How we got The Pill

On By Catherine HausteinIn Uncategorized3 Comments

I remember the birth of the birth control pill much like many might remember Kennedy’s assassination or the Challenger blowing up. No, I wasn’t ready for birth control, but my mom sure was and as the oldest, I was deeply sensitive to her frustrations as a being a housewife who was frequently pregnant. My mom had gone to college and chosen one of the three paths available for women who were educated:  secretary, nurse or teacher. She was a teacher who had to quit her job when she was pregnant with me because showing might tell the students that she’d been up to something.  As the oldest, I must have been her confidant because I do remember her in the living room of our split level in Rockville, Maryland, sun streaming onto the wood floors,  saying how happy she was that she could just take a pill and not have kids anymore. Having some symptoms of eldest daughter syndrome at a young age, I shared her joy.

To quote Janis Joplin, my mom was searching for a life very different than what she had known. It was common for girls to look at their future in horror back then–marriage and children. That’s it. My mom was a loving mother, but being a homemaker bored her and I could sense it.

Wanting to control family size is nothing new. Some of the earliest records from ancient Egypt contain recipes for birth control, primarily soaking lint in substances such as honey and acacia leaves putting it you know where. Nursing for many years was also a suggested method. The techniques, put forth by female doctors and midwives, were for avoiding overpopulation and keeping women beautiful. The later was the most important. Interestingly enough, scientists today link an increased biological age to each pregnancy a woman endures.

The ancient Greeks had different approaches from eating pomegranate seeds (hello Persephone, you had no choice but to eat that seed), infanticide and encouraging sex outside of marriage with someone of your own sex. This may seem shocking now, but they were very aware that again, the right family size was best for society.

Women in Aztec societies ate wild yams as birth control and Native Americans used it as a tea to prevent contraception. (Note: don’t try this at home. The Pill much improves the safety and effectiveness of this home remedy.) This plant contains one of the first substances studied as a possible birth control pill ingredient.

A hundred years ago, working with plant steroids was a large push in scientific research, with numerous substances isolated from plants such as soybeans. One, cortisol and cortisol related compounds, was effective in treating rheumatoid arthritis and was hailed as a miracle cure in the 1940s. Scientists were sure that other modified steroids would provide other miracle cures, including ability to control ovulation.

The birth control pill chemically manipulates a person’s natural sex hormones. Sex hormones are steroids with a somewhat simple structure, many of them being almost identical and similar to the structure of cholesterol. The basic secret behind the birth control pill is progesterone. This hormone is secreted during pregnancy to prevent ovulation and thicken the uterus. This tells the body to prepare for pregnancy and to stop further ovulation- no eggs are prepared to be released.

Progesterone alone is not a great birth control pill material. It breaks down in the stomach too quickly. Scientists set about to modify progesterone so that it could survive being taken as a pill.

Why were people so keen on a birth control pill? For one thing, public health measures including sanitation, vaccines, and antibiotics resulted in fewer childhood deaths. As a result, family size was burgeoning, and children were becoming a financial burden. There were many reasons given for developing the birth control pill : to control population, to free women to enjoy sex, and to help people out of poverty. Many people working on and funding he perfect birth control formula  the noble goal of making sure that every person born was wanted and had a chance in life. They knew, as we do now, too many children too close together depletes the mother who is more likely to have complications in childbirth with subsequent pregnancies.  In some cases, women were fitted with IUDs to ”correct uterine problems.” Although often illegal, diaphragms were also women-centric birth control tools. However, the idea of a discretely taken medication which didn’t require insertion of a foreign object, an idea as old as time, was appealing

Katharine McCormick worked in conjunction with Gregory Pincus to find the ideal hormone. She provided funds to Pincus, an animal reproductive biologist, searching for the perfect progesterone like molecule. He tested several forms of progesterone on lab animals in a ramshackle lab in Massachusetts

When it was time for human trails, ethical and practical dilemmas raised their ugly heads. Finding test subjects wasn’t easy. One of the goals was to have ovulating and intelligent women who could be relied on to carry out the instructions to take the medication each day. It wasn’t so easy to find healthy people who wanted to take a new medication, especially when birth control still had a stigma for some.

Women in Puerto Rico stepped up to the task. Many of them thought there was no escape from poverty if they had more than a couple children. Abortion was legal fairly common in Puerto Rico. Many women from the mainland went there to have a “San Juan weekend.”  A pill was a better alternative. The trials were successful in preventing pregnancy, however, shady, in that the women who volunteered were not clearly informed that this was an experimental drug not previously tested on humans! In fact, one of the people involved in setting up the trial was on a mission to sterilize woman in Puerto Rico because he saw them as unfit. I can look back at this time and see why people can be afraid of a new medication. Thankfully, some guidelines have been put into place including informed consent. (Hopefully, these won’t be tossed out.)

Another set of patients was found at the Worcester State Hospital for the Chronically Ill, a mental asylum. Many of the women here were suffering from abuse and domestic conditions that were not bearable. Even men there were given the prototype pill to see how men reacted. These trails were a flop because no one was having sex.

The development of the Pill can fill a book. A formulation containing Norethynodrel and dubbed Enovid was developed. It was eventually called The Pill. Selling the idea to religious and social groups was a struggle. Some called it un-natural, and others compared it to permitting sexual gluttony, like being able to constantly eat cake. People still considered talking about birth control to be “porn” as shown in this comic where the woman has not used birth control but her children are naked inside the home, showing how anything can be called porn.

