A recent report by the Manila Bulletin said that the Philippine Department of Education (DepEd) will be dropping science classes for public schools from the first and second grades. This was supposedly “in line with its efforts to decongest the Basic Education Curriculum and to make learning more enjoyable to young learners.” DepEd Secretary Armin Luistro says, however, that they will be integrating science topics “in other subjects to make the new curriculum more child-friendly.” This new curriculum will “mainly focus on oral fluency” for the first grade.

Time Allotment for Public Schools According to the Basic Education Curriculum

The Basic Education Curriculum was instituted under the late DepEd Secretary Raul Roco and former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in 2002, which was “the product of 16 years of study under the various DepEd secretaries.” This 2002 curriculum removed “Science and Health” from the first and second grades.

Since the belated Manila Bulletin report, there has been a lot of outrage regarding this decision, leading Senator Pia Cayetano to discuss the matter with her constituents online. She said that she would discuss the curriculum with other senators “so [they] can act on it.”

The claim that science is too difficult for children is not controversial and it is commonly believed, though seldom backed up by evidence. And, to be fair, it can be quite hard to convey the rigor and chain of evidence employed by science to children. In this way, I can somehow understand (but not agree with) the secretary with his implication that science is not “enjoyable” or “child-friendly.” Even scientists themselves often have a difficult time grasping the more counter-intuitive discoveries of science.

While it is a shame that science is regarded by some sectors of the government as “congestion,” I do not think that this delaying of science will have as terrible an impact as people have been suggesting it will have. Rather, I think that scientific instruction in the Philippines regardless of age has been misguided for far longer than just the ten years since the curriculum revision. Given this, the removal of two years of bad scientific instruction isn’t too big a loss.

The position taken by the government towards science reflects the general attitude of the public—that it is conducive to practical skills and not much else. That’s why the state can afford removing science and replace it with the more economically useful “oral fluency.” Though the loss of even just practical science would still be worthy of outrage, the more noble value of science has long been lost (if it was ever held). The principles of science—critical thinking, skepticism, and reliance on evidence—are rarely ever instilled by educational institutions in the country, even upon science undergrads. We may have some really bright minds in the Philippines capable of unique scientific insight, but we would be hard-pressed to universalize this trait for as long as we have a workaday perspective of science.

Our society treats science as a behavior apart from normal life, which leads to some very interesting, though disturbing, juxtapositions of brilliance and outright nonsense. We have very intelligent doctors who fall prey to alternative medicine. We have scholarly lawyers who believe in feng shui. We have trained psychiatrists who believe that atheism is the cause of depression. New curriculum or not, as long as science is treated by our society as a body of knowledge to memorize and a set of equations that barfs out dissertations, and not as a way of going about the world, it wouldn’t matter even if we started teaching science at kindergarten.

Neil Degrasse Tyson once said, “If you’re scientifically literate, the world looks very different to you.” Beyond its practical utility, science provides an outlook that imbues the world around us with unending wonder, which will always be unavailable to those lacking the curiosity to investigate things deeper than face value. Science empowers one against the cognitive failures our brain is predisposed to (we call these “biases”). Scientific illiteracy is a sure way to getting swindled by liars, frauds, and superstitions but, more than that, scientific illiteracy makes an entire universe inaccessible.

An old Discovery News article has recently been making its rounds on Facebook, which was claiming that “new nucleotides” were identified in human DNA. Users were quick to rant and rave about how game-changing this piece of news is. I read claims about how they’d need to retake biology courses now and how this could have implications on artificial life.

DNA is composed of four canonical bases. Canonical, because they are the classic bases in Watson and Crick’s double helix. That is, four chemical letters that compose genes—adenine (A), thymine (T), guanine (G), and cytosine (C). These are the A’s, T’s, G’s, and C’s you see in biology textbooks. What users took the news to be was that there were new letters to add to these. To be fair to those misled, the title was technically accurate (New Nucleotides Identified in Human DNA from Discovery News on July 27, 2011). There are two new nucleotides previously unknown. However, contrary to the subsequent speculations of those I read, the discovery doesn’t demolish or revolutionize anything that we’ve already known about what genes are. A’s will still always pair with T’s and G’s will always pair with C’s. There are no secret letters strewn throughout the genome (at least, for life here on Earth).

The finding, as the article later explains, is that there are two new modifications discovered of the canonical nucleotide cytosine and not that there are somehow new forms of genes that code for alien proteins. This is in addition to the two previously known modifications.

Cytosine has long been known to incorporate chemical groups that influence how genes are expressed. The study of this is called epigenetics. By altering the shape of DNA molecules, the modifications of cytosine can change how enzymes in the body access genes, preventing some genes from being read. As researcher Yi Zhang of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute opined, their work could lead to better control of how stem cells develop.

At the end of the day, your genetics classes don’t need to revamp their curricula and, no, you don’t have to forget what you learned in school. Surely, epigenetics is a fascinating field that is needed to augment our current understanding of how simple chemicals order each other around to make thinking human beings. And, while speculation is at the root of all scientific discovery, we must always be careful to temper it with skepticism and fact-checking.

I’ve been dabbling in macro photography recently and it’s like having a new set of super eyes, one that allows you to appreciate the beauty of flowers and insects by seeing their vibrant colors and intricate eye patterns, like the weevil above and the fly below.

Such beauty compels some people to conclude that there must be an Intelligent Designer, a Loving Creator who creates and sustains life. However, naturalists argue that it is the sun which is the ultimate sustainer of all life on earth. The sun makes the plants grow, and certain animals feed on them, like this bee sucking nectar from a flower.

Other animals prefer animals for food, like this spider waiting on another flower for a bee just like the one above.

This is a colorful jumping spider. Handsome creature, isn’t it?

Does it look as beautiful now when it’s holding a small dragonfly in its jaws, paralyzing it with venom and slowly sucking the life out of it?

There is much debate about whether or not insects and even higher animals are capable of suffering pain from physical injury, e.g., being eaten alive, but even assuming that they don’t does not change the fact that certain lives must be ended in order to sustain other lives. That’s just the law of the jungle, the natural order of things – nature, red in tooth and claw – and it doesn’t look very lovingly designed at all. As Richard Dawkins observed in The Greatest Show On Earth,

If we are going to postulate the creator of the cheetah, he has evidently put every ounce of his designing expertise into the task of designing a superlative killer. But the very same designer has equally evidently strained every nerve to design a gazelle that is superbly equipped to escape from those very same cheetahs. For heaven’s sake, whose side is the designer on? Does the designer’s right hand not know what his left hand is doing? Is he a sadist who enjoys the spectator sport and is forever upping the ante on both sides to increase the thrill of the chase?

Now consider an artificial world inside a butterfly sanctuary, an environment tended by a Gardener who loves butterflies. The Gardener is not very powerful, but within his limited ability he provides a safe and abundant haven for the winged residents by putting a large screen dome to keep predatory birds out, removing spiders and their webs, planting different flowers, and even placing sliced peaches on a table for the butterflies to feast on all day.

And this butterfly-loving Gardener did not plant a forbidden flower anywhere in the garden, a flower that would cause the banishment of the butterflies that would feed on its nectar.

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Now contrast this garden world to the world we live in…

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All images by Jong Atmosfera

Logical debate is a necessary part of every activist’s life. But before engaging in a debate, make sure you ask yourself the following questions:

1. Do I know the subject? – For seasoned activists, this should be a given. But for newbies, it is normal to romanticize passion and equate it with victory. If you don’t think you can pull it off, leave it to the experts. If you think you can, make sure you have information handy.

2. Are my objectives realistic? – If you are about to argue with a religious fundamentalist with the intent of convincing the person to turn against faith, you might as well argue with a 10-foot tall slab of concrete. As a personal policy, I never engage in debate to win. I engage to educate and to learn.

3. Are we both clear on the parameters? – At the onset, make sure both of you know the rules. I generally do not engage if I know that Bible verses will be used against me. It defeats the purpose of a logical debate. But for some people, that is perfectly fine. So know what parameters work best for you.

4. Can I document the whole discussion? – If you can’t document the discussion, then be prepared for a lot of moving goalposts (discussed later). Documenting the discussion ensures that both of you have a way of getting back on track. It’s also a nifty way of catching contradictions.

5. Will this do more good than harm? – Sometimes, winning an argument will actually put you in a worse position or result in more damage to your cause. Be selective. Choose your battles.

