A predictable catastrophe

Today's Washington Post has an article on how the global food crisis is impacting Mauritania. Yesterday, I blogged about this topic on Intlawgrrls, here.

The human scale of this tragedy can get buried under statistics about biofuel, farm animal production and global trade. But, hunger is personal. It affects individuals one-by-one. I am haunted by images of hungry children, and even more haunted what must be an unbearable pain that parents feel when they are unable to feed their children.

More than two decades ago, Amartya Sen convincingly demonstrated that human hunger is a distribution rather than a production problem. That remains true. I am continually amazed at how willing we are to accept plenty juxtaposed with desperate poverty, and at how many people just don't care.

If you care, do something! Give money (here is a link to one fine organization--there are many others) write your representatives about the need for US leadership on this issue, advocate for the hundreds of millions of people who have no safety margin. As Jacques Diouf, Director-General of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization warns, this is an entirely predictable catastrophe.

Dr. Lovejoy on Climate Change & Biodiversity

Last week, I added a brief blog post on my research into climate change and biodiversity, emphasizing forest preservation. This evening, I bumped into a video of Dr. Thomas E. Lovejoy discussing similar issues a couple of years ago. Dr. Lovejoy has long been among the most important scientific voices on biodiversity and he has focused on the impact of climate change in recent years. The 35-minute video offers a very nice "plain English" primer on some of the key scientific and policy issues, which I thought Biolaw readers might enjoy.

The bit of the talk that I find most interesting relates to facilitating biodiversity adaptation to inevitable climate change:

Dr. Lovejoy notes that the disassembly and reassembly of biological communities, given differing rates of species migration, will bring “with it a whole host of conservation challenges that it is almost impossible to manage at this point.”

He continues, however, (around 17:00 of the video), “but, basically, if there’s a single recipe here, it’s to restore connection to the landscape, reverse our way of looking at the situation as nature being fenced-off in nice little human-dominated landscapes, and begin to think of ourselves in just the opposite way, as humans living and pursuing our aspirations within a natural matrix.”

He then emphasizes the value of protected areas – primarily as a means of facilitating the migration of species and reassembly of ecological communities.

Other notable points include Dr. Lovejoy advocating short-term use of nuclear energy and stressing the need for social agreement on greenhouse gas concentration targets (rather than emissions targets).

Dr. Lovejoy is co-editor of a major text on climate change and biodiversity. A more recent interview with him, discussing use of markets in forest preservation, is available here.

Toxic inaction, in humans and their pets

Mark Schapiro, Toxic Inaction Greenpeace U.K. released a study in 2005 that found numerous toxic chemicals in the umbilical-cord blood of European infants. That same year, World Wildlife Fund International tested the blood of three generations of women from 12 European countries. The largest number of chemicals — 63 — was found in the group of grandmothers. Given the number of years they had had to accumulate exposure, this result was perhaps not surprising. But the next-highest level was among their grandchildren, aged 12 to 28, who in their short lifetimes had amassed 59 different toxic chemicals . . . . Bio-monitoring tests in the United States have revealed the same dangerous chemicals making their way into the blood of Americans. In 2005, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention completed screening for the presence of 148 toxic chemicals in the blood of a broad cross section of Americans; it found that the vast majority of subjects harbored almost all the toxins.

Tara Parker-Pope, Toxic Cats and Dogs [A toxicity] analysis, released by the Washington-based Environmental Working Group, used blood and urine samples from 35 dogs and 37 cats collected at Hanover Animal Hospital in Mechanicsville, Va. The study found high levels of numerous chemicals in dogs and cats, including chemicals used in the making of furniture, fabrics and electronics. Mercury was also detected at high levels, likely from fish used in pet food.

earth day thoughts

This is the Ganges River basin (photo by NASA). Isn't it beautiful?

More satelite images of the earth can be found here.

When the President of the United States pitches halting the increase in greenhouse gas emissions by 2025 as a "rational and balanced approach," let alone as a national commitment to sustainability, it is worth taking a moment to remind ourselves what a beautiful and yet fragile planet we call home. Especially on earth day.

Exploitation and Gardening

Paul Krugman has an op-ed piece in the NY Times called “Running Out of Planet to Exploit.” The basic thrust is to question whether rising oil and food prices are a sign that the human population is hitting the proverbial brick wall in terms of resource exploitation.

What would greater discussion of that view mean for future biodiversity policy? Will such perspectives create greater interest in conservation, and foster development of alternative agricultural techniques? Maybe that is too optimistic. . . . Perhaps if the view gains momentum, it will simply create greater hoarding and a more devastating rush to exploit?

