Dengue—a viral disease that can refer to both dengue fever and the more severe dengue hemorrhagic fever (DHF)—swept away records again this past spring as it raged across Brazil, infecting more than 160,000 people and killing more than 100. The reports were similar to those out of Southeast Asia in the summer of 2007, South America the previous spring, and India the fall before that. Although it may not be the most devastating of the mosquito-borne diseases—malaria strikes 10 times more people and yellow fever kills more of its victims—dengue has become a major public health concern for two reasons: the speed with which it is spreading and the escalating seriousness of its complications.In the nineteenth century, dengue fever was a mild illness found in the tropics. Deaths were rare, and years passed between major epidemics. But since the mid-twentieth century, the range of the dengue virus has steadily broadened. In the last 50 years, its worldwide incidence has increased 30-fold, and various estimates posit that anywhere from one-third to nearly one-half of the world’s population are now at risk of becoming infected.Moreover, today’s dengue infection is not what it once was. DHF, a complication of dengue infection that was not recognized until the 1950s , now appears in many dengue epidemics. In addition to the fever, rash, headache, and muscle and joint pain of classic dengue fever (which earned dengue its nickname of “breakbone fever”), DHF sometimes causes hemorrhaging that can lead to shock and even death. Epidemic DHF is now a leading cause of hospitalization and death among children in several Southeast Asian countries. Worldwide, of the 50 million dengue infections estimated by the World Health Organization (WHO) each year, there are 500,000 cases of DHF and 22,000 deaths, mainly among children.Once considered mainly an Asian disease, dengue fever and DHF now also permeate the tropical Americas. Between 1995 and 2001, the number of dengue cases in the Americas doubled, according to the WHO. By 2007, the annual incidence there reached nearly 900,000 cases, with more than 25,000 people suffering DHF.The dengue virus comes in four distinct serotypes. Individuals who become infected with one serotype obtain lifelong immunity against that serotype but not against the other three—and there is good evidence that a previous dengue infection increases the odds of developing DHF upon infection with a different serotype. “Somehow, having that prior infection enhances invasion of target cells by new dengue [serotypes],” explains Laura Harrington, a medical entomologist at Cornell University.Dengue experts agree on many of the causes of the disease’s spread, including demographic changes and interruptions in vector control efforts. But some controversy has surfaced over whether climate change—often cited as a factor in broadening disease vector habitats—has had or will have anything to do with the virus’s expansion. “It’s too early to predict what effects global warming will have, if any,” says David Morens, senior scientific advisor at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) in Bethesda, Maryland. “But it’s certainly something to be concerned about.”Aedes aegypti, the mosquito that is the chief carrier of the dengue virus, originated in Africa but migrated to other continents via the slave trade in the 1500s and 1600s, says Duane Gubler, director of the Asia-Pacific Institute of Tropical Medicine and Infectious Diseases at the University of Hawaii at Manoa in Honolulu. “As urban port cities developed, [the Ae. aegypti] mosquito became established and became highly adapted to humans,” he says. Accordingly, as the tropical developing world has become increasingly urbanized over the past few decades, Ae. aegypti have proliferated.Several factors have assisted in the spread of dengue around the world. Ae. aegypti originally bred in small natural water bodies such as tree holes or rock pools, it now breeds successfully in water that accumulates in discarded trash such as bottles, plastic and cellophane packaging, and tires, as well as in domestic water storage containers that are common in places where people do not have easy access to a regular supply of clean water. Ae. aegypti also prefers to live inside buildings rather than outside. Finally, this mosquito prefers to feed on humans, meaning viral transmission is not diluted by the mosquito feeding on other animals as well. Ae. aegypti therefore is “perfectly adapted to the urban environment,” says Gubler.Whereas During World War II, Japanese and Allied military movements spread viruses throughout Southeast Asia. In the aftermath of the war, “for the first time, several serotypes were coming together,” Harrington says, as people began to travel across the world more frequently. Subsequent economic boom and rapid urbanization in Southeast Asia led to conditions ideal for epidemics—cramped living quarters, low-quality housing, and poor management of water, sewage, and waste systems. Dengue’s progression from tropical nuisance to life-threatening epidemic reached a tipping point in the 1950s, when DHF was first reported in the Philippines and Thailand.Ae. aegypti, which also transmits yellow fever virus. By going after Ae. aegypti aggressively with the insecticide DDT and systematically eliminating its breeding areas, the campaign largely eradicated the vector from Central and South America, although not the Caribbean and southern United States, says Gubler. In the course of eradicating yellow fever, the efforts also squashed dengue transmission in the region.Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, dengue had been largely eliminated in the Americas, mainly thanks to attempts to control urban yellow fever in the 1950s and 1960s. The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), an international public health agency, initiated a campaign to rid Central and South American, Caribbean, and southern U.S. regions of Ae. aegypti eradication efforts were deemed successful and therefore largely abandoned, with resources redirected to other pressing issues of the day such as President Richard Nixon’s “War on Cancer.” Since then, Ae. aegypti has returned to nearly every region from which it was eliminated. “We have allowed Aedes aegypti to reinfest most if not all of the urban areas of tropical America,” says Gubler.DDT was banned in the United States in 1972. Coincidentally, says Gubler, In 1981 a serotype of dengue imported from southeast Asia caused an outbreak of DHF in Cuba—the first DHF epidemic in the Americas. Since then, all four serotypes have spread throughout the Americas, causing DHF outbreaks and becoming endemic in many countries.Ae. aegypti after the lapse of eradication campaigns also contributed to dengue’s resurgence, Harrington says. “For those of us who work in dengue research, I think there’s a fairly strong consensus about what the major factors are [in dengue’s spread],” she says.Increased global movement of people and cargo via air travel have undoubtedly assisted dengue’s growth, says Harrington. It is this movement that now allows multiple serotypes of dengue to encounter each other frequently, leading to the complications of DHF. And in the Americas, the reinvasion of One factor, however, remains debatable: the effect of climate change on the dissemination of dengue. Like many vector-borne diseases, dengue fever shows a clear weather-related pattern: rainfall and temperatures affect both the spread of mosquito vectors and the likelihood that they will transmit virus from one human to another. In a cool climate, the virus takes so long to replicate inside the mosquito that most likely the mosquito would die before it actually has a chance to transmit the virus to another person, says senior research fellow Simon Hales of the University of Otago, New Zealand. “There’s a consensus that climate is one of the necessary factors that has to be right for dengue to be able to be transmitted,” Hales says. “Whether or not climate change will affect the spread of dengue is probably more contentious.”The Lancet, Hales and his colleagues published an empirical model of worldwide dengue distribution in which they reported that annual average vapor pressure (a measure of humidity) was the single climate factor that best predicted dengue fever distribution. They also used their model to predict likely effects of humidity on dengue distribution. If humidity were to remain at 1990 levels into the next century, a projected 3.5 billion people would be at risk of dengue infection in 2085, but assuming humidity increases as projected by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the authors estimate that in fact 5.2 billion could be at risk.Several studies have predicted that global climate change could increase the likelihood of dengue epidemics. In the 14 September 2002 issue of Fourth Assessment Report on Climate Change Impacts: Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, concluding that climate change could increase the number of people at risk of dengue infection.Other work has reported correlations between dengue and climate variables such as El Niño, temperature, rainfall, and cloud cover. In March 2008, the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released its But some dengue researchers feel that a case for a connection between dengue incidence and climate change has yet to be made. Global warming might influence dengue transmission “to the extent that it influences how water is managed and handled,” says Harrington, but temperature increases are probably not important for the virus’s expansion. “If you really sit down and look at the science, . . . there are no real hard data to show that [climate change is] having an effect,” she says.There’s no argument that global warming is occurring, says Gubler, but as for the suggestion that it has played any role in the expansion of dengue, “It’s all hype. A lot of public health officials and a lot of policy makers use global warming as a cop-out, an excuse for not controlling a disease that is very preventable.”In a plenary session at the May 2008 annual meeting of the American Institute of Biological Sciences, Gubler urged that policy makers not focus on climate change but resume addressing the chief known drivers of dengue’s spread—namely, population growth, urbanization, and modern transportation. Importantly, he said, “we need political will. With political will, we may get the economic support that we need to do the research to develop effective prevention and control strategies.”The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene showing that temperature-induced variations in how efficiently Ae. aegypti transmits the dengue virus may be “a significant determinant” in the annual cyclic pattern of DHF epidemics in Bangkok.But even as there is no documentation that climate change is influencing the spread of dengue, Hales counters there also is no proof regarding many other factors claimed responsible for increased dengue—such as