AMA worried mental health patients being jailed

This I found just minutes after posting my last post. It was on the ABC News Online website. Interesting extention to my previous thoughts.

The Australian Medical Association (AMA) says rural mental health patients are ending up in jail cells because there are not enough beds in regional areas.

The group is calling on state and federal governments to make a significant boost to mental health services as the drought drags on.

Dr David Rivette from the AMA’s rural reference group says public psychiatry has been grossly under-funded. He says incentives are needed to train more psychiatrists and to retain overworked mental health staff to work in country areas.

“We want more beds for them to go to in regional areas. I’ve had instances of patients having to be shipped all over the state to find an acute psychiatric bed,” he said. “It’s just not appropriate to keep them for long periods in small country hospitals when patients are acutely psychotic. It often means they have to be locked up in a police cell and be watched by the police.”

Dr Rivette says acutely ill patients are often not receiving the safest or best care. He says the drought is adding to the pressure on already inadequate services.

“Those doctors out west that I speak to say there’s definitely a rise in numbers of severely depressed patients, people thinking about self-harm,” he said. “So, yes, that is going to put some pressure on beds, there’s no question about that.”

Dr Rivette says psychiatry services in country New South Wales in particular are in worse shape than a decade ago.

“If there’s real advances I certainly haven’t seen them in my neck of the woods, I’d love to hear about them from anybody,” he said. “Things are worse now than they were five and 10 years ago. I certainly don’t see the situation improving, I see it going backwards.”

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Gene linked to mental Illness, So I don’t have to just “Snap out of it?”

I remember when I was growing up in a rural community and on a farm, that my father and most of his associates believed people with mental illness where weak, or lazy. It is still quite common for people to believe, especially with anxiety and depressive disorders, that the person has some choice as to how they respond to “whatever”

Research has constantly shown this to be partly true, but the whole “Nature-Nurture” debate focuses on predispositions to conditions according to birth. I.E. some conditions are passed on by genes, from parents to siblings. The degree to which each condition is naturally caused and which are environmentally triggered will continue to rage, but this is another piece of the puzzle.

PsycPORT Reports:

U.S. scientists have found a gene variant linked with mental illness is also linked with enlargement of a brain region that handles negative emotions.

The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center and Central Texas Veterans Health Care System researchers focused on a gene related to the neurotransmitter serotonin. They found the region of the brain called the pulvinar is larger and contains more nerve cells in those carrying the gene.

Once specific nerve cells release serotonin, a molecule called the serotonin transporter, or SERT, brings it back into the cell.

Drugs that prevent this re-uptake, such as Prozac, are frequently used to treat patients with depression.

The serotonin transporter gene has two forms, or variants: short, or SERT-s, and long, SERT-l. People carrying two SERT-s genes are more likely to experience depression than people with one or no SERT-s genes.

The researchers studied brains from 49 deceased people, with and without psychiatric illnesses. They found subjects carrying two SERT-s genes had pulvinar areas 20 percent larger and contained 20 percent more nerve cells.

Technorati Tags: Psychology, Genetics, Nature-Nurture, Issues

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Reading the Terrorist Mind

I find this a very timely piece. With al the “war on terrorism, and associated hype, how do you get into their minds” The following excerpts are from The Frontal Cortex : Reading the Terrorist Mind . November 8, 2006 10:35 AM, by Jonah Lehrer

I’m skeptical of these sorts of psychological models – an important part of the terrorist strategy is to not have a coherent strategy – but it’s certainly a noble effort:

“Imagine that we had a mathematical formula that could be applied to Israel’s enemies to predict their course of action?

Prof. Alex Mintz of Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya claims to have created just that. Mintz has developed a formula to map how terrorist organizations make their decisions. His theory can be applied to any leader in the world, whether heads of state or terror masterminds. …”

“How does this formula work? It mimics the decision-making process of a terror organization, involving thousands of minute details. The process is twofold: first the leader rules out the options that his group cannot carry out, and then the organization maximizes “specific dimensions on the remaining alternatives.”

This is all plugged into his custom-designed computer program, which takes into account funds, weapons, opposition, elections and the most heavily weighed factor, politics. The algorithms do the rest.

What separates Mintz’s calculations from those of other experts in the field? In the world of game and decision theory there are two basic camps: the rational approach, with roots in economics, and the cognitive approach, which is rooted in psychology. Mintz’s theory is one of the first that “combines elements of both in an attempt to bridge the gap between the rational and cognitive in decision-making.”