If you answered “yes” to all these questions, then I present to you ten commonly used fallacies and what to do when they are used against you in logical debate (actual quotes from actual debates are found here):

Fallacy #1: Appeal to Nature – “This is the fallacy of assuming that whatever is “natural” or consistent with “nature” (somehow defined) is good, or that whatever conflicts with nature is bad”

Example:

“Marriage is only between a man and a woman because that is the natural law of things”

What you can do: Aside from explicitly calling out that this is a fallacy called “Appeal to Nature,” you can also point out that it is in our nature to get sick and eventually die. This means that preventing death and sickness from happening is unnatural. And yet we don’t consider modern medicine and doctors as “bad.”

Fallacy #2: Appeal to Popularity – “The basic idea is that a claim is accepted as being true simply because most people are favorably inclined towards the claim.”

Example:

“I am against same-sex marriage because a majority of the population is against it.”

What you can do: As with the first fallacy and all the succeeding fallacies, it is a must that you call out what kind of fallacy the person is using. And then point out that in the past, a majority of the population also believed that the world was flat and the earth was the center of the universe. Both arguments turned out to be false. If you are in the US, you can also point out that last April, same-sex marriage supporters outnumbered the opposition for the first time. Unfortunately, we have no such survey in the Philippines yet.

Fallacy #3: Appeal to Tradition – “Appeal to Tradition is a fallacy that occurs when it is assumed that something is better or correct simply because it is older, traditional, or “always has been done.”

Example:

“Marriage is reserved for heterosexuals because that’s how marriage has been defined for 2000 years”

What you can do: State that slavery was also acceptable for more than 2000 years but that does not make it right. Also state that the 2000 year old definition of marriage has already been redefined a decade ago when same-sex marriage was made legal in the following countries: Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Iceland, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, South Africa, and Sweden.

Fallacy #4: Cherry Picking – “Cherry picking, suppressing evidence, or the fallacy of incomplete evidence is the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, while ignoring a significant portion of related cases or data that may contradict that position.”

Example: 

PERSON A: “Laws are based on natural moral standards”

PERSON B: “Then why did the Supreme Court disallow Comelec to use morality in denying Ladlad accreditation?”

PERSON A: “The Supreme Court respected Ladlad’s right to freedom of expression.”

*It is true that the Supreme Court cited the right to freedom of expression. But what PERSON A conveniently left out was that the Supreme Court’s ruling against the Comelec also included “Public Morals” as an invalid ground for blocking Ladlad, thereby disproving PERSON A’s original claim.

What you can do: Refute the claim by presenting the rest of the facts that the person left out. The complete and original text of the Supreme Court’s decision on the Ladlad vs Comelec case is available online. But put simply, the Supreme Court disallowed the Comelec to use Public Morals and Religious Belief to deny Ladlad accreditation. This is important jurisprudence because it tells the public that the use of morality and religion in deciding state affairs is unconstitutional.

Fallacy #5: False Analogy - “A false analogy is a rhetorical fallacy that uses an analogy (comparing objects or ideas with similar characteristics) to support an argument, but the conclusion made by it is not supported by the analogy due to the differences between the two objects.”

Example:

“Marriage is not for everyone. For example, minors can’t marry. Mentally handicapped people can’t marry. Humans can’t marry their pets”

What you can do: Explain why the analogies presented are not similar to the original argument. In this case, the family code of the Philippines requires legal consent from both parties, which minors, the mentally handicapped, and pets cannot provide. And then avoid analogies entirely because if they are not used smartly, they have the tendency to backfire.

Fallacy #6: Moving The Goalpost - ”The “Moving the Goalpost” logical fallacy is another one that has a fairly descriptive name. It is the case when Person A makes a claim, Person B refutes it, and Person A moves on to a new or revised claim, generally without acknowledging or responding to Person B’s refutation. Hence, the goalpost of the claim has been shifted or moved in order to keep the claim alive.”

Example:

PERSON A: “Moral relativism causes same-sex marriage!”

PERSON B: “But earlier, you said same-sex marriage causes moral relativism, not the other way around.”

PERSON A: “No, what I meant was same-sex marriage reinforces moral relativism. I admit that is was poorly constructed because I was in a hurry.”

What you can do: Keep track of how many times the person moves goalposts. If the person does this often enough, faulty logic will soon expose itself. The key here is documenting the entire conversation.

Fallacy #7: Presenting Opinion as Fact - ”In casual use, the term opinion may be the result of a person’s perspective, understanding, particular feelings, beliefs, and desires. It may refer to unsubstantiated information, in contrast to knowledge and fact-based beliefs.”

Example: 

“Laws are based on natural moral standards”

*when what the person really meant to say was “Laws should be based on natural moral standards”

What you can do: Assert that in the absence of facts, all you have is opinion. But be cautious, too, because not all facts are from credible sources. Prefer facts over stats because stats can be manipulated depending on who is doing the study.

Fallacy #8: Red Herring - ”A Red Herring is a fallacy in which an irrelevant topic is presented in order to divert attention from the original issue. The basic idea is to “win” an argument by leading attention away from the argument and to another topic”

Example:

PERSON A: “It is not true that homosexuals were not allowed to run for public office”

PERSON B: “Ladlad was barred by Comelec”

PERSON A: “The Comelec didn’t just bar Ladlad because of homosexuality because that is oversimplifying the position. Just look at gay pride marches. It is embarrassing. But I’m not saying that just because homosexuals behave that way, they can be discriminated against. I don’t understand why people assume that just because I think homosexuality is disordered that I automatically want to bully homosexuals. That’s pretty immature.”

What you can do: Acknowledge the new information presented. But make sure that your acknowledgement is not taken as agreement. State the exact same question for emphasis before the red herring was thrown at you. Again, this is why documentation is key.

Fallacy #9: Slippery Slope - ”The Slippery Slope is a fallacy in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another without any argument for the inevitability of the event in question.”

Example:

“Same-sex marriage will cause population implosion.”

What you can do: Ask “how” and ask for facts just a few repetitions short of ad nauseam. Let them ramble and eventually, they will run into self-contradictions. In which case, be ready for more moving goalposts and more red herrings.

Fallacy #10: Spotlight Fallacy - ”The Spotlight fallacy is committed when a person uncritically assumes that all members or cases of a certain class or type are like those that receive the most attention or coverage in the media.”

Example:

“Gays are not oppressed because that’s not what we see in the media”

What you can do: State factual evidence to the contrary. From an international perspective, the United Nations recently released its first report on LGBT rights. You can also download the Philippine LGBT Coalition report (which I co-authored Ü) to the UN’s Universal Periodic Review. It is a good resource for citing actual documented discrimination against LGBT people in the Philippines.

These are just some of the common fallacies I’ve encountered recently. If you know of more or have found other effective ways of handling them, help our readers and post your experience here.

Happy debating!

“Pure logical thinking cannot yield us any knowledge of the empirical world: all knowledge of reality starts from experience and ends in it.” – Albert Einstein, 1954″

Typhoon Sendong: An Avoidable Tragedy

With the death toll recently going over 1000 deaths, the number of human lives ended by Typhoon Sendong is heartbreaking. What makes it more tragic, however, is the fact that many of these deaths could have been avoided.

It is good to see that the government is doing its job of helping the survivors of the calamity in the cities of Cagayan de Oro (CDO) and Iligan. (You too can help the survivors. Start by clicking here.) However, it would have been better to see the government preventing a calamity of this magnitude from happening in the first place. As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. The prevention would have been as simple as making decisions that were scientifically informed. As this report shows, scientists have already warned both local and national government of this calamity. By not heeding the scientists’ warnings, some government officials are guilty of indirectly causing the tragedy in CDO. 

The aftermath of Typhoon Sendong and the flashflood it caused.

Scientific Literacy in the Philippines

We live in an era when human life should be most enjoyable. For what else is all our scientific knowledge if it is not used to make everyone alive live a long, safe, happy, and healthy life?

We at Filipino Freethinkers believe that the principal purpose of modern science is the improvement of the human condition. This is why we do our best to defend science, combat pseudoscience, and further the cause of science education in this country. (To see the most recent example, read the excellent article Of Heroes and Hoaxes: Painting a CNN Hero in a Dangerous Light).

But defending science and advocating its consistent application in all aspects of life is difficult here in the Philippines. For one, many of the powers that be apparently have a stake in the public’s scientific illiteracy. A good example of this is the CBCP’s opposition against the passage of the RH Bill. The proliferation of many pseudoscientific objections to the bill is another sign that the cause of scientific education here in the Philippines still has a long way to go.

To say that our public is scientifically illiterate is an understatement. As a case in point, recent reports that many young Filipinos take soda-detergent mix as contraceptives reveal the dismal state of reproductive health education in our country.