The first woman take The Pill, before it gained FDA approval, was not a poverty stricken over-worked mother but a well-to do white woman, Sue Dixson Searle, daughter of the Searle family, whose pharmaceutical business developed the formulation.  After two closely spaced babies, she decided she wanted a break and was happy to be “a pioneer.”  She lived to 91, dying recently in 2022, after being an enthusiastic patron of art of public lands in the Chicago area and a mother to three and great grandmother to many.  It must have been a disappointment to those who saw birth control as a means to reduce “undesirables” in the population, but the reason Dixson took the Pill harkens back to birth control in ancient Egypt—she wanted to be happy.

On Oct 1, 1957, the Pill was offered clandestinely to women since birth control was still a felony in 17 states.

The Pill was approved by the FDA May 6, 1960.

By 1965, more than 6.5 million women were taking the Pill. In 1963 the Dial Pak was introduced.

Slowly laws against contraception fell, and it was fully legalized in 1972.

 In 2023, a non-prescription alternative, the OPill was approved for purchase.

Yellow dots on blueAs for my mom, she stopped having babies and went back to work as a teacher and she and my dad resumed an active social life. People just want to be happy and limiting family size to your individual choice can make it easier.  But who knows, laws restricting its use may arise again.

The two books in the center of this snapshot of part of my messy bookcase were sources for this blog.

Who’s here for the apocalypse? (My neighbor for one)

On By Catherine HausteinIn chemistry, Uncategorized2 Comments

You may have heard of a consequence of the US, in 2018 under Trump, getting rid of the Iran Nuclear Deal. The deal, made by the Obama Administration, limited and surveilled Iran’s nuclear capacity. Netanyahu, Israel’s Prime Minister, did not like the nuclear deal—saying it could bring another Holocaust. The reason he had for his qualms was sanctions on Iran were lessened and they got financial relief for their concession. Israel had approved the deal but he represented new leadership. As a consequence, he wouldn’t negotiate with Biden (who did not bring back the deal) for peace in Palestine and is happy Trump won. Trump has a policy of maximum retribution to Iran.

The above graphic is from the Obama White House

The outcome of the having no nuclear deal is maybe a bust. Iran’s nuclear program is getting no surveillance. They don’t care about our feelings and thus, Iran has made enriched uranium. They are close to making it weapon-grade. What is that and why should anyone care? Sit back for a science lesson. (or skip to next paragraph with a bold font if you want to avoid it)

Uranium is a dense heavy metal that decays–meaning it’s radioactive and gives off particles and energy and transforms into a slightly lighter metal, thorium, which is also radioactive. 

It emits an alpha particle, the Mac truck of subatomic particles, which is also a helium nucleus. This is where earthly helium comes from! All forms of uranium are radioactive, but not the helium it emits. Don’t worry, your party balloons are safe. (If you want to learn more about sub-atomic particles, let me know!)

Uranium is unstable and thus radioactive. The word radioactive was coined by the Curies in 1898, with radio being related to ray as in a ray of light Many radioactive elements and nuclear reactions cause their surrounding to glow due to their energy. Uranium is slowly radioactive with all isotopes having long half-lives. It can be found in deposits across the globe.

Uranium can be made into a source of power when it undergoes fission. During fission, the core of the atom (the nucleus) is hit with a neutron and split into smaller pieces and new lighter elements are made. The lighter elements are more stable and the energy needed to hold the large unstable uranium together is released. More neutrons fly out and if enough atoms of the right isotope of uranium are nearby, they split other uranium atoms. A chain reaction ensues and this keeps the energy release going. If the reaction is fast enough, a bomb is created. 

Here’s the catch, not all forms of uranium undergo fission. Only the isotope with 92 protons and 143 neutrons in the nucleus, uranium 235 or U-235, is unstable enough to be broken in this fashion. And it’s not very plentiful. Only 0.7% of naturally occurring uranium is this isotope. And to allow for the chain reaction to occur, you need to concentrate this form of the metal. This is needed for both weapons grade and power reactor uranium but weapons grade uranium needs more concentration aka enrichment. This is not easy. Why does it take so much work? Chemical reactions occur with the outside of the atom–the electron cloud. This is an easy way to separate chemicals–by their different reactivities due to different electron clouds surrounding them. 

All isotopes of uranium have the same cloud of 92 electrons. This means the isotopes have to be separated by mass. The uranium is reacted with fluoride and forms a gas, then is passed through a porous membrane which only lets the smaller 235 isotope through. Alternately, it might be centrifuged. There are a few other less efficient methods of enrichment. This process demands lots of energy. Monitoring the energy use of enrichment facilities is one way to watch to see if a country is working on producing weapons grade U-235. 

What’s going on in Iran? After the Iran-Nuclear deal was trashed, they used centrifuge technology to enrich uranium to a concentration of 4.5%. The allowed limit with the Nuclear Deal was 3.67%. However, it takes 90% enrichment to make a bomb because a bomb reaction must go faster with more U-235 atoms close to each other. Getting to this level is a huge challenge needing a high tech centrifuge. Yes, Iran can get there if the nuclear deal remains sour for years and apparently, it will.

Right now, the world has a surplus of enriched uranium because of the many enrichment plants world wide. This is why tech billionaires want to use nuclear-powered AI. It will be fairly cheap. What country has a surplus of weapons grade uranium? The United States. We are sitting on a “gold mine” so to speak. Germany, the Netherlands, and Japan also have plenty of the stuff.

