|
|
|
|
Rare toxic algae identifiedScientists have identified an unusual species of pathogenic algae that causes human skin infections. The finding should improve our understanding of how rare species of algae are sometimes able to cause serious disease in humans and animals.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 May 2010 | 3:00 pm Most distant galaxy cluster revealed by invisible lightAn international team of astronomers from Germany and Japan has discovered the most distant cluster of galaxies known so far -- 9.6 billion light years away. The X-ray and infrared observations showed that the cluster hosts predominantly old, massive galaxies, demonstrating that the galaxies formed when the universe was still very young. These and similar observations therefore provide new information not only about early galaxy evolution but also about history of the universe as a whole.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 May 2010 | 3:00 pm Violent teenage girls fail to spot anger or disgust in others’ facesGirls appear to be "protected" from showing antisocial behaviour until their teenage years, new research has found. The study sheds new light on antisocial behavior in girls compared with boys and suggests that rather than violence or antisocial behavior simply reflecting bad choices, the brains of people with antisocial behavior may work differently from those who behave normally.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 May 2010 | 3:00 pm New insights into how deadly amphibian disease spreads and killsScientists have unraveled the dynamics of a deadly disease that is wiping out amphibian populations. New findings suggest that infection intensity determines whether frog populations will survive or succumb to an amphibian disease called Chytridiomycosis. The research identifies the tipping point in infection intensity, beyond which Chytrid causes death and extinction, and finds that continual re-infection causes the disease to reach this threshold.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 May 2010 | 3:00 pm Sum of digits of prime numbers is evenly distributed: New mathematical proof of hypothesisOn average, there are as many prime numbers for which the sum of decimal digits is even as prime numbers for which it is odd. This hypothesis, first made in 1968, has recently been proven by mathematics researchers in France.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 May 2010 | 3:00 pm Generic drug may be potential treatment for deadly brain cancerMedical researchers report evidence that the orphan generic drug dichloroacetate may hold promise as potential therapy for perhaps the deadliest of all human cancers: a form of brain cancer called glioblastoma.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 May 2010 | 3:00 pm New water-splitting catalyst: Researchers expand list of potential electrode materials that could be used to store energyResearchers have found yet another formulation, based on inexpensive and widely available materials, that can efficiently catalyze the splitting of water molecules using electricity. This could ultimately form the basis for new storage systems that would allow buildings to be completely independent and self-sustaining in terms of energy: The systems would use energy from intermittent sources like sunlight or wind to create hydrogen fuel, which could then be used in fuel cells or other devices to produce electricity or transportation fuels as needed.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 May 2010 | 12:00 pm Rate of childhood peanut allergies more than tripled from 1997 to 2008Results of a nationwide telephone survey have shown that the rate of peanut allergies in children more than tripled from 1997 to 2008.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 May 2010 | 12:00 pm Angiogenesis inhibitors are safe cancer drugs despite hypertension risk, panel concludesA new class of cancer drugs can be used effectively while minimizing hypertensive side effects if patients' blood pressure is closely monitored and controlled, a clinical panel has determined.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 May 2010 | 12:00 pm Investigating how spiders spin their silk, researchers unravel a key stepScientists in Germany have unraveled a decisive step in nature's way of producing spider silk. With industrial partners, they are working toward biomimetic production of synthetic fibers with comparable strength and elasticity. The researchers report how spider silk proteins can be stored in high concentrations without clumping and then drawn at a moment's notice into fibers with five times the tensile strength of steel.Source: ScienceDaily: Latest Science News | 13 May 2010 | 12:00 pm BP says oil spill costs $450 million so far (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 May 2010 | 4:00 am Cancer scare headlines are not new | Richard EvansScientists and journalists have been publishing overblown reports for a century – no wonder people still don't trust them "It would be difficult to think of any article of diet which has not, at one time or another, been blamed as a cancer-producing substance. The list includes tea, coffee, cocoa, white