That the Philippine public is scientifically illiterate is one disheartening thing. That some of our reputable newspapers publish pseudoscience and baloney is another. However, the fact that our government does not make decisions based on scientifically sound judgment is the most tragic of all. Equally sad is how our government needs wake-up calls like the Typhoon Sendong tragedy to finally listen to scientists. But as a Filipino saying goes, “Aanhin mo ang damo kapag patay na ang kabayo? [What will you do with the fodder if the horse is already dead?]”

How Sineskwela and Grade School Science Could Have Avoided the Tragedy

One sad aspect of the public’s relationship with science is how people find science “nosebleed inducing” and intimidating. Even as I write how science could have helped avoided the Sendong tragedy, I can already feel the expectation that a lot of jargon will be involved in the explanation. Let me dispel this expectation as early as now by reiterating the message of this section’s title: to avoid a tragedy similar to the Sendong tragedy, all we need are lessons from the science-centric children’s TV show Sineskwela and our grade school science teacher. These are the lessons the government should’ve heeded three years ago.

Lesson number one: Do not live within a river’s flood plain because this area is naturally flooded on a regular basis. Many people seem to think that humans can live anywhere they want to. But a smart Grade 6 student should be able to tell you that an area known as a flood plain always surrounds rivers. The flood plain of the river is an area close to it that is regularly flooded during heavy rains. It is therefore imperative for the government to disallow people from buying land and building homes within this area. Both local and national government, however, did nothing to prevent many people from building their houses close to the rivers of Lanao del Norte and Misamis Oriental.

The flood plain of a river is the area near its banks that is naturally flooded at a regular basis.

Lesson number two: Excessive logging is bad and more trees in the mountains is good. During heavy rains, the roots of big trees trap a lot of the rainwater. This helps prevent flooding and this is why the government should protect forested mountains from greedy logging and mining companies. However, these very rich companies easily bribe our corrupt government officials. The greedy mining companies are especially active in metal-rich CDO. (Even the very name of Cagayan de Oro tells us how much gold there is under its mountains.) When mining companies dig for metals in the mountains, they must cut the trees. To maximize their profit, these companies often try to escape their responsibility of replanting trees, and the government often allows them to get away with it. But we already know that this leads to the the following equation: bald mountains + heavy rains = flash floods = countless preventable deaths.

[Edit: I have been informed that there are no large-scale mining activities in Misamis Oriental as the previous paragraph suggests. Recent developments also suggest that illegal loggers and the people living in the mountain side are more responsible for the  loss of forest cover in the mountains of Misamis Oriental.]

An opent-pit mine in the Philippines.

Lesson number three: Global warming is changing our climate. The island of Mindanao used to have the kind of climate that rarely experiences strong typhoons. This is why people living in Mindanao are not traditionally prepared for strong storms unlike people living in typhoon-prone areas. But since global warming is changing the world’s climate, places that are not regularly visited by typhoons, like Mindanao, must expect more typhoons in the years to come.

The Philippines has seen the effects of abnormal weather patterns in recent years.

Lesson number four: Global warming will make “wetter” and more vicious tropical typhoons. Because of global warming, storms will now have more rain than usual. This is why flooding is a greater problem now than it used to be. Another effect of global warming is to make typhoons more unpredictable in terms of strength, speed, and path taken. This is why Sendong attacked CDO with the element of surprise.

Lesson number five: Global warming causes sea levels to rise. Because the planet is getting warmer, the polar ice caps are melting. As these ice sheets melt, they add water to the world’s oceans. This causes the water level in the oceans to rise, increasing the risk of flooding in low-lying areas such as the coastal towns and cities of Misamis Oriental.

Typhoon Ondoy (2009) was another evidence of the change in our country's weather systems.

Scientific Literacy = Human Lives Saved

The fact that the public and the government ignored the simple science lessons given above shows a dangerous lack of understanding of how the Earth works. If Filipinos understood this, they would have more respect for its power and they would be able to prevent its power from ending so many lives.

Although we grieve for the victims of tragedy caused by Sendong, we must not fail to learn from this event. Both the public and the government can help prevent a similar tragedy by learning more about how the Earth works and how its workings are being altered due to climate change.

Let this tragedy be a painful reminder to the public and the policy makers that in this day and age, making decisions based on a high level of scientific literacy is a matter of life and death.

Do what you can to help the survivors in CDO. And do what you can so that this does not happen again.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not out to demonize a woman who has obviously done loads for maternal and reproductive health. At 54 years old, Robin Lim has helped thousands of poverty-stricken Indonesian women to experience a healthy pregnancy and to safely give birth, and for that, she most certainly deserves to be hailed as this year’s CNN Hero.

As a rabid supporter of the passage of the local Reproductive Health (RH) Bill, it gladdens me to know that a person has actually built her life around providing the poorest of mothers with prenatal and postpartum care, birth services, and breast-feeding support — and has done so for free. Her Yayasan Bumi Sehat Foundation has done more for reproductive health in a single day than the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) has done in, well, ever. I seriously wish that there were more people as passionate and take-charge about the cause as she is.

Here we go again, Inquirer

What doesn’t sit well with me, however, is how the media is playing up the fact that she is an advocate of “alternative medicine.” I’m giving the stink eye to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, in particular, because as far as I know, CNN  and other news outfits have yet to mention the words “hilot,” “alternative,” “homeopathy,” and “herbal medicine” in its features of Lim, whereas the Inquirer has been practically framing her as the poster woman for “No Therapeutic Claims,” and actually sees this love for quackery as a good thing. (Incidentally, FF has had quite a beef with the Inquirer’s integrity, as can be read here, here, here, and here.)

Take note that Lim was awarded mainly for her outstanding efforts to practice and promote safe birthing. CNN as the awarding body did not bestow her the honor because she felt that “there should be a reinvention of the health-care system by including holistic medicine such as acupuncture, homeopathy, herbal medicine and physiotherapy.” If that were actually the case, then Deepak “Quantum Mysticism” Chopra should have been crowned President of the fucking Universe ages ago

Shit sells

Sensationalism is the culprit here, I think. It is this horrid excuse for journalism that possibly encouraged the Inquirer’s writers to play up the “alternative medicine” angle. In line with local media’s never-ending, unnerving campaign for this thing called “Pinoy pride,” there’s a good chance that this facet of the half-Filipino Lim was highlighted because her traditional healing background was the most “Filipino” of her qualities. This nation is, after all, known for its folkloric herbal concoctions and its faith healers, never mind that these concoctions can’t hold a candle to actual lab-developed drugs, and that these healers are money-grubbing quacks of the highest order. (This broadsheet has, unsurprisingly, had a history of publishing scientifically unsound things like “miracles” as fact, so there’s that.)

Another possibility is that Lim herself insisted on the topic of her Inquirer piece. If that were the case, though, then the Inquirer should have suggested a different angle, or at the very least peppered the article with disclaimers regarding the efficacy of traditional healing methods, in the hopes of maintaining the barest smidge of journalistic credibility. But they didn’t.

Ooga booga and mumbo jumbo

“Alternative medicine” is a load of bull. As the old joke goes, “alternative medicine” that is proven to work is just called “medicine.” It is this staggering lack of proof — and its advocates’ insistence that proof is neither necessary nor applicable — that sets the former apart from the latter. It goes out of its way to be baseless and unscientific, depending on flimsy, abstract concepts such as “auras” and “chakras” that have as much chance of being real as unicorns, mermaids, and the Jonas Brothers’ pledge of virginity. And while some unconventional healing methods are said to be okay complements for actual, scientifically proven methods and medicines, this so-called “complementary medicine” cannot and should not stand alone.

Even if Lim advocated the methods that worked in certain, complementary ways (and I use the term “work” very, very lightly), it was still publicized by the Inquirer in such a way that she seemed to be for “alternative medicine” in general, which includes a long, snaking list of  very bad decisions. (She espouses the whackadoodle fad that is homeopathy, which is bad enough, so imagine how much worse the stuff she doesn’t espouse are.)

Moreover, it’s also quite unfortunate and ironic that the article, which features a woman known for her hard work in furthering reproductive health, placed so much emphasis on highly suspect “remedies” that have nothing to do with RH, and in no way mentions how certain lab-developed medicines can do and have done so much for maternal health. In fact, it’s disheartening how the RH Bill, which promotes safe, effective, and clinically approved medicines in the form of family planning supplies, can be so easily dismissed by many, while something as impotent — and fatal — as faith healing gets good press at the drop of a hat.