Scientists worked hard to create the bomb. Some did it unknowingly and others suffered remorse at how it was used. Scientists approved the Nuclear Deal, they supported it, and scientific collaboration is suffering at its end.  The end of the nuclear deal helped Trump achieve victory by gaining support from Arab-Americans and from his overseas pals, who are willing to make others suffer to achieve power. 

I suppose that’s nothing new but disappointing for idealists everywhere. People are terrible—they will draw out a war to get their way. Fortunately for me personally, I’ve been a scientist for so long, I no longer score in the idealist category on personality tests. That influence came from my educator parents. I’m one of those pattern seekers. I play the long game.(click for vacation photos). 

You know who also plays the long game, Christian Nationalists. They now have the president who has promised to bring the apocalypse. Yes, he did. And some of them are here for it, as this flag in my neighborhood shows. It says: The final chapter God Wins.

Here’s a view of a similar one.

It might seem harmless but look up Christian Nationalism. They are planning on seeing the Final Chapter, as in the final chapter of Revelations, which ends in destruction and god and angels coming down. The Apocalypse. You can read about these folks cheering on the apocalypse here. And by the way, they hate Jimmy Carter. 

I saw apocalypse flag flying homeowner today as we both walked our dogs. We look similar when out walking. Our paths didn’t quite cross or I would have asked her to explain more about the flag.

Do I really think the apocalypse is at hand? No. It would ruin the world economy and that’s the last thing the autocrats want. But according to the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, it’s 90 seconds to doomsday. Better stock up on necessities, maybe a water purifier, and get your vaccines while you can! And personally, I’m going to cut back on social media because it’s full of inaccuracies and products I don’t/won’t need.

How to Vote for Science

On By Catherine HausteinIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Vote NO for poisons and censorship!

Some in this town have gotten a political mean streak and passed it on to their kids. Kids, or another immature group, have been roaming the town late nights and early mornings stealing political signs and in darkness ringing doorbells of people who might be signaling that they are open minded. Pella is poisoned with such bigotry.

I can’t understand why people here are so afraid and define themselves by opposition to others.  Maybe they hate something inside themselves. How deep does the censorship urge go in these people? Do they want scientists to be censored? The real fear of many scientists is yes, they do. 

I’m proudly displaying signs and I’m here to confess to one more reason I’m a Democrat—science policy. I admit, science policy isn’t going to sway the vote of a low information voter. But do you think even those voters want to pave the ways for cures and sharing of information that could lead to those cures? Who should own these cures? Will they be only for the rich? Might they be curious about new sources of energy? Do they want protection from toxins and a healthy life? Do they use weather forecasting and knowledge about weather and climate to keep safe or at least comfortable? Do they want to invest in basic science? Science can bring security to our lives, security that could be tossed out with the wrong president or party in charge. 

In general, Republicans don’t like science or take advice from scientists. Remember when Trump said COVID would go away and Iowa Governor took advice from Moms about masks—even saying that people should be able to make their own healthcare decisions. As Christina Bohannan pointed out, Iowa’s policy will make it harder to keep people safe should another pandemic arise.  Even before this, Republican presidents rejected even fundamental science such as evolution in favor of weapons of war, some of which couldn’t even be made. 

Why should government be involved in science? The government has long led the way in innovations, especially in computers and the life sciences. Every new drug since 2010 has started off with tax-payer funded basic research. Basic research is the study of a phenomenon or set of observable facts to understand them without a product in mind. Funding for basic research can come from the government, academia, or business. The federal government provides funding for about 40% of basic research, much of it health related. One thing that is good about government funded research is that it is shared with the public. Accessibility to scientific findings funded by the government was implemented during the Obama years. Biden has kept that legacy alive. This means that important discoveries won’t be made secret from the public and all of us, especially other scientists, can benefit and move things forward. As Isaac Newton said, science stands on the should of giants. 

Private funding of discoveries has a few downsides. For one thing, private organizations often have CEOs making huge salaries and sometimes these people can be huge jerks. Privatized research often has less oversight and has the potential to harm human and animal subjects. It doesn’t have to share research results and thus, hoards information that can be valuable to everyone. We could even see scientific advances being made available to a select few. Think about the harassment people get in Pella simply for having a sign! 

Although it often depends on Congress, basic science could be highly disrupted by Trump’s rearrangement of federal offices. You may be familiar with the principle CEOs use when they have to look like they are doing something—reorganization. Trump has said this is something he would do and institutions such as the Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation could face disruptions. He’s tried this before. The only silver lining is that he failed at his reorganization attempt, just as many of these strategies fail in the long run. Sadly, he appointed many unqualified people to science positions, prompting Scientific American to endorse Harris.

Scientific freedom is another consideration when deciding which party to vote for. Remember when George Busch stopped stem cell research and set back cures for things like cancer and Parkinson’s disease? Here in Iowa, we have had a requirement to teach about HPV and vaccines for it removed from the public school curriculum, a furthering of dumbing down science literacy. Why this happened, nobody is saying.  But let’s be real—Protect My Innocence is probably hiding under your bed on this one. 

Trump has already done things that alarmed scientists such as altering a FEMA Hurricane map. In fact, he has interfered with science based decision making over 200 times. (As a comparison, Biden has done this two times.)

