What kind of blog would this be if it didn’t at least mention the biggest sporting event in the world this month? The Olympics in Sochi started on February 6th with figure skating, and the closing ceremony will take place this Sunday, February 23rd. Most of these athletes have been training for their whole lives for their events and are unquestionably awesome at them. But some people might want to get an extra boost by trying performance-enhancing drugs before they compete.

So far, at least three athletes have failed doping tests in Sochi. One of them is a Russian biathlete who stepped down shortly before the games began; another is a German competitor who was found out this Friday; the third is an Italian bobsledder who was sent home on the 18th.

Elite Russian biathlete Irina Starykh failed a steroid test and was disqualified at the beginning of the games.  Picture courtesy of RiaNovosti (http://en.ria.ru/)

The purpose of drug testing isn’t just to even the playing field; steroids can have harmful effects on athletes’ health. One of the most common drugs is Oral-Turinabol, which does a great job boosting physical abilities. However, it also causes long-term heart and liver problems, along with more minor side effects like body hair and voice deepening.

Early in the games, chairman of the medical commission Arne Ljungqvist, expressed his confidence in Russia’s drug testing system: “Who knows who is the smartest, the athletes and their entourage or our scientists… I [personally believe that] our scientists are probably smarter than those around the athletes.”

And indeed, Russia has promised to implement the toughest drug testing system in Olympic history. They are using a new procedure called the “long-term metabolites method,” which can detect anabolic steroids more than six months after athletes take them. This method is apparently so effective that the IOC (the Russian committee responsible for drug testing) are starting to use it on frozen urine samples from the 2006 Olympics. But there is always the question, how many athletes have used performance-enhancing drugs, but for some reason were never discovered?

Right now, it seems that science is being used to both develop better performance-enhancing drugs and better ways to test for them. Do you think that maybe this is a no-win cycle and we should just allow steroid use in sports competitions? Or should there be stricter punishments for drugs so athletes and coaches would be less willing to try them?

Sources:

http://www.timesunion.com/news/article/SOCHI-SCENE-Athletes-vs-scientists-5255219.php

http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrissmith/2012/08/24/why-its-time-to-legalize-steroids-in-professional-sports/

http://www.bbc.com/sport/winter-olympics/2014/schedule/2014-02-23

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/sochi/2014/02/21/italian-bobsledder-william-frullani-tests-positive/5675687/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/sochi/2014/02/21/german-athlete-doping-winter-olympics-sochi/5671469/

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/othersports/drugsinsport/10458454/IOC-to-act-after-new-testing-methods-reveal-hundreds-of-positive-results.html

So THON is happening this weekend, and there is no doubt that it’s for an important cause– in the United States in 2007, 10,400 children under age 15 were diagnosed with cancer and about 15% of them will die from it. Cancer is actually the most deadly disease for children in this age group. In 2009, the five-year survival rate for leukemia (the most common childhood cancer) was only 59%. The problem is that the current treatments for cancer often don’t keep the patient from relapsing years later.

The five-year survival rates for leukemia and similar cancers have been increasing over the past few years, but they are still rather low.

Obviously, research needs to be done to not only treat cancer, but to cure it and keep it from reappearing during the person’s lifetime.

One recent development seems promising. An article published in Science Translational Magazine reported the results of a massive clinical trial that tested a new therapy– researchers extracted some of the patients’ T cells (one type of white blood cell), genetically modified them to attack cancer cells, and injected them back into the patient’s body. Acute lymphoblastic leukemia causes B cells (a different type of white blood cell) to divide out of control, but because they look like regular cells, the body’s immune system doesn’t recognize it as harmful. Current treatments don’t work well for this type of leukemia; 70% of patients do not respond to chemotherapy and even those who do respond, or who have received bone marrow transplants, tend to relapse quickly.

The idea behind this new therapy is pretty simple; if the body’s own cells can be trained to fight cancer, the person would have a lifelong anti-leukemia “drug” that works constantly and is not toxic. In the end, it’s true the patient would not have any B cells (even healthy ones) but the health effects of this are much less severe than they would be for leukemia.

So far, 88% of leukemia patients who participated in the clinical trial have recovered completely after receiving this therapy.

One author of this study is very optimistic, saying, “These extraordinary results demonstrate that cell therapy is a powerful treatment for patients who have exhausted all conventional therapies… we are already looking at new clinical studies to advance this novel therapeutic approach in fighting cancer.”

This seems like a rather brilliant therapy and everyone is very optimistic about it. But what do you think? Could it be risky to modify the body’s cells and inject them back inside? What kinds of ethical concerns might come up later? Or is leukemia such a serious disease that these concerns aren’t the main priority?

