One day in class, the topic of a cocaine vaccine was very briefly mentioned, but I was highly intrigued by it. Scientists question the effectiveness of this vaccine if it were to come onto the markets and how one would go about the process of creating such a vaccine.

Dr. Ronald G. Crystal from Weill Cornell Medical College believes he’s figured it out. He stated, “The vaccine eats up the cocaine in the blood like a little Pac-Man before it can reach the brain.”

Some drugs’ negative side effects outweigh the positive ones, but the outcome for this one sounds stupendous. The Fix states. “According to The National Institute on Drug Abuse, more than 1.9 million Americans used cocaine in 2009, with more than a million of those classified as cocaine abusers. If Crystal’s new cocaine vaccine is proven effective, the impact of reducing that number by even five percent would be impressive.”

Within Crystal’s studies that he conducted, he used animals. When the mock antibodies were placed into test tubes that possessed cocaine, the antibodies clung to the cocaine molecules and literally “gobbled” up the cocaine. As a result, the cocaine molecules increased and couldn’t even cross over the blood-brain barrier.

In the next part of the research, he determined that only approximately 20% of the cocaine was able to get through the blood-brain barrier and cling onto the dopamine transporters of those vaccinated. And at 20% there were very little “intoxicating effects” on the animals.  The drop in these animals made Crystal believe there was hope for human beings in the battle of cocaine addiction.

“This is a direct demonstration in a large animal…that we can reduce the amount of cocaine that reaches the brain sufficiently so that it is below the threshold by which you get the high,”

-Crystal

(Sniffing Coke? Get it?)

But, there are a few downfalls to this vaccine. Critically thinking, how many drug users themselves are going to buy this vaccine? A drug addict isn’t worried about spending money trying to better themselves, they want to spend money to get their next high. And depending on the environment, the user would be more likely to stick to their ways than to stop. The relapse rate (for the first 12 months) for cocaine addicts lies at 55%, and a vast 85% for crack addicts. As a result, is it not a possibility that Crystal and everyone who is spending money – hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars on this vaccine just going to lose money?

The next question is the effectiveness of the vaccine – how often must it be taken? How long does it last for? Well, in mice, the first time Crystal found 13 weeks maximum and the second time 7. He assumed that the results would be similar for humans.

Will this vaccine come to light in the future and actual be available for friends, family members, and citizens who battle with a cocaine addiction? Who knows.

http://www.thefix.com/content/let-us-all-now-vaccinate-against-cocaine

I was online reading articles on the Huffington Post and I happened to stumble upon a story about a 19-year-old teen girl who eats sponges to satisfy her appetite. Yes, legit, sponges that most people use to clean up around the house.

Rosie Skinner, a college student at Reigate Sixth Form College in the UK, told reporters that she eats them at least twice a week. She eats these sponges in the middle of class similar to how most people might pull out an apple or chips to snack on.

“I have always loved the smell of a wet sponge,” she stated. “I crave that damp taste and feeling in my mouth,” she said, according to the Irish Mirror. “I like the texture as well, it’s a bit like eating cake. I might try one with some icing on one day. If I have a stressful day I love to treat myself to snack on a sponge to relax.”

Skinner’s obsession began when she was 5. Since then, she has lost a tooth and had to get a huge ball of sponge surgically removed  that was clinging to her stomach.

“It was a bit of a weird situation. I started having stomach aches and then they developed into really severe pains,” she told reporters. “I was rushed to the hospital where doctors removed a ball the size of a small mouse from my stomach. I tried to do what the doctors told me, but I can’t fight my cravings entirely. Now I just chew it for a while and spit it out.”

Her story, as strange as it sounds, is not abnormal in the scheme of the world. Her condition is called pica. It is defined as an eating disorder that makes one want to eat non-edible items such as dirt, paper, and in this case – sponges.

Psychology Today  states, “These new data reveal that, between 1999 and 2009, the number of hospital stays for patients with pica nearly doubled (from 964 to 1,862). Patients with pica and other eating disorders may also be hospitalized for other conditions such as depression, fluid and electrolyte disorders, schizophrenia, or alcohol-related disorders. Although 9 in 10 cases of eating disorders occur among women, those in men increased by 53 percent in the last decade.”