In stark contrast, Biden-Harris has moved to regulate and eliminate toxic substances such as endocrine disruptors from our lives while Trump issued an executive order that for every new regulation, two regulations had to be eliminated. Biden-Harris made limits and laws against toxic substances a priority. They even have worked to limit polyfluoroalkyl substances, PFAS. (Read here) Meanwhile, Trumps speaks highly of asbestos.  

 There are more comparisons and you can find them here, where I got much of my information. For further analysis, click here.

It’s sad that some in Pella are prompted to engage in censorship. Just remember, according to this book if you aren’t a Puritan, you are the enemy within. But Puritans respected science, so under Republicans, things have gotten much worse. Now even scientists are the enemy within. We saw how things went when a pandemic was downplayed. Let’s not do it again.  Vote NO for poisons and censorship

And by the way, putting American flags on a sign might make it harder to steal. 

Three Little Kittens

On By Catherine HausteinIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Several weeks into kitten season, a granddaughter found a litter of kittens in a pile of leaves near my house in the yard of the home my husband uses for an office. The mother cat kept her away and moved them. I thought they were gone. A month later, three tabby kittens came around looking for food. One was grey and shy, one was black and tiny but brave, and one was big and orange. A grandson and I decided to start taming them. We got them to play with toys and come onto the back porch to eat. They were too afraid to be touched. I decided to leave them alone. This changed when the orange one showed up with a huge bite on his neck, growing goopier by the day. We lured them onto a back porch and shut the sliding glass door behind them. They leapt at the door and hid behind a desk back there. I called the local pound. Can you take them? No.

The shelter was overwhelmed with kittens.

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A group of kittens on a wooden deck Description automatically generated

Above, three little kittens in the wild.

I was a little afraid of the kittens. Could they be harboring rabies or another disease? What about cat scratch fever or pathogenic cat bites? I called a vet and arranged for them to get the feral cat treatment which is spay/ neuter and basic shots, including rabies. I asked that the injured kitten get an injection of antibiotics. I bought some cat handing gloves. My grandson who works for a local vet caught them and one by one, he and I took them to get the feral treatment. Did I get them tagged with a cut on the ear to signify a treated feral cat? No, because I had and still have hope they can be pet cats for someone someday. Since the rabies vaccine doesn’t reach full effect for a month and because the orange one was hurt, they’ve been kept inside at my husband’s office in the house next door. They’ve passed the time limit. They could go outside. But they don’t seem to want to. And the office has had mice in the past. They have a job to do/

Now, my husband and I have three semi-gown kittens. The black one, Cobalt is friendly, likes to be petted and purrs for us. He ran outside once and ran right back in. I’ve declared him a pet. Probably my pet. The other two are still shy. They all use a litter box which dispels one of my many worries about having a cat—bad litter box behavior.

I always thought if I got a cat, which I wasn’t going to, I’d get a black female cat. Instead, I have this guy:

A cat looking up at the camera Description automatically generated

I really am not used to cats, especially not jittery cats. Cobalt was afraid when I simply moved a wastebasket in the office kitchen and started the dishwasher. Having no cat to look to for advice about humans, he hid for over an hour.

The point of this post is this: spay, neuter, and vaccinate your animals. A mom cat can have four kitten litters a year. Cats can be disease vectors. Outdoor cats suffer a variety of mishaps and a large number of shelter animals are euthanized. Feral cats are not just a country problem. I don’t even live in the country—I live in town right on Main Street. 

Feeding feral cats is not the best idea. They can fend for themselves. Feral cats can sometimes have colonies and territories. Their homes can be uprooted, leaving them even more vulnerable as is happening in this town in North Carolina. It’s difficult to tame a kitten once it is past the socialization stage, which occurs before they even leave their mother.  Some feral cats are genetically resistant to being tamed no matter how much human interaction they have. And I’m no expert on cats. This is why in general, I leave things to the experts. Jane Addams wrote extensively about the problems with charity which included the “rescuers” not understanding those they intended to help. I can see this applying to me and these cats. I have disrupted their possible colony formation and perhaps their genetic destiny to avoid humans.

Although there is a debate about if cats are wild animals or not, most wild animals find captivity stressful. However, there’s evidence that wild animals experience much stress and suffering. Cats, it seems, are only semi-domesticated. Most cats eventually tame up and as someone pointed out, “They like you a lot more when it’s cold outside.”

Meanwhile, I’m going to walk my highly domesticated dog, who doesn’t like cats. Cat advice welcome and needed.

A Tale of Two Cities and how they affect you

On By Catherine HausteinIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Nearly 200 years ago, a group of men in the Netherlands were separatists. They wanted to reject the “rationalism of the enlightenment” that was creeping into religion in the Netherlands. As far as I can understand this, the Enlightenment values included liberty, progress, and separation of church and state. The latter was important to Europeans for things like abolishing wars and moving science forward without the dogma of a church looking over. But the Dutch Separatists rejected this.

The religious separatists wanted none of that Enlightenment nonsense. Starting in 1834, they began their movement to restore what might be called fervor and dogma of the Calvinists into religion. (For those not up on religion, Calvanists think God saves some and others are really sinful.) The Dutch Reformed Church had become far too liberal for them. When they were opposed by the government, the separatists decided to leave. They debated where to go and settled on the US in the farm belt. Not many in the Netherlands were sorry to see the Afscheiding—the Successionists– go.