bread – and also brown bread – cheese, butter, eggs, meat, fish, and poultry." This is a quote from the Times newspaper, and many people will empathise with its sense of exasperation at the steadily increasing and sometimes contradictory list of things we are told apparently either causes or prevents cancer. After all, how many of us have not at some point picked up a newspaper with a cancer-related headline and muttered something about scientists always changing their minds? But what people might find surprising is that this quote appeared in the Times way back in 1927. We tend to think of the idea that your diet affects your risk of cancer as being a relatively new thing, and it is true this area of science has only really come into its own in the last 30-odd years. But this quote suggests that while the evidence has been strong enough to form the basis of solid lifestyle advice only relatively recently, the feeling of being bombarded with health messages has a longer history. Again, most people would not be surprised to see the Daily Mail run a story headlined "The truth about cancer", citing the reason for many cases as apparently a lack of potassium in the body. But what people might not expect is that this story was published in 1916. The Guardian, meanwhile, was reporting in 1927 that "there does not appear to be any hereditary disposition to cancer", and that "cancer, as far as we know, is not caused by any special food or foods, nor by the absence of special foods". Research has since shown this is incorrect. When you realise that newspapers have been publishing these sorts of stories about cancer for at least a century, it is understandable that people are cynical about what scientists tell them. At World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), we commissioned a YouGov survey that showed 52% of people think scientists are "always changing their minds" about cancer. This is despite the fact that advice on preventing cancer and staying healthy – eating a diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables, being physically active and maintaining a healthy weight – has stayed largely the same for decades. The YouGov survey makes grim reading for the science community, and raises serious questions about its ability to communicate its findings to the public. However, the media does not fare much better, with 46% of people saying they do not trust news coverage about cancer risk. Think about that for a moment – roughly half of people do not trust the scientists who do the research nor the journalists who write about it. That's quite a vote of no confidence. You can argue about why this is – and, in fact, within the scientific community there is quite a lot of navel-gazing about why people do not trust scientists. But the bottom line is that, from the 1916 story about potassium and cancer to its modern incarnations of the "Facebook causes cancer" variety, the scientific community and the media have worked together in a way that has consistently over-egged the significance of single studies, and have favoured the quirky over the reliable. People are not stupid. They know scientific breakthroughs do not happen every other day, and that this means the results of studies are being overblown. But the problem is they do not know which ones. Because of this, large numbers have given up listening altogether. In essence, the media and the scientific community have become one big case of the boy who cried wolf. The frustrating thing is that this situation comes after years of top-quality research by some of the world's leading scientists, so that we can now know much about reducing our risks of cancer. In 2007 WCRF published the most comprehensive report on the subject. It analysed more than 7,000 separate studies and found there is now convincing evidence that, for instance, excess body fat, drinking too much alcohol and eating red and processed meats all increase cancer risk. In fact, scientists estimate that about a third of the most common cancers in the UK could be prevented through a healthy diet, regular physical activity and weight maintenance. I do not think the levels of cynicism are so bad that they cannot be turned around. But if we are not still to be reading about spurious cancer "truths" in another 100 years, we need fundamental changes to the way scientists and journalists work together. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds Source: Science news, comment and analysis | guardian.co.uk | 13 May 2010 | 3:30 am Going greener?Coalition sets out plans on runways and nuclearSource: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 May 2010 | 3:29 am BP tries new fix to cap oil spill (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 May 2010 | 3:26 am The nation's weather (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 May 2010 | 2:42 am Thresher shark mystery solvedThresher sharks use their enormous tails to swat and stun other, smaller, fish, new video footage confirms.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 May 2010 | 2:29 am Fossils resolve extinction puzzleScientists discover fossils of ancient marine creatures that were previously thought to have died out during an earlier period.