It should also be noted that Mintz isn’t the first scientist interested in deciphering the inscrutable decisions of terrorists. I’ve got a short article on Neil Johnson in the next Seed, so I won’t describe his research in too much detail here. But Johnson has constructed a model of the terrorist mind using some techniques from the physics of complex systems. After analyzing the casualty counts and battlefield reports from several major conflicts (from Iraq to Indonesia to Columbia), Johnson realized that all the conflicts looked the same. The terrorists were all operating from an identical playbook. “In every war we looked at,” Johnson told me, “we saw the same basic patterns. On the one hand, there were lots of little clashes that had very few casualties. As you increase the number of casualties, the number of clashes is much fewer. But the really surprising thing is the way in which every war goes between these two extremes.” When Johnson graphed the relationship between the number of clashes and the number of casualties per clash, he discovered a striking consistency between totally unrelated wars. “The numbers fall perfectly on this straight line called a power-law function,” he says. “When you measure the slope of the line, you find that the number is right around 2.5. It doesn’t matter if it’s for Iraq, Columbia, Senegal or Indonesia. The line never changes.”

Technorati Tags: Terrorism, Issus, Psychology

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Nuclear debate

Here is the follow up to the preceding post;

06 November 2006

Nuclear debate

Well, I will admit I cannot see a lot of viable alternatives to nuclear power in the context of greenhouse emmissions over time, But it is interesting that this whole debate is raging in public at the exact same time that the parliament is in a protracted and controversial debate on allowing embryonic cloning…

The following excerpts are quoted from the (Australian) ABC from Mon 6th Nov.

To start with the PM supported Nuclear power as

“an option… The Prime Minister says nuclear power production must be an option in Australia and it would be foolish to ignore the option with the country’s vast reserves of uranium
” Nuclear power is potentially the cleanest and greenest of them all,” he said. “We would be foolish from a national interest point of view, with our vast reserves of uranium, to say that we are not going to consider nuclear power – not even going to look at it, we are going to say no to it before the debate even starts. One of the options that has got to be on the table is nuclear power, I believe that the world’s attitudes toward nuclear power is changing and I believe that Australian attitudes towards nuclear power are changing”

This follows the release of a report commissioned by the government, and controversially staffed by pro-nuclear supporters and scientists. It was led by the man who ran Telstra (The national phone company) while the share price free fell to a fraction of their value as the government started to privitise it…

A review by the Federal Government’s nuclear energy task force has found a nuclear power industry could be commercially viable within 15 years. The Federal Government says it believes the 15-year time frame is realistic. A report by the Federal Government’s nuclear energy task force has found that within 15 years a nuclear power industry in Australia could be commercially viable.
The task force is headed by former Telstra boss Ziggy Switkowski and it is due to hand the draft report to the Government in a fortnight. The report also suggests that when more countries invest in nuclear technology it will become cheaper.
Federal Resources Minister Ian Macfarlane says the report shows that nuclear power is viable and should be carefully considered in Australia.
Mr Macfarlane says he agrees with the 15-year time frame suggested in the report. Fifteen-year time frame is realistic, you could see the beginning of construction of the first nuclear power station in Australia within the next decade and coming on-line and producing electricity on a constant basis within five years after that,” he said.

“What we are seeing though is more and more evidence both here in Australia and also internationally through the International Energy Agency that nuclear power will be a price competitive option for Australia to consider in the years ahead,” he said.

The review has also found that the cost of nuclear power will drop dramatically when more countries invest in nuclear technology and the price of fossil fuels goes up.

The PM even touched on that bogeyman of the Kyoto protocol. Interesting take!

[He] …will not be pressured into making changes that would place Australia at an economic and competitive disadvantage…“Australia is different from Europe, it is different from America, it is different from Asia,” he said.

“In many respects the whole debate surrounding the Kyoto Protocol is being driven out of Europe rather than out of countries whose economic circumstances are similar to our own.”

But there are always at least three sides, with one being the truth. This is another.

But a spokeswoman for the Wilderness Society is calling on the Government to rule out using nuclear power and instead investigate other options for generating base load electricity – like the use of natural gas.
Queensland Conservation Council spokesman Toby Hutcheon does not believe Australia will have a nuclear power industry by 2021.

Further arguments include the fact that nations like the UK and USA still have a 20+ Year lead time. I wonder if this is a new “green’ Howard government, a smokescreen for something else, or a real attempt to both secure future “Clean” power and improve the balance of trade by supplying enriched products to consumers overseas…

I will come back to this in a month or so to see where it has gone!

Technorati Tags: Issues, Nuclear power, Polotics, Prime Minister

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Australian issues: A quick primer.

I wrote this while learning how to post, so here it is.

