Now that medical marijuana is legal in more than half the country, patients suffering from chronic pain or PTSD are flocking to marijuana dispensaries across the nation for symptom relief. But what if I told you that marijuana may not actually help with either ailment?

Apparently, there is little scientific evidence to draw conclusions about the benefits and harms of marijuana in patients with PTSD and chronic pain, according to two studies published Monday in the journal “Annals of Internal Medicine.”

In an editorial accompanying the research, Dr. Sachin Patel of Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital noted that the findings aren’t unique, and that “scientific evidence for the effectiveness and safety of cannabis and cannabinoid products in treating medical and psychiatric disease has recently come under substantial scrutiny.”

“The current studies highlight the real and urgent need for high-quality clinical trials in both of these areas,” Patel continued in an email to Reuters. “If cannabis is being considered for medical use, it should certainly be after all well-established treatments have failed.”

Both of the studies were conducted by researchers at the Veterans Affairs Portland Health Care System and funded by the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs.

Is Marijuana Causing More Harm Than Good?

Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for medical use, and the number of medical and recreational users has nearly doubled between 2001 and 2013, with one in 10 adults saying they use it.

According to the researchers, more than one third of patients seeking cannabis for medical purposes in states where it is legal list PTSD as the primary reason for their request, and between 45 percent and 80 percent of people who seek medical cannabis do so for pain management.

For one of the studies, the team of researchers reviewed 27 studies examining marijuana use for chronic pain. While they weren’t able to conclude that it helped pain sufferers, they did find evidence that marijuana led to an increased risk of car accidents, psychotic symptoms, and short-term cognitive impairment.

When reviewing prior research on the effects of marijuana on PTSD, they “found low- to moderate-strength evidence that cannabis use is associated with an increased risk for psychotic symptoms, psychosis, mania, and–in active users–short-term cognitive dysfunction,” the authors noted.

In fact, one of the studies they examined involving veterans with PTSD showed a small but “significant” worsening of symptoms among veterans who either started or continued using cannabis during the study period.

It’s important to note again that the researchers maintained that there was insufficient evidence for them to draw firm conclusions about the effectiveness of cannabis in both patient populations.

Is This Fuel for Sessions?

Short answer: probably not.

It’s no secret that Attorney General Jeff Sessions is actively looking for research to support his disapproval of marijuana legalization. After his Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety failed to offer up any new suggestions for dealing with marijuana in states that have legalized it, experts said that Sessions could still invoke federal law to push his anti-marijuana agenda.

While these new studies cast doubt on marijuana’s effectiveness at treating these particular ailments, the findings don’t definitively negate prior research attesting to the benefits of marijuana for patients suffering from chronic pain and PTSD. The effectiveness of marijuana treating these symptoms could also depend on potency and dose, Patel said in an email to CNN. Most studies use lower doses and lower potencies of medical marijuana than what is found in dispensaries.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Marijuana May Not Actually Help with PTSD or Chronic Pain appeared first on Law Street.

Despite encouraging their children to buckle up, many adults are not following their own advice.

A new study from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) found that 91 percent of adults wear their seat belts in the driver or front passenger seats, but only 72 percent do in the rear seats. Moreover, only 57 percent use the belts in hired vehicles like taxis or ride sharing cars.

“When we asked people why they were less likely to buckle up, a quarter of the respondents told us that it’s safer in the back seat, so they don’t need to buckle up,” Jessica Jermakian, an IIHS senior research engineer, told CBS.

It’s true that in cars from the ’60s and ’70s, the back seat is generally the safest place. However, the belts, tensioners, airbags, and vehicle designs of the modern era remove any disadvantage the front seats once had. While experts still consider the rear seats to be somewhat safer, a seat belt is still necessary.

“Even if you’re in the back seat, the laws of physics are not suspended,” Jermakian warns. “You still need to buckle up in order to get the best protection in a crash.”

Crash test footage reveals that an unrestrained passenger in the back seat can slam against the front seats. That sort of collision could injure passengers anywhere in the vehicle.

In response to questions about ride sharing, four out of five adults explained that they don’t wear a seat belt because they are only traveling short distances.

“That statistic [about the risk of a crash] doesn’t change just because you’re in a ride share or a taxi,” said Jonathan Adkins, executive director of the Governors Highway Safety Association. “We need rear-seat passengers to understand that seat belts are critical for them, too.”

Every state except New Hampshire requires adults to wear seat belts in the front seat. Only 29 states have laws that extend to the back seat as well.

About half of all fatalities in car crashes each year could have been prevented if the victim had worn their seat belt. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that seat belts saved nearly 14,000 lives in 2015 alone.

Delaney Cruickshank

Delaney Cruickshank is a Staff Writer at Law Street Media and a Maryland native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in History with minors in Creative Writing and British Studies from the College of Charleston. Contact Delaney at DCruickshank@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Even children aren’t immune to racial prejudices. According to a new study from Georgetown Law, black girls between the ages of five and 14 are viewed as less innocent than white girls in the same age range.