A bad influence

In the end, by playing up this sorely misguided aspect of Lim’s, the Inquirer can be said to be taking part in putting people in danger. Ranked as the top newspaper in the Philippines, it’s safe to say that this broadsheet helps to influence many Filipinos’ opinions. It is only right, then, that they make sure that the stuff they offer as journalism is, in fact, journalism and not just a bunch of interesting-sounding yet highly deceptive words. But this is sadly not the case.

This piece on Lim could very well encourage many people to prioritize alternative methods over tried-and-tested ones and, thus, keep these people from getting the proper medical attention every one of them deserves. “If an actual CNN Hero is for it, then it can’t be wrong” is the kind of opinion that might proliferate. As much as we hope people to be more discerning of what they read, it’s always better to be safe than sorry and, in the Inquirer’s case, absolutely necessary to be factual than not.

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Images from thejakartapost.com; policeheadlines.com; and skepacabra.wordpress.com

The RH Bill and Exponential Growth

In my article What the Debate on the RH Bill Should Not be About, I argued that overpopulation is a non-issue in debates over the passage of the RH Bill. There I reasoned that the battle over the RH Bill is a women’s rights battle and that overpopulation has little if anything to do with it. While I am still convinced that the RH Bill is a women’s rights issue, the following observations forced me to reconsider the relationship between the bill and the Philippine population problem:

• The world population has exceeded 7 billion. What’s worse is that it shows no signs of stabilizing on its own anytime in the foreseeable future (contrary to the claims of the laissez-faire advocates).
• The successful population management measures in many countries around the world, particularly in neighboring Thailand and Vietnam, have yielded very positive effects. In fact, the said countries have already overtaken the Philippines in terms of social and economic progress.
• Our legislators, particularly Senator Sotto, continue to use overpopulation denial myths as arguments against the passage of the RH Bill.
• Conservative estimates have pegged the Philippine population at 101 million as of July 2011.^[1]
• The Philippine population grew by 1.904% in the year 2011.^[1]

The above observations should be enough to convince any rational person that the RH Bill is not only important but is urgently needed. Sadly, many of our politicians aren’t really of the rational sort.

Seven billion. That's a pretty big number, dontcha think?

Sotto Voce?

On a Senate interpellation on the RH Bill held last December 5, Senator Tito Sotto parroted the same old ridiculous arguments that supposedly prove that the world is not overpopulated. Worse still, Sotto went as far as to claim that the world would never experience overpopulation. In his own (?) words, “These people think that they are smarter than God. Sa tingin ba nila gagawa ba ang Diyos ng mundo na mapupuno? [Do they think God will create a world that will be overpopulated?]”

"Dapat bang maging senador 'to?" "HINDE!!!!11!!!1!!"

Sotto’s argument is blatantly invalid in two ways. First, it is legally invalid; such a theological argument has no place in a secular interpellation (and that goes for you too, Senator Miriam Santiago). The fact that such a theological argument can be used in a Senate interpellation without drawing any objections from the other senators is enough to give any secularist a conniption. Second and perhaps worse, Sotto’s argument is logically invalid; it does not follow that if there is a god, then that god will create a world that will never be overpopulated.

Setting aside the invalidity of his arguments, Sotto’s claim that the Philippines will never be overpopulated is also demonstrably, disturbingly and dangerously false. The key to debunking Sotto’s absurd claim is contained in just two words: exponential growth.

Three Chinas in a Philippines

This year, the Philippine population experienced a growth of 1.904%. If this population growth rate is maintained, the Philippine population will double in a mere 36 years and 9 months – around 37 years.^[2] If there are 101 million Filipinos alive today, that means there will be 202 million Filipinos alive 37 years from now. Give another 37 years (that’s 74 years from now) and there will be 404 million Filipinos alive. Fast-forward to another 37 years (111 years from now) and our population is already at 808 million; by then our population is rapidly speeding toward the 1 billion mark. Does this pattern sound familiar? Why of course, it is nothing but the geometric progression that we’ve met in Part 1 of this article. By now you should know that if our population keeps on growing in such a pattern, then we’re in for a lot of trouble.

Shown below is a table of the projected population of the Philippines in the next two centuries under the assumption that our population growth rate remains steady at 1.904%.

Under this steady growth rate scenario, the Philippine population would exceed 1 billion somewhere around the year 2130. Our great grandchildren, perhaps even some of our grandchildren, would still be alive at that time and would be among the 1 billion Filipinos trying to fit inside a country 32 times smaller than China. By the end of the 22^nd century, the number of people trying to fit inside the Philippines is more than thrice the number of people living in China today. By the year 2500 the Philippine population is already, quite simply, astronomical. Now matter how look at it, the Philippines can be overpopulated and it will be overpopulated if we will do nothing about our population growth rate. Take that, Tito Sotto.

The Philippine Population Growth Rate: Good News and Bad News

Three objections can be leveled against the previous hypothetical scenario. The first one goes like this: Malayo pa naman ang taong 2196 ah, bakit natin po-problemahin yun? [The year 2196 is still many, many years away, why should we bother about what’s going to happen then?] The degree of myopia implied by this objection is, sad to say, exhibited by many of our politicians and citizens. This can be remedied only by good moral education. But this remedy takes a long time, perhaps several generations. We need to act on the problem now. The only way to expedite the solution is to replace our myopic politicians with wise, far-seeing leaders. For this purpose we have the democratic process of voting our future leaders.

The second objection is worse than the first: Malapit namang magugunaw ang mudo. Bakit pa tayo magpapakahirap sa pag-ayos nito? [The world is going to end soon anyway. Why waste your effort making it a better place?] Unfortunately, many people, some of them even intelligent, sincerely hold this view that the world is ending soon. It is our job as freethinkers and as people who love the earth to think of creative ways to convince these people to care for the future of our planet. We might need to convert them to freethought or to more liberal versions of their religion. We might also try to convince them that if they believe that the god they love created this world, then they should do everything to take care of it. Whatever our strategy is, we must do everything we can to decrease the number of people who believe the world will end soon because if we don’t, then it surely will.

The third objection is a rational one: The steady growth rate scenario is an oversimplification because the Philippine population growth rate isn’t really constant but is in fact decreasing. This objection is in fact valid. (It does not, however, negate the fact that the scenario in the previous section disproves Tito Sotto’s claim that the world will never be overpopulated.) Official records show that the Philippine population growth rate has been on a general trend of decline over the past decades. The Philippine population growth rate over the past few years is shown in the table below. ^[3]

There is good news and bad news in the trend of the population growth rate.

Let’s begin with the good news. The decline in our population’s growth rate is either an effect or an indicator of the following:

• Our government’s previous family planning programs have been, to a certain extent, effective.
• Filipino women have been slowly gaining empowerment over the past decades.
• The Filipino youth have been slowly gaining accurate RH information in recent years.
• Philippine cultural values have shifted from the valuing the quantity of life to valuing the quality of life.
• The Church’s anti-contraceptives stance is quickly losing support among Filipinos.

Now off to the bad news. I will first state them in somewhat technical language. Later I will unload them in layman’s language. Here they go:

• While fertility rates have been steadily declining in middle- to high-income families, the fertility rates in low-income families have not dropped; in fact, studies show that they have increased in the period between 1997 and 2000(see Reference [7]).
• The disparity between our country’s fertility rate (somewhere between 2.79 and 3.19^[4]) and population growth rate (1.904%) is an indication that there remains a high infant mortality rate in the Philippines.
• The decline in our population growth rate is better modeled by a decreasing exponential and not a decreasing linear plot.^[5]

Now let us explain the bad news in layman’s language one by one.

First bad news: Families with means voluntarily undergo family planning while poor families continue to have more babies than they can feed. (But who doesn’t know this already? Apparently the anti-RH camp.) So even though the population growth rate of the Philippines is declining on average, the decline is not uniform across all income levels.  This causes the top of the social pyramid to become thinner and the base to become wider. If this keeps on going, this means that in the near future our society will be composed of fewer and fewer people with means and more and more people who cannot feed their families. (Wait, am I describing the future here or the present?) An economist of any feather will tell you that this is really bad news.

A Philippine porridge line. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

Second bad news: If there are many children born for every woman in the Philippines, then why is our population not growing as rapidly as it should? Surely this is not because of an increased natural death rate; our natural death rate is in fact declining. The only explanation available is that many infants are dying. High infant mortality rate is an indication of high birth rates among low-income families. That brings us back to bad news number one.