urbanization, population increase, and heightened travel—and that no published studies have attempted to assess the relative importance of these factors in comparison to temperature trends. It is not controversial, he adds, that dengue is highly temperature-sensitive, citing work published by Douglas M. Watts and colleagues in the January 1987 issue of As for whether dengue is very preventable, Hales points to the example of Singapore, where dengue persists despite the best efforts of this wealthy country with its well-developed public health infrastructure and vector control. Hales concedes that it’s too soon to say for sure whether climate change is promoting the spread of dengue, but that “other things being equal, we would expect [the disease] to spread with projected climate change.” If Earth warms as expected, “then a larger area of the planet’s surface will be climatically suitable for dengue,” he says.Journal of the American Mosquito Control Association noted that the Asian tiger mosquito, Aedes albopictus, spread worldwide through the international trade in used tires. Over the past 25 years, the relatively cold-hardy Ae. albopictus has invaded many U.S. states, and rising average temperatures raise the possibility that the vector could move even further north.Global transport has helped another dengue vector spread to new territory. An article in the September 1987 issue of the Ae. albopictus is occasionally an important dengue vector in rural and suburban areas in Southeast Asia, says Philip McCall, a medical entomologist at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, United Kingdom, and it was also behind Hawaii’s 2001 outbreak of 122 cases on the island of Maui. But Gubler says it is a mistake to assume that dengue epidemics will necessarily result from the spread of Ae. albopictus. Although this mosquito has been shown to be a highly efficient carrier in controlled experiments, it is far less so in real-world situations, he explains, mainly because it feeds on both humans and nonhuman animals, and it prefers rural environments to urban settings. If Ae. albopictus populations were to displace Ae. aegypti, then that could actually lead to reduced risk of dengue transmission, Gubler says.Dengue is a disease of poverty, Hales says. “In the places where it’s really rife, typically urban shantytowns, people have got very poor services,” he explains. “Waste is piling up in the street. There’s no running water, so people have to collect water in vessels, which then breed mosquitoes. The people have got terrible housing, so they’re not able to protect themselves from getting bitten. And they’re living in very close proximity. It’s the perfect recipe for a huge epidemic.”Even if today’s temperate latitudes did become more suitable for dengue transmission, Gubler says, most of those regions are more developed and have good enough housing and water supply that dengue epidemics would remain unlikely. The standard of living in the United States will likely prevent any major dengue epidemics. “The United States is not going to have major epidemics of vector-borne diseases unless we allow our public health system to deteriorate completely,” Gubler says.But professor Peter Hotez of The Sabin Vaccine Institute and George Washington University worries about the effect of dengue and other diseases he calls “neglected infections of poverty” on the poorest people in the United States. “There’s always been this reservoir of people at risk, and my concern is that, because they’re poor and voiceless, we ignore them,” he says.Although dengue is endemic in Puerto Rico (where it has caused epidemics since the 1960s), it is absent from most of the continental United States, except in travelers returning from tropical locales. However, the disease appears occasionally along the U.S.–Mexico border, Hotez says. Along the border, reported incidence is much higher in the Mexican states than the U.S. ones, probably because of different living standards—window screens, air conditioning, and effective sanitation may help keep dengue at bay on the U.S. side, Hotez says.Emerging Infectious Diseases found that dengue incidence was surprisingly high in the border town of Brownsville, Texas. The researchers found evidence of past dengue infection in 40% of Brownsville residents. People with low income, no air conditioning, and poor street drainage were most likely to have suffered infection.However, a study published in the October 2007 issue of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases, Hotez estimated as many as 200,000 U.S. cases of dengue fever occur each year, “but the estimates are pretty wide-ranging,” he says. There have so far been few reports of DHF in the United States. However, Hotez points out that DHF outbreaks have happened as close as Cuba; therefore, he says, “so there’s every reason to believe that it could happen in the United States.”In a review published 25 June 2008 in Many of the people at risk of dengue infection in the United States are members of minority groups, Hotez says—something that also applies to other infections that many people think of as “tropical” disease. Besides dengue, low-income Hispanic communities near the Mexican border are also at risk of Chagas disease, cutaneous leishmaniasis, and cysticercosis, an infection caused by ingesting tapeworm eggs, which is now a leading cause of epilepsy and seizures in areas around the U.S.–Mexico border. Many of these infections have been around for a while, Hotez says; however, “We’ve just ignored and neglected them because we tend not to pay attention to the plight of the poor and underrepresented minorities.”Hotez suspects that people living in other areas prone to neglected infections—especially the post-Katrina Gulf Coast and elsewhere in the Mississippi River delta—are at some risk of dengue, but few data have been collected. “It’s not clear how many cases of dengue infection there are each year in the United States,” he says. “We’re not doing aggressive surveillance.”Researchers are coming at dengue from a variety of angles to try to curb the virus’s spread. There are no available vaccines or antivirals for dengue infection, leaving mosquito control as the only current method for prevention and control.“Ultimately, we need a vaccine for dengue,” says Harrington. “That’s probably the only way that we’re going to be able to have a significant impact.” Dengue vaccine development has proven challenging, largely because of the four different virus serotypes in circulation. Because DHF usually occurs when an individual already has immunity against one dengue serotype, researchers fear that vaccines that fail to provide equal immunity against all four serotypes may actually predispose people to hemorrhagic complications if they encounter a novel serotype after being vaccinated. “That has really slowed the development of the dengue vaccine,” Hotez says.Currently, researchers at the Korea-based Pediatric Dengue Vaccine Initiative, chaired by Gubler and funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, are facilitating the development of several different technologies to overcome those obstacles, for example, by helping some companies with clinical trials, establishing field sites, and working with developing countries to create the infrastructure to manage eventual vaccine distribution.Ae. aegypti for resources and mates in the wild. “If you could dream about something that could really make an impact, this would be it,” she says.As part of the Grand Challenges in Global Health program, also funded in part by the Gates Foundation, researchers are creating mosquitoes that are genetically incapable of transmitting the dengue virus. About a dozen scientists worldwide are tackling different facets of the project, says Harrington, whose laboratory is assessing whether the transgenic strains are likely to outcompete The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene that cultivating a natural predator of Aedes mosquitoes, the tiny crustacean Mesocyclops, in water storage containers virtually eliminated Ae. aegypti populations. “I was amazed,” McCall says. “I’m often skeptical about biological control, but in Vietnam, when used in combination with clean-up and education campaigns, this seems to have been spectacularly successful.”For now, dengue control still relies heavily on controlling the mosquito that transmits it. McCall and his colleagues have been running studies in Latin America and Southeast Asia to judge the effectiveness of household-based insecticide-treated materials (such as window curtains) and domestic water container covers as foils to the mosquito carriers and dengue transmission. Also, scientists from Vietnam and Australia reported in the January 2005 issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences showed that decreasing dengue transmission may sometimes cause an increase in cases of DHF. The model’s predictions were boosted by epidemiologic data from Thailand that were later published 16 July 2008 in PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. The authors of both papers speculate that the effect may arise from a brief, transient cross-protection that people experience when infected with one serotype of dengue. At very high levels of dengue transmission, people could then have immunity to all four serotypes of the virus. If transmission is reduced moderately, this cross-immunity would also be reduced. The results are controversial, McCall says, “but many in the field believe it to be the case.”Research continues on all fronts, adding to the collective knowledge about dengue transmission and, in some cases, challenging long-held assumptions. A mathematical model published by Suwich Thammapalo and colleagues in the 12 February 2008 issue of Not everyone agrees, however, and Harrington summarizes some of the concerns about the paper. The authors based their conclusions on the relationship between dengue infection and transmission as a function of mosquito abundance as measured using the Breteau index, which reflects the number of water containers with mosquito larvae in 100 randomly selected houses in a community. But the Breteau index is a poor estimate of mosquito abundance, she says, and it rarely indicates what species is abundant. Moreover, it does not provide a large enough sample size to be powerful and meaningful.“This type of work is a prime example of scientists working in isolation,” she says. “It highlights the need for cross-collaborative work on models for dengue ecology and epidemiology where biologically meaningful models can be developed.”According to Hales, some of the most promising solutions may not directly involve mosquito eradication and may have little to do with technology. “What people [at risk] need is a decent environment in which to live,” he says. “If we had a dengue vaccine, most likely those people wouldn’t be able to afford it anyway. I’m not saying don’t look for a vaccine, but that’s probably not a short-term answer for the problem for these people.”


