Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers – Mary Roach

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Macabre. Gross. Funny, in a twisted, fascinating way. What does happen to our bodies once we are dead and gone? Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, eventually and in most cases, unless you’ve donated your body to science and then the process is either sped up, as it is dipped in a tub of lye, or delayed indefinitely through plastination. In Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers, author Mary Roach takes us on a wild romp through history and science, describing in unsettling detail how cadavers have been used, and are used, in medical research. Although the book is weirdly entertaining, given the subject matter, Roach is always respectful of the bodies, and the people who have donated them.

“The human head is of the same approximate size and weight as a roaster chicken. I have never before had occasion to make the comparison, for never before today have I seen a head in a roasting pan. But here are forty of them, one per pan, resting face-up on what looks to be a small pet-food bowl. The heads are for plastic surgeons, two per head, to practice on. I’m observing a facial anatomy and face-lift refresher course, sponsored by a southern university medical center and led by a half-dozen of America’s most sought-after-face-lifters. The heads have been put in roasting pans – which are of the disposable aluminum variety – for the same reason that chickens are put in roasting pans: to catch the drippings. Surgery, even surgery upon the dead, is a tidy, orderly affair.”

In the chapter entitled “Crimes of Anatomy”, Roach takes us back before the time where there was a legal process in place to donate one’s body to science. In the early 1800s teachers of anatomy had to resort to other means of acquiring bodies on which to practice. Body snatching from recently dug graves was the more usual method, and there was a vigorous trade in the practice. The problem was that nobody wanted to be dissected. The common view of life after death was of the whole body making its way to heaven. Dissection was something only done to the bodies of executed mass murderers.

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A Short History of Nearly Everything – Bill Bryson

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If only all science books were as entertaining as Bill Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything. Bryson explains the major scientific theories known to man with masterful storytelling skills. Weaving in richly researched details on the lives and characteristics of the foremost historical scientific figures, Bryson discourses on everything from the big bang theory and quantum physics, to paleontology and plate tectonics. As he put it, the book is about “…how we went from there being nothing at all to there being something, and then how a little of that something turned into us, and also what happened in between and since.” Not just detailing what we know, Bryson describes how we learned what we now know.

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Intestinal Worms and IBD

I love stories like this… from the New Scientist, Diet of Worms Can Cure Bowel Disease. Studies have found that regular doses of pig whipworms can drastically relieve the symptoms of Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) and Chron’s.

Hats off to the brave volunteers for the first studies, who not knowing if this was going to work of not, intentionally submitted their GI tracts to intestinal parasites.

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Violent Behavior – Learned or Genetic?

Caught this in Sharon Begley’s column in Friday’s Wall St. Journal. (click here for full article, available for a few days). Stanford University’s Robert Sapolsky has observed that when the most aggressive, dominant members of a baboon clan are removed, the culture of the remaining baboons changes to become more peaceful. These changes persist even as new generations come into the clan either from birth or from other clans.

The most recent evidence of culture among animals comes from studies of olive baboons. It stands out because the learned behavior is so at odds with how badly baboons customarily behave.

Baboons tend to be fierce and aggressive, and the “Forest Troop” in Kenya’s Masai Mara Reserve fits the mold. Males fought over everything (grub, girls …) and nothing. But in 1982, the aggressive males began raiding the garbage pit of a nearby tourist lodge, gorging on rotten meat. Almost half of the troop’s males — and all the aggressive ones — died of tuberculosis, leaving, as Stanford University biologist Robert Sapolsky puts it, “a cohort of atypically unaggressive survivors.”

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Hormesis – Radiation Is Good For You?

What is Hormesis?

I had a conversation with a retired X-Ray specialist physicist who claimed that radiation in low doses was actually good for you, citing the phenomena called “hormesis”.

What is hormesis? It’s a process in a cell or organism that shows two phases of response to increasing exposure to toxins – the first phase beneficial at low doses, then moving to detrimental as the amount of exposure increases.

Google hormesis and you’ll find thousands of studies displaying this effect.

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New neural pathways

Small triumphs. I learned how to do a backwards crossover today in my ice skating class.

What’s a backwards crossover? Skating backwards in an arc generated by picking up one foot and crossing it over the other foot.

No big deal, unless you are 42 and decided 3 months ago that you wanted to learn how to skate and you are as terrified as I am of falling on your tush on that cold, hard ice.

The old adage is that it is much harder to learn new things, especially those requiring physical skill, the older you get. This may be true, but it is really hard if you don’t even try. And the older we get, the more reluctant we are to look stupid, and the less we are willing to take risks.

I’ve been reading lately about the latest research in brain neuroplasticity. What they’ve found is that the brain continues to build new neural pathways throughout our whole lives, as long as we require our brains to perform new functions such as learning a new language or a new motor skill.

Every week I go to my ice skating class and every week I get just a fraction better. What I learned last week, as difficult as it was then, is much easier this week. This must come from the brain creating stronger neural connections.

Although children can pick things up faster, I have found that I’m learning as fast if not faster than most of the kids in the class because of my better ability to focus my attention.

Focused attention creates new neural pathways. Go brain go!