Third bad news: Yes, our population growth rate is decreasing, but its rate of decrease is slowing down over time. This means that as years go by, it won’t decrease fast enough to curb our growing population. For example, by year 2100, our population growth has decreased but is still at 1.52%. That’s 89 years from now when our population growth rate is at 1.904%! End story: our population will keep on growing exponentially if we do nothing about it. The decline in population growth rate is not enough to curb the exponential population growth that has been going on for decades now.

The graph below shows the projected Philippine population in the coming decades as assessed by the U.S. Census Bureau. According to the graph, the Philippine population will be at 150 million in the year 2050. Note that this projection is around 75% of the value projected in Table 1 for the year 2048.

Projected growth in Philippine population. From the U.S. Census Bureau.

Lessons From the Losing CEO

If we learned anything from Part 1 of this article, then it is that one should never underestimate the power of exponential growth. We are therefore faced with the following fact: Our population is already at 101 million and it continues to grow exponentially. Even if our population growth rate is declining, it is not declining fast enough to curb the dangerous rise in our numbers. Worse still, studies show that while families with means tend to have fewer children, poor families tend to have many.

But we’ve seen that there’s good news. As long as you give families and especially women the freedom to choose, they will choose to keep their family size manageable. This is shown by the significant decrease in the fertility rates among middle to upper class women over the past decades. Poor families and poor women in particular, however, still do not have the means and the freedom to choose the family planning method that suits them best. This explains why the fertility rate among low-income families remain dangerously high. All the facts indicate, however, that if we give them the power to choose, low-income families will voluntarily plan families of manageable sizes (1-4 children). Note that they will do this for their own good without knowing that they are, in effect, helping to solve a national problem.

Herein lies the magic of the RH Bill: It solves two different problems in one stroke. On the one hand, it will give poor families the power of options in planning their family. On the other hand, its end effect will be the curbing of our population growth. The RH Bill will do these and more. At the most basic level, the RH Bill will give women their basic rights to family planning services and it will give the youth their basic rights to scientific and age-appropriate education.

The RH Bill: An Urgent National Concern

Never forget that one does not kid with exponential growth. If we are to secure our future as a country, then we must manage our population now. In fact, we should have started decades ago.

Congress and Senate must pass the RH Bill by January of next year, or else it will be too late. Remember, we are racing against time in our battle against the most powerful force in the universe.

Reproductive Health = our Republic's Health.

* * *

Notes:

^[1] Taken from the webpage of index mundi, Reference [4]. See also References [5] and [6] for official data.

^[2] The equation for any kind of exponential growth is similar to that of compound interest: FV = PV(1 + i)ⁿ. Here, FV is the future value (of an investment or of a population), PV is the present value, i is the rate of increase and n is the number of times the value is increased. In our case, PV is 101 million, the present population of the Philippines. If it doubles, this means that FV is 202 million. Meanwhile, i is 1.904% = 0.01904, the population growth rate. We want to solve for n, the number of years it takes for PV = 101 million to become FV = 202 million. This is accomplished by dividing both sides of the compound interest equation by PV, then taking the logarithm of both sides and then finally using the properties of logarithms. The solution is going to be n = 36.75.

^[3] See References [5] and [6] for the official estimates. Reference [4] provides more recent, unofficial estimates. Reference [8] provides projections based on UN studies.

^[4] The high estimate is from Reference [4], the low estimate is from Reference [8].

^[5] The best fit exponential curve in the population growth rate has an equation of f(x) = (2×10^-7)e^-0.01x with coefficient of determination R² = 0.935. I tried the best-fit linear curve, and its coefficient of determination is only at R² = 0.932; even then, the slope of the linear trend line is negligibly small so that difference between the predictions of the linear plot and those of the exponential plot will not be very great.

* * *

References:

[1] Miller, G. Environmental Science, 10th ed, 2005.

[2] Campbell, N.A., Reese, J.B. and Mitchell, L.G., Biology, 5th ed, 1999.

[4] Index Mundi. <http://www.indexmundi.com/philippines/population_growth_rate.html>, accessed 15 December 2011.

[5] National Statistics Coordination Board. <http://www.nscb.gov.ph/secstat/d_popn.asp>, accessed 15 December 2011.

[6] National Census Data via the National Statistics Office. <http://www.census.gov.ph/data/sectordata/popproj_tab1r.html>

[7] Asian Development Bank, Poverty in the Philippines: Income, Assets and Access. 2005.

[8] Costello, M.P. and Casterline, J.B., Fertility Rate Decline in the Philippines: Current Status, Future Prospects. 2005

A Tale of the Two CEOs

One day, two bold CEOs decided to play a game of chess where the winner gets to ask anything he wants from the loser. After the game, the winning CEO asked the losing CEO to choose between two payments. The first payment involves the losing CEO giving half of his company’s assets to the winning CEO. The second payment involves placing 1¢ in the first square of the chessboard, 2¢ in the second square, 4¢ in the third, 8¢ in the fourth and so on until all the 64 squares of the chessboard are filled. Thinking that it will allow him to get off easy, the losing CEO agreed to the pay the winning CEO the second reward. But the losing CEO made a very serious mistake. In the process of trying to pay the winning CEO the reward, the losing CEO ended up going bankrupt and buried in debt. In fact, the losing CEO may never be able to give the reward money even if he spends his whole life working for it.^[1]

Double, Double, Double….Jeopardy!

Human intuition evolved to understand linear progressions and patterns only. For many everyday purposes, this intuition is a quick and effective tool in assessing odds and projecting future values. The losing CEO’s big mistake is that he used the said intuition on an example where it is not applicable, an example that involved not a linear progression but a geometrical one.^[2]

When you add up the terms of an increasing geometric progression, what you get is exponential growth.^[3] As with geometric progressions, the human brain is notoriously ill equipped in understanding the power of exponential growth. This is shown by the fact that, without the aid of mathematics, almost all of us find it difficult to understand why the losing CEO made such a grave error. In order to comprehend the gravity of the losing CEO’s mistake in choosing the second payment option, let us get rid of our intuition for the moment and let us turn to mathematics.

Imagine starting with x of something. If you double that number, it becomes twice the original, 2x. If you double the previous result, you get four times the original, 4x. If you keep on doubling the most recent result, you’d successively get 8x, 16x, 32x, 64x and so on. Notice that doubling once gives you 2x or 2¹x while doubling twice gives you 4x or 2²x. Meanwhile, doubling thrice gives you 8x or 2³x and doubling four times gives you 16x or 2⁴x. Following this pattern, we can see that doubling x an n number of times gives you 2ⁿx.

Paal Paysam's chessboard.

Recall that the losing CEO started with a mere 1¢ (that is, x = 1¢). By the 8^th  square (the last square in the first row) he is required to double the original 1¢ seven times. This means that he must place 2⁷ times 1¢ on the 8^th square. Using a simple calculator, one can easily confirm that 2⁷ = 128. This means that the 8^th square must contain 128¢ or $1.28. So far, the losing CEO still feels he’s having it easy. However, when he reaches halfway through the chessboard (the 32^nd square), he would have doubled the original value 31 times. This means that the 32^nd square must contain 2³¹ times 1¢. Using a calculator, one can compute that this amounts to 2 147 483 648¢ or around 21.5 million dollars! But the tragedy of the losing CEO is only beginning; even though at this point he is halfway through the chessboard, the losing CEO is still very far from paying half his due. By the time he reaches the last chess square, he is going to need a whopping 92 million billion dollars! But wait, there’s more. The said 92 million billion dollars is for the last square only. Adding up the amount of money he must place on all 64 squares of the chessboard, the total amount of money the losing CEO owes the winner is approximately 184 million billion dollars!^[4]

The Curious Case of Exponential Growth

Here’s another example of how wildly counter-intuitive exponential growth is. Imagine starting with a piece of paper (of thickness 1.0 mm). Fold that paper into two halves so that its new thickness is twice the original. Now fold it again so that its thickness is four times the original. If you repeat this process just 42 times,^[5] you end up with a piece of paper that will extend from the surface of the earth of the surface of the moon!

Going expo.

A very peculiar aspect of exponential growth that the human brain finds so hard to understand is the fact that if something grows exponentially then the present value is greater than all the previous values combined. For example, notice that the amount of money the losing CEO must place on the 5^th square, for example, is greater than the total amount of money he must place on the 1^st, 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th squares. This is true even for the 64^th square – the amount of money it must contain is greater than the sum of the contents of the remaining 63 squares.

Exponential Crises

Albert Einstein once said, “The most powerful force in the universe is compound interest.” Since the mechanism behind compound interest is exponential growth, the previous example shows that Einstein’s humorous hyperbole is only partly so.