For nearly two-thirds of a century, up to 99% of the ingredients in any given pesticide product have legally been hidden from public view, even though many are known to be toxic. The primary impetus has been to protect industry trade secrets. But the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is considering what it calls a “sea change” in policy, possibly requiring public disclosure of 100% of a pesticide product’s ingredients. Many factions have a stake in the outcome. Claudia Polsky, deputy attorney general with the California Department of Justice’s Environment Section, says the inability to publicly disclose ingredient information has left California unable to assure its residents that pesticides the state wants to use for various purposes are safe, resulting in lawsuits, injunctions, and protracted negotiations with pesticide manufacturers. Susan Smolinske, director of the Regional Poison Control Center at the DMC Children’s Hospital of Michigan, says, “We get calls where the lack of [ingredient] information results in a delay in treatment. It does cripple us.” And Aimee Code, water quality coordinator for the Northwest Coalition for Alternatives to Pesticides, says all ingredients need to be on the label because “[consumers] make choices based on that.”But Ray McAllister, senior director of regulatory policy for the pesticide industry group CropLife America, says he’d like to keep the situation “fairly close to where it is now.” He points out that each formulated pesticide product is subject to a battery of acute toxicity tests whose results are reflected in the cautions, usage directions, and first aid statements on product labels.However, the EPA is concerned enough about the status quo that it is investigating how to better inform consumers about most or all of the ingredients in pesticides. That could correct what the agency sees as the current “market failure” that allows pesticide products to potentially contain “levels of hazardous ingredients that are higher than society needs or wants.”The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA), a cornerstone of pesticide regulation that was implemented in 1947, set up a technical distinction between “active” and “inert” ingredients in pesticide products. Active ingredients are defined as those that are intentionally added and designed specifically to kill or control the target pest. All other ingredients, such as fragrances, dyes, aerosol propellants, solvents, desiccants, carriers, and other substances, are defined as inert.Under FIFRA only active ingredients must be named on pesticide product labels. All inert ingredients, which can constitute more than 99% of a product, can be lumped together under the category of inert or other ingredients and listed simply as a percentage of the product’s total weight. According to the EPA, there are currently more than 1,000 active ingredients and about 4,000 inert ingredients in use.FIFRA generally allows the identity of inerts to be kept secret to protect confidential business information. However, manufacturers must divulge all ingredients to the EPA. FIFRA gives the agency the option of requiring such ingredients to be listed on the label if they “pose a hazard to man or the environment.” Historically, however, the agency has interpreted FIFRA language primarily in favor of protecting confidential business information.The EPA and others acknowledge the term “inert” is often popularly perceived to mean “harmless.” But as noted in 2 petitions filed in 2006 asking the EPA to disclose hazardous inerts, at least 374 such ingredients are known to present a risk of injury to human health or the environment, as determined by the EPA or other federal agencies. Among these are coal tar, dibutyl phthalate, glutaraldehyde, hexane, hydrochloric acid, kerosene, naphthalene, nitric acid, xylene, and numerous petroleum distillates and fuel oils. A further 1,863 inerts were of unknown toxicity at the time the petitions were filed. The petitions also noted that 455 substances on the EPA inerts list are also in the Hazardous Substances Data Bank, which tallies potentially toxic substances and is maintained by xvzcthe National Library of Medicine. Furthermore, 516 ingredients currently used as both active and inert ingredients (depending on the product) are listed only on those products in which they are deemed active ingredients, regardless of toxicity. The EPA says it does not have current numbers for any of these categories.EHP, and studies conducted since then have continued to illustrate this phenomenon. In work published in the 19 January 2009 issue of Chemical Research in Toxicology, Nora Benachour and Gilles-Eric Séralini found that an inert ingredient used as a surfactant, polyethoxylated tallowamine, was more damaging than the active ingredient glyphosate to human umbilical cord, placental, and embryonic cells. Monsanto, which makes glyphosate, challenged the findings and the study methods in a press release and multiple media accounts in the months after the study was published. But the researchers maintain their methods and findings are valid and reflect possible effects at real-world concentrations.Much of the regulatory testing of pesticides focuses solely on the active ingredient. But many studies have found that a complete pesticide product can be significantly more toxic to human or environmental health than the active ingredient alone. Several examples are noted in a commentary by Caroline Cox and Michael Surgan published in the December 2006 issue of The Government Accountability Office recognized the conflict of not listing inert ingredients, even though some are toxic, as long ago as 1975. That same year, the EPA required that a handful of known toxic inerts be identified on pesticide product labels. That number was boosted to 57 in 1987. Manufacturers quickly phased out all but 8, in part because they chose to reformulate rather than disclose such ingredients, according to the EPA.  Of those 8, only 5—adipic acid, bis(2-ethylhexyl) ester; ethylene glycol monoethyl ether; hydroquinone; nonylphenol; and phthalic acid, bis(2-ethylhexyl) ester—are still used as inerts.Several thousand other inerts still remained secret, however, spurring 10 state and territorial attorneys general and scores of advocacy organizations to petition the EPA in 1998 to require complete ingredient disclosure on labels. The agency denied this request, and its decision was upheld in 2004 by a federal judge. But in light of the judge’s clarification of the FIFRA language giving the EPA authority to require disclosure of inerts known to be harmful, 15 state and territorial attorneys general  and 22 advocacy groups again petitioned the EPA to require disclosure in 2006. This time they focused on 374 inerts that have been designated as toxic under one federal law or another, such as the Clean Air Act, the Emergency Planning and Community Right-to-Know Act, or the Toxic Substances Control Act.On 30 September 2009, the EPA announced it was granting the request and would pursue a change in disclosure of hazardous inerts. The agency also said it would consider more than the requested 374 ingredients for inclusion on labels due to regulatory and administrative difficulties in drawing a line on what to disclose.Pesticides Industry Sales and Usage: 2000 and 2001 Market Estimates that about 5 billion pounds of active ingredients were used in 2001 in products such as insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, disinfectants, and wood preservatives. If each of the United States’ 3,717,792 square miles received the same amount, that would be an average of about 1,350 pounds per square mile per year. Based on limited data on the percentages of inert ingredients in various types of products, a conservative estimate suggests about 6–10 billion pounds of pesticide products may be spread in the environment each year.The EPA doesn’t have current publicly available data on total pesticide use, although agency spokeswoman Enesta Jones says the agency expects to release a report on sales and use of pesticides later in 2010. The agency had previously calculated in The American Association of Poison Control Centers received 93,998 calls about pesticides in 2008, or 3.8% of all calls involving human poison exposures. Pesticides were the ninth most common topic of concern. There were an additional 3,705 calls from people asking for pesticide information; 19% were from pesticide applicators. The National Pesticide Information Center received 26,440 calls from 1 April 2008 to 31 March 2009, 88% from the general public. The center, which is jointly funded by Oregon State University and the EPA, also had 2,465,802 website hits from all over the globe. That was 1 million more than the previous year. The number of phone calls at both centers has remained fairly steady for several years.Some