Researchers surveyed 325 adults of various ethnic, racial, and educational backgrounds from across the U.S. The results reveal that black girls are viewed as more adult than their white peers at almost all stages of childhood, beginning most significantly at the age of five.

The report, Girlhood Interrupted: The Erasure of Black Girls’ Childhood, was released by Georgetown Law’s Center on Poverty and Inequality, and builds on previous research conducted by professor Phillip Goff in 2014 regarding adult perceptions of black boys. Goff found that starting at the age of 10, black boys are more likely to be perceived as older and guilty of suspected crimes than white peers.

Black girls are more likely to be disciplined at school. Have stories/thoughts to share? Join #girlhoodinterrupted chat tomorrow at 1pm EST pic.twitter.com/fV4v84nbbG

— Center on Poverty (@GtownLawPovCntr) June 28, 2017

“This new evidence of what we call the ‘adultification’ of black girls may help explain why black girls in America are disciplined much more often and more severely than white girls–across our schools and in our juvenile justice system,” said Rebecca Epstein, lead author of the report and executive director of the center.

The Georgetown Law study is the first to focus on how people perceive black girls’ innocence and maturity relative to white girls.

According to a report from the U.S. Department of Education on racial disparities in K-12, black girls are suspended more than twice as frequently as white girls. Black girls are also expelled without educational services at higher rates than white girls. In adulthood, black Americans are five times more likely to be incarcerated than white people.

A snapshot of the data shows that adults also believe:

• Black girls seem older than white girls of the same age.
• Black girls need to be supported less than white girls.
• Black girls know more about adult topics than white girls.
• Black girls need less protection than white girls.
• Black girls know more about sex than white girls.

This information merely confirms long-standing beliefs for many within the black community. The researchers hope the data can be used as a call to action for policy makers and educators.

“These findings show that pervasive stereotypes of black women as hypersexualized and combative are reaching into our schools and playgrounds and helping rob black girls of the protections other children enjoy,” said report coauthor Jamilia Blake, an associate professor at Texas A&M University.  “We urge legislators, advocates and policymakers to examine the disparities that exist for black girls in the education and juvenile justice systems and to pursue reforms that preserve childhood for all.”

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Thanks to the success of recent legalization efforts across the country, more American adults are now able to consume legal marijuana than ever before. But as usage statistics surge, researchers have found that their rates do vary along gender lines–men are significantly more likely to smoke marijuana than women.

Epidemiologists Hannah Carliner and Deborah S. Hasin conducted the study at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, and published the results online in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence. They found that compared to 2002, an estimated six million additional men and four million additional women reported past-year pot smoking in 2014.

For a number of years, users remained steady at about 13 percent of the adult male population and 7 percent of the adult female population; however, in 2007, prevalence increased by about 4 percent among men and 3 percent among women.

“These changes parallel national trends in decreased perceived harmfulness of marijuana use, and legalization of both recreational and medical use in over half of U.S. states,” said Dr. Carliner. “However, changes in attitudes and legality do not sufficiently explain why we observe a sharp increase in use in 2007, or why this increase was greater in men than in women.”

Interestingly, the study also found that the widening of the gap was driven by men with low incomes, and corresponded with the start of the Great Recession and rising unemployment rates in 2007. Between 2007 and 2014, marijuana use increased about 6 percent among men in households earning less than $20,000 annually, compared to only 2 percent of women in that group.

It’s easy to understand how financial pressure could cause more individuals to seek out marijuana, which is commonly used to relieve stress and help with anxiety.

“While an economic recovery began around 2012, it largely bypassed men in the low-income manufacturing and construction fields, where earning and employment rates remained low,” noted Dr. Carliner.

“Our findings are consistent with other recent national studies documenting increasing rates of disease and death related to substance use among middle-aged low socioeconomic status White Americans,” says Dr. Hasin.

Both researchers believe that documenting changes in drug use is important for public health planning as well as economic policy. They also believe that identifying such high risk periods and populations could help tailor future prevention efforts.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The media output and amount of propaganda coming from the terror group ISIS has dropped dramatically as the group has experienced increasing military pressure, according to a new study. In August of last year, which was the peak of ISIS’s media activity, the group released 700 media items from official sources in Syria and other countries. This past August, it only published or released 200 items.

The propaganda by ISIS has from the beginning focused on how the group is creating a functioning new society with thriving businesses and happy citizens–a new caliphate, meaning a unified Muslim country. Foreign Muslims were “invited” to move to Syria and live in a peaceful, thriving Muslim community, specifically in Raqqua. The propaganda material often featured pictures of happy children and a life of prosperity. But as the fighters face defeats and mounting pressure, Aleppo is in ruins, and some high profile leaders have been killed, that image becomes harder and harder to uphold.