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality finds that other conditions like bulimia and anorexia were the first cause for hospitalization in terms of eating disorders has declined by 23% between 2007 and 2009. Yet, the  in-patient stays for pica has sharply increased by 93% since shortly before 2000.

The AHRQ News and Numbers has shown that pica patients have increased from 964 to 1,862 in the past decade. Within the children that were hospitalized five years ago, 30% had autism. I am not surprised by children taking in inedible items, but is that honestly pica? Or were they curious toddlers who didn’t know any better?

One thing that I thought of immediately when learning more about pica was pregnancy in relation with pica. We all know that pregnant women get weird cravings, ones that we often cannot understand, but do they have pica-like cravings? And is that acceptable for them?

American Pregnancy informed me that they do have pica-like cravings. There is a pattern of particular substances that they enjoy, which are dirt, clay, and laundry starch. Not as common but somewhat relevant to one another are burnt matches, stones, charcoal, mothballs, ice, cornstarch, toothpaste, soap, sand, plaster, coffee grounds, baking soda, and cigarette ashes.

Is the intake of laundry starch okay for a non-developed child? Well, the sites says, “Eating non-food substances is potentially harmful to both you and your baby. Eating non-food substances may interfere with the nutrient absorption of healthy food substances and actually cause a deficiency.  Pica cravings are also a concern because non-food items may contain toxic or parasitic ingredients.”

Hopefully these mothers can fight the urge to resist having mothballs for dinner for the safety of her child!

I don’t know about you guys, but I am huge on horoscopes. I check mine every day and relate each little thing that happens in my daily events to what my horoscope predicts – and they’re usually accurate. I am a Pisces, and my zodiac personality traits fall in line with exactly how I am! However, not everyone has the same beliefs.

Lazer Horse challenges the accuracy of horoscopes. In a somewhat comical manner, he describes how they are too vague and will ultimately appeal to everyone because they are such general statements. His example was “You have got to make a choice today, though it’s tough. The good news is you’ve got multiple attractive options, but you do have to pick one and stick with it, which makes you a little nervous.” He responds by saying that everyone has to make choices and options every day.

Psychologist Bertram Forer conducted an experiment in 1948 which made individuals take a personality test and they received an assessment from their results. Forer asked them to rate whether the written response of their results were accurate or not. On a scale from 1-5, 1 being inaccurate and 5 being very accurate, the average rating was 4.26.

The catch is that each person who participated in this study received the same exact assessment. It was a newspaper horoscope that stated: “You have a need for other people to like and admire you, and yet you tend to be critical of yourself. While you have some personality weaknesses you are generally able to compensate for them. You have considerable unused capacity that you have not turned to your advantage.”

The discovery from Forer’s experiment is that people generally tend to take these vague statements, accept them, and apply them to their lives. We pick a situation in our lives in order to make it align with what the horoscope is telling us. Lazer Horse says, “When empirically false statements sound positive, they will agree that the traits describe them accurately.” This is now called the Forer effect, Barnum effect, and the Subjective Validation effect.

Although we see strong evidence and support rejecting astrology, it’s hard to completely rule it out. I admit that I sometimes fall a victim to the Forer effect, but sometimes I think that it’s specifically applicable to me, and not any Scorpio or Gemini.

Two researchers named John McGrew and Richard McFall created a study in 1990 that emphasized astrological charts.

Peter Nardi describes the experiment by saying, “So researchers John McGrew and Richard McFall conducted a more elaborate study in 1990 going beyond simple newspaper horoscopes and focused on detailed astrological charts. They had six expert astrologers and one nonastrologer attempt to match the birth chart horoscopes (prepared by professionals from the Indiana Federation of Astrologers) of 23 people to their case files, which contained life histories, photos and results from a standardized personality assessment and a vocational interest inventory.”

The results? 0 out of 6 astrologers were able to match the charts with the case files better than the one non-astrologer.