doctors aren’t very concerned about acute or chronic pesticide exposures. “The chance of being injured is vanishingly small,” says Daniel Brooks, co–medical director of the Banner Poison Center in Phoenix, Arizona. He says any clinical effects are usually caused by active ingredients and that toxic exposures occur largely when pesticides aren’t used as directed on the label or when they’re intentionally ingested.But it’s impossible to know how many people are being affected, says Catherine Karr, an executive committee member of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Environmental Health and director of the University of Washington Pediatric Environmental Health Specialty Unit. “We don’t have a national surveillance system for tracking pesticide exposures,” she says. “We only have some poor and limited proxies, like data gleaned from poison control center call records.”Federal Register advance notice of proposed rulemaking in which it laid out a list of inert disclosure issues, possible ways of resolving them, and a request for public comment. The agency says it is trying to help consumers and health care providers who want more information, encourage the manufacture of less-toxic products, and maintain industry competitiveness.In response to various pesticide concerns—plus the fact that products such as foods, cosmetics, drugs, and some household goods have much more transparent labeling of ingredients—the EPA issued a 23 December 2009 Marty Monell, deputy office director for management in the EPA’s Office of Pesticide Programs, says one option is labeling 100% of the ingredients. There’s a “good shot” the agency will pursue this option, she says. But a lot depends on whether disclosure will reveal critical information to competing manufacturers.Part of that secrecy has already been breached, since some ingredients are disclosed through sources such as patents, scientific studies, reverse engineering, and Material Safety Data Sheets. McAllister says one way to help protect remaining trade secrets would be to require disclosure only of the class of the ingredient, in the same way that foods or household product labels use terms such as “natural flavor” or “fragrance.” That would prevent disclosure of certain key substances, “which is where much of the magic of a particular product comes in,” he says, noting this could work with categories such as surfactants, emulsifiers, and solvents.Allowing inerts to be identified only by class is a concern to Smolinske, though. She cites a case in which a child was exposed to unlabeled peanut butter used as bait in an ant killer. The child, whose family has a history of peanut allergy and who had been rigorously protected from peanut exposure, is now sensitized for life and runs the risk of a severe reaction to future exposures, she says.Even if McAllister’s group-label approach doesn’t fly, some essential trade secrets will still remain intact, says Dan Goldstein, senior science fellow at Monsanto He explains that the ingredients are just one facet of a pesticide product’s unique properties. The processes used to combine the ingredients also are important, he says, and any process more complex than simply mixing the ingredients could easily remain secret, even if a competitor tries to reverse engineer the product.Cox, who is research director for the Center for Environmental Health and one of the 2006 petitioners, says experiences with other products that require more explicit identification of ingredients has shown many pesticide product businesses likely will remain viable: “Toothpaste lists all the ingredients,” she says, “and that hasn’t stopped there being a very competitive toothpaste market.”The EPA will consider many other issues as it makes its decision, such as how to disclose ingredients , where to draw the line if less than 100% of ingredients are labeled, whether to prohibit use of any inert deemed hazardous, and how quickly to require implementation of any changes. There also could be little or no change. The agency’s direction is expected to become clearer as it develops a final rule.For Polsky, the details matter, but the main goal is simple: “Information alone is powerful in spurring market transformation,” she says.The public comment period, which the EPA extended by 60 days at the request of two industry representatives, ends 23 April 2010. According to EPA officials, a proposed rule could be announced by mid-2011 and possibly finalized by early to mid-2012.


Ta Indica, the author’s account of India. Megasthenes’ flamboyant beasts, some of them sporting nonstandard digits and extra heads, may have come from the stories of people he met in his travels and not his own observations. Nonetheless, they could be describing the creatures of Alexis Rockman, artist, naturalist, author, educator, activist.“There are also cocks, which are extraordinary size, and have their crests not red as elsewhere, or at least in our country, but have the flower-like coronals of which the crest is formed variously colored,” wrote traveler and geographer Megasthenes 17 hundred years ago. “Their rump feathers are neither curved nor wreathed but are of great breadth and they trail them in the way peacocks trail their tails, when they neither straighten nor erect them: the feathers of these Indian cocks are in color golden and also dark-blue like the smaragdus.” These impressive cocks, and other fantastic creatures, populated “I try to use all of the ways we depict nature and natural history as content,” Rockman says, explaining the natural sciences bias of his subjects. “I’m interested in credibility.” His love for science and art flourished during childhood in his native New York. “I grew up in the American Museum of Natural History. My mother was an assistant to Margaret Meade … it shaped my perspective. ... Charles R. Knight and Chesley Bonestell were my heroes.” His education at the School of Visual Arts complemented long studies of nature in the United States and abroad. “I started out thinking that I would be a scientist. Eventually, over the years, I ended up becoming interested in other types of practices, like certain genres of filmmaking, animation. I think what I ended up doing was really a combination of all those different interests. I’ve always been interested in the history of the representation of nature.”Rockman’s style, now realistic now abstract, has eluded traditional descriptions, “I try to make it as credible as possible without making it boring.” Some have seen surrealism in his unusual depictions of plants, animals, and humans, “What I am after … is the disturbing part or the transformative part.” Embracing popular culture, he flaunts it with great precision in a manner called hyperrealism in the tradition of Grant Wood, who captured the rural Midwest of the 20th century, especially in his American Gothic. Like pop art icon Andy Warhol, he is comfortable with modern technology and skillful with its agility and interactivity, “computer-manipulated, archetypal images that we’ve all seen, or if we haven’t seen them we feel that we know them.” The Farm, on this month’s cover, was commissioned by Creative Time, a public arts organization, as a New York City billboard. “I like to put people off-kilter by breaking up expected visual patterns.”The constant struggles between nature and its creatures engage all of Rockman’s interests from evolution, climate change, and genetic engineering to the failures of technology. Like his idol H.G. Wells, the artist portrays humans as, “the unnatural animal, the rebel child of nature,” that, “more and more … turns himself against the harsh and fitful hand that reared him.”The Farm portrays this favorite theme. Developing it follows the artist’s usual path of discovery, which involves learning from an expert, in this case a molecular biologist, about genetics and artificial selection. The subject drives the medium. The story unfolds with the clarity of a high-definition screen. A field of soybeans extends as far as the eye can see; against it, an allegorical tableau, in Rockman’s words, “the way humans have altered their landscape.”