Daniel Milton from the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point, who wrote the new report, told the New York Times:

It’s not just the numeric decline. The caliphate was their big selling point. Now there’s an inability to say we’re doing the things that make us a state. And that was behind their broad appeal.

Very interesting piece on falling ISIS media output. Sobering last question on traumatised youth growing up in Raqqa https://t.co/UWnS8iboKX

— Julian Sayarer (@Julian_Sayarer) October 11, 2016

Another figure that illustrates the Islamic State’s shrinking influence is how many foreign fighters join the cause. According to the Pentagon the number of fighters going to Syria and Iraq from other countries has shrunk from about 2,000 a month a year ago to only 200.

Milton believes the decreased media output is due to the military actions against ISIS. The fact is that the “caliphate” is not an organized state. It is a group of militants trying to fight for a cause, but this means that the people publishing media content are also soldiers. When they fight, no one is there to put out media content, and when they get killed, the army shrinks even more. Also many media outlets, like Twitter, have made an effort to block radical Islamic accounts.

But even though the new information points to decreased power when it comes to territory as well as propaganda, experts warn that the ideology and mentality of the Islamic state will keep attracting lone terrorists for a long time. There is also the risk that Islamic fighters will return to their real home countries in the West, and carry out terror attacks like the ones seen in France. And, lastly, there is the problem of how to take care of the kids that have grown up during the war and been fed with propaganda for their whole lives.

“How do you deal with all the children who have had these experiences and who have been exposed to this worldview? This is going to be a long-term problem,” said Milton.

Emma Von Zeipel

Emma Von Zeipel is a staff writer at Law Street Media. She is originally from one of the islands of Stockholm, Sweden. After working for Democratic Voice of Burma in Thailand, she ended up in New York City. She has a BA in journalism from Stockholm University and is passionate about human rights, good books, horses, and European chocolate. Contact Emma at EVonZeipel@LawStreetMedia.com.

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On Thursday, Airbnb announced a major overhaul of its racial discrimination policies in response to several reports of hosts exhibiting racial bias against renters on the home-sharing app.

Airbnb CEO and co-founder Brian Chesky (pictured above) released a statement on the company website revealing its investigative partnership with Laura Murphy, the former head of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington D.C. Legislative Office. After looking into every aspect of Airbnb’s platform, Murphy detailed her findings in a report titled Airbnb’s Work to Fight Discrimination and Build Inclusion.

The report lists nine policy changes that would “greatly reduce the opportunity for hosts and guests to engage in conscious or unconscious discriminatory conduct.” The changes include:

1. Beginning November 1, 2016, all app users are required to agree to The Airbnb Community Commitment, which pledges to “treat all fellow members, regardless of race, religion, national origin, disability, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation or age, with respect, and without judgment or bias.”
2. Users must also agree to Airbnb’s “strengthened and more detailed” nondiscrimination policy, the rules of which Airbnb claims are stronger than what are required by law.
3. Airbnb has put in place a full-time product team to fight bias and promote diversity.
4. It will encourage and grow instant book listings.
5. The company will experiment with reducing the prominence of guest photos in the booking process and enhancing other parts of host and guests profiles with objective information.
6. Airbnb will also improve its response to discrimination complaints and better enforce its policies.
7. It will also implement an open door policy for discrimination complaints.
8. Airbnb will offer new training for to help people learning how to fight bias.
9. The company will implement the Diversity Rule, a new policy that will mandate that all candidate pools for senior-level positions include women and candidates from underrepresented backgrounds. Airbnb will also expand efforts to bring economic opportunities to minority-owned business and encourage more people from underrepresented populations to use Airbnb.

The changes come after several Airbnb guests adopted the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack to vent their frustrations of being rejected from bookings–only to see the same rental be re-listed later.

#AirbnbWhileBlack #Airbnb pic.twitter.com/3pIGzQsP57

— Q. (@TinaLaBang) July 16, 2015

Black guests’ suppositions were later confirmed by a study conducted by Harvard Business School students Benjamin Edelman, Michael Luca, and Dan Svirsky that found that requests from guests with distinctively African-American names are roughly 16 percent less likely to be accepted than identical guests with distinctively White names. The same also goes for hosts that are black, regardless of whether the property is cheap or expensive

The announcement of new policy changes designed to combat these types of biases is definitely a step in the right direction for the company. Unfortunately there will always be opportunities for people to still discriminate against others. At least now, both guests and users will hopefully be held more accountable.

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

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A new study from the University of British Columbia suggests that there is some truth to the stereotype that smoking weed makes you lazy–at least as far as rats are concerned.

Researchers published a study in the Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, that found THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, made male rats less likely to choose more cognitively demanding tasks. (Presumably they used male rats because all the female rats were already busy multi-tasking three things at once.)

UBC conducted the study by training 29 lab rats to complete behavioral tasks where they had to decide whether or not they wanted to engage in a task that required a lot of attention for a larger reward, or complete an easier task for a smaller reward.

