care workers. It would deny federal funding to any medical institution that did not accommodate the beliefs of employees by allowing them to decline to perform any medical treatments or work (including dispensing prescriptions) to which they morally object. Included in an earlier draft of the regulations was a redefinition of abortion that would have included a lot of contraceptives, including birth control pills and IUDs. Now it appears that the Bush administration is backtracking on this aspect of it.

But even without this redefinition of abortion included (assuming that it ultimately isn’t), pro-choice groups still object to other provisions of the proposed regulations. As Reuters reports:

The National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association said it was concerned the proposed regulation would target 37 state laws.

“These laws mandate the availability of EC (emergency contraception) in emergency rooms, bar pharmacies from flatly refusing to fill prescriptions and mandate coverage of contraception when other prescriptions are covered,” the group said in a statement.

The organization goes on to state:

“Given that at least 17.5 million women in America are in need of publicly funded contraceptive services … we believe the department should be working to increase access to these crucial health care services, rather than working to limit them.”

When activists cross the line into extremism, the border between causes becomes blurry.

Two firebombs targeting UC Santa Cruz biologists appear to mark an escalation in violence by militant opponents to animal research, a transition from threats and harassment to acts of terrorism and attempted homicide, authorities said Monday.

The San Francisco Chronicle goes on to report:

Early Saturday, and just minutes apart, firebombs destroyed a car outside the campus home of one researcher and torched the front door of another, who had to flee with his wife and two young children by lowering a ladder out a second-story window. A third researcher received a threatening telephone message around the same time, police said.

The article notes this as a new wave of violence and intimidation targeting scientists that use animals for some of their research. In fact, fliers publicizing the names and home addresses of UC Santa Cruz researchers alleged to be testing on animals had appeared in the city of Santa Cruz prior to the attacks.

Now, if some of this sounds familiar, it is because we have seen these types of tactics before. The National Abortion Federation notes in its History of Clinic Violence:

What began as peaceful protests with picketing moved to harassing clinic staff and patients as they entered clinics…This foundation of harassment led to violence with the first reported clinic arson in 1976 and a series of bombings in 1978. Arsons and bombings have continued until this day.

And, in fact, anti-abortion extremists have long published the names and home addresses of abortion clinic workers, such as in the infamous Nuremberg Files.

The causes might be different, but fanaticism brings the methods closer and closer together. And along the way, the message of the fanatics is lost in the hatred and the fire, until only the violence remains.

In the meantime, the rest of us can continue to work to create a society safe and free from fanaticism, governed by reason, and respectful of science.

In a June 25th article from the Science section of the New York Times we discover that the latest link between fish and tetrapods has been discovered.  The 365 million year old skull and sundry body parts discovered in Latvia is thought to be the oldest tetrapod, or four-legged creature in the Earth’s history.  The discovery continues to close in on the transition between fish to four-legged animals “by presenting the skull, exceptionally preserved braincase, shoulder girdle and partial pelvis of Ventastega curonica from the Late Devonian of Latvia, a transitional intermediate form between the ‘elpistostegids’ Panderichthys and Tiktaalik and the Devonian tetrapods (limbed vertebrates) Acanthostega and Ichthyostega.”

Now the sixty-four million dollar question; So how does this knowledge benefit us today?  Well as biologist Neil Shubin explains:

“When you know how to look, fish are just one way station in our historical path. In fact, we share deep similarities with all living creatures on our planet. Seeing the history inside our bodies is like peeling an onion: The first layers we see reveal the history we share with primates (large brains and opposable thumbs). Peel deeper and we find the layers of history shared with other mammals (hair and breasts), reptiles (our distinctive way of chewing food), fish (arms, legs, backbones and heads), worms (an anus on one side of the body and a mouth on the other), jellyfish (the DNA recipe that builds our bodies), sponges (our many celled bodies) and so on.

Even as we are discovering more about the DNA that builds animal bodies (including our own), new fossils from around the world are continuing to crop up that help explain our anatomical history. Just as we have a family tree that extends to our parents, grandparents and so on, our human family tree extends to other living beings. The same DNA technology that allows courts and forensics experts to identify perpetrators and fathers allows us to categorize the relationships between our species and others. Do this and we see that inside every organ, cell and gene of our bodies lies more than 3.5 billion years of the history of life.”

If we didn’t share a history with the everything from bacteria to apes, we might not have the physical ails that afflict us.  The evolutionary path that winds through the many twists and turns that have created our less than perfect and at times fragile physiques.  Still, the problems we share through are evolutionary history also mean we can study other species mean that work with flies and bacteria may be the source of great medical advances for humans. Work on a worm that is no bigger than a comma is helping us understand how our genetic material functions in both health and disease. 

Our shared history makes it possible for work done on flies and even worms to lead to health advances for our own species.  I think we ignore these possibilities at our own peril.  Again as Neil Shubin says,  Is there any more powerful statement about the importance of our deep evolutionary connection to the rest of life than that?”

A letter sold on May 15th for the astounding amount of 170,000 pounds ($330,000) in London may help clarify Einstein’s beliefs or lack of beliefs about God. In the 1954 letter to Eric Gutkin, Einstein is fairly blunt about his religious views:

“The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honourable, but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish. No interpretation no matter how subtle can (for me) change this.”

“For me the Jewish religion, like all others, is an incarnation of the most childish superstitions. And the Jewish people to whom I gladly belong and with whose mentality I have a deep affinity have no different quality for me than all other people. As far as my experience goes, they are no better than other human groups, although they are protected from the worst cancers by a lack of power. Otherwise I cannot see anything ‘chosen’ about them.”

An abridged version of the letter is here

Richard Dawkins, one of the losing bidders, said that while he was disappointed with losing the bid, he was pleased to see that people so highly valued this letter. In fact, Rupert Powell, the managing director of Bloomsbury Auctions, said the letter attracted unprecedented interest from around the world. He speculated that the letter had captured peoples imagination because it is such a clear statement of the Einstein’s views.

It is indeed intriguing how highly this letter was valued, it presents no scientific evidence for or against the existence of God, but is only the opinion of one man. A genius in the world of physics both atheist and theist have been trying to make Einstein one of their own for years. But Einstein doesn’t fit either definition very neatly.

His sense of religion and of God owes much more to Spinoza than to any established church. In fact, it probably owes much more to his own scientific investigations than any church. In a separate letter also from 1954 he wrote:

“If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.”

Whether we choose to think of Einstein as a atheist, theist, deist or something else altogether, it is important to remember that we must make decisions about our beliefs for ourselves. It’s nice to feel like smart people think the same way you do, but at one time smart people thought the Earth was the center of the universe. I think Humanist could do a lot worse than approaching religion in the way Einstein appears to have. Making up his own mind and allowing room for spirituality and wonder in the world we live in.