05 November 2006

It is very interesting that Australia has been in the grips of a prolonged drought for 7 years now. Finally the politicians have realized we have
a problem! Why? Because several major cities and towns are now on severe water restrictions. Toowoomba recently proposed the building of
a world best practice re-cycling plant to return up to 25% of the waste water to one of the cities dams. The federal government in their wisdom
decided it was a wonderful idea, but to look like they where concerned about community feelings they had a referendum. And got rolled!
Now we have a city with no water, in fact it is illegal to use water outside of the house now! Brisbane down the hill a bit, the capital of
the state, the gold and sunshine coasts, (well over half the state population) are all on very strict limitations. Add to that the fact that Australia, has failed to sign the much vaunted Kyoto protocol to reduce greenhouse gas emmissions, (although we produce less than 1%), and now we have a huge fight brewing over the governments floating the possibility of nuclear power. As a nation Australia has about 1/3 of all the worlds known uranium resources.

The argument goes that if we sell it for producing power, (and we do), then we should value add and keep some money. If you are going to enrich it why not use it, and reduce our current reliance on coal! There are many other projects to use solar, wind and water, but all are decades away from even marginal economic viability. The other issues include our reliance on digging finite resources out of the ground to pay for our standard of living. As Australia will receive both the first major, and worse effects of global warming, largely due to ice melt and climate change, this is an issue I watch fairly closely, and will continue to monitor. In the coming week our PM has called a water summit, which will be an interesting sight, as we have one party in nation government and another in all but one state! The possibility of constructive outcomes
is therefore somewhat negated by political imperatives… Oh well. The more things change…

P.S. There are no citations or references in this post, as it is merely a state-of-play in my mind. As i delve into the issues I will supply supporting ��� and corroborating evidence.

One of my pet peeves in the WWW is the number of unsupported opinions…

Technorati Tags: Polotics, Australia, Issues, Nuculear Power, Drought, Water, Climate change

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Stem Cell Reserch Allowed by 2 Vote Margin. Is this a good thing?

Australia’s lower house today approved a bill allowing human Stem Cell research. In an article by Anna Salleh, on the ABC science online (8/11/2006) , this new legislation will however forbid mixing human and animal components. The embryonic cells are to be used entirely fro reasrearch and must be destroyed after 14 days.
I have no problems with this as it is a potentially revolutionary area for medical research, which has only really been touched on so far. The bill lifts a ban on therapeutic cloning, allowing the creation of human embryos for research

“… top stem cell researchers have welcomed the bill, which lifts a ban on therapeutic cloning by allowing the creation of human embryos specifically for research. The bill, which will now go before the House of Representatives, allows a process called somatic cell nuclear transfer (SCNT). This involves removing the nucleus from an egg and replacing it with one from a non-reproductive body cell, of a patient for example, to produce an embryo, the same method used to produce Dolly the sheep.”

“The main Question I had is why the scientists here, (and in the UK at the moment), are so keen on fusing animal and human cells to produce embryos?

“It’s an invasive procedure for a woman to donate an egg and the eggs are very precious,” says Skene. “So we thought it would be better to allow another source of eggs, namely animal eggs, to be used.” “It was never envisaged that any stem cells that were produced from this would go into treatments for people.”

…”Researchers hope to turn embryonic stem cells into insulin-producing cells “… “But he says thousands of eggs are required to sequence and identify the factors and there are just not enough human eggs for this. “You can’t get thousands of human eggs to extract the factors,” he says. Tuch is less concerned about a shortage of eggs. He says one possible source will be the 240 women a year that have their ovaries removed because a genetic predisposition to ovarian cancer.”

There are a couple of other issues involved, such as learning what it is the makes a stem cell turn into whatever type of cell is required. But the main debate centers on supplies of the cells themselves. And more particularly the eggs. this 250 women will not be enough?

Trounson says eggs will be gathered internationally for research to find suitable embryonic stem cell lines. A sociologist who studies the global trade in human and animal tissue, Peta Cook of the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane says it’s this international context that needs to be considered when it comes to the pressures on women to sell their eggs. While this is illegal in Australia, Cook says there is a booming international trade in body parts. “If I need a kidney, I can travel to Pakistan or India and receive one from a live donor,” she says. “It is close to an on-demand system.” Similarly, women in Eastern Europe have had their eggs taken illicitly and sold by health-care professionals, says Cook. She says that in the US a woman can sell her eggs for up to US$10,000 and this is very tempting to poor university students and such financial incentives can undermine informed consent and autonomous decision-making.

Hmm, will be interesting to watch!!

Technorati Tags: Stem cells, Cloning, Issues, Politics

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Why not use embryonic cloning?

  I am posting this before my next post to act as a preliminary spat to release a bit of tension!. I totally do not agree with these sort of emotive, unscientific and impractical reoprts. This site, www.cloning . org.au, Is a  fundamentalist religious smear campaign. Take this comment,

       “Doctors and scientists explain…“It is probable that such (adult) stem cell lines as these will render therapeutic cloning irrelevant and impractical ” … Prof Alan Mackay- Sim , Griffith University , Lockhart submission. …
 “There are no cell-based therapies for any disease that would warrant the preparation of human embryonic stem cells by SCNT (‘therapeutic cloning’).” Emeritus Prof TJ Martin FRS, Melbourne University .