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 May 2010 | 2:10 am BP to try new fix as oil spill threatens Gulf (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 13 May 2010 | 2:10 am A serious fungal disease hits Afghan opium cropA serious disease has hit poppies in Afghanistan, driving up opium prices in the region, UN officials tell the BBC.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 13 May 2010 | 1:22 am China scientists find use for cigarette buttsHONG KONG (Reuters) - Chemical extracts from cigarette butts -- so toxic they kill fish -- can be used to protect steel pipes from rusting, a study in China has found.Source: Reuters: Science News | 13 May 2010 | 1:21 am The Pain and Beauty of China's "Earthquake Marriages"China is playing matchmaker with survivors of a quake that claimed tens of thousands of lives in 2008.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 May 2010 | 12:20 am Walrus Attacks Ducks in Rare FootageA BBC natural history unit film crew captures rare footage of a walrus attacking a floating flock of sea ducks.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 13 May 2010 | 12:04 am New Artificial Gravity Tests in Space Could Help Astronauts (SPACE.com)SPACE.com - New plans for artificial gravity tests in space using centrifuges may hold the key to helping future astronauts ward off the debilitating loss of muscle and bone due to weightlessness on long missions to asteroids or the moon under NASA's revised space exploration plan.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 May 2010 | 11:30 pm Oil blowout device 'was faulty'Congressional investigators say the device meant to halt an oil leak after the Gulf of Mexico rig blast was faulty.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 May 2010 | 10:38 pm US senators unveil climate billUS senators unveil a long-awaited climate change bill, which includes divisive plans on offshore oil-drilling.Source: BBC News | Science & Environment | UK Edition | 12 May 2010 | 9:35 pm Mom's Voice Just as Comforting as a Hug (LiveScience.com)LiveScience.com - Moms can bring comfort, even at a distance, a new study finds.Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 May 2010 | 9:15 pm Congress quizzes oil executives, BP tries new fix (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Science News | 12 May 2010 | 8:53 pm US climate bill arrives in SenateNew legislation represents delicate compromise between politicians and industry.<img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/news/rss/today/~4/Kx6SBeDqGIo" height="1" width="1"/>Source: NatureNews - All articles published today - nature.com science feeds | 12 May 2010 | 8:34 pm Cigarette Butts Make Steel StrongerThe toxic chemicals found in smoked cigarette butts make steel far more resistant to corrosion.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 May 2010 | 7:53 pm Colossal Squid Far from Fearsome Predators
In the popular imagination, the colossal squid is fast and terrifying, able to dispatch whales and submarines with ease. But the image of the squid as a nasty predator of the deep is probably more mythology than biology argue Rui Rosa of the Laboratorio Marıtimo da Guia in Lisbon and Brad Seibel of the University of Rhode Island in a new paper. These huge squid, which can weigh more than 1,100 pounds, may have a supremely slow metabolism, allowing them to live on a measly tenth of a pound of fish flesh per day.
Tiny squid can be quick, but their metabolisms and movements slow as they get bigger or live deeper in the ocean. By the time you get 6,500 feet down like the colossal squid, the animals exist at a slow pace. And, unlike unlike warm-blooded leviathans like whales, they can. Regulating temperature has a very high energy cost, so whales have to eat a lot. Squid, by contrast, can simply hang out and wait for some fish to come by every once in a while. Citation: “Slow pace of life of the Antarctic colossal squid” by Rui Rosa and Brad A. Seibel in Journal of the Marine Biological Association of the United Kingdom. doi:10.1017/S0025315409991494 See Also:
WiSci 2.0: Alexis Madrigal’s Twitter, Tumblr, and forthcoming book on the history of green technology; Wired Science on Twitter and Facebook.
Source: Wired: Wired Science | 12 May 2010 | 6:07 pm Rogue Stars, Non-Constant Constants... Holes in Space? Our Universe is Rebelling!It's hard to keep up with the Universe these days. What with all these bullied stars, rampant black holes and wobbly physics, it's little wonder astronomers always look surprised.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 12 May 2010 | 5:38 pm The Book Show | Autistic Superstars | Behind The Scenes At The Museum | History Cold Case | All At Sea | Outnumbered | Watch thisThe Book Show | Autistic Superstars | Behind The Scenes At The Museum | History Cold Case | All At Sea | Outnumbered The Book Show |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Clouds are fascinating because they take on so many different, beautiful shapes and are constantly changing. Cloud-watching from Earth can be endlessly entertaining, but some of the most amazing cloud patterns can only be properly appreciated from space.