“How would the alignment of stars and planets affect your personality? Why would a Scorpio born in 1906 have the same horoscope characteristics as a Scorpio born in 2006? And what could I possibly have in common with Joni Mitchell?”

-Peter M. Nardi

Sources:

http://www.psmag.com/navigation/books-and-culture/horoscopes-fun-but-utterly-fallible-25533/

Personal Experiment On The Accuracy Of Horoscopes

I was on Twitter, the social media site that’s known for off-the-wall statements, and I stumbled upon a screen shot of an article claiming that eating grits is correlated to homosexuality. As this continued to circulate online, I did some investigating on my own to see where this theory even came from.

The article came from a site called The Daily Currant. On the site, it claims that Stanford University conducted a study several months ago displaying that men who consume grits “regularly” are 70% more likely to have gay children. The article then says that a study published in Nature Medicine titled The Prospective Cohort followed 15,000 people for approximately 30 years to “determine the influence of parental diet on the development of childhood illnesses”.

They found that fathers who ate grits had a much greater chance of having a gay child.

Edmund Bergler, the head researcher on the study, says, “We were shocked when we ran the data. But we controlled for every variable. We triple-checked every calculation. And it turned out that eating grits makes your kids gay.”

Their reasoning for this theory relies on homotonin, which apparently is a substance that can damage a man’s sperm. Scientists determined that during the process of making grits, homotonin is created. The hypothesis concludes with the thought that DNA defect is passed down to the child and causes homosexuality.

Well, luckily, I stumbled upon an article that exposed this page. It is indeed fictional, and the theory is made up even though social media continues to display this article. However, Edmund Bergler is not a made up person. According to http://badsatiretoday.com/eating-grits-linked-to-homosexuality/, Edmund Bergler was a psychoanalyst who created theories on homosexuality around the 1950s. He wrote a book called Homosexuality: Disease or Way of Life that stated homosexuality was a disease that is in your head and can be cured.

http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/gaygrits.asp also confirms that homotonin does not even exist and that it was made up for humor. So although the article was intended for comical purposes, someone scrolling on their timeline on Twitter or Facebook might read the article and think that there is some truth to it.

When I read this story, I knew it sounded strange. One, the relative conclusion of 70% isn’t reliable. 70% more compared to what? Second of all, the experiment itself made little sense. How would scientists conclude that these individuals (which were never even specified as only male, only female, or both) didn’t turn gay based on their environment, or even biologically as some people believe? Third, the study never touched base on how much grits were actually consumed within these 30 years. How do they know that 15,000 people really ate grits “regularly” (regularly was never defined) and did not lie or forget about their intake?

Hopefully people take the time to find out it is not a real theory  so the page and false studies can stop circulating around.

Sources:

http://dailycurrant.com/2014/05/05/study-links-homosexuality-to-eating-grits/

http://badsatiretoday.com/eating-grits-linked-to-homosexuality/

http://www.snopes.com/media/notnews/gaygrits.asp

So in my last post I explored the idea of empathy being correlated with yawning. Psychologists and researchers believe that the contagious yawn (seeing other people yawn and then yawning in response) is due to the amount of empathy you possess; one who is empathetic toward others will participate in the contagious yawn, one who is not empathetic will not. But I’ve found evidence making the claim that yawning has nothing to do with empathy.

Image taken from http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/thoughtful-animal/2012/05/17/contagious-yawning-evidence-of-empathy/

“The lack of association in our study between contagious yawning and empathy suggests that contagious yawning is not simply a product of one’s capacity for empathy.”

-Elizabeth Cirulli, assistant professor at Duke University School of Medicine

 

Rather than empathy, research is showing that yawning is correlated with age.

According to the Huffington Post, 328 people were measured through multiple variables of cognition, emotion and fatigue before viewing a yawning clip that lasted approximately three minutes. 222, or 68%, yawned at least one time in the duration of the clip, and some people yawned up to 15 times.