Over in NYT Magazine's "Green Issue," Michael Pollen has an article asking why an individual should bother living a more environmentally-conscious lifestyle. An article that ends with a call to garden.

Juxtaposing the two pieces creates an interesting impression. We may be reaching the apex of the planet's ability to sustain our lifestyle, for reasons far beyond one individual's choice. Yet, perhaps it is time to pay more attention to the little bit of planet each of us lives on, and to draw just a bit of our sustenance directly from it, because, in Pollen's words,

The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world.

Biodiversity & Climate Change

Last week I gave a presentation on biodiversity & climate change for the faculty workshop series here at the University of Louisville School of Law that I thought may be of interest to some Biolaw readers. Biodiversity loss is a much more insidious threat than climate change, underappreciated by the public and many policymakers. Climate change, on the other hand, has significant momentum, both in the public's imagination and in international negotiations.

My goal in the presentation was to identify linkages between the two issues -- particularly as they converge on forests -- and highlight some possibilities for creating legal linkages that effectively promote biodiversity protection. Primary options are credits for Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degredation (REDD) and other uses of the climate regime (perhaps prioritization of CDM projects to promote biodiversity) to adjust the financial and other incentives currently producing poor forest management in many biodiverse regions. REDD is not without dangers, however, as high carbon value and high biodiversity value often are not correlated. I expect to continue researching this area for years to come and welcome readers to contact me for further discussion.

Pharyngula, we are here

PZ Myers of Pharyngula has asked bloggers everywhere to help build a Google bomb that promotes the National Center for Science Education's website, Expelled Exposed. The project consists of embedding the word Expelled inside a matched pair of <a> and </a> tags. Here is a snippet of .html code that will do the trick:

<a href="http://expelledexposed.com" target=_blank style="font-style:italic">Expelled</a>

A blow against creationism is a blow for enlightenment, and we are pleased to help Professor Myers promote Expelled Exposed.

Update — April 15, 2008:

The Expelled Exposed website is now showing this video of a Texas schoolteacher who was fired for failing to remain "neutral" about creationism:

Dendrobium: Family Orchidaceae's tree of life

I.V. Passmoore, Dendrobium Orchid (n.d.)

Dendrobium refers to a large genus of tropical orchids comprising roughly 1200 species. The term dendrobium combines the Greek words δεντρο (tree) and βίος (life). These orchids range throughout much of southern and eastern Asia, the Philippines, Indonesia, New Guinea, Australia, and New Zealand. Their diverse habitats span the high Himalayas, lowland tropical forests, and the Australian desert.

Most dendrobium species are epiphytic and grow on other plants. Others are lithophytic and dwell on rocks. After a long period of winter dormancy, many Dendrobium orchids issue new shoots from pseudobulbs.

As the panorama below demonstrates, this diverse genus has been cultivated to cover all colors of the rainbow and is much beloved by orchid collectors.

The Most Challenging Audience: The Public

Tomorrow evening I will deliver a lecture in The University Lecture Series on Global Climate Change at the University of Kansas. My talk - "Climate Change and the Changing Legal Climate" - will focus on the awkward, and sometimes openly hostile, interaction between law and science in guiding climate change policy. However, this lecture will be very different from teaching my students in class or presenting a paper to my colleagues at a conference. It will be much more challenging and take a lot more preparation, because I'll be addressing the toughest audience of all: the public.

Is the public really so tough? Yes, I think it is. My students are a captive audience, their grades dependent, at least in part, on attending my classes. At conferences, my colleagues usually have considerable expertise in the subject matter I present. Members of the public, by stark contrast, have neither obligation nor expertise. They want to learn something new, interesting, and perhaps even important, and most of them will have significant experience in neither law nor science. Instead, they will judge my talk against the opportunity cost of not watching Wife Swap, Deal or No Deal, or America's Next Top Model. Or, much worse, they will compare my presentation on such crowd-pleasing legal and scientific issues as climatic forcing, albedo, cap and trade, intergenerational equity, the FCC, the IPCC, COPs, and MOPs with that other climate change guy - the one with the Oscar-winning movie, the Nobel Prize, and the compellingly tragic near-Presidential backstory. Unless I'm careful in what and how I present, the audience may think to itself "I knew Al Gore. I, like most people, voted for Al Gore. Professor Torrance is no Al Gore."