Satellites can take in thousands of miles of the Earth’s surface in one shot, revealing complicated and intriguing cloud patterns we could never see from below. We’ve gathered here some of the best cloud formations to see from above.
Click on any of the images in this gallery for a higher-resolution version.
The crazy-looking swirls in the image above may be one of the weirdest cloud formations that can be seen from space. The pattern is known as a von Kármán vortex street, named after Theodore von Kármán. First noticed in the laboratory by fluid dynamicists, it occurs when a more-viscous fluid flows through water and encounters a cylindrical object, which creates vortices in the flow.
Alejandro Selkirk Island, off the Chilean coast, is acting like the cylinder in the image above, taken by the Landsat 7 satellite in September 1999. A beautiful vortex street disrupts a layer of stratocumulus clouds low enough to be affected by the island, which rises a mile above sea level.
More strange and wonderful vortex streets formed by islands can be seen in the images below and in the last slide of this gallery. Below is Guadalupe Island, 21 miles off the coast of Mexico’s Baja California, shot in 2000 by Landsat 7; Rishiri Island in the northern Sea of Japan, photographed by space shuttle astronauts in 2001; and Wrangel Island, above the Arctic Circle northeast of Siberia, flanked by a vortex street created by the smaller Gerald Island, imaged by NASA’s Aqua satellite in August 2008.
Images: 1) Bob Cahalan/NASA, USGS. 2) NASA. 3) NASA. 4) NASA (STS100-710-182).
SPACE.com - Neil
Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon, blasted NASA's new plans for
future space exploration Wednesday, adding that President Barack Obama was
poorly advised when he canceled the space agency's previous course for U.S.
human spaceflight earlier this year.
Researchers projected men's sense of self into a virtual reality woman, changing the way they behaved and thought
Scientists have transferred men's minds into a virtual woman's body in an experiment that could enlighten the prejudiced and shed light on how humans distinguish themselves from others.
In a study at Barcelona University, men donned a virtual reality (VR) headset that allowed them to see and hear the world as a female character. When they looked down they could even see their new body and clothes.
The "body-swapping" effect was so convincing that the men's sense of self was transferred into the virtual woman, causing them to react reflexively to events in the virtual world in which they were immersed.
Men who took part in the experiment reported feeling as though they occupied the woman's body and even gasped and flinched when she was slapped by another character in the virtual world.
"This work opens up another avenue for virtual reality, which is not just to transform your sense of place, but also your sense of self," said Mel Slater, a virtual reality researcher at the Catalan Institute of Research and Advanced Studies and University College London. "There isn't any other technology that allows you to look down and see another body that isn't yours and give you the illusion that it is," he said.
"If you can temporarily give people the illusion that their bodies are different, then the evidence suggests it also affects their behaviour and the way they think. They can have new experiences: a person who is thin can know what it's like to be fat. A man can have an experience of what it's like to be a woman."
In the study, 24 men took turns wearing a VR headset that immersed them in a virtual room. Some men saw the virtual environment through the eyes of a female character who was sitting down, while others had a viewpoint that was just to the side of her.
During the experiment, a second virtual female approached and appeared to rub the person's shoulder or arm. Researchers in the lab mimicked this sensation in the real world for some of the volunteers by rubbing their shoulder or arm, helping to reinforce their feeling of occupying the character's body.
Later in the study, the second character lashed out and slapped the face of the character the men were playing. "Their reaction was immediate," said Slater. "They would take in a quick breath and maybe move their head to one side. Some moved their whole bodies. The more people reported being in the girl's body, the stronger physical reaction they had."
Sensors on the men's bodies showed their heart rates fell sharply for a few seconds and then ramped up – a classic response to a perceived attack.
As expected, the body swapping effect was felt more keenly by men who saw their virtual world through the female character's eyes than those whose viewpoint was slightly to one side of her. In all cases, the feeling was temporary and lasted only as long as the study.