Big companies, especially banks, tap into the power of exponential growth to get rich. But big companies pay decent sums to their actuaries and analysts to deal with the number shuffling involved in compound interests (in the interest of compounding their profit and compounding your debt). In the absence of such expertise, unaided human intuition will more often than not fail in assessing problems involving exponential growth.

An individual’s failure to appreciate the power of exponential growth usually leads to debt crises.  The losing CEO is just one (rather fantastic) example of the victims of the human brain’s inability to grasp exponential growth. To give a more common example, the many people who are buried in credit card debts are similarly victims of the failure of human intuition to grasp the full force of compound interest and the mechanism behind it, exponential growth.

In many ways, the losing CEO represents human civilization. Many of the problems we face today as a society stems from our failure to assess the power of exponentially growing quantities around us. Like the losing CEO, we use our linear human intuition to analyze situations involving geometric progressions and we end up engulfed by the problems this wrong judgment caused.

Three of the greatest problems caused by our failure to grasp exponential growth are:

• the human population explosion
• the rapid (or should I say rabid) increase in human demand for resources leading to the even more rapid depletion of natural capital
• the rapid increase in industrial activity leading to uncontrolled increase in the generation of pollution and waste

I will write about the other two global problems in future articles. In Part 2 of this article, however, I will concentrate on the first and perhaps most important the three – human population explosion. I say it is the most important because it is the key to solving the other two problems; the problems of resource depletion and environmental degradation cannot be fully addressed without addressing population explosion. Finally, it is the human population explosion that I will write about in Part 2 because it is an urgent national issue that is intimately related to the debates regarding the passage of the RH Bill.

Click here to read Part 2.

 * * *

Notes:

^[1] Adapted from a version of the legend of Paal Paysam told on Reference [1].

^[2] An arithmetic progression is a sequence of numbers in which the next number in the sequence is just the previous number plus a constant. Examples are the sequence {1, 2, 3, 4, 5, …} and the sequence {4, 7, 10, 13, 16, …}. In the first progression, the constant being added is 1 while in the second it is 3. A geometric progression, on the other hand, is a sequence of numbers in which the next number in the sequence is just the previous number times a constant. Examples would be {5, 15, 45, 135, 405, …} and {2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, …}. In the first sequence, the constant being multiplied is 5 while in the second it is 2. Notice that the second progression is simply the progression our losing CEO is having a problem with. Geometric progressions, however, can also be decreasing, just like the sequence {4, 2, 1, ½, ¼, …}.

^[3] The sum of the terms of an increasing geometric progression increases exponentially as you increase the number of terms being summed up. For those who know their math jargon, this can be expressed by saying that the partial sum of a monotonically increasing geometric series diverges. The result for a decreasing geometric progression is similarly tricky to the human intuition and is at the root of Zeno’s Paradox. The apparent Paradox is resolved if one understands that a sum of infinitely many numbers can be finite if the numbers being summed up form a decreasing geometric progression. That is why 4 + 2 + 1 + ½ + ¼ + … = 8, even though you are adding infinitely many numbers.

^[4] For those who recall their college calculus, the formula for the nth partial sum of a geometrical series with 1 as its first term and 2 as the common ratio is given by the formula s_n = (rⁿ – 1)/(r – 1). Here, r = 2 and n = 64. The total amount of money the losing CEO must place in all the 64 squares of the chessboard is just equal to the partial sum s_n.

^[5] Douglas Adams is God.

 ^{* * *}

References:

[1] Miller, G. Environmental Science, 10th ed, 2005.

[2] Arfken, G. B. and Weber, H. J., Mathematical Methods for Physicists, 5th ed, 2001.

It is apparently controversial to say that science will be able to tell us what is important in life. Science, as paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould said, tells us how the heavens go, while religion tells us how to go to heaven. And for the most consequential things, it seems that science must yield to faith when considering what it means to have a good life.

But there is something gravely wrong with this kind of thinking. What it says is that reason cannot be used to distinguish right from wrong, happiness from suffering. But, even if reason, evidence, and methodical thought fail to illuminate our understanding of what constitutes a life worth living, what are our alternatives?

The mere suggestion that science can determine how we ought to behave understandably irks religious conservatives. For the faithful, this is an act of war against religion, which has always claimed for itself the realm of ethics and human values. That this assumption of moral authority still holds sway, when religions have failed in accurately representing practically anything in the world, is baffling. If religious traditions have been completely wrong about what goes on in the universe, why would they suddenly be unquestionably correct about what goes on in the mind?

A morality that is not based on authoritarian precepts is merely the acceptance that the world is not black and white and actions can have unforeseen consequences. And a science of morality would have to agree with what religious demagogues have been saying all along: there are moral truths to be found and there are objectively wrong ways to act. It seems especially strange then that, while they decry moral relativism, conservatives try to explain away the disgusting depravities in the Bible by calling for them to be placed in “context.” This precisely argues for a relativist morality—justifying mass murders (by Yahweh himself), rapes, and social outlooks by the culture at the time.

Saying that there are objectively good acts means only that there is a difference between an action that can bring about happiness and another that results in suffering. We can be right or wrong on whether homophobia is conducive to well-being. We can be right or wrong on whether misogyny is a good principle on which we should run our society. Our beliefs regarding these matters are, essentially, claims about conscious experience—how the brain responds to stimuli and how well-being is realized in the brain. And in this realm of facts, as in all others, there is no reason to put religious claims on a pedestal.

As we study more about the brain, our opinions on ethics will become increasingly constrained by psychological research and neuroscience. Findings such as those on the effect of corporal punishment on children and on the structural differences between the brains of normal and psychopathic human beings will change how we relate to each other and how we organize our societies. Our traditional views on parental roles and on how responsible people are for their actions may be altered as we continue to investigate how the evolved mind interacts with its surroundings. We might find that our justice system is not conducive to a peaceful society. We might find that our economic system inevitably leads to abuse and suffering. We might find possibilities for moral awareness that were never available to our pre-scientific ancestors or contemporary religious leaders.

There is public trust in science for many things that we’d never look to religion for answers, such as in believing in corrective glasses over faith healing. But, why is it that when the stakes are highest, when we are considering lives and the happiness of conscious human beings, science, reason, and logic take a back seat? The question on what makes a life worth living is, to say the least, hard to solve, but there are answers: based on facts and not on the musings of men who thought that all animals used to be herbivores.

—

Not only is science considered impotent when contemplating the deeper questions in life, it is generally believed that rationality ruins romance.

Consider the classic challenge against atheists. When questioning the existence of God, atheists are invariably asked to compare God with love. That is, love is said to be intangible and it admits of no rational inquiry, but we know it’s there. We can just feel it. While the analogy is false (love is realized in the brain as the sum total of specific neural activity and, thus, exists in the natural world), it reveals a common perception that scientific scrutiny is incompatible with an awareness for wonder in this world.

But that is clearly not true. The chemical process that results in feelings of love is itself a thing to behold and appreciate. That there is something material underlying our affection for others or art takes nothing away from our experience. And here we can expand our moral circle beyond even just humans.

Since our capacity for love and moral action evolved (not to say that morality should reflect the cruelty of Darwinian natural selection), it necessarily implies that other animals have similar, if not identical, capacities for compassion and cooperation. And here is where Christianity, in particular, is extremely impoverished. That humans (and specific kinds of men) are set apart by God is nothing short of speciesism and bigotry. Though there are cognitive differences between humans and other animals, that is what differentiates our moral responsibility to each other and not the entitlement assumed to be bestowed by a creator.

A non-supernatural outlook emphasizes the importance of our relationships in the here and now. We should thank doctors for healing us; we should thank farmers for providing for us food; we should thank our friends and families for comfort and companionship. These are the people who should matter to us, and attributing our happiness to something that isn’t there steals away from what other people rightly deserve.

Many believe that one day the world will end and that this would be the greatest thing that could ever possibly happen. Every action we do here in life is meaningless outside the goal of eternal paradise. This nihilism is why we must rid ourselves of religion wholesale. How could we ever endeavor to build a lasting society when our neighbors secretly yearn for doom and destruction, leaving all us suckers who never bought into religion to burn in perpetual torment. These are beliefs that are not conducive to mental health, let alone peace and human flourishing.

Science allows us to comprehend the world around us in a way our ancestors never could. Still, many choose to bind themselves to the follies of the past, relying not on evidence but on the servile desire to let other men think for themselves. It is a shame, when available to us now are methods and insights that will allow us to not only have greater knowledge, but a deeper and more meaningful understanding of what it means to be alive and how we must act.