The first band to set out was lead by Alburtus Van Raalte, a poor preacher’s kid who was last in his seminary class. His followers were also poor and never made it to the rich farmland they expected. They settled in the woods of Michigan and there they stayed, founding my hometown of Holland, on the shores of Lake Michigan which had frozen when they got there and was impossible to cross. His impoverished group was at home in the woods and saw the trees as a gift from God, ready to be exploited. More on how that worked out for some of the locals can be found here.

The other leader, Hendrick Scholte was delayed because his infant son sickened and died. He soon followed with a more wealthy group of settlers and Scholte himself had plenty of money. He didn’t want to join Alburtus, as he found the Michigan land too swampy and unhealthy. As family lore said, “the rich kept going” and founded Pella, Iowa, where I live today.

The two groups later vied for immigrants, causing some resentment. They parted further when Scholte, who was fond of trying new things, set up an independent church. He staunchly opposed any sort of Christian school because public school was vested in the “sovereignty of the people.” He even supported the anti-slavery movement and became friends with Lincoln! Van Raalte clung to the mantel of being God’s chosen and remained more orthodox in preaching. There was even a movement in the church at large to oust independent Scholte from the Reformed Church but it failed. Those who were mad about this had other grievances. These somewhat later immigrants even found the Van Raalte style church too liberal and Americanized with at least 800 hymns they didn’t like. Much to Van Raalte’s chagrin, the malcontents created a new church, the Christian Reformed Church.

The Christian Reformed Church might be best known to outsiders as giving us Betsy DeVos and her brother Erik Prince. Van Raalte came around to see the value in public education after this.

Being of Dutch decent, I have been aware of these things, but vaguely. My point is, ancient history is today’s history. People still fight over which church doctrine is the most pure, who is a heathen, which Enlightenment values to embrace or reject, and if school should be public or private. They even fight over hymns. And for us in Iowa, a former aide to Betsy DeVos is now Iowa’s education director.  If you don’t think this will influence public education in Iowa, you don’t know history. Or maybe now, you do.

More complete background can be found here and in the Van Raalte Institute in Holland, Michigan.

A painting of a group of people fighting Description automatically generated

The Fall of the Rebel Angels by

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

1562

  • Rights: Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussel

View in Augmented Reality

Pick a Straw

On By Catherine HausteinIn Uncategorized1 Comment

As the MAGA types warn that a Harris Administration could be a threat to plastic straws, I’d like to remind readers that the Iowa Republicans have been way ahead when it comes to plasticphelia. They love plastic so much that they brought back Styrofoam cups after the Democrats had replaced them with paper cups at the Statehouse in Des Moines. Styrofoam can leak styrene, a neurotoxin (brain poison), especially under hot conditions. It might explain a few things. It doesn’t have to be in a cup to give you a little zap of brain-kill—even those foam peanuts can cause anxiety, and not simply from the mess.

Later, the exalted Republicans took the bold move to save plastic bags from extinction. Consequently, you can have the delight of seeing plastic bags hanging from Iowa fence rows. I wrote about it here and later, even wrote a novel in which people living in exile wear clothes made from plastic bags.

Plastic is cheap. A little oil makes lots of plastic. And it has fueled our consumer culture. But of course, it’s clogging our bodies as well as our oceans. It even plugs up storm sewers and contributes to flooding.  In the US, 500 million plastic straws are used each day and while they are not the most prevalent plastic pollution, they are one of the most commonly visible types of plastic litter.

I have an above ground swimming pool with a plastic liner. We play in it with plastic toys. Recently, I noticed tiny plastic fibers floating in it. The raft was shedding. As much as I dislike straws and plastic bags, pool toys are also a problem since they are not recyclable. Even recyclable plastic rarely gets recycled. I used a sock over the skimmer to get the fine plastic fibers out of the pool because I didn’t want them to clog my filter system. The insoluble plastic coated the sock. I could only wonder what it would do to an intestine. Of course, scientists have been studying this. Not surprisingly, tiny plastic particles indeed do coat intestines and affect gut bacteria, decreasing some types such as Bifidobacterium, a probiotic, and increasing others associated with conditions such as irritable bowel syndrome. Straws warm or cool a drink slightly to make it more appealing to our taste buds. They are convenient, too. But is it worth the intestinal challenge to suck instead of sip?

Is it a given to use paper straws? Paper isn’t the cleanest material to produce. Trees are pulverized and cooked slowly (digested) with chemicals such as sulfite to break them down. Smelly sulfur containing gasses are released in the process.  It uses chlorine to bleach it and is the third largest source of pollution world-wide. Paper causes deforestation and paper straws also release the toxins known as PFAS.  These substances are used to coat paper food products to make them last longer. The good news here is that the Biden administration cracked down on PFAS in paper and other food packaging and soon to be safer products should be hitting the shelves. (more here) The best option is reusable straws, or maybe, as I decided, no straw at all, at least not for today, which is also my opinion of our conservative Iowa legislature. Not today.

A few straws and a leaf on the ground Description automatically generated

Midyear Science News

On By Catherine HausteinIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Midyear 2024 science news

The US delayed acting on the Covid -19 virus, setting the vaccine development back. Are you one of those people who think the virus came from a lab? Scientists don’t agree with that.

Mounting evidence that pesticides, plastics, and other pollutants harm our bones & butterflies & cause heart problems.

Eclipse awes, unites. Thanks Mother Nature!