The study, which appears in the online science journal PLoS One, suggests that our minds have a very fluid picture of our bodies. The research is expected to shed light on the thorny neuroscientific puzzle of how our brain tells the difference between a part of our own body, and something else in the wider world.
The work might also improve rehabilitation for patients who have experienced strokes and other medical problems by immersing them in a world that helps them to use their bodies to the full again.
One isn’t such a lonely number. All life on Earth shares a single common ancestor, a new statistical analysis confirms.
The idea that life forms share a common ancestor is “a central pillar of evolutionary theory,” says Douglas Theobald, a biochemist at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts. “But recently there has been some mumbling, especially from microbiologists, that it may not be so cut-and-dried.”
Because microorganisms of different species often swap genes, some scientists have proposed that multiple primordial life forms could have tossed their genetic material into life’s mix, creating a web, rather than a tree of life.
To determine which hypothesis is more likely correct, Theobald put various evolutionary ancestry models through rigorous statistical tests. The results, published in the May 13 Nature, come down overwhelmingly on the side of a single ancestor.
A universal common ancestor is at least 102,860 times more probable than having multiple ancestors, Theobald calculates.
No one has previously put this aspect of evolution through such a stringent test, says David Penny, a theoretical biologist and Allan Wilson Centre researcher at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand. “In one sense, we are not surprised at the answer, but we are very pleased that the unity of life passed a formal test,” he says. He and Mike Steel of the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, wrote a commentary on the study that appears in the same issue of Nature.
For his analysis, Theobald selected 23 proteins that are found across the taxonomic spectrum but have structures that differ from one species to another. He looked at those proteins in 12 species — four each from the bacterial, archaeal and eukaryotic domains of life.
Then he performed computer simulations to evaluate how likely various evolutionary scenarios were to produce the observed array of proteins.
Theobald found that scenarios featuring a universal common ancestor won hands down against even the best-performing multi-ancestor models. “The universal common ancestor (models) didn’t just explain the data better, they were also the simplest, so they won on both counts,” Theobald says.
A model that had a single common ancestor and allowed for some gene- swapping among species was even better than a simple tree of life. Such a scenario is 103,489 times more probable than the best multi-ancestor model, Theobald found.
Theobald’s study does not address how many times life may have arisen on Earth. Life could have originated many times, but the study suggests that only one of those primordial events yielded the array of organisms living today. “It doesn’t tell you where the deep ancestor was,” Penny says. “But what it does say is that there was one common ancestor among all those little beasties.”
Citations: Theobald, D. L. 2010. A formal test of the theory of universal common ancestry. Nature 465 (May 13): 219-223. doi:10.1038/nature09014
Steel, M. and Penny, D. 2010. Common ancestry put to the test. Nature, 465 (May 13): 168-169.
Image: M. Steel and D. Penny/Nature 2010
AP - NASA is getting hit up for extra launch passes, and mission stickers and pins are flying off the shelf. Another Twittering crowd is descending on the space center. Even science fiction writers want in on the action.
AFP - Dinosaur footprints up to 1.2 meters (four feet) in diameter have been found in an area of Patagonia known as Argentina's "Jurassic Park," a scientist said Wednesday.
Women who are seven to nine years older than their husbands have a 20% higher mortality rate than if they were the same age
The secret to a longer life is to marry someone the same age, at least if you are a woman, researchers say.
Marriage generally improves life expectancy, but the age gap between a couple affects the life expectancy of men and women very differently.
Marrying an older man shortens a woman's lifespan, but having a younger husband reduces it even more, the study found.
The findings, drawn from the medical records of two million Danish couples, suggest that the best a woman can do is marry a man of about the same age.
Health records have shown previously that men live longer if they have a younger wife, an effect researchers expected to see mirrored in women who married younger men.
But a study by Sven Drefahl at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Rosktock, Germany, shows that the greater the age gap between a woman and her husband, the shorter her life expectancy, regardless of whether he is older or younger.