The acceptance that all that there is is this natural world requires from us the understanding that there is no delaying justice to an afterlife. There is no point in deferring mercy and charity to a final judgement. If we yearn for anything that would resemble heaven, our only choice is to create it here.

Now that the rudimentary over-praising of Steve Jobs has subsided, a compelling deluge of criticism regarding Jobs’ decisions has flooded the Internet.  According to pieces such as this one, Jobs was a tyrannical boss, an unethical entrepreneur, a selfish billionaire, and an asshole of a dad. Not only that, he used to be a staunch believer in alternative medicine, and initially refused to undergo life-saving treatments for his cancer, only regretting his decision when it was far too late.

One author, however, has taken it upon herself to defend what she calls all this “finger-wagging” regarding Jobs’ death. She says that:

“…the notion that if we are not doing absolutely everything our doctors and our friends and our shamans tell us, we will commit the great error of not wringing the maximum amount of time out of life, well, that’s really a hell of a lot of pressure.”

“The pressure to make the right choices, the wrenching doubts and fears of disappointing everybody: Aren’t these too much to weigh upon any of us? How much ‘if only’ are we expected to bear? Mortality is grueling enough. But guilt-tripping is an entirely curable condition.”

She wants people to give the guy a break. Personally, though, I feel that it is important to take advantage of all this so-called “finger-wagging,” most especially since Jobs is a celebrity. Alternative medicine doesn’t work, but a lot of people still believe in it. Jobs’ example will continue to be one of the best and most visible cases you can pit against mumbo-jumbo meds. His death, in a sense, can help save lives. At this point, I would rather forego walking on eggshells if it means educating people about the dangers of pseudo-science.

Would you?

–

Image from technology.ezinemark.com

The 1998 report issued by the Department of Agriculture listed 140,471 dogs, 42,271 cats, 51,641 primates, 431,457 guinea pigs, 331,945 hamsters, 459,254 rabbits, and 178, 249 “wild animals”: a total of 1,635,288 used in experimentation.

– Peter Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: HarperCollins 2009).

Vivi-what?

The term vivisection was unfamiliar to me until I started to look into animal rights issues. These days, when I choose to avoid the term vivisection and use ‘animal experiments’ instead, I sense that people aren’t particularly aware of the difference between the two terms. There is simply a lack of information surrounding the issue. Many seem to think that animal tests are used sparingly, only in life-saving circumstances such as research for HIV/AIDS, and that in these situations, animals are treated with utmost care for their “contribution to science.”

The fact that we are using animals — sentient beings — in the first place poses an ethical question. They are basically treated as mere objects and tools — “models,” as industry journal Lab Animal refers to them. What makes it worse is that these experiments, even under the highly-esteemed medical research category, are practically useless. According to Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt, “nine out of ten experimental drugs fail in clinical studies because we cannot accurately predict how they will behave in people based on laboratory and animal studies.” [1]

Examples of Vivisection

Vivisection consists of military tests, psychological research, product testing, and medical research.  The following examples of animal testing are selectively derived from book Animal Liberation by Peter Singer.

One experiment used a flight simulator called Primate Equilibrium Platform to test how exposures to radiation and chemical warfare agents affect the ability of monkeys to fly an aircraft.  To train monkeys, electrical shocks had to be administered up to one hundred times a day or a total of thousands of electric shocks throughout the experiment. Once monkeys had learned to operate the aircraft, they were then exposed to lethal or sublethal doses of radiation or chemical warfare agents. This was where the real experiment began. The end result was that the monkeys showed symptoms of loss of coordination, weakness, and intention tremor.

Another experiment consisted of beagle dogs being fed varied doses of explosive TNT throughout a period of 6 months. This was conducted under the direction of the U.S. Army Medical Bioengineering Research and Development Laboratory at Fort Detrick, in Frederick, Maryland. The result was that the dogs experienced dehydration, emaciation, anemia, jaundice, low body temperature, discolored urine and feces, diarrhea, loss of appetite, weight loss, enlarged livers, spleens, and kidneys. As if this wasn’t or cruel enough, the test conclusion was that “additional studies of TNT in beagle dogs may be warranted.”

In the field of psychological research, many experiments used animals as subjects in controlled experiments, rather than studying available data in depth through actual human behavior. One such experiment was conducted by Professor Harry F. Harlow. In his experiment to determine the lifelong effects of maternal deprivation, depression was induced by allowing baby monkeys to attach to abusive surrogate mothers. They reared female monkeys in complete isolation, after which they were impregnated with a technique accurately called “rape rack.” The test result was depressed baby monkeys reaching out for help from surrogate mothers who treated them even worse.

In product testing, a common test for cosmetics, bathroom, and household products is called LD50 or “lethal dose 50 percent”. The point of the test is to find out what amount of the substance will kill 50 percent of the test subjects when force-fed. The very intention of this test is to kill half of the animals and to conduct the testing again and again until the 50% kill-ratio is achieved.

The Draize eye irritancy test is another common product testing methodology. As the name suggests, products are tested in animals’ eyes. The animals are restrained so they are unable to move, scratch, or rub their eyes — so the “integrity” of the test can be retained. It is not uncommon for eye swelling, ulceration, infection, bleeding, and even total loss of vision to occur. It is important to emphasize that the testing bears no relevance to the actual situations wherein the products are to be used. A Draize eye test can be used to test deodorant, for example.

Many experiments under medical research are conducted not for any breakthrough findings, but merely to satisfy an intellectual curiosity, with these experiments’ outcomes already known. As an example, Yale University School of Medicine students conducted an experiment on kittens by placing them in a “radiant-heating” chamber, which resulted in convulsions. Their report said: “The findings in artificially induced fever in kittens conform to the clinical and EEG findings in human beings and previous clinical findings in kittens” (italics mine).

Cruel, Faulty Science

Saying no to vivisection is not being anti-science. On the contrary, we cannot rely on the accuracy of animal tests in many occasions. As a data point, in a toxicity test involving 56 substances, 45% of findings from animal tests cannot be replicated in humans. Even with medicine we use today, the effects differ significantly among animals and humans.  Acetaminophen, for instance, is “poisonous to cats but is a therapeutic in humans; penicillin is toxic in guinea pigs but has been an invaluable tool in human medicine; morphine causes hyper-excitement in cats but has a calming effect in human patients; and oral contraceptives prolong blood-clotting times in dogs but increase a human’s risk of developing blood clots.” [2]

Because vivisection is used as the standard for medical testing today, we have wasted a lot of money, time, animal lives and human lives. Take, for instance, the linking of smoking to lung cancer.  When the correlation was reported based on an epidemiological study in 1954, it was dismissed because the result could not be replicated in animal experiments. It took 30 more years for the initial finding to be accepted — that is 30 years’ worth of animal and human lives that could have been saved. [3]

Another misleading experiment was the study on a drug called Mitoxantrone. When tested on beagle dogs, the drug did not show links to cardiac failure, and so it was approved for human testing. Later on, “data from 3,360 patients receiving mitoxantrone included 88 reports of cardiac side effects with 29 cases of heart failure.” [4]

Because much variance can be derived from experimentation among different species, vivisection is also an easy way for research practitioners to manipulate experiments for their own interests. All researchers have to do is switch species until their desired outcome is derived. If their experiment on rats did not produce the desired result, they will repeat the experiment in rabbits, and then in cats, and then in dogs, and then in monkeys, and so on, until they find the results that will get them their research grants and funding. By this time, countless animals would have suffered and died with no guarantee of any significant finding.

There are many other examples of vivisection as bad science, and the bottom line simply is that because of our attachment to using animals for experimentation, we are not only being cruel to beings who are sentient enough to feel pain, but we are also impeding progress in the medical field.

Speciesism: Animals as Property

The reason vivisection still exists today is not because it is necessarily an effective means of research, but largely because of speciesism. Speciesism is the discrimination towards species other than our own. Speciesism allows us to justify the harm we do to animals by clinging on to the false belief that our interests and trivial concerns precede the comfort and preferences of others. Even as non-practitioners of medicine, many of our schools and universities require dissection of frogs, cats, and other animals in basic biology classes.  We can all agree that such experiments are not necessary in the advancement of knowledge as a whole, for we are merely studying what is already known. The reason we continue to do this is because as speciesists, we see nothing inherently wrong with this practice. This further desensitizes us as our own educational institutions force the idea that animals are mere objects, tools, or properties.

To end vivisection and other forms of animal exploitation, we have to reject the property status of animals, an animal rights theory introduced by Gary L. Francione. It is not enough that animals are “treated better,” for properties remain a sign of ownership, where the owner has the right and privilege to do whatever he or she pleases with the property. It is always a relationship of power and dominion over that which is owned.

