Ethnobotanist vs. Big Pharma?

What is an ethnobotanist? Chris Kilham is one, and here are two excerpts from his website "medicinehunter.com."

"Chris travels the world in search of traditional, plant-based medicines, and works with shamans, healers, growers, harvesters, scientists, trade officials and other plant medicine experts in dozens of countries."

“Part David Attenborough, part Indiana Jones, Mr. Kilham, an ethnobotanist from Massachusetts… scoured remote jungles and highlands for three decades for plants, oils and extracts that can heal.” - The New York Times



I had a chance to hear him on a program recently. Given that his discoveries could potentially impact profits at big pharma companies, they are not big fans of his work. They seek to create FUD abut what he does. I guess it is mutual. He too is not a big fan of big pharma.

When the interviewer asked him about safety of his drugs, he had the following to say:
"300,000 people in the US die every year from prescriptions drugs, whereas during a typical year, one or two people may die from herbs." Of course, the number of people of taking herbs is much lower, and so the percent of people dying from herbs may be higher, I still can't argue with the 300K number.

Regarding patents, his view was that it is not the research cost of drugs that companies are seeking to recover, it is the sales and marketing cost. He says that pharma companies spend twice as much on sales and advertising as they do on research.

He summarized his talk by saying "We have become so used to factories that we are willing to give up millenia of tradition for some factory made products."

How right!

Hunting - urban vs. rural; human vs. beast

Last week, the city of Cupertino, home to Apple was abuzz with news of a death. Yes, the death of Steve Jobs, but also the death of Shareef Allman. On Thursday (October 6, 2011), the local Silicon Valley Newspaper (San Jose Mercury News) devoted half the front page to Steve Jobs, and the other half to the rampage caused by Shareef Allman. Mr. Allman had wedged shut the door at his office staff meeting, and opened fire on the people present there - resulting in 3 deaths and multiple people being wounded.

For the next 22 hours, the police hunted him - looking for him in the urban area - Sunnyvale, at the boarder with Cupertino. They eventually found him, and shot him dead.

Reminds me to a book I had read as a child - Man-Eaters of Kumaon, by a British hunter - Jim Corbett.

What is similar?

1. A man-eating tiger kills some people - here, a human being kills some people with his gun.
2. The killer vanishes in the forest - vs. an urban area.
3. Masses of villagers are summoned to help in the hunt vs. masses of law-enforcement officials.
4. When the killer is found, he/she is shot dead.

What is different?

1. The weapons used for killing.
2. The scheming mind.

But, should there be another difference? Is killing a human being the same as killing a tiger?

Fuels from Sunlight: Converting Solar Energy

This was another in the series of public talks at Stanford University tonight. Professor Thomas Jaramillo made an eloquent case for:

1. Fossil fuels (high energy density, easy to transport, stable, inexpensive)
2. Converting sunlight directly to fuels that meet some of the above criteria without converting to electricity first. (fossil fuels are easy to store)

How do they do it?

1. Use energy in photons to move generate free electrons (and "holes").
2. Use these electrons and photons to break down water into hydrogen and oxygen. This hydrogen can be used as fuel. They can also be used to create hydrocarbons from water by pulling carbon di oxide from the air.

Next level of detail

1. Create a semiconductor cell to generate a voltage difference when light falls on it. This voltage difference is equal to the energy absorbed from the photons.
   
2. If not possible through one cell, this can be achieved through two - the anode cell and the cathode cell, each one generating some potential difference.
3. The charges are then transported to the edge of the semiconductor.
4. In the presence of a catalyst these charges convert the medium (water), in combination with the atmosphere to fuel.

The process works today, but is very expensive. They are trying to make it low-cost. Interesting, isn't it. If this is effective, you no longer have to worry about changing the entire transportation infrastructure. The same cars, the same factories, everything will work. And, the system will just capture carbondioxide that it releases.

The only thing we need to be careful of is - to do nothing for the environment while waiting for this solution to be cost-efficient.

"Pakistan’s rogue army runs a shattered state"

This Financial Times article makes some strong points:

1. Osama Bin Laden did not just accidentally land up in Abbottabad; he was the guest of the Pakistani Army in their garrison town.
2. Pakistani Army is not fighting against Jihad in South Asia, IT IS THE SOURCE OF IT
3. Charges against Pakistani Army include - aiding both US and its enemies in Afghanistan, trading in nuclear technology with the worst countries, and conducting terrorist operations including the 2008 attacks in Mumbai.
   
4. When the "impractical utopia for India's muslims in 1947," the country of Pakistan, failed to take off, the Army moved in. It led the country into ruinous wars, and ended up consuming one-fourth of the country's budget every year.
   
5. Pakistan defined itself by being "not India." Then in the 1980's a hateful Islamic ideology was spread among the people of Pakistan to keep alive an enmity of India.

This validates a lot of views. That by focusing on Islam as the source of problems in Pakistan people are barking up the wrong tree. Islam is merely the tool being used by the elite in the Army. They have found that religion sells among the masses. If for some reason, religion were to disappear as a cause, the elite will find some other way to control the same masses.