“The way I constructed it is that, as in a lot of Western culture, we read things from left to right,” he explained in an interview. “On the left side of the image are the ancestral species of the chicken, the pig, the cow, and the mouse”; on the right, their contemporary versions. Farther to the right are “permutations of what things might look like in the future.” The transition from wild cow and boar to familiar barnyard beasts to grotesque technologically engineered models is precise and tactical, and the animals still maintain some original species characteristics. A fruit fly, a strand of DNA, an overmanipulated dog inside a prize-winning blue rosette compete for attention with the cocks placed conspicuously on the fence, straddling the horizon, challenging Megasthenes. Tomatoes created to fit the shipping crate, loaf-shaped watermelons, and multicolor corn complete the picture, occupying several layers of time and genetic activity in the permissive context the artist calls “democratic space.”Rockman’s vision of biotechnology is riddled with clues and inside jokes rooted in economic, social, ethical, and other concerns. It’s a vision he wants to popularize, “It has to be decipherable to a six-year-old child. I try to construct it as an onion with different layers of meaning and iconography.” The Farm succeeds in this regard, perhaps even beyond the artist’s intentions. This icon of biotechnology is also the stage for foodborne disease emergence. The soybean farm is much too close to the farm animals, whose fertile waste deposits seep into the nearby water used to irrigate the plants. The fence is useless for keeping out rodents or birds and their microbial deposits. And human manipulation, intended to make larger more efficient food animals, may have unintended consequences. If the DNA strands were animated, they would be turning wildly.E. coli O157:H7 infection was associated with salad. Samples taken from a stream, cattle manure, and feces from wild pigs on ranches in Salinas Valley, California, implicated spinach, but after this outbreak, leafy greens were seen as subject to this type of contamination. Rockman’s iconic overlap of urban, agricultural, and cattle-raising elements in ecosystems containing sigmodontine rodents, which are reservoirs of hantaviruses, is a recipe for hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. The syndrome, now found throughout the United States, is rare but deadly. Mad cow disease emerged in Great Britain, possibly as an interspecies transfer of scrapie from sheep to cattle and moved around the globe through trade. Spread from human to human is now a threat through contaminated hospital equipment and blood transfusions. People who consume antler velvet as a nutritional supplement may also be at risk for exposure to prions.A 2006 multistate outbreak of “Nature isn’t what it used to be,” Rockman wrote in one of his books. And of course it never was or ever will be. But the irony of that statement awaits future developments. Because, as H.G. Wells put it, “The only true measure of success is the ratio between what we might have done and what we might have been on the one hand, and the thing we have made and the things we have made of ourselves on the other.”


Deepwater Horizon oil rig, the Obama administration announced it would pause offshore drilling plans in the Arctic Ocean, one of the planet’s most pristine ecosystems.On 27 May 2010, with crude oil gushing into the Gulf of Mexico after the explosion of BP’s With shallow-water, near-shore reserves increasingly tapped out in the Gulf of Mexico, oil companies are being forced into more challenging terrain to sustain domestic energy production. That means pushing into much deeper geology in the Gulf of Mexico—much of it more than a mile underwater—and also into ecologically fragile locations off the coast of Alaska.In decades past, oil companies didn’t prioritize the offshore Arctic for development because drilling there was too expensive. Oil prices simply weren’t high enough to sustain production windows limited to just a few months in summer, when thawing seas make drilling possible, explains Layla Hughes, an attorney and senior program officer for Arctic oil, gas, and shipping policy at the WWF in Juneau. But as economies in China, India, and Brazil have grown, global fuel demands have risen accordingly,Oil companies now have to prove they can extract those resources safely, without compromising an ecosystem that might never recover from the effects of a large blowout. Dana Wetzel, an ecotoxicologist at Mote Marine Laboratory with 10 years’ research experience in the Arctic, says oil degradation depends largely on temperature. When exposed to frigid water, oil turns quickly into a thick, tarry substance that microbes can’t easily degrade.Exxon Valdez spill, which occurred roughly 400 miles south of the Arctic Circle, likely underestimates the full environmental impact of a blowout even farther to the north. “The Valdez was a horrible spill in a rich marine ecosystem, but you didn’t have the oiling of the sea ice,” Wetzel says. “If you taint sea ice with oil, you’re never going to get rid of it. And those ice floes are home to walruses, seals, and polar bears. Many people survive up there by subsistence hunting, and to contaminate their food is one of the worst moral blows you can deliver to those communities.”3The 1989 The Alaska Outer Continental Shelf (OCS), a swath of submerged territory under U.S. federal control—contains an estimated 23% of the nation’s technically recoverableThe federal government manages OCS oil and gas resources off Alaska and also off the Gulf of Mexico and along the Pacific and Atlantic coasts using a multistage process. The Department of the Interior first decides which areas are available for drilling, and then it sells leasing rights to those areas to the highest bidder. With Lease Sale 193, Royal Dutch Shell, PLC, which is the only company that was prepared to drill this year in the Alaska OCS, paid $2.2 billion for the rights to explore in the Chukchi Sea, which lies west of Barrow, the state’s northernmost city.7That 2008 purchase allowed Shell to use seismic technology to conduct geophysical searches for oil and gas in the Chukchi and also to submit an exploration plan detailing how the company would drill wells to confirm if petroleum was present in suspected locations. What was then the MMS reviewed Shell’s exploration plan and in December 2009 gave the company the green light for three exploratory wells in the Chukchi and two more in the adjoining Beaufort Sea to the east of Barrow, where Shell had purchased exploration rights in a prior lease sale, according to Shell spokesman Curtis Smith.Deepwater Horizon oil rig exploded on April 20, offshore operations throughout U.S. waters came under intense scrutiny. Prior to that disaster, both oil companies and the MMS could promote Arctic development on the basis of what they each claimed was a history of safe drilling in the Gulf of Mexico. The MMS deemed the likelihood of an Arctic blowout remote on the basis of its own research showing that “four wells out of fourteen thousand studied [in the Gulf] had undergone a blowout scenario, with the largest incident releasing some two hundred barrels of oil,” says BOEMRE spokesman John Callahan.But after the Whether the estimated 4.9 million barrels  of oil released during the recent Gulf spillOn May 27, just as a month-long moratorium on drilling was set to expire, the administration extended it for deepwater operations in the Gulf of Mexico for an additional six months, claiming the pause was necessary to ensure oil companies working at extreme depths had adequate spill prevention and response capabilities.After the federal suspension, Shell’s exploration plans took another hit on July 21, when the Alaska Federal District Court ruled the MMS hadn’t sufficiently considered environmental threats posed by drilling activities associated with Lease Sale 193.Smith admits these setbacks create uncertainty for the company, which he says has $3.5 billion invested toward its OCS operations in Alaska, including not just the value of its lease purchase but also oil spill response infrastructure, operational readiness, seismic investigations, and research. “We’re unsure how [the July 21 decision] might impact our aspirations to drill in 2011,” Smith says. “While the ruling is disappointing, the judge did not vacate the lease sale, and his specific concerns can be remedied expeditiously provided the BOEMRE completes the work in question.” In response, Callahan would say only that the agency is reviewing the Alaska court’s decision carefully and deciding how best to comply with it.Chuck Clusen, director of the Natural Resources Defense Council’s Alaska project, describes Shell as the biggest offshore operator in the area by far. “Shell’s at the leading edge, and the other companies are hanging back waiting for it to start so they can see what happens and then act on their own,” he says. Other companies with preliminary operations in the Alaska OCS include Chevron, Conoco Philips, Statoil (a Norwegian company), ExxonMobil, and BP, according to Ranger.BP has spent over a decade developing its controversial Liberty Project, which aims to extract 100 million barrels of oil from under the Beaufort Sea. The company was planning to access the oil with an “extended reach” horizontal well, drilled from a gravel island built three miles offshore in Prudhoe Bay. Digging first two miles down, and then six to eight miles out horizontally to the oil reservoir, this would be the longest extended-reach