Under normal circumstances the rats opted for the harder task to earn the bigger reward. However, when the scientists gave the rats doses of THC and had them pick between the same tasks, they chose the easier tasks for the smaller reward–basically they became “cognitively lazy.” Surprisingly, the rats could still perform the harder task, they just didn’t want to.

Some of the motivations behind the study were to determine whether or not marijuana legalization has an adverse effect on the quality of life of its users. The researches concluded:

We hypothesize that associations between THC and poorer life outcomes may be due to a drug-induced decrease in willingness to allocate cognitive effort, rather than impairments in fundamental cognitive abilities per se. Our findings also suggest that unlike THC, CBD does not adversely affect executive function, and as such its inclusion in medicinal cannabis is not of primary concern.

While the results of this study probably aren’t shocking for most of us, they do provide more information about the affects of THC–at least on rats. Although, I do think they could have gotten the stoned rats to try a little harder if they’d offered them pizza as their reward instead.

Watch the researchers explain the study below

Alexis Evans

Alexis Evans is an Assistant Editor at Law Street and a Buckeye State native. She has a Bachelor’s Degree in Journalism and a minor in Business from Ohio University. Contact Alexis at aevans@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Shocker: Weed Makes Rats Lazy AF, Say Researchers appeared first on Law Street.

Sexual assault on college campuses has been one of the hottest topics for a couple years now. Many universities are being investigated by the Department of Education for Title IX violations. The recent Rolling Stone article about rape on the campus of the University of Virginia that was partially retracted and has landed the publication in hot water over concerns about its journalistic ethics has seriously reignited the discussion. There are a lot of moving parts to the debate about sexual assault on college campuses, and I think that one of the many, many reasons that the conversation gets so easily muddied is that we don’t all agree on definitions, or statistics.

While this is obviously an extreme example, watch this video of “Princeton Mom” Susan Patton who I’m still a little bit sure must be running the world’s longest satirical performance. She begins the video by talking about how rape is no longer just defined as a woman being held at gunpoint and assaulted, and then spends the next ten minutes pretty much going on about what a shame that is. She also thinks that rape is often women falsely accusing men after “regrettable sex.” Then she talks about how it’s women’s responsibility to protect themselves from rape by not drinking, making good decisions, and choosing better friends. It’s a charming exercise in a game I like to subject myself to called “Holy Shit, People Actually Think This Way.”

Now the Department of Justice (DOJ) has weighed in with statistics from a study it conducted, and it’s probably going to all get even more confusing.

The new DOJ report dealt with not just college students, but college-aged females more generally. The DOJ report included the statistic that six of every 1,000 college females are sexually assaulted, and now everyone who thinks like Patton is using it to prove that sexual assault on college campuses isn’t a thing we should be worried about, and that this talk of “rape-culture” is overblown.

First, what we need to do is remember that anytime this sort of study is undertaken–one that relies on people’s word, memories, and stories, rather than say, hard facts in a laboratory–is that it needs to be taken with a grain of salt.

There have been other studies that indicate that the rate of college sexual assault is much higher than what the DOJ reports. A survey at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) concluded that 17 percent of female students and 5 percent of young men were sexually assaulted as students. Then there’s the Campus Sexual Assault Study from 2007 that gave us the now-infamous and oft-cited “one in five” statistic.

There are a few reasons why two studies can have such radically different numbers, and they’re excellently detailed here, by the Marshall Project. The main takeaway is this though: neither is necessarily right and neither is necessarily wrong. They asked different questions, they talked to different people, and at the end of the day, it’s really very much an inexact science. We’re not sure how many students are sexually assaulted; more studies to come might help us pinpoint that number, but probably not.

But we do know that at least some are. Furthermore, the same DOJ report stated that eighty percent of students sexually assaulted don’t report it. And 80 percent were assaulted by someone they know. Both of those statistics are deeply troubling.

No matter how many people are being assaulted on our college campuses–whether it’s one percent, twenty percent, or somewhere in between–it’s too many.

But that “less than one” percent is probably going to get thrown around for a while. Because, unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there who, for whatever reason, don’t want to see change. They just got some ammunition, for now.

That’s why we need to keep having conversations about rape culture. Why we need to keep educating our young people, and for that matter, all our people, on consent. Why we need to stand up for rape victims when they’re accused of making up their stories. It doesn’t matter how many–any at all are too damn many.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Is whether or not you survive Ebola all about your genetics? A new study on mice indicates that it might be. Scientists found that certain genetic factors determine if the disease manifests as mild or devastating.

To reach this conclusion, scientists injected mice with the same strain of Ebola that caused the 2014 West Africa Outbreak. The expressed severity of the disease among the mice was scattered although they were all injected with the same unaltered and unmutated strain. Why did some resist the disease while others surrendered?