By the way, US aid to the military suits the Army just fine. The military gets the money to spend on themselves, but also for spending to keep their primacy among the people. That is also part of the reason why US is hated by the Pakistani people - some have figured out that by supporting the Army, the US is not just complicit in, but is also fully responsible for the current state of affairs in Pakistan. This is the same realization that dawned on people in Tunisia (whose head was supported by France), Egypt (US sponsored head), and Yemen (again, US supported head).

The article does not go far enough in tracing responsibility. Military itself is a tool being used by the economic elite. A few families run Pakistan through the Army. The solution, therefore, is not religious; it is economic. Greater opportunities for the masses will give them a brighter view of the future, through a stake in the future of the country and a way to control their own destiny. This is exactly what people in Libya, Syria and many other places in the Middle East are fighting for.

Losing life to terrorism on Installment basis

Every time you travel by air in the US, you give up an additional 10-30 minutes to additional security - meant to foil terrorism. You gain confidence in the safety of your air travel. In exchange, how much of your life are you giving up? And, how much is the country as a whole giving up?

Last year, the top 6 airlines in the US carried 600M passengers. If each passenger spent an additional 15 minutes for these measures, then the total amount of time spent was 600 times .25 hours, or a total of 150 million hours.

Normal life-span in the US is 78.4 years, which translates to 686, 784 hours.
150 million hours translate to 218* lives.

Every year, therefore, we are losing 218 lives to terrorism-related measures. They just aren't 218 individuals. Instead, this loss is spread out over all of us - 300 million US population.

Worth it? You be the judge. If a single terrorism-related incident were to take 218 lives, there would be a huge hue and cry. But, we are willing to accept this loss of the equivalent 218 lives on a sustained basis, year in and year out. On the other hand, would you take a .7 times 10 to the -6 chance of losing your life, rather than subject yourself to intrusive security every time you fly in the US. My personal answer is no. Just like I give away part of my earnings to life insurance, I also give away part of my life to safety.

At the individual level it makes sense. It is at the society as a whole that we worry about. Is this worth-while for the society?
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* The number 218 is surely an underestimate. We have taken only the top 6 airlines of 2010. There are many other airlines in the US. Security measures are taken on not just US, but foreign airlines too, and US passengers are subject to similar measures when traveling outside the US.

In addition, a proper analysis will include the economic cost of these anti-terrorism measures. This includes the cost of hiring staff, equipment, and what the passengers have to do (buy supplies in smaller containers, throw away water bottles etc.).

Sharia Laws vs. US legal system

The aspect of Sharia law most commonly quoted in the US is "eye for an eye." Is the US law very different from this? Take the following principle of US criminal justice system.

Five major purposes of punishment in the US are: rehabilitation, incapacitation, deterrence, denunciation and retribution.

Retribution is to give defendants their "just desserts" by imposing penalties directly proportional to the seriousness of the offense and the offender's blameworthiness. Is this not the same as the version of Sharia quoted earlier?

There is a difference, however. In the US, there are lots of restrictions around this retribution. For example, there are upper and lower bounds. Punishment is further scaled by what is needed to achieve crime prevention goals. Judges are also required to take into consideration, other requirements, e.g. no cruel or inhumane punishments, attempting to promote victim-offender reconciliation etc.

You be the judge - if US laws are substantially different from Sharia, or basically the same.

I contend that US laws are Sharia with some exceptions. And, while those exceptions make a world of difference, the underlying prinicples are the same. It is possible that some "strict constructionist" judge can start interpreting US laws to be much closer to Sharia.

Firearms and Safety

All that has gone on in Arizona over the last one week brought back some memories.

In the early 80's, fresh out of college, and on my first job, I read a newspaper report about an anti-semitic incident in Oregon, USA. The reponse of the local Rabbi struck me as unusual - he issued instructions to all Jewish families in the area to get their firearms ready. I am sure it was the threat of firearms, not the firearms themselves that kept the mischief-mongers away.

Learning from this, I decided that all minority communities must strive to protect themselves. The first step was to attend a series of lectures delivered by an active duty officer from the local police department. Two things from that lecture have stayed with me over the last 20+ years:

1. When talking about philosophy, he asked the audience the rhetorical question . "You see from your window that someone is staling the tires on your car. You get your gun out. You may or may not be legally justified in shooting him, but are you morally justified? A life for a set of tires?"
2. The most amazing things of the whole talk - he said that 85% of cases involving firearms that police get called to, are family incidents.

So, that is the bargain fire-arms owners make - almost six times more likely to use it on family than on a stranger. And, some of this one sixth chance is morally not justified.

Why do many Americans make this trade then? The same reason that many people buy lottery tickets. They overestimate their chances of coming out ahead. But there are a lot more losers in the lottery than winners.

And, things like Joe the Plumber, who claimed that he would have to pay more under Democrats than under the Republicans. Reportedly, he was neither Joe, nor a plumber, nor would he have to pay more under Democrats. I just wish more people would think for themselves, than be told what to think - through elaborate lobbying campaigns.