But never do they explain how they can replace those opportunities offered by stem cell research! They explain the uses, sort of…

The two important goals of stem cell science are (1) to use ‘patient-specific’ stem cells as direct cell therapy to repair damaged tissue, (2) to use ‘disease-specific’ stem cells as tools for exploring a disease process and testing drugs against that disease.

1. Human cloning is unnecessary for direct ‘cell therapies’, because adult stem cells are already providing the required ‘patient-specific’ stem cells for treatment. Contrary to popular misconception, embryonic stem cells have never been used in any human condition, while adult stem cells are already safely used in over 70 human conditions”….

“Also Professor Alan Trounson of the Australian Stem Cell Center stated in May 2005: “I don’t call it therapeutic cloning because it’s not about cells for therapy. This is about cells that give us an opportunity to discover what causes a disease and whether we can interfere with that.”….

“And the Chief Executive of the Australian Stem Cell Center, Stephen Livesey (Fin Review 10/9/06): “The reason why scientists want to create a nuclear transfer embryo is for the tiny mass of inner cells that are stem cells (which) could then provide a safe and sustainable way of testing, in the laboratory, new drugs and theories on cells that carry the human disease trait.”

Let’s get the science straight: stem cells from cloning are NOT proposed for direct ‘repair kit’ treatments, except by cynical campaigners. Cloning is only seriously proposed as providing ‘research’ tools – a way to obtain “disease-specific” stem cells for drug testing and genetic research of disease.

So far so Good, And then the “hype begins. These are the same types of people who argued against such useless and unproven ideas as space travel, telephones and airplanes… There can be no acknowledgment of the fact that things are discovered by research, it should only be done on things we know about…. I don’t get it.!! any way this is where this mob go off the rails a little, IMHO

    “Cloning for research remains entirely speculative – since nobody in the world has ever made even a single ESC from a cloned human embryo – while Griffith is already using ‘disease-specific’ ASC lines from over 40 patients for research into Parkinson’s, motor neurone disease, epilepsy, schizophrenia etc….

    “Why pursue the fantasy of cloning, when a superior stem-cell research tool is accessible right there under your nose ? Or in your fat or blood or skin?”

    “Muddle: That adult stem cells ‘cannot turn into many different cell types’ like ESCs can. a. Clarification: Contrary to the claims of certain science journalists, adult stem cells have been shown beyond any doubt to be fully ‘ pluripotent ‘ – that is, able to turn into many other cell types, just like embryonic stem cells, only in a more controlled and useful fashion.
    “Muddle: That embryonic stem cells have had great results in Parkinson’s, diabetes, spinal cord injury, heart disease
    “Clarification: ESCs can only do tricks in rats, never treatments in humans, for the reasons noted above. Therefore ESC studies are only ever in animals – and show second-rate results compared to ASC studies in animals. And of course, only ASCs have studies in humans.

    “Muddle: That the great advances in stem cells science we hear about every day involve BOTH embryonic and adult stem cells:
    ” Clarification: this is a trick of the cloning lobby, blurring the reports so that people think ESCs are involved in human treatments when they NEVER HAVE BEEN. See our Blog on ‘Your weekend does of embryonic snake-oil’ ….

But even they concede during this tirade of rear-looking-moral-high-ground (Protecting their investment), that there are successes in rats, but not humans. UMM…. They haven’t been allowed to try on humans have they?

“The animal studies so far have not established proof of concept for stem cell therapies derived from cloned embryos. Lockhart served only to inflate the hype that so frustrates responsible scientists seeking to develop cellular therapies.”

    Well most of the scientific community thinks they have, only not in humans… but I’ve been there.
    The problem is the diversity and ability to have an off the shelf, ready to inject solution is the long end goal. ASC’s are NOT. It means using individual resources for each and every patient, and waiting for cultures to grow and so on. The whole idea of the research is the dream of developing a stored, centrally manufactured and easily administered solution to numerous degenerative diseases, and nerve injuries, to mention just a couple! And to finish I love these quotes from a paper, These are totally unsupported, and some of the issues that research will remedy, one would hope!

“Another reason that embryonic stem cells cannot be used directly is that they form tumours[sic] when transplanted into mature tissues.”
Interview with Dr. Peter Hollands , Chief Science Officer of the UK Cord Blood Bank:…“This means that in cord blood we have … just as much potential as embryonic stem cells but without all of the related objections and technical concerns.”
Prof Jean Pedduzi -Nelson writes from the US on the true shape of stem cell science:… “If one looks at the human clinical trials or research using experimental animals, the record for adult stem cells compared to embryonic stem cells is extremely impressive. In examining only the scientific evidence, one wonders why the controversy even exists.”

Beacuse its not been really done because it’s been illegal, DUH

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