The article goes on to state that over 80% of people under the age of 25 yawned in a contagious manner, while approximately 60% of 25-49 year old individuals did. 41% of people who were 50+ yawned contagiously. The results of this experiment and the hypothesis of the yawning theory is that the older you age, the less you yawn contagiously.

However, only 8% was shown to be accountable for age. So it seems that neither empathy or age is in direct correlation with contagious yawning – so what is?

“Age was the most important predictor of contagious yawning, and even age was not that important. The vast majority of variation in the contagious yawning response was just not explained.”

Multiple articles supporting that yawning and empathy are not correlated continue to mention that there may be genetics linked to contagious yawning. The hypothesis here is that those with disorders such as autism do not participate in the contagious yawn. Yet, when you think about it, that statement supports the empathy theory because autistic individuals are missing that social or certain cognitive development which is attained in early childhood years, i.e. the same time when empathy is developed. Therefore, their empathy is altered/impaired, and results in them not participating in the contagious yawn.

As it stands, there currently is not enough evidence to support the theory of empathy not being linked to yawning. Although it sounds strange, and we want to reject the theory, there are far more studies that show the correlation between yawning and empathy than those that reject it. In the same sense, there is not enough evidence to accept or reject the alternative hypothesis either. As time goes on I’m sure we will find more experiments that support both sides.

Sources:

http://corporate.dukemedicine.org/news_and_publications/news_office/news/contagious-yawning-may-not-be-linked-to-empathy-still-largely-unexplained

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/18/contagious-yawning-age-empathy_n_4980824.html

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/274016.php

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2391210/

“‘Cause God makes no mistakes. I’m on the right track, baby, I was born this way.”

Several years ago, Lady Gaga made it a point to express her view on sexuality and that it is acceptable to be gay because that’s how you were born. But scientifically, can you really be born gay? Is there such a thing as a gay gene?

As stated by the CitizenLink team, since the early 1990s, an abundance of  studies have been making an effort to tackle a specific genetic cause for homosexuality, and for over twenty years, one still cannot be classified as valid or consistent proof. This raises the argument of nature vs. nurture, and due to the lack of proof, nurture seems to be the reasonable solution.

CitzenLink goes on to say that Dr. Francis Collins, head of the Human Genome Project, concluded his homosexuality research by stating, “Sexual orientation is genetically influenced but not hardwired by DNA, and that whatever genes are involved represent predispositions, not predeterminations.” Dr. Francis Collins is indicating that the impending genetic factor for homosexuality is far less than the genetic contribution that has been proven for communal personality traits that he listed as “general cognitive ability, extroversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness, aggression and traditionalism”.

The Huffington Post re-introduced a controversial study from 1993 that presented the idea that families with out of two homosexual brothers, specifically twins, at least one was highly likely to have particular genetic markers on a part of the X chromosome called Xq28. But how could the “gay gene” have originated?  If the “gay gene” did exist in a family, that would mean the family would have a history of gay couples. That alone could be countered with anecdotal examples. Within this gay family, a trickle-down effect would have to take place, which could negatively impact the family’s level of reproduction or eliminate it as a whole over the course of time. The likelihood of this occurring commonly within families solely due to the “gay gene” is highly unlikely. Once again, the biggest influence on the correlation with families and homosexuality relies on the environment, or nurture.

“You begin to display gay behavior when you’re young,” many pro-gay gene individuals claim. This may be true, but this does not prove that it is biological. At a young age, we begin to display our personality with subtle or sometimes obvious actions. Our environment as a child strongly influences the way we grow as adults. As a child, if one is surrounded by a vast majority of women, the child is likely to act in a feminine manner. If a child has the misfortune of coming in contact with molestation/sexual abuse with the same sex, male or female, their sexual orientation may be skewed. Or, if a child grows up with a male on male couple, he may grow up believing that is the way that a relationship should be. On the issue of how much influence parents have on their child’s sexual orientation, a parent told Patrick J. McGrath, “A friend has always projected a very tough facade. She was sexually molested at around 12 years of age. Her daughter has taken the ‘toughness’ to heart and anything remotely feminine is shunned.”