Even if vivisection can lead to valuable medical findings, it still cannot be morally justifiable in the same way that experimenting on brain-dead human beings or newly-born babies cannot be morally justifiable. In the subject of morality, the question is not skill or intelligence or likeness to humans. The only qualifying criterion is sentience or capacity to feel. We cannot own anyone who has the capacity to feel, and we certainly cannot experiment on them without their consent.

What Does This Have To Do With Me?

You are unconsciously contributing to animal cruelty — and I say this with certainty if you wash your hair with shampoo, shower with soap, and brush your teeth with toothpaste.  It is horrific to think that in the name of a new variant of shampoo, animals have to suffer and die (and they most certainly die, as animals are normally “discarded” after the experiment has concluded.)

If you think you’re being a good Samaritan by donating to a cancer research fund, again, this has everything to do with you. Find out if the charity you are donating to is still using vivisection or has advanced to in-vitro, tissue cultures, cell cultures, computer simulations, and other non-invasive procedures. Not only are these methods less cruel, they are also more relevant to human health and medicine.

The power in being a consumer is that we vote with the currency most understood by businesses and corporations — profit.  There are many injustices in the world, but the injustice of animal cruelty is a very direct one that we can stop. It is one that we either choose to sustain or choose to boycott. It was said in the documentary Earthlings that “it takes nothing away from a human to be kind to an animal”. But when I really think about my own choices to boycott animal cruelty, my motivation is not so much of kindness but one of justice. One does not have to be an “animal lover” to oppose suffering. One does not have to be a radical activist to create positive change. It could start with the shampoo you use today, that is how ridiculously simple it is. The truth about vivisection is that it cannot be justified, nobody deserves it, and nobody benefits from it. The truth about cats and dogs — and monkeys and rabbits and rats and guinea pigs and all other animals — is that they are sentient, just like you and I.

Resources:

[1] Food and Drug Administration (2006, Jan. 12). FDA Issues Advice to Make Earliest Stages of Clinical Dug Development More Efficient. Press Release. Retrieved March 2008, from http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/news/2006/NEW01296.html.

[2]  and [3]  Problems with Animal Research.

http://www.aavs.org/site/c.bkLTKfOSLhK6E/b.6456997/k.3D74/Problems_with_Animal_Research.htm

[4] Beagle Dogs Mislead Cancer Research

http://www.iaapea.com/101_page.php?id=47

Search for cruelty-free companies:

http://www.peta.org/living/beauty-and-personal-care/companies/default.aspx

Carl Sagan once had to argue for the inclusion of visible light cameras on the Voyager spacecraft. It was deemed by NASA as wasteful since they’d only be able to record that narrow band of light visible to humans. But Sagan insisted on it. He knew that the images it would take would inspire a new generation of scientists to make even greater discoveries.

The endeavor of popularizing science is definitely a daunting one. Our culture has made science look cold and unromantic. Even science undergrads regularly call out any application of scientific reasoning to everyday events as nosebleed-inducing.

It is this sad culture of anti-intellectualism that projects like the Mind Museum aim to correct.

Finishing construction at Bonifacio Global City early next year, the Mind Museum will have 250 exhibits and five galleries, each specializing in a field of science—from the origins of the universe to the technology of one of its inhabitants.

We at Filipino Freethinkers support the vision of the Mind Museum to promote science among the general public. Because of this, we have sponsored an element on their Periodic Table Exhibit—element 87, Francium.  Like a freethinker in a Catholic country, Francium is one of the rarest naturally-occurring elements and, like the Filipino Freethinkers, has virtually no commercial application. Plus, we [Fr]eethinkers liked having [Fr] to ourselves, Breaking Bad style.

Help build The Mind Museum and sponsor some of the exhibits. Apart from the Periodic Table Exhibit, donors can also sponsor stars and even galaxies. Help inspire the next generation of scientists and freethinkers.

(Images from Mind Museum and Wikipedia)

Culion, Palawan (former leper colony)

While island hopping in Coron, Palawan, our boat passed by Culion, the former leper colony, and I felt an involuntary shiver as I contemplated on how the people who contracted leprosy in the early 1900s were forcibly taken from their homes and brought here to live in isolation for the rest of their lives and died without any hope of a cure. How they must have blamed themselves for some imagined sin that warranted God’s wrath to be afflicted with a hideous disease. “He was unfaithful to the Lord his God…leprosy broke out on his forehead…the Lord had afflicted him. King Uzziah had leprosy until the day he died. He lived in a separate house – leprous, and banned from the temple of the Lord.”

Leprosy was once incurable and thought to be highly contagious that in 1907 the Philippine Commission passed Act 1711, which provides:

The Director of Health and his authorized agents are hereby empowered to cause to be apprehended, and detained, isolated, segregated, or confined, all leprous persons in the Philippine Islands, and upon application of the Director of Health it shall be the duty of every Insular, provincial, or municipal official having police powers to cause to be arrested and delivered to the Director of Health, or his agents, any person alleged or believed to be a leper…

Having leprosy in the first half of the 20th century was not unlike being a common criminal to be arrested and detained – and sentenced to life imprisonment not only in a lonely island but inside a numb body covered with lesions. Then in 1952 Act 1711 was amended with Republic Act No. 753:

Section 1058. The Director of Health or his authorized representative is empowered to cause all persons with leprosy or suspects in the Philippines to be subjected to the medical inspection and diagnostic procedure necessary to determine the presence or absence of leprosy. If it be found that the suspected person is positive bacteriologically for mycobacterium leprae, the Director of Health or his authorized representative shall turn him over to the Director of Hospitals or his authorized representative for isolation and segregation; and if it be found that the suspected person does not have leprosy, the Director of Health or his authorized representative shall assist in his conveyance to the place at which he was taken, at government expense, unless other satisfactory arrangements are made.

Section 1059. If the diagnosis is questioned, no person shall be removed to place of segregation until the diagnosis of leprosy had been verified positive bacteriologically.

The main difference here is that instead of being automatically apprehended, detained, isolated, etc., people suspected of having leprosy were now subjected to a medical diagnostic procedure first to confirm if they are indeed carrying the contagious disease. However, there seemed to be no effective cure available at the time, so those positively diagnosed with leprosy were still isolated and segregated.

But with the advances in medical science, leprosy is no longer to be dreaded since it is not only treatable but curable (curable means the disease can be entirely eliminated while treatable means only the symptoms can be relieved), and the drugs are even free.

In fact, as early as 1964, Republic Act No. 753 was amended with Republic Act No. 4073, “An Act Further Liberalizing the Treatment of Leprosy by Amending and Repealing Certain Sections of the Revised Administrative Code.”

Sec. 1058. Persons afflicted with leprosy not to be segregated. — Except when certified by the Secretary of Health or his authorized representatives that the stage of the disease requires institutional treatment, no persons afflicted with leprosy shall be confined in a leprosarium: provided, that such person shall be treated in any government skin clinic, rural health unit or by a duly licensed physician.

Sec. 1059. Confinement and treatment in sanitarium when necessary. — Whenever a person afflicted with leprosy shall have developed the disease to such stage as to require institutional treatment and the leprosy officer shall so certify, the said person shall forthwith be sent to a government operated sanitarium and be treated therein until such time as the Secretary of Health or his authorized representative decides that institutional treatment is no longer necessary.

Thanks to modern medicine, we have come a long way since biblical times when lepers were pronounced unclean and separated from society, and when only a handful were healed by God/Jesus. By the year 2000, the World Health Organization and its partners in the medical community have actually eliminated leprosy as a public health problem, meaning the prevalence rate is now less than one case per 10,000 persons. Over the past 20 years, more than 14 million leprosy patients have been cured, and leprosy has been eliminated from 119 out of 122 countries. That’s quite an achievement for mere human beings with no divine powers to perform miracle cures, using science as their only tool, so lepers and non-lepers alike are indeed lucky to have lived in this century.

As for Culion, it is no longer a leper colony but a municipality, and its sanitarium has expanded into a general hospital that also provides health care services to neighboring municipalities including Coron, Busuanga, and El Nido. But being the erstwhile largest leprosarium in the world, Culion has invaluable contributions to the research and appreciation of leprosy as scientists from all over the world came here for the opportunity to study the disease in all its stages and manifestations.

As our boat sailed away from Culion, I took a moment of silence to honor the dead lepers of the island, the unsung heroes of medical progress that conquered one of the oldest maladies that plagued mankind. Thank you, guys. You did not suffer and die in vain.