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• Fascination with Forensics

  Posted by Cat

  on Sep 01, 2010

  In certain circumstances, a body can skeletonize in ten to fourteen days.

  There is a magnet on my fridge that my girlfriend bought me. It says, ?I like poetry, long walks on the beach and poking dead things with a stick." It?s so funny to me because it?s true! Many beach walks with my grandfather growing up involved poking dead crabs, jellyfish, and a random seagull or two and when he wasn?t looking putting them in my orange bucket. I also learned and practiced massage from an early age on. Working on muscles and pressure points intrigued me about the inner workings of the human body. I loved the cadaver show that came to San Francisco a few years back because I could visually see what my hands had felt over countless years doing massage.

  A few years ago, I read "Stiff" by Mary Roach. I went to my family and told them when I die they were under strict instruction to donate my body to science. Like the cadavers in Mary Roach?s book, I want my earthly remains to be busy and useful post humus albeit in plastic surgery, teaching anatomy or being a crash test dummy. My family just rolled their eyes, shook their heads and muttered, "Only Cat."

  Another great book about dead people recently crossed my path and I am reading it now. "Dead Men Do Tell Tales" by William R. Maples, Ph.D. is the assigned book for the next Down to a Science Book Club get together on Monday, September 13 at Books Inc. I am having a wonderful time reading this book as it a chronicles a brilliant career of a forensic anthropologist in Florida. In starting this book, I thought I knew a lot about forensics but many times I have caught myself very surprised to learn something new about the field and its make-up. Below are a few tidbits from the book that piqued my interest:

  - Body decomposition is subjective. A body that is wrapped or in a container will decompose differently that one left out in the air. Temperature, climate, season, how deep a body is buried all affects the rate of decomposition. One instance is given in the book of a grave containing three bodies that had different rates of decomposition because each body was at a different depth - even though they were buried at the same time.

  - In certain circumstances, a body can skeletonize in ten to fourteen days.

  - Caught and gutted tiger sharks have yielded the highest number of human remains found. However, the corrosive juice in the stomach of a tiger shark can dissolve bone beyond recognition in a short window of time.

  - Forensic anthropologists are not medical doctors although they do hold doctorates. Their specialty is the study of the human skeleton and often can find details on human remains that a coroner or medical examiner will overlook.

  - ?The vibrating Stryker saw used in autopsies [is] a tool whole circular blade does not spin, but instead oscillates back and forth at high speed so that is will not cut skin, but only bone.? (Maples, pg 40).

  I am only a quarter of the way through the book; this book is not for those with weak stomachs as the stories are macabre and graphic. However, I am learning so much about this field and finding a new found respect for those that practice it. I am greatly looking forward to finishing the book and engaging in a very lively conversation about its grisly contents at the next book club meeting.

  
  Tags: forensics
  
  
  

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• More Transparent Genetic Testing

  Posted by Dr. Barry Starr

  on Aug 31, 2010

  A few minor tweaks to genetic testing companies' websites could make their offerings more transparent to the public and the FDA.

  The last couple of blogs I have been talking about direct to consumer (DTC) genetic tests. I talked about how the FDA has begun looking into them and why the FDA isn?t happy with what it sees.

  In this blog I thought I'd propose a couple of different ways these DTC companies can present their data that might mollify the FDA. These changes will also let consumers know what they're really getting and whether they want it at all.

  Before starting, I want to say that I will focus on 23andMe, a Bay Area company. I'm not picking on them. They are just the company I know best and one of the few that is good enough to survive the FDA's scrutiny. I also know a lot about them because I have taken their test.

  23andMe has a very good website. They present complicated data in an understandable and easily searchable way. Their major weakness, though, is that they implicitly promise more than they can actually deliver. In essence, even though they are pretty good about disclaimers, they aren't good enough.

  One of the first things the company should probably do is to reorganize the first page that potential customers see. They need to make sure that potential customers have a good idea about what they can and can't get from these sorts of genetic tests.

  For example, right now a prominent feature is a box that lets the viewer search for the diseases 23andMe ?covers? along with a list of popular topics. People may come away thinking 23andMe has useful tests for most of the diseases listed. They don't.

  They have some useful tests for a few, rare genetic diseases. But the bulk of their tests are not at all useful yet in figuring out someone?s risk of getting a certain disease. What they have for the more complicated diseases is a way for people to compare their DNA to various studies in the scientific literature.