According to Drefahl's report in the journal Demography, a man who is between seven and nine years older than his wife has an 11% lower mortality rate than a man whose wife is the same age as him. However, a woman who is between seven and nine years older than her husband has a 20% greater mortality rate than if she were with a man the same age.
Researchers used to think that healthier individuals were in a better position to choose younger spouses and so already had a longer life expectancy. A younger spouse may also have a beneficial psychological effect on the older partner and provide them with better care in old age.
However, Drefahl's study casts doubt on these ideas, since they do not hold for women marrying younger men.
"These theories now have to be reconsidered," said Drefahl. "The reasons for mortality differences due to the age gap of the spouses remain unclear."
Some explanation may lie in the quality of friendships men and women form throughout life. Women tend to have more close friendships outside marriage and so benefit less than men from having a partner. "Unlike the benefits of a younger wife, a younger husband wouldn't help extend the life of his older wife by taking care of her, going for a walk with her and enjoying late life together. She already has friends for that. The older man, however, doesn't," said Drefahl.
Women with much younger husbands may die younger on average because they experience more stress, Drefahl speculates.
While the study shows that women on average die younger if there is a large age gap in their relationship, married men and women both tend to live longer than unmarried individuals.
The life expectancy of women in general is higher than men, with women born in the UK expected to live to 82 years on average, compared with 78 years for men.
Celebrity cancer stories don't tell the whole story – the media must show people living with cancer, rather than dying from it
I have been living with incurable breast cancer that has spread to my liver and bones for nearly two years. Thanks to two types of chemotherapy and a whole host of drug regimes and surgeries, my disease is under control. I work four days a week, see friends, go to the gym and generally have an active life like any other woman in her thirties.
When I tell acquaintances or strangers about my health, they either look at me disbelieving that someone with cancer could look so well, or give me a sorrowful look and the dreaded, but oft-repeated words, "but you're too young". They always just stop short of finishing the sentence with "to die". I want them to understand that just because I don't look sick I'm not cured, but with stable disease I'm also not yet terminal.
Breast cancer is rarely out of the UK press, most recently through the widely reported story of Martina Navratilova's DCIS diagnosis. In recent years, the experience of a primary breast cancer diagnosis and the treatment that follows has successfully been destigmatised by stories such as Navratilova's. We talk about it openly as a result, and thankfully many women (and men) no longer see their own breast cancer diagnoses as an insurmountable challenge.
The downside to all of this celebrity-driven reporting is that all too often we see the "diagnosis' story" followed by the "all-clear" story, effectively sidelining further discussion of what happens when the cancer comes back in metastatic form. News reports about new breakthroughs in cancer treatment do little to change the perception that once stage 4 cancer is diagnosed, planning for death should begin.
People like me with stage 4 cancers don't want it to be an issue swept under the carpet, but we also don't want to be cast as the helpless "victim". The media have a responsibility here, as the lack of balanced reporting on the cancer experience often doesn't give us any other options. We become objectified in the tabloids and given the homogenous "terminal cancer-sufferer" label. Our appearances in the press are generally limited to tragic case studies to highlight the obstructiveness of Nice in licensing new drugs, and most recently the NHS over its refusal to allow cancer patients to be treated with CyberKnife.
The coverage of the late Jane Tomlinson's sporting achievements while living with metastatic disease were an extraordinary contrast to this press-driven portrayal of us as victims. To breast cancer patients looking for hope, she was a lone inspirational figure who didn't sit at home and let her illness rule the six years she had with secondary spread. As people like me are living longer, more active lives thanks to advances in treatment, we are now even more than ever desperately lacking a public voice to put across our viewpoint, and destigmatise the experience of living with cancer rather than dying from it.
Last year, it was reported that the number of deaths per year from breast cancer have fallen below 12,000 for the first time since records began. As the genetic makeup of individual cancers is further unpicked, and more targeted therapies such as Herceptin are developed, the disease is moving towards becoming a chronic condition. It isn't a step back to say that those of us with metastatic cancer can go on living full and active lives, sometimes for many years, within the boundaries of our drug regimes.