well ever created, Ranger says.Deepwater Horizon disaster, BP’s offshore plans in Alaska appear to be on hold. The company has yet to submit an application for a permit to drill in the Beaufort Sea, Callahan says, and according to Ranger, BP has indicated it is likely to delay the project.Yet in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon rig) gushes oil at a flow rate of 15,000 psi, Smith says historical data put expected flow rates in the Alaska OCS at a much lower 6,000 psi. That figure—produced by Shell during prior exploratory drilling in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas, according to Smith—has not been confirmed by external experts, and Callahan did not respond to inquiries about external review of Shell’s wellhead pressure estimate.As offshore Arctic drilling waits to go forward, the essential question is whether it can be done safely. The petroleum industry insists the answer is yes. Ranger claims drilling depths currently being considered in the U.S. Arctic don’t exceed 500 feet, unlike the 5,000 depths or more in the Gulf of Mexico. Moreover, oil flows are much less pressurized in the region, he says. While the Macondo Prospect (the geological site of the Deepwater Horizon,” he wrote.10Nevertheless, lower pressure is held up as a key argument for the safety of Arctic drilling. According to Ranger, companies studying potential projects in the U.S. Arctic believe shallow waters will make it easier for divers and submersibles to respond to a potential blowout, while lower pressures will make a blowout less likely overall. In a May 14 letter to former MMS director S. Elizabeth Birnbaum, Shell’s president, Marvin Odum, took a similar stand. “Due to the difference in expected down-hole pressure of the Macondo well versus our planned 2010 wells, our margin to safely operate in Alaska is much greater than that experienced by In the letter, Odum argued that drilling muds—slurries of clay and other minerals mixed with water or oil that modulate oil flows in the pipe connecting the wellhead at the seafloor to the drill rig at the surface—would be heavy enough to contain a low-pressure blowout. He also referenced other safety features such as cement liners that strengthen the casing pipe, which extends downward from the wellhead to the oil reservoir deep underground. A series of interconnected pipes, the casing is analogous to a telescope, with a wide end at the surface that narrows as each additional pipe goes through the bore, penetrating into the geology below. Each pipe is secured with cement, Ranger explains, and that’s what ensures the integrity of the well (indeed, an inadequate cement job compromised by skimping on costs was one of the fatal flaws of the destroyed BP wellStill, Ranger admits responders would have a limited ability to contain a blowout should it occur. “The laws of physics and chemistry make it very difficult to remove one liquid, in this case oil, from another, meaning water,” he says. “All on-water oil-spill response is imperfect, and our ability to recover oil mechanically ranges from ten percent to thirty percent. Those are the realities.”Arctic drilling is only viable, Hughes says, from July through late September or October. Each year the sea ice first starts separating from shore in April, creating a steadily widening stretch of open water called a lead. By July, open water dominates in the region, although portions still freeze over occasionally, and pack ice can still threaten drilling operations. Come November, the region has completely refrozen.In a worst-case scenario, a blowout would occur in late fall, producing an oil gusher blocked at the surface by newly formed ice, says Rick Steiner, a professor of marine conservation at the University of Alaska in Anchorage. Inaccessible to skimmers, booms, and other mechanical recovery tools, oil would flow under the frozen surface and spread throughout the region. “There would be nothing you could do about it until the ice goes out again in June,” Steiner emphasizes. “The oil would be in evidence for decades. It could fundamentally restructure the Arctic Ocean ecosystem, which is already threatened by damage from climate change.”Smith says that in the event of a major spill, the company would deploy its “world-class, on-site oil-response kit,” which includes booms, skimmers, helicopters, support vessels, and other infrastructure, all floating next to the drill site and ready for mobilization within an hour. He also claims Shell could drill a relief well within 30 days using an “ice-ready” drill rig that can work late into the winter season. The spill response plan has been reviewed and approved by the U.S. Coast Guard, Smith says. “We’re also at pre-engineering stages on a containment dome developed specifically for Arctic conditions,” he adds.Yet in a blog posting dated May 26, Clusen wrote that Shell offers no explanation for why such a dome would be more successful than the one that failed in the Gulf. “Although much shallower, the [proposed] wells in the Arctic are sufficiently cold to produce the methane hydrate crystals that formed in the Gulf and clogged the hole at the top through which the oil was supposed to be removed by a pipe to the sea surface,” he wrote.12Deepwater Horizon response at one point involved more than 5,300 vessels, 120 aircraft, 4.27 million feet of boom, 1.8 million gallons of dispersant, and 42,000 people,12Moreover, Hughes disputes the notion that a relief well could be drilled in less than 30 days, and claims current efforts to drill such wells at the Macondo Prospect—in their 105th day at the time of this writing—bolster her case. Patrick Lewis, officer for responsible industry at the WWF’s International Arctic Programme in Oslo, Norway, adds there’s no way the Alaskan infrastructure could handle a large offshore spill response. Where the Moreover, it’s unlikely that chemical dispersants used to break oil into minute particles that undergo more rapid microbial degradation underwater would be as effective in the Alaska OCS as they were in the Gulf of Mexico, according to Carys Mitchelmore, an associate professor at the University of Maryland’s Chesapeake Biological Laboratory. How well dispersants work depends in part on temperature, she says, such that applications would be more effective at the wellhead, where spewing oil is hot. But after bubbling just a few meters toward the surface in frigid water, oil thickens into a more viscous form that doesn’t respond to dispersants as readily as more fluid oil.In Steiner’s view, Shell and the other companies proposing to work in the offshore Arctic need to develop better blowout risk assessments, prevention plans, and response measures, reviewed not just by BOEMRE but also by other independent bodies such as the National Academy of Sciences or the National Academy of Engineering. “The companies just haven’t gone through the hundred-and-one ways a blowout could occur, and in my opinion, they haven’t sufficiently articulated their plans for drilling relief wells,” he says.Callahan responds, “The Alaska Region [of BOEMRE] can confirm that it reviewed Shell’s contingency plan and found it adequate for the time it was issued. However, in light of the BP oil spill in the Gulf and new requirements for the plans, we will be reviewing the adequacy of the current version of the project’s spill plan.”Asked about the impact of the Gulf spill on BOEMRE policies with respect to Arctic drilling, Callahan says, “We must raise the bar for offshore oil and gas operations . . . holding them to the highest safety standards to ensure they follow the law rather than cut corners. The stronger regulatory structure, tougher safety requirements, and new leadership we are putting in place will bring about fundamental changes to how our nation oversees oil and gas operations.”Environmentalists interviewed for this story seem resigned to the notion that drilling on the Alaska OCS is likely at some point. “There’s a lot of oil up there, and the state of Alaska desperately wants to go forward on this,” Clusen says. Opinions among native groups are divided, adds Jonny Jemming, a Barrow lawyer who represents the North Slope Borough, an Inupiat-led municipal government in northern Alaska. Although many Inupiat, or native people of Alaska, rely in large part on marine subsistence for their dietary needs, their native corporations are also heavily contracted with oil industries in the Alaska OCS, he says.Jemming says it’s not fair to say that all Inupiat are against offshore drilling. “There’s a realization that these decisions are ultimately made far outside our control,” he says. “Oil operations are part of the socioeconomic health of the region. But from what we have seen, the technologies for oil spill mitigation aren’t adequate to minimize the risk from these operations. What we have been asking for are the