Sources:

http://www.lls.org/diseaseinformation/getinformationsupport/factsstatistics/

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/factsheet/Sites-Types/childhood

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/02/140219142556.htm

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/12/131211185050.htm

This past Saturday I decided to go to a Frontiers of Science seminar, just to see what it was like and because it involved chocolate. Frontiers of Science is a four part “mini-course” given by Penn State professors for the community. Anyone can attend (in fact there are a lot of awesome old people there), and the topics seem really interesting; next week the talk will be about killer asteroids!

The chocolate talk was given by Dr. Maximova and Dr. Guiltinan, two professors in the department of plant sciences who are trying to genetically modify cacao plants to survive better in warmer environments. This research is important, they explained, because cacao trees represent the livelihoods of many farmers living in Africa and South America. Chocolate is also a major cash crop and supports many local economies (including Hershey). However, global warming has made many regions much warmer than they should be, encouraging the growth of viruses and fungi– including ones that affect cacao trees. As a result, certain regions are becoming unsuitable for cacao growth. This is predicted to be much worse by 2050:

So research is being done to make cacao trees and other cash crops more resistant to warmer temperatures, and the “drought, floods, diseases, and pests” that come with it. Dr. Guiltinan gave an example: Black Pod Rot is a disease that causes cacao pods to turn black and rot, and has become more common as a result of climate change. The Penn State lab identified a gene that helps make trees more resistant to it, and is trying to breed together plants that overexpress this gene.

All in all, this research sounds fascinating, but I just couldn’t stop thinking about the “drought, floods, diseases, and pests” that were mentioned. Are genetically modification and selective breeding of cash crops really our biggest priority right now if we are faced with droughts and floods and diseases and pests? Would farmers in Africa be more affected by crop losses or by malaria? (Floods would help mosquitoes breed and spread malaria.) If global warming could harm cacao in such a significant way, how much would it affect the millions of other organisms that we are not genetically modifying?

Some would even argue that genetic modification of crops is unnecessary. Euloge Agbossou, a professor in Benin, Africa, said: “People are not waiting for engineers, scientists and researchers in order to adapt to climate change. They are aware of the phenomenon, they feel it around them and they have adapted to it.”

Personally, I feel it might help to focus on slowing down climate change. That may prevent a lot of problems. But what do you think? What would be the best way to fix world hunger and save the economy, while preserving biodiversity and the climate? It’s definitely a difficult question.

Basically, I really learned a lot from the talk on Saturday and it was super eye-opening. If anyone is interested in going to the Frontiers of Science series, here is some information about the lectures: http://science.psu.edu/news-and-events/lectures-and-events/frontiers

Sources:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/petergleick/2011/10/04/an-open-letter-to-climate-change-deniers-and-skeptics-the-final-chocolate-straw/

http://www.facebook.com/notes/connect4climate/are-genetically-modified-crops-the-answer-to-climate-change/297533833605281

Can scientific developments and economic growth cause as much harm as they do good? Recent New York Times articles bring up this question by addressing an interesting topic: the increasing popularity of testosterone creams.

These creams are often prescribed to aging men to reverse the effects of aging; according to one study, people taking testosterone cream became stronger and had better endurance than those who were not. However, their chances of getting heart disease (particularly heart attacks and strokes) increased by about five times. Other studies have shown that this risk is especially high for men over 65– the age group that testosterone marketing is aimed toward.

Testosterone is supposed to be prescribed for men with a condition called hypogonadism, which causes extremely low testosterone levels. However, some physicians have been prescribing supplements to more and more people who have only slightly low levels of testosterone even though many others say there really isn’t a standard level of the hormone that everyone should have, and the risks of using testosterone cream would outweigh the benefits.

Dr. Lisa Schwartz, a professor at Dartmouth University, summed it up with: “We’re giving people hormones that we don’t know they need, for a disease that we don’t know they have, and we don’t know if it’ll help them or harm them.”

So with all the scientific evidence against it, why is testosterone treatment still so popular, and why hasn’t the government tried harder to regulate it? There have been no official, government-funded clinical trials to determine the benefits and risks of taking testosterone. As of now, we don’t know if the bone loss and decreased strength of older people is really due to low levels of this hormone, or if taking supplements would reverse these problems.

However, some people say that clinical trials (which would keep testosterone on the market for at least the duration of the trial) aren’t the best course of action; a Hunter College professor argued, “It’s in the interest of the pharmaceutical companies to have a trial going on for ten years. In that time, they can continue to sell testosterone.” She definitely has a point. Sales of testosterone gels alone (not counting supplements or pills or even nasal sprays) generated about $2 billion in the United States in 2013, and the profit is expected to double by 2017.

So at some point in history, testosterone was isolated and synthesized in large amounts, and then sold to people for a huge profit. But did this development happen for a good cause? Is it doing as much harm as it is doing good? We will definitely need to do more research to find out.

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/16/us/a-push-to-sell-testosterone-gels-troubles-doctors.html?_r=0

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/02/03/weighing-testosterone-benefits-and-risks/