Do Night Shifts Cause Breast Cancer?

According to this review article, the answer appears to lie somewhere between maybe and probably.  While there seems to be a correlation between the two, more research is needed to determine whether or not there is a causal link as other plausible reasons for the correlation haven't yet been ruled out.

...Shift work. Excess incidence of breast cancer has been observed consistently in studies of women with prolonged exposure to shift work involving exposure to light at night (Kolstad 2008; Stevens 2009). Research needs in this area include a) a better definition of what is meant by shift work and related exposure metrics; b) studies of markers of circadian disruption in non–day workers; c) better descriptions of controls and their exposure to light at night; and d) investigation of the effect of variations in expression of circadian genes on cancer in shift workers. An emerging area of interest is the relative toxicity of occupational chemical exposure depending on time of day of that exposure. The marked circadian variations in cell division and DNA repair during the daily cycle are controlled by the circadian genes (Haus and Smolensky 2006; Stevens et al. 2007). Therefore, non–day workers may have very different susceptibility to occupational exposures compared with day workers. Studies are also needed to determine if shift work is associated with other cancers, especially hormonally related cancers, and prostate cancer in particular. If further experimental and epidemiologic evidence confirms a causal association between exposure to light at night and breast cancer, it will be important to develop interventions to reduce the risk.

You can read more here. For details, see the article and relevant references.

Reference

1. Ward EM, Schulte PA, Straif K, Hopf NB, Caldwell JC, et al. 2010 Research Recommendations for Selected IARC-Classified Agents. Environ Health Perspect 118(10): doi:10.1289/ehp.0901828

Templeton Foundation Talk Tomorrow in Columbus

Since 2006, the Ohio State University has hosted an annual discussion of religion, science and evolution entitled The Intersection of Science and Faith. It's funded by the John Templeton Foundation (JTF) and this year's discussion will be happening tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7pm at COSI in Columbus. Attendance is free, but registration is required to attend.

If you're in town, you should check it out!

Here's the announcement from the COSI calendar (PDF flier here):

Beyond Belief: Is Religion in Our Genes?
October 13, 2010 - October 13, 2010
Wednesday, October 13, 2010 (7pm-9pm)

Supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation

Join COSI and moderator Neal Conan, senior host of the National Public Radio talk show, Talk of the Nation, for a lively panel discussion with Andrew Newberg, MD, Director of Clinical Nuclear Medicine, Director of NeuroPET Research, University of Pennsylvania, and author of "Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief," and Nicolas Wade, New York Times science writer and author of "Before the Dawn," and "The Faith Instinct." This program takes place inside the WOSU@COSI Studios on COSI's Level 1.

Register: RSVP by calling 614.228.2674, registration is required.

Cost: This event is free

Admission: Free; registration is required - please call 614.228.2674 to RSVP.

Sounds interesting, right?  But what might we expect from the discussion? What's the John Templeton Foundation?  Who are the speakers?  To answer these questions, lets take a closer look at the speakers and the funding source.

Religious Fundamentalists vs. Religious Moderates: Tell Me Again Who's Got Their Religion Wrong?

I'm not a religious or superstitious person, but for as long as I've thought about these things I've been in awe of how people acquire and adhere to these kinds of beliefs. It gets particularly interesting when someone is confronted with evidence contrary to a belief - or contrary to the justification for adopting that belief - or when one tries to apply some of those justifications across different religions with surprisingly mixed results.

But suppose supernatural entities like ghosts or gods do exist, and that some humans have knowledge of these things. Doing a quick survey of "who believes what," one thing quickly becomes clear:

Our beliefs are too varied and contradictory 

for most people's beliefs to be correct.
Most people have it wrong.

But how can we tell who (if anyone) has the right religious/supernatural beliefs?

The Science of Denying Science

Have you ever wondered how people can rationalize away a scientific claim when it conflicts with other beliefs?  Or why being anti-evolution also seems to up the odds being anti-vaccine or a climate change denialist??

Then you should go check out When Science Clashes with Beliefs? Make science impotent, by John Timmer.

[Hat Tip to PZM]

Michael Specter on the Dangers of Science Denial

Beauty in the natural world... according to A. Hughman

If you follow YouTube channels, I highly recommend you check out A. Hughman's Channel.  While more about atheism than science, I think most anyone would find his stuff worth watching.  Like, for example...

 He's also got a blog you might want to check out. Good stuff!

PS: There's also a version of the video above with Spanish subtitles, here.

Does therapy change sexual orientation?

Surprise, surprise - it most likely doesn't. At least according to a review of dozens of studies investigating such "therapies", conducted over the past 45+ years.

The group's Task Force on Appropriate Therapeutic Responses to Sexual Orientation reached its conclusion after its review of 87 studies conducted between 1960 and 2007 and finding "serious methodological problems" in the vast majority of them.

Those few studies that did have "high-quality" evidence "show that enduring change to an individual's sexual orientation is uncommon," it said.

In addition, the report cited evidence that efforts to switch a person's sexual orientation through aversive treatments might cause harm, including loss of sexual feeling, suicidality, depression and anxiety.

The full report can be read here at the American Psychological Association website.

This comes as no big surprise, really - you might have seen this documentary on the sad story of David Reimer: The boy who lived as a girl, or read the book version of his story: As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised As A Girl.

Born as Bruce Reimer, he received gender reassignment surgery after a botched circumcision. Psychologist John Money coached "Brenda's" parents to try and raise "her" as a girl, and later used Brenda's case to support his pet hypothesis of Gender Neutrality... the notion that nurture could trump nature when it came to sexuality and gender identity. The result? Nature never gave way to nurture for Bruce/Brenda/David, and he suffered because of it. He died via self-inflicted gunshot wound when he was 38 years old.

Fear, religion, and bad medicine

I recently came across this post by PZ Myers about a 13 year old Minnesota boy and his family (the Hausers), who are currently in court for the right to refuse chemotherapy to treat the boy's Hodgkin Lymphoma. In doing so, they're refusing an 85% chance of surviving the cancer, in exchange for almost no chance of survival without proper treatment - opting instead for natural remedies such as herbs and vitamins (a decidedly bad form of cancer "treatment"!).

In my usual fashion, I followed up on the blog post and read through a few more articles on the story, like this one, this one, this blog post by Jerry Coyne, and http://www.childrenshealthcare.org/ which chronicles the painful and preventable deaths of a handful of children (mostly from Christian Science families) following the faith-based "treatment" their parents elected to provide them in lieu of real medical treatment.

The consequence of all this (and my reading these stories in the middle of a busy few days of thesis work) was that I completely got wrapped up in the emotional aspects of this and other stories like it, and failed to dig deeper! Was their nemenhah religion really behind all this (in my defense, their website was down when I checked)? What was their experience dealing with his cancer up to this point? A whole slew of other questions a little critical thinking should have brought to mind...

Fortunately, I just saw the post below on the blog Respectful Insolence which points out some of the mistakes which I and others have made in reading into these matters. "Orac" gives very level headed view of the situation, and to me it's a personal reminder that we're all susceptible to loosing our better judgment from time to time.

If you haven't looked over the articles and websites above, I'd suggest giving at least some of them a read before reading this one.

Daniel Hauser and his rejection of chemotherapy: Is religion the driving force or just a convenient excuse?

I'll try to post follow-up links on the Hauser case below, as they become available.

Political (errr..... visual?) Instincts

Here's a little news short from ScienceNOW on some recent work showing how children are just as swayed by looks as adults when it comes to choosing candidates for political office.

I thought it might lighten the mood a bit after all those vaccination posts!