 Getting some new pavement, as I did? It causes 8% of the world carbon emissions. Climate friendly concrete will soon become available.

Unwashed men pose danger. You may have heard of VOCs, volatile organic compounds, which are released into the air from synthetic products such as carpet, gasoline engines, and paint. These compounds can cause health issues ranging from irritation, headaches, organ damage, and cancer. And, when men don’t wash, they emit them.

 Gun violence is declared a public health crisis.

Climate change caused 150 billion dollars in damage in 2023, yet few people in the US think they will be affected. Is weather becoming more severe? Yes, it appears so.

Bird flu marches on, with new testing done on milk to ensure safety and track the disease.

Speaking of tests, a blood test to supplement the more invasive colonoscopy has been approved. With colorectal rates skyrocketing, this test should make getting screened easier, although it will not entirely replace colonoscopies.

Project 2025, the sweeping right-wing blueprint for a new kind of U.S. presidency, would sabotage science-based policies that address climate change, the environment, abortion, health care access, technology and education...and even cancer research. The government funds 40% of basic science, science done to advance knowledge and improve health, and the research is shared with the public and other scientists.

Our Lips are Sealed

On By Catherine HausteinIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Italian philosopher and political scientist Norberto Bobbio argues that attitudes towards equality are primarily what distinguish left-wing politics from right-wing politics on the political spectrum:  “the left considers the key inequalities between people to be artificial and negative, which should be overcome by an active state, whereas the right believes that inequalities between people are natural and positive, and should be either defended or left alone by the state.” (link)

In 2020, scientists performed an astonishing feat. In less than one year, they produced not one but several safe and effective vaccines against the novel coronavirus, sars-cov-2. Yet, by the summer of 2021, barely half of all Americans had been fully vaccinated, even though free vaccines were widely available. By the autumn of 2021, ten thousand deaths following vaccination had been reported, and only six positively attributed to the vaccine, with more than four hundred and fifty million vaccine doses administered. This is a vaccine-death rate of 0.00000001 percent.1 Yet public health officials still struggled to persuade the remaining Americans to get vaccinated. Commentators have read this opposition as evidence of a crisis of public trust in science. (link)

Scientists and conservatives have not gotten along for a while and they aren’t getting along now. Although this may be seen as bias on the part of scientists, it is the conservatives who have turned away from science and encouraged the public to go with them.

Mistrust in science has been seeded for a while, lead by conservative business leaders in the US who do not want regulations. The environmental and public health movements scared them and they saw these ideals as eating into their profits. Conservative people hate the environment so much, they won’t even invest in it. They like science well enough when it is related to production of goods but otherwise, it and the government, are expected to get out of their way as they do what they please. Interestingly enough, the anti-science attitude is strongest in educated Republicans, who then use money and influence to infect other Republicans with this view, which is basically anti-government. The anti-government movement funded think tanks at The University of Chicago which basically didn’t believe in public good. They don’t believe in helping people. Is it any surprise that Iowa’s attorney general is a product of that?

Government is not supposed to help people with science problems because then, people might want to government to protect them from the maladies businesses have created. In fact, these conservative business leaders go out of their way to block government solutions because they want the government to look bad. They do not want government to lend a helping hand.

One mastermind in this conservative movement is the National Association of Manufactures. You can see their leaders here. You’ll note that the head of both Pella Corporation and Vermeer Manufacturing are on their board of directors. A former head of Vermeer Corporation received their award recently and dutifully repeated some of their anti-government talking points. You may recognize a business ally of Trump’s. NAM has flooded newspapers, radio, and television stations with their messaging—enterprising businessmen heroes fighting pesky environmentalists and socialist moralists who seek a fair and safe workplace. These companies donate to their favorite charities, advertise in local media, in effect silencing them from speaking out on issues. Our lips are sealed.

One recent result: In Iowa, the public harassed a local weather man to the point that he left the state. Read more here. His crime? He talked about climate change as being science. Which it is. We Midwesterners have lost our niceness and it’s no accident. We’re trusting the wrong people.

It’s important to realize that much of the anti-science, anti-regulation rhetoric is myth, a right-wing myth that enriches a few. For our own good, for our health and safety we need to see it as the PR stunt it is.

Recently, I asked Pella’s Planning and Zoning director about flooding in town. Climate change models predict extreme weather, including flooding over much of the US. He said we have regulations to prevent flooding from 100-year floods but to push these limits would be too expensive. Here in a self-proclaimed religious city, protecting each other is too expensive. Maybe we should care more about our neighbors. My property is not at much risk for flooding. How about yours?

You have the right, as a citizen, to expect your elected officials to listen to basic science and take the appropriate steps to protect you. One small step you can take will be to push “delete” if you get a voting guide from a member of NAM. Another is to adopt some skepticism. A friend once joined a pro-business group, because he had a small business, and received their newsletters. He noticed that every issue had a right-wing spin. He tossed his membership in the garbage.

There is nothing wrong with manufacturing. It’s been with us since the industrial revolution. But, like Botox, too much used carelessly in the wrong place will hurt you. It can even affect your empathy for others. There’s no reason to trust right-wing business leaders on matters of science. Regulation can slightly raise costs, but it does protect the community.  It also encourages innovation. The environmental costs of their neglect will be paid by the rest of us. Look through the PR stunt. Meanwhile, here comes the rain again.