highest safety standards possible and that they be implemented before development takes place. We see this as reasonable ocean management.”Still, that raises a difficult question: What would an offshore drilling plan in the Arctic need to demonstrate before it’s seen as reasonable? The only logical conclusion is that it would show either that a blowout would never occur or that it wouldn’t pose an unacceptable risk to the region’s fragile ecology. That sets a high bar, and the oil industry will have to show it can meet it.Steiner adds that although offshore drilling has broad support in Alaska, the decision to go forward with it involves fundamental choices for society. “Do we continue our devastating industrial expansion into one of the last, pristine wild areas in the world, extract and use the billions of tons of fossil carbon energy there, and further degrade the environment of the region and the world?” he asks. “Or do we choose another, sustainable future?”Offshore Arctic development also has an international component, given that seven circumpolar nations—the United States, Russia, Canada, Norway, Greenland, Iceland, and Sweden—have claims to submerged territory in the region that could hold as much as of 25% of the world’s remaining petroleum reserves. In one closely watched operation, the Scottish company Cairn Energy is drilling exploration wells in the Davis Straits, an icy stretch between Greenland and Baffin Island. Statoil already drills for natural gas now in the Barents Sea at a point roughly 90 miles northwest of Hammerfest, Norway.Patrick Lewis of the WWF International Arctic Programme says very little of the accessible Arctic sea floor is unclaimed by one country or another. “And there’s a complete absence of international regulation over the oil and gas industries,” he says. “While other global sectors, such as shipping, are regulated at the international level, the petroleum sector still depends on [national-level] regulation, which is frequently inconsistent across regions and poorly administered.”Therefore, oil companies may choose to operate in areas where rules governing environmental safety—or enforcement of those rules—is more lax. “Unfortunately,” Lewis says, “the consequences of a major spill may well affect more than just one jurisdiction.”


Thousands have been excavated from various sites.“The art of [marble] sculpture is much older than that of painting or bronze statuary,” wrote Pliny the Elder  that would have given the face a strikingly realistic appearance” , on this month’s cover, represented the donor, a nobleman named Romvos as inscribed on the base. The figure, found in fragments on the grounds of the Acropolis near the sanctuary of the Temple of Athena, has none of the masklike quality of earlier Romvos is carrying an animal for sacrifice on the altar of Goddess Athena, a formidable fixture of the Hellenic pantheon known for its temperamental deities and countless demigods and their descendents. Their origins and relationships with humans were fodder for myths and art through sculpture and elaborate iconography. Gods gave gifts and favors. Humans offered votives as thanks, atonement, entreaty, or worship.Sacrifice (from sacrificium [sacred] + facere [make] = to make sacred) was a central part of religious practice during festivals and feast days. The ritual was performed in well-defined space within a temple sanctuary. Some feasts were Pan-Hellenic and included processions and athletic competitions. “There are sanctuaries of Hermes Kriophoros,” wrote Pausanias, describing the city of Tanagra. “... Hermes averted a pestilence from the city by carrying a ram round the walls; to commemorate this Calamis made an image of Hermes carrying a ram upon his shoulders. Whichever of the youths is judged to be the most handsome goes round the walls at the feast carrying a lamb on his shoulders” .The contradictions inherent in religious sacrifice did not elude ritual participants, who ate little meat outside these religious feasts. The rituals may have expressed their uneasiness at killing animals for food and to appease the gods. Their ambivalence continued during the classical period, when even large domestic animals sustainable only in small numbers were used. “Our ancestors handed down to us the most powerful and prosperous community ... by performing the prescribed sacrifices,” wrote Athens orator Lysias, defending the practice. “It is therefore proper for us to offer the same ... if only for the sake of the success which has resulted from those rites” (Moschophoros stuns for its ability to bring to life eons after its creation a moment of connection. The human face, wearing a smile, the single most appealing adornment then and now, is framed by the surrendered animal. The marble seems to melt in the calf’s unparalleled fragility and tenderness. Locked in a secure embrace, human and animal take a step together, an ear touching, a tail relaxed.“My pawing over the ancients and semi-ancients,” wrote Ezra Pound, “has been one long struggle to find out what has been done, once for all, better than it can ever be done again, and to find out what remains for us to do” (Moschophoros is not ancient. The statue exists in the present. It can be touched, viewed, and examined for universal meaning. Resilient and unchanged, it defies death. And like other marvels from antiquity, it takes the initiative in speaking to us. “The statues are not the ruins,” wrote Seferis. Inasmuch as we die before we step forward, “—we are the ruins” (


He painted them making turpentine, mining clay, harvesting tobacco, buying andselling goods. His portrait of an aircraft-engine factory worker in New Jersey won him aGuggenheim Fellowship in 1944. But his best known painting is probably FuneralProcession, a work displayed above the mantle of the Huxtables’ living room inthe 1980s–90s television series The Cosby Show.Wilson was born in Mayfield, a cloth-manufacturing town in Kentucky’stobacco-growing region. The son of a barber-cabinet maker who took art lessons andpainted with some success, he was inspired by his father to study art from a young age.“I guess I got what little talent I have from him,” he said in a 1975interview. Young Wilson did odd jobs and worked as janitor at Day’sReady-to-Wear, where his weekly portraits drawn with cleaning wax on the dress shopwindow delighted passersby.The aspiring artist attended Kentucky State College in Frankfort, then moved north tocontinue his studies at the Art Institute of Chicago in 1919, a period of racialupheaval and riots. “I couldn’t go downtown to the Art Institute. Theywere shooting and carrying on.” He joined the Chicago Art League and met many inthe art community, among them sculptor Richmond Barthé. “I had never beenin a group of artists …. It was just great to be numbered among them.”After completing his studies, he worked as commercial artist for a few years, thentraveled to New York in 1928, during the period of cultural and artistic resurgenceHarlem Renaissance.In New York, Wilson broke away from the academic style taught him in Chicago and fromrepresentational painting to focus on shape and color. His forms became increasinglyangular and elongated, the colors brighter and more vibrant, the faces spare andmasklike with a modernist inflection. “I just cut out completely from anythingthat looked like a portrait. It was freer. I was astounded.” He worked for theFederal Art Project sponsored by the Works Progress Administration and at various otherjobs, joined the Harlem Artists Guild, and continued to paint and meet other painters:Aaron Douglas, Alain Locke, Joseph Delaney, Palmer Hayden. He moved to GreenwichVillage, where he exhibited at Augusta Savage’s Salon and other venues.“Practically all my life I have been painting under difficult conditions,”Wilson said of earning a living from art. “Lack of money and time, especiallytime, has prevented me from painting as much and as often as I have wanted to.”Dealers “wanted all black painters to be ‘primitives,’” andthe public viewed him with mistrust. “A white woman who bought pictures from meinvited me to her home in North Carolina. I told inquisitive people that I did paintingfor her in New York. They thought I was a house painter.”Despite these difficulties, Wilson sought and received fellowships, awards, and otheropportunities, which allowed him to roam the southern states, the Sea Islands, and laterHaiti. The experiences broadened his artistic scope and nourished his creativity.