So many confounding variables play a role in the environment, culture, and development in one’s childhood that it is nearly impossible to say that a baby came out a particular way and has not changed since birth. In the battle of nature vs. nurture, nurture wins. There is no way to prove that an individual is born gay and stays gay due to the “gay gene”.

Growing up, I drank soda like no one’s business. Even now I am likely to pick up a can of soda over a glass of water. As I went through the awkward stage of puberty in my middle school years, pimples and blemishes emerged on my face out of nowhere. My old fashioned step-father always told me, “It’s that soda! If you stop drinking soda, your face will clear up.” But is that statement necessarily true? Is it educated to think that soda is a direct cause of acne?

I asked my doctor several years ago this question and his response was, “I’m no dermatologist, but to my knowledge, no it is not.” If that’s the case, why is the rumor still circulating around? According to Amy Wechsler, the origin of acne is more complicated than food. She says, “The root of virtually all acne is genetics, hormones, stress and inflammation.” Later on in the article, Jody Levine goes on to say, “While there is no direct evidence that soda causes pimples, some ingredients may trigger the body to produce acne.” And that is where the rumor lies.

Soda is obviously loaded with sugar, refined to be exact, and consuming the high glycemic drink that we love oh so much can lead to blood sugar. Then, Levine explains, will cause more insulin and testosterone, which leads to skin inflammation or clogged pores.

Another blog states, “If your persistent pimple is large and inflamed, its most likely coming from under the skin…which usually means the cause is internal. Stress and hormonal changes can cause systic (inflamed) breakouts. Caffeine, sugar, pesticides, MSG and other food additives found in sodas, bottles teas, energy drinks, flavored coffee, and juice can throw your body off balance, causing stress and breakouts. Sodas in particular, have also been known to pull calcium from the bones.”

So no, drinking soda does not DIRECTLY cause acne as adults always throw around. But it does make an impact on your body’s natural performance and balance.

Marijuana is one of those topics that everyone has a distinct opinion about. Either you are more on the “Tobacco has more harmful effects than marijuana does, so it should be legal” side, or the “Marijuana is a gateway drug, so it should be illegal” side. Marijuana has always been known as a “gateway drug”, or a minor drug that leads to the usage of more serious drugs. But has anyone ever considered alcohol to be a gateway drug?

Although there are studies that show marijuana leads to cocaine, heroin, ecstasy, etc., I believe it is almost common sense that one who uses cocaine will not just jump directly to cocaine. It only makes sense for a rock star to have listened to rock music at one point in their life. Marijuana being recognized as a direct gateway drug, however, does not exist. A 12-year experiment, courtesy of the University of Pittsburgh, tackles the question head-on by tracking 214 boys beginning at ages 10-12, all of whom eventually used either legal or illegal drugs. When the boys reached age 22, they were categorized into three groups: those who used only alcohol or tobacco, those who started with alcohol and tobacco then used marijuana, and those who used marijuana prior to alcohol or tobacco.

Nearly a quarter of the study population who used both legal and illegal drugs at some point – 28 boys – exhibited the reverse pattern of using marijuana prior to alcohol or tobacco, and those individuals were no more likely to develop a substance use disorder than those who followed the traditional succession of alcohol and tobacco before illegal drugs, according to the study. “The gateway progression may be a common pattern, but certainly not the only pattern of drug use,” said Ralph E. Tarter, Ph.D, professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “In fact, the reverse pattern is just as accurate for predicting who might be at risk for developing a drug dependence disorder.”

According to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, alcohol is the most commonly used and abused drug among youth in the United States, more than tobacco and illicit drugs, and is responsible for more than 4,300 annual deaths among underage youth. The article goes on to say, “Although drinking by persons under the age of 21 is illegal, people aged 12 to 20 years drink 11% of all alcohol consumed in the United States. More than 90% of this alcohol is consumed in the form of binge drinks. On average, underage drinkers consume more drinks per drinking occasion than adult drinkers. In 2010, there were approximately 189,000 emergency rooms visits by persons under age 21 for injuries and other conditions linked to alcohol.”

