Jon Cohen (2)

Examining and explaining the history of HIV/AIDS vaccine research, from its beginning rounds on up through 2000, just after which the book was published, Cohen's work explores the individuals, the politics, the bureaucracy, the funding, the scientific processes involved in vaccine research, and even past vaccine developments--all in an effort to untangle the spiderweb of developments, and more often non-developments, that accounted for work toward a vaccine over the first few decades of the world's awareness of HIV/AIDS.

Throughout the book, what is frightening clear is how many different personalities and forces did as much to hinder the process as to help. From average slow-moving politics to individuals and companies who could see only their way of doing things and refused to accept options, and on to parties who were unwilling to accept that the traditional paths of research wouldn't work in the case of HIV/AIDS, research was more spastic and half-hazard than clearly directed toward a unified purpose. Cohen at one point describes the various efforts in terms of a child's soccer game, where a team's many members are gathered in an organized fashion, all flailing and kicking in the direction of the ball so that it eventually, more by chance than direct effort of a team, shoots out into some unpredicted direction...and very rarely hits the goal. Similarly, the description above isn't to say that many smart and dedicated individuals weren't directing their efforts toward the search for an AIDS vaccine--it is to say that many of them were working at cross-purposes, or at best, working on niche goals that weren't conceived or clearly understood in relation to other efforts.

Cohen's work is meticulously researched, and includes material not just from publicly available documentation, but from personal interviews, observations, and access to personalities and documents generally kept private by the research and/or government offices involved in the research and politics at the heart of this subject. His writing is clear and detailed, giving a careful view to the race for an HIV/AIDS vaccine.

On the whole, the book is hard to read not because of Cohen's writing or because of the subject---he's done an admirable job of making the material accessible and allowing readers into the world depicted here, both in terms of science and in terms of politics--but because it is all too clear that the bureaucracy of it all, and the fear of making a mistake, has far more to do with failure than success. In fact, reading Cohen's work and putting together the different pieces makes it seem rather a miracle that our society has ever managed vaccines or scientific developments that depended on more than the power of one individual. Simply, cooperation isn't in the vocabulary of too many people who were directly involved in the work discussed here, and as a result, it is a frustrating read.

All told, Cohen's work is an admirable one, depicting a maze of research and personalities which is difficult to accept, but utterly too real. I'd recommend the work to anyone interested in the processes involved in scientific research related to inter-agency or government cooperation and/or funding, or interested in the beginning years' progression of research which is still working toward establishing some level of dependable vaccine for HIV/AIDS.… (mehr)

I have the bizarre need to emphasize that I am not pregnant, I am not planning to become pregnant, and I have never had a miscarriage. This book is in actual fact a rather amazing piece of work about a woefully under-studied branch of medicine that happens to be a profoundly emotional one for almost everyone involved. The stories Cohen tells in this book have a lot to say about other situations, too - like how we test and approve new treatments, how people under stress make (or more often fail to make) rational decisions, and just how much we don't know about the complexities of the human reproductive system. Fascinating stuff, and the writing takes a lot of complicated concepts filled with medical jargon and makes them understandable. A really excellent piece of nonfiction.… (mehr)

Excellent exploration of the current state of human / chimpanzee / bonobo understanding and research.

The book is divided into three sections: Blood, Brains, and Bodies. The Blood section explores the primate family tree, including where modern and fossil humans are, in relation to modern chimpanzees and bonobos (humans are approximately equidistant from each). But there is also a more detailed discussion of how hybrids "work" in the larger evolutionary framework. The discussion starts with ligers, the hybrid of a lion father and tiger mother. And they are not just a product of zoos and private breeders - they occur more frequently in the wild than one might think. From here, the author discusses how genetic flow (as the author comments, "scientists' way of saying doing the nasty") from one species to another influences the genes of the offspring and their adaptability to new ecological niches. And that hybridization in the distant past explains some of the puzzling similarities and differences between humans and our closest primate cousins.

The section then goes on for several chapters about similarities and differences between humans and these apes with respect to diseases. This is the part of the book that makes one uneasy, because it describes how animals are used in this part of research, and it is not pretty. But much has helped provide basic research into what may or may not be useful in treating hepatitis and AIDS, for instance.

Part 2, Brains, is about the cognitive similarities and differences between humans and chimps and bonobos. The author gives an overview of the various attempts to teach these apes human language, whether audible, signed, or via symbol manipulation. Parts worked, parts didn't. And what did not work tells us as much about what is unique about humans as about how a chimp "thinks." There is some fairly detailed discussion of FOXP2 genes, and how they appear to cause particular effects in the humans that have defective versions, and how this gene is expressed in many animals, including chimps. It has to do with how humans recognize and use language. The chapters are fairly technical, and I skimmed through the "hard parts". Physical brain architecture is the subject of one entire chapter - parts of the brain, brain size, amount of folding, the kinds of cells within the brain, the connections between parts, and timing of brain growth. Some of these relates to Alzheimer's research, among other things.

But it also had a couple sentences that resonated with a recent Senate race. It noted an experiment done with mouse brains related to the study of human brains.

Part 3 - Bodies - has a chapter devoted to the human upright stance. This pulled in some more of the research that I had read about in "Born to Run" about how human gait differs from chimp gait, and what it might mean, including the human's loss of body hair, sweat glands, and even skin color. There is also a telling graphic about the size of a baby's head, for orang, chimp, gorilla, and human vs. the size of the birth canal. "Chimp birth is very fast, and it doesn't look tramatic at all" wrote one researcher. And the apes do not appear to miscarry with near the frequency of humans.

The author concludes with the state of chimp populations world wide, both wild and captive. Many recent laws have outlawed or strongly hampered medical use of captive chimps, which has had the result of fewer chimps being bred.

I found the book to be a fascinating peek at these apes, and what they show us about what it means to be human, as well as what it means to be ape.… (mehr)