One correlation posits a provocative answer. Scientists noticed a strong correlation between symptom expression and the genetic lines of the mice. Dr. Michael Katze, a researcher on the project, declared that their data suggest disease outcomes are largely dependent on genetic factors.

It seems that the genes of the mice determined their immune response. In some mice, the genes that promote blood vessel inflammation and cell death became agitated and ultimately these mice succumbed to the disease. In other mice, the white blood cells were more lively and the genes that promote blood vessel repair were activated. These mice were able to fight back. As they observed the mice over multiple generations, they found that the ability to survive was tied to genetic lines. The continuous correlation of immunity in genetic lines presents a puzzle. Did the mice pass specific immunity on to their offspring?

Immune responses to specific pathogens, like Ebola, only develop after exposure. Specific immunity is an acquired trait, and so far, science has told us that acquired traits cannot be passed on through DNA. Traits we acquire in our lifetimes are not written into DNA and therefore not built into genes. Acquired traits result from environmental influences, like memories or even tans. If you’re a bronze goddess while pregnant, you won’t have a baby with a gorgeous tan.

So it is intriguing to think that mice who were exposed to Ebola had somehow passed on their specific, acquired, immunity to offspring through their genes. Below we’ll explore the possibility of inheriting acquired immunity.

Your Two-Sided Immune System

We’re all born with an innate immune system. It’s responsible for the classic immune response that recognizes and eliminates foreign invaders with the help of killer cells and cytokines. Skin, mucus, cells, and molecules all present at birth innately protect your body from foreign pathogens. Think of any computer you buy. It comes with a built in operating system. But that doesn’t mean you can’t upgrade, right?

Environmental factors prompt us to make little upgrades to our basic innate immune system like we do to our computer’s operating system. This is called adaptive or acquired immunity. Adaptive immunity activates in response to a specific problem that the innate immune system isn’t able to overcome. As it works, it also forms memories, so it can remember how to fight a specific pathogen if it ever returns for vengeance. A classic example is the Chickenpox. It doesn’t take much for most people to catch it the first time, but after that, many are resistant for life.

Acquired immunity, like other acquired traits, is not inherited. Even though you might have had the chickenpox, your kid will probably still get it, just like they can’t inherit your amazing tan or stellar vocabulary. With that said, we return again to the mice in the study above. Is it possible that they passed on their acquired immunity to their offspring?

“Lamarck-y” malarkey! Or maybe not….

If you’re intrigued by the study above, one historical figure would be absolutely riveted. Jean Baptiste Lamarck had this idea a long time ago — in 1801 to be specific. He theorized that evolution takes place when species develop traits to adapt to their environment and then transmit those adaptations to their offspring. Per his theory, giraffes developed long necks to feed from the tallest trees and then passed the “long neck” trait to their offspring.

Somebody else thought that evolution occurred in a different way. Charles Darwin proposed that evolution occurs through random mutations that bestow a competitive advantage for survival over a long time. Per his theory, the giraffes didn’t develop long necks to feed. It was just that the giraffes that happened to have slightly longer necks were able to survive to make more offspring. Eventually, the long neck became a dominant feature of all giraffes.

Darwin’s theory eclipsed Lamarck’s as the favorite theory of evolution. But were there some nuggets of truth in Lamarck’s musings? A growing body of evidence is creating a whisper of renewed interest in Lamarckian evolution. Collectively, it’s a young field called epigenetics.

For example, observations of starving Dutch mothers during the famine of World War II revealed that they had offspring and grandchildren more susceptible to obesity. Experiments on rats have found that obesity in mice might be caused by the high fat diets of their fathers. And there’s more where that came from.

The proof is in…the roundworm?

Dr. Oliver Hobert was curious to find out if Lamarck might have been right about the heritability of acquired traits. He suspected that ribonucleic acid, or RNA, and its role in genetic expression might shed some light on the subject.

Hobert was specifically interested in RNA interference (RNAi). Cells use RNAi to turn down or suppress certain genes. Watch the video below to see how it works.

Hobert and his team of Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC) researchers turned to roundworms to study RNAi’s influence on immunity. Roundworms have a unique capacity to battle viruses using RNAi that made them ideal for the study. The team found that a RNA molecule memory of instructions on fighting off certain viruses could be passed on from one generation of roundworms to the next.

Here is a quote from Dr. Oded Rechavi, lead author of the study, courtesy of the CUMC newsroom:

In our study, roundworms that developed resistance to a virus were able to pass along that immunity to their progeny for many consecutive generations.The immunity was transferred in the form of small viral-silencing agents called viRNAs, working independently of the organism’s genome.

More Pieces in the Puzzle

Studies like this one give scientists pause on long standing notions about the heritability of acquired traits and what we know about our genes. While many more studies are needed to completely vindicate Lamarck and his ideas, some puzzling clues are coming together. Here are some highlights from other studies that tackle similar ideas:

SardiNIA Study of Aging: Researchers at the National Research Council’s Institute of Genetic and Biomedical Research in Italy found that genetics play a key role in our ability to fight off disease. According to the study, the immune system has evolved to reject certain pathogens and cancers. The basis of the study is that several adaptive immune cells are regulated by genetics. They found 89 gene variants with significant ties to the production of specific immune system cells.