WebMD Health News stated, “The highest and lowest overall harm scores … are 72 for alcohol and 5 for mushrooms,” Nutt and colleagues calculate. “The ICSD scores lend support to the widely accepted view that alcohol is an extremely harmful drug both to users and to society.”

Overall, alcohol should be considered more of a gateway drug than marijuana. There are far more incidents and deaths that occur from alcohol consumption opposed to marijuana. Also, there are too many possible confounding variables in the equation to say that marijuana is a sole gateway drug.

Whether one participates in sexual activity or not, most young adults in today’s culture are familiar with the concept of birth control. We generally assume that birth control — whether it is in the form of an injection, an oral pill, etc. — are aimed toward women. But male birth control is evolving and is definitely a matter that should be heard about.

The concept of male birth control originally sounds like a brilliant idea, at least from a female perspective. Males may argue, “Why take birth control when we are not the ones who get pregnant?” But regardless who delivers the baby at the end, sexual activity happens between two people and both are responsible. Women have tons of options to attempt to prevent pregnancy, while males are limited to five main ‘birth controls’, as confirmed by Planned Parenthood:

• abstinence
• condoms
• outercourse
• vasectomy
• withdrawal

In comparison to the abundant options women have, there are fewer, yet higher quality options for males. A soon-to-launch RISUG gel is predicted to be on the market by 2015. This gel, according to Stephanie Watson and Cristen Conger, has been proved as 100% effective. The only sexual ‘birth control’ up to this point is abstinence! The statement strikes as unconvincing to most, however, because women only have to stop one egg cell. Men have to tackle 1,500 sperm cells each second! But the question does not only rely on the performance and consistency of the product. This RISUG gel is said to be a long-lasting product that does not need to be purchased each month or even every few months. So will the revenue from this skeptical product exceed all the research and manufacturing the product will require?

An article in Men’s Fitness published slightly less than one year ago informed males of the birth control pill that is set to release in approximately five to seven years. Monash University conducted a study with the use of mice to prove the male birth control pill had potential. Like many people argue with any theory though, is the use of mice comparable to a human body? And with such a new product, the side effects are still unknown. One side effect that has been detected from this specific study was a decrease in male fertility.

The last question about male birth control relies solely on today’s culture, standards, and psychology. Would men actually feel comfortable taking this pill? Studies suggest no. According to the Huffington Post, The Kaiser Family Foundation conducted a survey that showed 80% of males and 89% of females agreed that, “women feel more responsibility for the children they bear than men.” The article went on to say, “And more than half of the men said they “did not” know a lot about different contraception methods currently available, with one in five admitting he knew “little or nothing” about contraception.”

As convenient as male birth control sounds, there are far too many factors that seem to be affecting the process of making male birth control accessible over the counter and readily available for store wide usage. There is definitely progress being made, but the success rate of these birth control options are too far up in the air.

It makes sense for people to assume that those who are blind cannot see in their dreams, or dream at all. This thought is commonly formed for multiple reasons. One common explanation behind this theory is that the blind individual cannot physically see, therefore, the blind individual’s brain is not used to the sense of sight as a whole and only recognizes the other senses that the body uses on a daily basis. Yes, the blind can dream. However, only some can see in their dreams.

According to an article in Sleep Medicine, a group of Danish researchers recruited 50 adults. Out of these 50, 11 of the participants were blind from birth, 14 went blind sometime after infancy, and there were 25 controls who were not blind.

Virginia Hughes from National Geographic reported that every individual in the control group has had a visual dream, as expected. However, none of the participants who were blind since birth have had a visual dream. The 14 participants who went blind after infancy stated that they do see, but the longer the length of time has been since they went blind decreases the strength of sight in their dreams.

The same study also reported by Melissa Pandika showed that approximately 18% of the blind individuals, from birth and later on in life, claimed they have tasted in at least one dream. Only 7% of the non-blind controls have reported to taste in their dreams. 30% of the blind claimed that they smell in at least one dream, in comparison to only half of those results. 70% of blind folks have reported a touch sensation, and 86% claim a hearing sensation.