  Maybe a study was done that found a DNA difference involved in diabetes. Customers can see whether or not they have this difference too but this tells them nothing about their risk for diabetes. It gives just one piece of a giant puzzle. They are not getting any meaningful results that can predict their risk for diabetes. This box should probably be heavily modified or even eliminated.

  In fact, the website really should be organized into different sections that are labeled by how medically useful they are to the customer rather than by how strong the DNA study was scientifically. Maybe they could split their tests into three sections.

  The first would be carrier testing. These tests can tell you if you have a hidden genetic disease that you could pass down to your child if your partner has it as well. This would get high marks for reliability, scientific validity, and usefulness.

  The next section would be more fun related stuff. This would have ancestry and some of the traits testing. It would be able to tell you what your earwax is like, where your mother's, mother's, mother's, etc. mother came from, the odds that your child might have blue eyes, etc.

  The final section would include the bulk of what is tested. These are the tests that compare your results to results in the scientific literature for complex diseases. Many of these tests would score high in scientific validity but get no points for usefulness. As I said before, most if not all of these tests will not give you an accurate risk assessment for the diseases they look at. Period.

  There isn?t any reason these results shouldn?t be included, though. Maybe people enjoy seeing the results or want to use them to watch progress in the field or whatever. But the companies need to say upfront that these tests are not that useful for determining risk. This needs to be obvious enough that someone wouldn't buy the product just for that test.

  As a last point, 23andMe (and all genetic testing companies) need to be much more upfront about what their tests can offer based on race. The carrier tests are probably pretty good for most everyone (although they may miss any nonwhite versions of many diseases). The fun section might be pretty useful to the nonwhite world for ancestry but probably less so for traits as they have mostly been determined for people of European descent.

  Most of the rest of the tests they offer that deal with more complex diseases have only been validated for white people. This needs to be explicit on their website so nonwhite people know they aren't getting as much bang for their buck. Buyer of color beware!

  These kinds of changes will go a long way towards making these sites more transparent to potential customers. And they may even keep the FDA at bay.

  
  Tags: 23andme, dna, FDA, gene, genetic, genetic testing
  
  
  

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• 6 DIY Activities For The Burning Man Blues

  Posted by Laura Khalil

  on Aug 31, 2010

  What to do when all your friends are at Burning Man? Here are six fun activities to inspire the Maker in you.

  You may have noticed a few strange occurrences this week: rush hour seems lighter, there are no lines at the grocery store and you can suddenly find parking in San Francisco. As many of us know, this is the week of Burning Man.  The city has cleared out and headed to Black Rock Desert in Nevada to show off their creativity, display feats of engineering and adorn themselves in furry costumes.

  There?s no time like this week to take advantage of these activities to fuel your senses and inspire the Maker in you:

  1. Visit Burning Man art in the city: Both the Raygun Gothic Rocketship at the Embarcadero and Ecstacy in Hayes Valley were unveiled at Burning Man in years past. They are amazing feats of engineering, art and ingenuity and definitely worth a visit.

  2. Take a class at Tech Shop. They are a great resource our us DIYers in the Bay Area. They offer over 20 classes a week in everything from laser cutting, sewing, electronics and CNC mills. Their current space is in Menlo Park and a second location will be opening in the heart of San Francisco soon.

  3. Go to the Exploratorium! One of the most fun creative spaces for engineers and DIY freaks, I could spend hours getting lost in their exhibits. Best of all, It?s free tomorrow night.

  4. Visit a science cafe. The East Bay Science Cafe is meeting tomorrow to talk particle physics with Dr. Beate Heinemann who will be discussing the Large Hadron Collider.

  5. Take a walk in the wild with Forage SF. Learn about all the edibles growing in our back yard on this East Bay walk on September 4th. Future walks take black on both sides of the bridge, but they sell out quickly!

  6. Go to Balsa Man. On Saturday evening, the same night that ?the Man? will burn in Black Rock City, tiny pieces of art made out of balsa wood will be burnt off the San Francisco coast in what is akin to a much tinier and shorter Burning Man like event.

  With so much cool stuff going on, this is a great week to be in town. Enjoy!

  
  Tags: balsa man, burning man, exploratorium, maker, Science, tech shop
  
  
  

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