MacMillan Cancer Support's recent Good Day campaign is an excellent representative of this, because instead of objectifying us as tragic victims it accurately represents – in a few simple words and images – the emotional burden of living with cancer rather than dying from it. The UK media in all its forms should follow this lead and be more nuanced in its approach to reporting cancer, rather than giving undue weight to celebrity stories which don't represent the whole picture.
• This article was commissioned after the author contacted us via the You tell us page
Addiction is a defence against a life or memories too difficult to bear. It is a way of coping that can be overcome
All the research on the effectiveness of different kinds of therapy shows that what matters is not the form of the therapy but the nature of the relationship between the therapist and the client. Clients are rarely interested in the theory of therapy that the therapist espouses. What they want is a relationship with a person who is genuinely interested in them, and who is able to become a reliable point in the client's empty and chaotic internal landscape. In group therapy the group itself becomes the reliable point.
People who don't understand what therapy is about and who want to believe that they're superior to those in need of help often use pseudo-medical terms like "addictive personality". Nobody has a personality, addictive or otherwise. "Personality" is an abstract noun which refers to an individual's more or less regular ways of thinking and acting. These ways of thinking and acting change with time and circumstances.
Every action has a purpose. The actions we call addictions have two possible purposes. The first is to give us a break from the reality of our life. Some people relax in the afternoon with coffee and chocolate cake, and some people have a gin and tonic at the end of their working day. These kinds of addictions are rarely called addictions because everyone has this kind of addiction. As TS Eliot said, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality".
The second purpose of addictions is to act as a defence against memories and feelings that threaten to overwhelm the person's sense of being a person. This is illustrated in the testimonies by men who, as children, were sexually assaulted by Catholic priests. Here the men talk about their heavy drinking and about being depressed, both of which are defences against being overwhelmed by memories and feelings. In their descriptions of the assault they told how totally helpless they felt in the hands of a man who, as well as inflicting pain, warned them that God would punish them if they told what had happened to them. They were also told that what was happening to them was their own fault.
When our sense of being a person is in danger of being overwhelmed, we feel that we are about to be wiped out as a person. We shall become a no-thing. This is utterly terrifying. If we have considerable self-confidence, we can tell ourselves that we shall survive this experience, but, if we see ourselves as unacceptable, even wicked, we feel that we are always in danger of being destroyed as a person. We can try to blot out our memory of the terror by consuming alcohol, but, no matter how much we drink, it is never enough. Or we can blame ourselves for what has happened to us, and thus become depressed. We can then drink to blot out the pain of being depressed.
Alcoholism and depression are only two of a number of desperate defences that we can use to try to fend off the fear of being annihilated as a person. Whatever defence we unconsciously choose to use, the only way to eradicate the need for a desperate defence is to arrive at the position where you value and accept yourself. In a good therapeutic relationship the client has the opportunity to come to value and accept himself, and to use this to create the courage to face what he needs to face in his life. In chronic illnesses like diabetes, epilepsy and cystic fibrosis where the physical basis of the disease has been clearly demonstrated, individuals will readily learn to manage their illness if they value themselves and are determined to be as healthy as possible and lead as normal a life as possible.
The AA philosophy that teaches that alcoholics have a chronic illness which renders them incapable of looking after themselves, and so they must submit themselves to a higher power, prevents them from being able to value and accept themselves. Resolving not to drink again has saved the life of many people, but this is like the situation where a sailor manages to get from his wrecked ship to rocks above the stormy sea but lacks the courage to cross the rocks to solid land.
• Dorothy Rowe's Beyond Fear (3rd edition) is published by HarperCollins
| World : News Archives | Business | Entertainment | Sports | Technology | Science | Marketplace Audio |
| India : News | Business | Entertainment | Sports | Telugu | |
| Blogs : Humor pages | Norkay's Blog | Kids Stories | Indian Recipes | Database Tech Blog |
| Sundries : World Video Clips | Songs Clips | Indian Video Clips | |