Some refer to the blind in a collective manner, not realizing that every dream is dependent on the severity of the blindness. That being said, some that are blind are able to see. And those who cannot see depend on their other senses that have been strengthened over time to have vivid, lively dreams.

Sources:

http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2014/02/26/how-the-blind-dream/

http://www.infociegos.com/english/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&Itemid=29

http://www.ozy.com/acumen/what-is-it-like-for-blind-people-to-dream/31902.article

We all know that abortion is a touchy subject that people could argue about for hours. But all political issues aside, ultrasounds being performed before abortions is a theory that is slowly growing across America. Researchers believe that a mother seeing her own child before executing an abortion is enough to change her mind and bring the child into the world. Empty statements and statistics have been thrown around, but there is proof that this theory does not prove to be true.

There is no doubt that there are cases of women changing their mind once seeing their child. According to Life News, in 2011 The Women’s Choice Network conducted a survey that stated out of 172 women who viewed their sonogram, 123 women continued the pregnancy. Sounds assuring, right? Well, I looked deeper into the statistics. Out of those 123 women, an overwhelming number were young. Young, vulnerable, and easily influenced. It is far-fetched to believe that a simple viewing of a sonogram can eliminate the reasoning behind one’s abortion. A sonogram will not erase the memory of rape, or not being able to financially support a child, or the health issues that may result in critical issues for the mother. Too many factors play a role into the pregnant woman’s choice of continuing a pregnancy or terminating the child. There is not enough evidence to prove that the sonogram is the sole reason.

In a study that was conducted in 2009, questionnaires were distributed to 350 women who entered two different abortion clinics. They were asked if they wanted to see an ultrasound. Approximately 73% viewed the ultrasound, and 86% viewed it as a “positive experience”. However, 0% of the women who viewed the ultrasound changed their mind.

Surveys were distributed amongst 318 women in Birmingham, Alabama in 2012. 72% of those women viewed an ultrasound. 92% reported that they were “sure of their decision, or that their abortion was a better choice for them.”

A pregnancy center in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, challenged a conservative research council that made the claim that women often opt out after seeing a sonogram. They told reporters, “98% of women from our center who have ultrasounds chose to carry them.”

One more example just to make my point clear. Slate published an article of researching done on the matter and found that “98.4% of women who saw their ultrasounds went on to get an abortion anyway.” Katy Waldman went on to say, “And for the 1.6% who decided not to go through with it, other factors, such as gestational age, were more salient in swaying them.”

There are surely cases of women in America who have been persuaded by viewing their precious child developing in their own body. But is it valid to say that there were not other factors, such as social pressures or age influencing this large decision? Is it educated to assume that the psychological theory will prove consistent across all ages, races, and states? Hardly. Viewing an ultrasound before an abortion in hopes to dismiss the thought of going through with the termination is ineffective and inconsistent.

Sources:

78% of Pregnant Women Seeing an Ultrasound Reject Abortions

http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/01/09/ultrasound_viewing_before_an_abortion_a_new_study_finds_that_for_a_small.html

http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/02/08/10355099-texas-begins-enforcing-strict-anti-abortion-sonogram-law?lite

Hey everyone!

My name is Briana Blackwell and I’m a freshman from Pittsburgh, PA. I am taking this course because I was not interested in taking a science class that would be strenuous for my first semester, or anything involving math. Also, I love controversial topics and critical thinking; I could discuss debatable life questions for hours. I found some science based topics on this page that I found interesting and would love to talk about with someone.

I am not majoring in science because science never captured my interest. Even though my grandmother was a science professor, I always found myself falling asleep or text messaging in my biology and chemistry classes. I maintained an A in both classes but just always found myself asking, “How are plant cells relevant to me? Do I really need the periodic table to get through in life?”

In high school, you are forced to take classes you do not like, but in college you possess the freedom to not enroll in classes you do not wish to take (except for math). Therefore, I am majoring and minoring in something that I have a passion for and will earn a decent amount of money in the future – business and sociology. I hope everyone enjoyed their long weekend!