Chief of NIA’s Laboratory of Genetics, David Schlessinger, Ph.D., sums it up nicely:

If your mother is rarely sick, for example, does that mean you don’t have to worry about the bug that’s going around? Is immunity in the genes? According to our findings, the answer is yes, at least in part.

Natural Environment Research Council UK: This study demonstrates that genetic variations in cytokines are a crucial component of individual variation in pathogen resistance and immune function. During both adaptive and innate immune responses, cytokines carry messages. They directly determine how an immune system will respond to a given challenger. So variations in the genes that control these cytokines, therefore, ultimately affect the immune system.

Analysis of Genetic Variation in Animals: A study of hemophiliac individuals infected with HCV showed that genetic factors determine the outcome of the disease. The researches studied siblings and found correlative rates of disease recovery among siblings was much higher than the pairs of randomly paired individuals, concluding that people who share genes might also share higher resistance to certain diseases.

Innate Immune Activity: Another study looked at the genome sequence that regulates expression of genes involved in the immune system. The study found that sometimes genes of interest reveal themselves when certain cells involved in fighting an infection are stimulated.

Back to the E-word…

Ebola usually depletes a person’s immune cells. Some immune systems stand up against the initial attack and their bodies are able to maintain some immune cells. These people are more likely to survive. We learned from the study on mice that it could be genetic factors that determine the disease outcome. What about people?

One study found that people with certain variations of the human leukocyte antigen-B  gene survived Ebola while those with another variation did not. Another finding deals with a mutation in the NPC1 gene. Cells taken from people with this gene are resistant to Ebola. The mutation is relatively common in certain populations in Europe and Nova Scotia.

More research is needed, but studying these genetic variances might reveal more secrets of why some survive Ebola and others do not.

Immuno Synergy

These findings do more than just play with our ideas of how traits can be inherited. If doctors were able to browse through your genetic catalog of specific pathogen resistance, they could administer therapies that create synergies among treatments. We might be able to predict what ailments you’re more susceptible to and take appropriate preventive actions. We might be able to study the genetic factors that make some people resistant to illnesses like Ebola, and synthesize them to construct even more effective treatments.

Is this science fiction? We don’t know yet, but no theories should be completely forgotten. As we’ve learned from Lamarck, even formerly discarded ideas can make a splash centuries after their inception.

 Resources

Primary

PLOS Genetics: Genetic Diversity in Cytokines Associated with Immune Variation and Resistance to Multiple Pathogens in a Natural Rodent Population

The Royal Society: Variation in Immune Defence as a Question of Evolutionary Ecology

NIH: Genetic Variability of Hosts

University of Western Australia: Genetic Variation of Host Immune  Response Genes and Their Effect on  Hepatitis C Infection and Treatment Outcome

Additional

Science Daily: Genetic Factors Behind Surviving or Dying From Ebola Shown in Mouse Study

Broad Institute: Scientists Make Connection Between Genetic Variation and Immune System in Risk for Neurodegenerative and Other Diseases

Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics: Study Tracks Effects of Immune Activity Across the Genome

MNT: Immune Response Determined by Our Genes, Study Shows

History of Vaccines: Viruses and Evolution

LiveScience: How Do People Survive Ebola?

Research Gate: What is the Scientific Position on the Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics (Lamarckism)?

Ashley Bell

Ashley Bell communicates about health and wellness every day as a non-profit Program Manager. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Business and Economics from the College of William and Mary, and loves to investigate what changes in healthy policy and research might mean for the future. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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The rate of “active shooter” incidents has been increasing since 2000, according to a new study from the FBI in conjunction with researchers at Texas State University’s Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center. The study identified 160 incidents occurring between 2000 and 2013, and concluded that there were over twice as many of these shootings in the second half of that period as there were in the first.

In total, these incidents caused over 1,000 casualties — which the FBI classifies as both injury and death — leaving 557 injured and 486 dead, not including the shooters themselves. Among the study’s many important conclusions is the finding that police officers are often not able to respond in time, making civilian response extremely important.

Researchers found an average of six active shooter situations per year between 2000 and 2006. That rate increased to over 16 in the second half of the years studied. The number of casualties – including both injuries and deaths– increased from an average of 35 per year in the first half of the study to 113 in the second.

It is important to note that active shooter situations are not the same as mass shootings. The agreed upon definition of an active shooter is “an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area,” though the FBI expanded it slightly for its research. In contrast to this definition, a mass shooting is an incident where a shooter kills three or more people.

Of the 160 total cases identified by researchers, 64 incidents or 40 percent would be classified as mass shootings. The distinction between “mass” and “active” shooter situations is small, but very important, as a person can be an active shooter without directly causing injury. Even the Wall Street Journal conflated the two, as the title of its coverage is “Mass Shootings on the Rise, FBI Says.”