Much of the information in this piece comes from this source (MIT Press)

The “A” word on Many Lips

On By Catherine HausteinIn Uncategorized1 Comment

As an eldest daughter, I can understand the appeal of authoritarianism. I was put in charge of these lesser beings, my siblings, by parental authority figures. Of course, they rebelled against my rule but I found that scaring them with the threat of home invasion and the paranormal—which only I could control– worked well to keep them under my thumb. Somehow, I inherently knew that making the world, or at least those nights when I babysat, a scary place worked in my favor.  I’m glad to say I grew out of my tyrannical ways. I can’t say how it happened. Maybe I decided I couldn’t pull it off for the rest of my life, or, having a happy childhood, I outgrew it. Good thing! It was antithetical to being a scientist.

Scientists are drawn to a dynamic body of knowledge that builds and expands. Authoritarianism is a form of ignorance, governing by omission of information. It’s often static. That’s why science and authoritarianism clash.  Authoritarianism most often fails, but it can last way too long for the life of a scientist. 

Authoritarianism is fueled by both ideology and prejudice and is held up by two worldviews. Followers often follow the first view, leaders the second view, and some people have both views.

  1. The world is a dangerous, unstable and un-predictable place. A candidate appealing to this group will take a dark world view. Coercing people into conforming helps stabilize the status quo. Punishing people for violating the norm is encouraged. Scary people are at the door!  Crime is up! You’re going to need weapons! This is particularly true for right wing authoritarians (shown here in cartoon) and people who grew up with instability who have not developed “openness.”
  • The desire to socially dominate in a competitive world where the strong survive and the weak perish. These people cultivate inequality and see themselves as tough. They don’t like participation trophies. They aren’t afraid to lie. Lies make them strong when people believe them. 

One important step along the way is creating prejudice. First, an out group must be identified as both threatening to the social order and capable of competing with the dominant societal groups. I was once at a bookstore selling some of my novels alongside a person selling Pella history books. She told me that Pella was once a coal mining town. When miners went on strike, the mining company went to the South and brought back black miners to break the strike, creating prejudice.

This might explain this racist political advertisement, which combines fear, subtle prejudice, and the superiority of the white, small-town life. And it’s not the only one that will flood your screen. Most authoritarian prejudice is towards people perceived as scary, people perceived as weak (lazy, old), and people perceived as different.  

Authoritarians in general support these types of policies:

  1. Leaving cooperative alliances with others. Brexit for example lead to the United Kingdom exiting The European Union
  2. Aggressive behavior to others such as corporal punishment, banning abortion for rape victims, and forced assimilation (one language polices, forced religion) which involves removing civil rights. 
  3. Belief that your country should not be criticized.
  4. Rigid stands against personal choices and public health and safety if they oppose monied interests, including those that honestly help the group such as maintaining a clean environment. 
  5. Refusal to accept evidence and lack of awareness of anything that goes against their beliefs.
  6. Unambiguous rules and morality. 
  7. Unity means conformity, as this authoritarian expert points out in a bone chilling analysis of the RNC convention.
  8. Restraints on voting and participation.

Both right and left political views can follow authoritarians but in general, left-wing authoritarianism is much less prevalent and focuses on the good of society. It still can suffer many of the flaws of authoritarianism. By definition, right wing politics promotes social hierarchy and meshes better with authoritarianism. 

Authoritarianism is having a global resurgence. Only 20% of global citizens enjoy what would be classified as freedom. Iowa itself has repeatedly put well-funded authoritarians, often connected with  Christian Nationalists,  at the helm. Authoritarianism is the way with Christian Nationalism. Every bona fide pastor should be denouncing it but they won’t because they know what will happen at the hands of their authoritarian congregation members. 

Authoritarian candidates see generous funding and not just from Christian Nationalists. Many tech billionaires in the US says they don’t believe in democracy anymore. One of those men gave us JD Vance. Elon Musk alone is pledging tens of millions of dollars per month to Trump. 

In general, traits needed to be a good scientist such as honesty, preference for group-based hierarchy (team players), and openness to experience do not promote authoritarianism and are negatively associated with conservatism. Thus, you will see right-wing authoritarians actively opposing scientists. 

Although scientists promoted masking to protect classrooms from COVID, the Iowa Governor chose to listen to and promote a right-wing mom group. In fact, I know of people in Pella who would not get a covid test and got mad at people who did because they did not want to make their authoritarian governor look bad. 

Noted climate scientist James Hansen is from Iowa. You’d think we’d be proud of him and have our elected ones consult him. Instead, our state leaders ignore him and get scientific advice from Ashton Kutcher. Extreme weather is associated with climate change, yet authoritarians want to cut weather forecasting and study because they tell it like it is.

A downside of right-wing authoritarianism, which has been studied more than left-wing authoritarianism because it is more of a threat, is that the population will be exploited by right-wing leaders and will become less innovative and less open to learning and exploration. Because they are by nature dishonest and even unaware, authoritarians most often fall into corruption. Authoritarians are a danger to a country.

A right-wing society also faces more intergroup conflict because it promotes hostility, competition, and rigid beliefs. I like football and recognize that team sports can help foster cooperation but we are such a competitive society these days that people have to have therapy when their favorite team loses.  The dark triad of high narcissism “fosters a competitive worldview.”

You can see these elements in this t-shirt. The shirt implies others might step out of bounds and need to be strong armed and removed from town.