So, I'm working hard on a presentation that tries not only to bridge science and law, two fields as disparate as C.P. Snow's Two Cultures, but simultaneously to weave together my esoteric academic interests in clean development mechanisms and oceanic iron fertilization with the quite different, but equally legitimate, interests of the public to learn something new, interesting, and compelling without being pandered to or patronized. Wish me luck. The inconvenient truth is that the public may be the most discriminating audience of all since its members are under no obligation to attend, their expectations of an hour well-spent are impossibly high, and, since I teach at a public law school, they pay my salary. Wish me luck. At least I've got an easier job than the previous speaker on global climate change, Australian author Tim Flannery. He had mission impossible: speaking at KU while everyone was cheering the Jayhawks win the NCAA championship in spectacular fashion. Now that's a challenging climate.

Cross-posted from Prawfsblawg.

Biolaw: Law at the Frontiers of Biology

Interface and Pain, watercolors by Sharon Burgmayer

Herewith the video proceedings of the Kansas Law Review's symposium, Biolaw: Law at the Frontiers of Biology (November 9, 2007), to be published in volume 55, issue 4 of the Review.

Read the rest of this post . . . .

	Jim Chen, Biolaw: Cracking the Code (see also this Biolaw summary)
	Andrew Torrance, Patents and the Future of Human Evolution
	Peter Barton Hutt, The State of the Art in Food and Drug Law
	Senator Adlah Donastorg (United States Virgin Islands), Lunchtime Address
	Henry T. Greely, Law and Human Biological Enhancement
	Rudolf H. Beese & Jerry Menikoff, Cutting Edge Legal Issues in Biotechnology

National Autism Day

April 2 is national autism day. Since a young cousin of mine was just diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, I am paying more attention to the day than usual.

Austism, and its spectrum of related disorders, are confusing and difficult to understand. The array of developmental syndromes known as autism spectrum disorders range from severe disability and cognitive impairment to the socially awkward eccentric with Asperger's syndrome.

Parenting a child with any these disorders can tax all one's resources--financial, emotional, relational. In addition, parents also have to deal with an often disapproving and unsympathetic public. I saw this in action two weeks ago. I was flying to Florida with my toddler. The family in front of me included three children, one of whom had autism. After we boarded the plane, the pilot announced a one-hour ground delay. All the parents on the plane panicked (an extra hour on the plane is not something small children tolerate readily.) But, for the family in front of me, this was a catastrophe! While none of their children were happy, their autistic little boy was simply incapable of staying in his seat. No amount of disapproving stares from other passengers, or whispered comments, would change that fact. I was amazed at how little sympathy and how much blame was directed at the poor parents who were doing everything they could think of under the circumstances.

With so little known about the causes of the disease, it is no wonder that conspiracy theories, particularly those involving vaccines, thrive among parents. The research and a growing body of evidence does not support the theories. Unfortunately, evidence does not seem to matter when dealing with conspiracy theories.

If parents simply believed disproven conspiracy theories, that would be one thing. But a conviction that vaccines "cause" autism can lead to dangerous choices. Recent reports document the growing number of children whose parents refuse vaccinations. The public health consequences are frightening to contemplate. In this country we have forgotten what epidemics are like, and how many children die from measles. Unvaccinated children are at risk themselves, but they also pose a threat to their peers, the elderly and pregnant women. Vaccinations are far more than an individual choice — they produce a public good that is as valuable as it is fragile.

Children of parents over 40 (euphemistically referred to as "older parents") are supposed to be at greater risk for autism and autism related disorders. So, in passing fits of paranoia, my partner and I overanalyze our daughter's behavior searching for the faintest symptom. (the warning signs are available here — early intervention is very important with autism, so take a moment to read the symptoms) While paranoia seems to be an inevitable part of being a parent (a perhaps inevitable result of "having one's heart waking around outside one's body" — the most apt description of parenthood I have ever read) you can be sure she is getting her full complement of vaccines. It is our duty, not only to our daughter, but to society at large.

Biolaw: Cracking the Code

Biolaw: Cracking the Code

The neologism biolaw describes all areas of law informed by the life sciences. Health law, bioethics, environmental law, natural resources law, agricultural law, food and drug law, biotechnology, law and neuroscience, law and behavioral psychology, and evolutionary analysis of law all share a common scientific core. Lawyers and legal scholars too often address these topics in isolation. This piecemeal approach undermines the scientific cohesion that connects these areas of law with the life sciences. This essay defines biolaw as the field of law and the life sciences in its entirety. Part I of this essay will define biolaw. Part II will then explain why it matters.

Citation:Jim Chen, Biolaw: Cracking the Code, 55:4 Kansas L. Rev. (forthcoming 2008) (symposium issue — Biolaw: Law at the Frontiers of Biology)