James Alan Fox, a professor of criminal justice at Northeastern University, cautioned against the conclusion that mass shootings are increasing. In an interview with Time he said, “A majority of active shooters are not mass shooters… A majority kill fewer than three.” Fox went on to say that, if the study focused specifically on mass shootings it might not reveal an increase. Instead, he contends that the number of mass shootings have remained relatively steady since the 1970s.

Implications for Law Enforcement

While the findings about the rate of active shooter situations are important, the report’s primary purpose was to take a closer look at these incidents and their trends to see how law enforcement can better respond. The focus on active, rather than mass shooters is based on the underlying implication that the situation is in progress, meaning that law enforcement and bystanders may be able to influence the outcome.

One major finding about these situations is that they often end very quickly. In the 64 incidents where a duration could be determined, 44 ended in five minutes or less and 23 of those finished in just two minutes or less.

Equally important is the specific ways in which these incidents end:

 “At least 107 (66.9%) ended before police arrived and could engage the shooter, either because a citizen intervened, the shooter fled, or the shooter committed suicide or was killed by someone at the scene.”

-FBI’s Active Shooter Study

Additionally, over half of the situations (56%) ended on the shooter’s accord; the shooter either committed suicide, stopped shooting, or ran away. Also important is the fact that 21 incidents (13.1%) ended when unarmed citizens intervened, only two of which involved off duty law enforcement. Armed citizens were only involved in five incidents, four of which ended after armed security guards intervened, and only one ended after an armed civilian bystander engaged the shooter.

Also important is the location of these shootings. The three places with the highest rate of active shooter incidents are commercial areas (45.6%), educational environments (24.4%), and government properties (10%).

The study’s findings indicate that law enforcement may have a limited ability to respond to active shooters, as they typically end very quickly and before officers can arrive. However, they may also emphasize the importance of prevention and response training for citizens. Prevention remains the most important strategy for dealing with this problem, but the FBI’s recent emphasis on training may also help reduce the danger posed by shooters.

Featured image courtesy of [North Carolina National Guard via Flickr]

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Kevin Rizzo (@kevinrizzo10)

Featured image courtesy of [North Carolina National Guard/TSgt Richard Kerner, NCNG Public Affairs, 145th Airlift Wing via Flickr]

Kevin Rizzo

Kevin Rizzo is the Crime in America Editor at Law Street Media. An Ohio Native, the George Washington University graduate is a founding member of the company. Contact Kevin at krizzo@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Conflict between religion and science is nothing new; starting in the seventeenth century, Enlightenment philosophers began to criticize religious traditions in favor of strict reasoning and the scientific method. More recently, a study led by Princeton economist Roland Bénabou argues that highly religious states lack scientific innovation. Controlling for factors such as per capita GDP, education, and foreign direct investment reveals the persistent obstacles to innovation that religion imposes. Measuring by the number of patents filed, countries — and even American states — show “a strong negative relationship” between religion and scientific innovation.

This study is vital to understanding the nature of religion in society and public life. Unfortunately, the scope and rigor of the research give credence to the claim that religion can be an impediment to progress. Considering that religion will not, and should not, go away any time soon, how do we reconcile its tendency to block scientific innovation with its importance in civilization? Full disclosure, I can’t say that I know the answer, but here are a few things to keep in mind.

First, this study may evoke concern about religion’s place in politics  But if we ignore religion in our politics and shove it to the margins of public discourse, the religious issues that we encounter won’t suddenly disappear. Instead, they will remain pervasive without an open forum for solutions and compromises. This study should, if nothing else, inspire us to bring religion into public discourse so that our leaders can foster open scientific inquiry. The study even cites the beginning of Islam’s spread and the “initial willingness of Muslim leaders to engage with logic and rational sciences.” Although opposition to such innovation was soon after opposed, progress was made “in chemistry and in medicine, and the use of the experimental method became widespread.”

Indeed, throughout much of ancient and modern human history, religious institutions have actively supported scientific endeavors. For centuries, throughout Europe and the Middle East, almost all universities and other institutions of learning were religiously affiliated, and many scientists, including astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus and biologist Gregor Mendel (known as the father of genetics), were men of the cloth. Others, including Galileo, physicist Sir Isaac Newton and astronomer Johannes Kepler, were deeply devout and often viewed their work as a way to illuminate God’s creation.

– Pew Research Religion & Public Life Project

Further, we should remember that patents in modern technology are not the only measure of societal progress. Research in sociology suggests that religion actually played a key role in the development of communities. New York University professor Jonathan Haidt examines some of the most important sociological development theories in his book, The Righteous Mind. He discusses how, evolutionarily, humans “have a few group-related adaptations” along with those that natural selection gave us on the level of the individual. Religion helps progress “gene-culture coevolution,” forging stronger groups and communities through cultural and genetic evolution. As Haidt writes, “religious practices have been binding our ancestors into groups for tens of thousands of years.”