Many right-wing leaders have emerged recently. They most often arise out of a chaotic situation which is why they love to sew more chaos and out-group hostility. Trump and the Iowa Republicans are such leaders. Trump and Republicans have authoritarian plans for education, which wipes out any intercultural understanding. Iowa appears to be a test case for Pr0ject 2O25 which is distinctly uncooperative and right wing. 

Authoritarianism is a harmful societal ideal which ultimately undercuts personal autonomy, a key to happiness and diminishes democracy. It undermines science and public health. It cuts creativity, which requires openness. 

To resist authoritarianism, point out their corruption and stand up for human rights. People who dislike authoritarianism and prefer intergroup cooperation are a diverse group of people, so appreciating some differences of opinion is important. Leave the absolutes to the authoritarians! Not all of them are not going to grow up, unfortunately. 

Most of the information for this post comes from this review article in the prestigious science journal Nature. 

What’s the missing element in science education?

On By Catherine HausteinIn chemistry, science4 Comments

What makes a kid like science? It isn’t information or government edict, advanced courses, or religion. Yes, a promise of a good job helps kids like me who grew up middle class. but it can’t be all it is, because there are times when science is routine, boring, and demands repetition, because some of the joy of science is being able to predict.

One of my favorite exercises in high school was the bug collection, which had been done for eons. I’m not sure it’s done anymore but I remember just being so fascinated with catching the bugs and classifying them.  I needed to add a twist so future chemist me had this thought that instead of sticking the bugs on pins and putting the pins on a piece of Styrofoam or cardboard, I incased them in plastic. Each bug was set in transparent resin. Giving them a category and finding their scientific name was a whole new language, and an interesting one at that. I remember one kid getting in trouble for turning in an old collection, one his brother had done. The evidence? He had a cicada in his collection that didn’t emerge in the year we were supposed to be catching our bugs. Science triumphed. Why would you ever want to cheat in science?

What’s missing in the STEM education discussion these days is curiosity, and the sense of wonder about and the respect for the whole vast natural world as compared to the engineered world of humans. In fact, respect for scientists themselves is missing from our political landscape in Iowa.

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I was just about to put this old book in the Little Free Library near the park. I paused because I wanted to read it one more time. I don’t think enough people understand what it takes to really, really be a scientist and to persist in it. I thought I might, for a post, just go through a few of the entries in that old book and see what scientists had to say about what brought them to science.

For many, it was being in nature itself. One scientist recalled being at a summer camp in Wisconsin and becoming fascinated with amoebas. Looking at the stars was the key for another. One scientist grew up in the California mountains, surrounded by nature. As an aside, Iowa has very few public lands to allow for exploring nature. The state has severely cut back the DNR. One strike against us.

The DNR budget has been cut back for years. Our state parks have fallen into disrepair. This isn’t a great way to encourage science.

According to the book, playing with batteries and wires in a family shed and constructing tic-tac-toe machines gave another his start. Some were from families of scientists, others had parents who never finished high school. There wasn’t a standard path to science. “Scientists are people of very dissimilar temperaments doing different things in very different ways. Among scientists are collectors, classifiers and compulsive tidiers-up; many are detectives by temperament and many are explorers; some are artists and and others artisans. There are poets–scientists and philosopher–scientists and even a few mystics. … and most people who are in fact scientists could easily have been something else instead.”

The scientists highlighted their curiosity,  physical discomfort when there was incomprehension and the ability to be both free and skeptical.

The scientists interviewed pointed to a few factors which helped them along the way—financial assistance and autonomy of thought. Neither of these things will the average kid get from a right-wing authoritarian. What are we getting from our state education department?

In the science homework that I’m seeing in the schools, there’s a whole lot about evidence. What’s the answer? How do you know? And that’s fine. Science is evidence based. But there’s a whole swath of it that’s missing.

Iowa has gotten overly practical about educating kids for jobs, especially ones the state—and no doubt the parents– want them to have. These are often STEM jobs. Manufacturers are even hitting up grade school kids, telling them to work for them when they grow up. But in some cases, I’ve heard students express doubts about a life making poisons and making people fat.

Likewise, long ago the now Iowa Governor came to visit my private school science department to tell us how much she likes science and private schools. I am seeing through a glass dimly here but I didn’t like her because she didn’t get science and was not there to listen to what we had to say.

Now, she acts as if she’s done miracles with STEM education. She might even be the next Secretary of Education, all while ignoring doctors and scientists. In other words, she ignores the informed opinions that scientists with autonomy of thought have given her. This is not anything to model if you want to promote science. She is a Trump supporter and Trump said that listening to scientists is something “only a fool would do.” Instead, you have to listen to the money.

Few people on the Iowa STEM council are working scientists, especially sparse are the natural sciences and basic sciences such as chemistry and biology. I’ve seen some of the curriculum and it has a heavy emphasis on design and engineering. And of course, there are corporate partners and a focus on jobs. It should be called a sTEM Council with a lower-case s. Current science focuses on methodology which many older scientists point out, can be boring. And I really, truly worry about a future where the only people paying for science are people that are making money from it. In the past, the government and universities have been drivers in basic science, the foundation of scientific discovery.

Instead, politicians publicly bash scientists. This in turn causes a public distrust, especially among Republican voters. It’s unlikely that Iowa’s Republicans will look at the evidence. They will instead, create a science-hostile climate for the foreseeable future, making a mockery of STEM education.