Undoubtedly, scientific innovations and technological advancements are key to growth; be it economic development or further cultural tolerance, science and reason can be powerful forces for development. That being said, the ancient communities that evolved into today’s great nations are indebted to religion’s role in bolstering their abilities to cooperate. So, while religiosity can be an obstacle for technological innovation, it has historically been a force for creating strong moral communities and binding groups together.

Choosing one way to measure how a state or society advances can help us track progress, but it is dangerous to ignore other metrics for understanding human development. We should keep in mind the positive effects of religion, and not declare it unfit for political discussion. Our rational discourse and scientific creativity would suffer from doing so.

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Jake Ephros (@JakeEphros) is a native of Montclair, New Jersey where he volunteered for political campaigns from a young age. He studies Political Science, Economics, and Philosophy at American University and is looks forward to a career built around political activism, through journalism, organizing, or the government.

Featured imaged courtesy of [Wally Gobetz via Flickr]

Jake Ephros

Jake Ephros is a native of Montclair, New Jersey where he volunteered for political campaigns from a young age. He studies Political Science, Economics, and Philosophy at American University and looks forward to a career built around political activism, through journalism, organizing, or the government. Contact Jake at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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Picture a drug-dealing teenager in your head. Maybe he’s white. Maybe he’s black. Maybe he’s hispanic or asian. But if the image you’ve conjured looks anything like those portrayed in the media, three things remain the same; he’s a man, his clothes are baggy, and you can probably find him in a back alley somewhere, slapping hands with junkies for cash.

But in a study featured in the Sept. issue of the Journal of Criminal Justice, social work researchers have found that the old corner store cliché of adolescent drug-sellers no longer suffices. Authors Jeffrey Shook, Michael Vaughn, and Christopher Salas-Wright argue that there are three different classes of adolescent drug dealers: dabblers, delinquents, and externalizers.

Dabblers, Delinquents, and Externalizers

According to the study, dabblers rarely use illicit substances themselves, and participate in violent or risky behavior even less. But in comparison with the general population, dabblers still show signs of elevated, marijuana, tobacco, and alcohol use. Of this class, 62% said that they have sold drugs only one or two times in the last year.

A new study shows three classes of teen dealers, all of which share elevated levels of marijuana, alcohol, and tobacco use. Courtesy of Torben Hansen via Flickr.

Delinquents, however, participate in violent behavior more often than dabblers. “Members of the delinquent class” reads the study, “were significantly more likely to reside in households earning less that $20,000 or between $20,000 and $49,000 per year.” But among this class, teenagers were not likely to use illicit drugs like crack/ cocaine, or other hallucinogens.

Finally, the group the authors deemed the “externalizers” engaged in risky and violent behavior the most. Externalizers often come from broken homes, and households where parents do not condemn the use of illegal substances. Externalizers often times belong to peer groups where drug use is the norm.

The study, called “Exploring the Variation in Drug Selling Among Adolescents in the United States,” uses data from the  National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH.) The researchers panned through a pool of 12 to 17 year-olds from across the country to find 3,080 adolescents who reported to have sold drugs in the last 12 months. They then ran analysis on participants for attributes ranging from grades in school to propensity toward risk.

One of the authors, Jeffrey Shook PhD, is an associate professor of social work at the University of Pittsburgh who holds a doctorate in sociology from the University of Michigan. He first began to look at youth drug dealing  while writing his dissertation on how court systems process juvenile delinquents. Shook says he began to see trends between selling drugs, and using them.

“The more that I got into it, the more that I looked at some of these links, particularly the link between use and dealing. A lot of the ethnographies that we get, a lot of them focus on urban drug dealing which doesn’t show as strong of a link [between use and dealing] as I think that we’re finding.”

Interventions, New Approaches

In the past, scholars have delved into the differences between drug-dealing youth and the general youth population; but never before has such a study been performed with the guise of comparing drug dealers to other drug dealers. This, the researchers say, will “help reveal key differences in the characteristics and behaviors of these young people and aid in the development of interventions that better reflect the nuances of drug dealers and drug markets.”

One possible intervention, Shook says, could be community based treatment. Rather than the current system, which he believes has a woefully misguided focus on “a more punitive response,” weeding out drug use at the grassroots level could have substantial results.

But he admits that adolescent drug dealing is an area that needs more research before any solid claims can be made on how to bring about wholesale change in the system.

“Each [study] tells you a little part of the story. You have to keep doing them and putting together the picture. I think there’s a lot more work to be done,” Shook said.

[Journal of Criminal Justice]

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Featured image courtesy of [Justin Scott Campbell via Flickr]

Jimmy Hoover

Jimmy Hoover is a graduate of the University of Maryland College Park and formerly an intern at Law Street Media. Contact Jimmy at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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