“I could express myself to the fullest degree and accomplish worthwhilework.” In Charleston, South Carolina, he became fascinated with the local openmarket, its vendors and crowds and the hustle and bustle of their daily activities. Heobserved and sketched them freely and marveled at the authenticity and honesty of theirlives. “I noticed such great hopes among the people in the South: hopes that theycould soon vote, and hopes that education would become free and open. My own hope isthat I capture their hopes in my work.”His work in Haiti, marked by exuberant color and figures free of extraneous detail, wassimilarly expansive, “I’d never seen a tropical place―and with themusic, the drumming, the dancing… [the people] were very artistic.” Thiswork was well received back in New York, where he returned to live and paint until hisdeath. But his legacy as an innovator, both in his choice of subject matter andgeometric boldly colored form, was not fully appreciated until later.“I hold my honey and I store my bread / In little jars and cabinets of my will / Ilabel clearly, and each latch and lid / I bid, Be firm till I return from hell,”wrote Gendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) in her poem “My Dreams, My Works, MustWait Till after Hell,” expressing the frustrations of her generation and givingwords to Wilson’s dilemma. All his training, high profile works, contacts in theart world, all his talent and dedication could not overcome the odds against him. Hedied unknown and was buried in an unmarked, “pauper’s” grave. Fewerthan 100 of his paintings have been located.Caribbean Bird Vendor, on this month’s cover, captures Wilson’s love ofbeauty as a main goal in art. The flat fully delineated form suits the regal figure hehas placed against yellowing vegetation and directly in front of the viewer. Sturdy andsolid, this vendor is sketched with little embellishment or detail, yet his geometricfeatures denote sadness, and he seems preoccupied. His eyes, unfocused, show detachmentfrom his circumstances as a seller of birds. The parrot on his shoulder is perched withease, claws withdrawn. The bird in the lower right is also at peace, nesting attentivelyin his cupped palm. But the one in the center is panic stricken. Pulling in the oppositedirection from the other birds, its feathers ruffled and spread, beak open, eye glaring,claws flexing, it is ready for flight. The vendor seems ambivalent as he steadies it onhis chest.The vibrant colors only add to the tension in this scene. The bird in distress, the mostattractive and volatile, draws all the attention, its frantic state amplifying theunnatural calm of the vendor, who seems not controlling but protective, as ifuncomfortable with the intent to sell his charges. A means to earn a living, the sale ofbirds and other wildlife out of their natural habitat is part of economic reality inmuch of the world. This vendor may well loathe his own occupation.Apart from the cruelty inherent in animal displacement and captivity, sensed byWilson’s vendor, other reasons, not least of them public health, compel againstthe sale and import of exotic birds. Unsanitary conditions in live bird markets in theUnited States and abroad have come under scrutiny in recent years, when legal andillegal trade in domestic and wild birds was associated with the global spread of highlypathogenic avian influenza (H5N1). This issue of Emerging Infectious Diseases featuresother health crises associated with animals on the move, from leptospirosis to Marburgvirus infection and white-nose syndrome in bats, and examines fungal infections thatcould spread through inhaling dust contaminated with spores from bird droppings.As he painted other people at work, Wilson was sensitive to the socioeconomic factorsthat prevented him from achieving greatness in his own time. What he did not know wasthat the same factors interfere with health, in a web of zoonotic and environmentalinterconnections.


Virchow was one of the 19th century’s foremost leaders in medicine and pathology. He was also a public health activist, social reformer, politician, and anthropologist.Virchow was the only child of a farmer and city treasurer in Schivelbein, Germany. He had a strong interest in natural science. In 1839, he received a scholarship from the Prussian Military Academy, where he was given the opportunity to study medicine in preparation for a career as an army physician. He studied medicine in Berlin and then taught there for the most of his life, with interludes in Silesia and Würzberg. In 1847, he and a colleague, Benino Reinhardt, founded the Archiv für Pathologische Anatomie und Physiologie (now known as “Virchow’s Archives”), which still survives as a leading journal of pathology. He encouraged his students to use microscopes and “think microscopically.” Virchow had a major impact on medical education in Germany. He taught several persons who became famous scientists in Germany, including Edwin Klebs, Ernst Haekel, and Adolf Kussmaul. He also taught William Welch and William Osler, 2 of the 4 famous physicians who founded Johns Hopkins Hospital.omnis cellula e cellula” (“every cell stems from another cell”). With this approach Virchow launched the field of cellular pathology. He stated that all diseases involve changes in normal cells, that is, all pathology ultimately is cellular pathology. This insight led to major progress in the practice of medicine. It meant that disease entities could be defined much more sharply. Diseases could be characterized not merely by a group of clinical symptoms but by typical anatomic changes. Pathologic anatomy, in addition to its great scientific merit, had tremendous practical consequences. If the physician was able to find out what anatomic changes had occurred in a patient, he could make a much more accurate diagnosis of the disease than he could in the past. This also empowered physicians to give more precise treatment and prognosis. In many of his speeches Virchow stated that the practice of medicine in Germany should shift away from being a largely theoretical activity. He advocated for the study of microscopic pathological anatomy, for research to be performed by physicians, the importance of making systematic clinical observations, and the performance of animal experimentations.Virchow’s greatest accomplishment was his observation that a whole organism does not get sick—only certain cells or groups of cells. In 1855, at the age of 34, he published his now famous aphorism “Virchow’s many discoveries include finding cells in bone and connective tissue and describing substances such as myelin. He was the first person to recognize leukemia. He was also the first person to explain the mechanism of pulmonary thromboembolism. He documented that blood clots in the pulmonary artery can originate from venous thrombi. While Virchow, in Germany, was developing the new science of cellular pathology, Louis Pasteur, in France, was developing the new science of bacteriology. Virchow fought the germ theory of Pasteur. He believed that a diseased tissue was caused by a breakdown of order within cells and not from an invasion of a foreign organism. We know today that Virchow and Pasteur were both correct in their theories on the causality of disease.Virchow noted the link between diseases of humans and animals and coined the term “zoonosis” to indicate the infectious diseases links between animal and human health. In addition to his groundbreaking work in cellular pathology he created the field of comparative pathology. Yet, Virchow’s concept of “One Medicine,” was not uniformly appreciated during his lifetime.In 1848, Virchow served on a commission to investigate an epidemic of typhus, for which he wrote a penetrating report that criticized the social conditions that fostered the spread of the disease. He had already established a reputation as a crusading social reformer, and this report consolidated that reputation. He has since been identified as much with what came to be called “social medicine” as with his primary specialty of pathology.Virchow was an outspoken advocate for public health. His writings and teachings are full of observations and recommendations about ways to improve people’s health by improving their economic and social conditions. He entered politics, serving in the German Reichstag (1880–1893), while also directing the Pathological Institute in Berlin. He helped to shape the healthcare reforms introduced in Germany during the administration of Otto von Bismarck. His prolific writings, while mainly on topics of pathology, included many essays and addresses on social medicine and public health.Trichinella spiralis in swine and its zoonotic consequences. He was opposed to Bismarck’s excessive military budget, which angered Bismarck sufficiently to challenge Virchow to a duel. Virchow, being entitled to choose the weapons, chose 2 pork sausages: a cooked sausage for himself and an uncooked one, loaded with Trichinella larvae, for Bismark. Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor, declined the proposition as too risky.Among Virchow’s many interests was helminthology. He described the life cycle of Homo sapiens, whose deformations were caused by rickets in childhood and arthritis later in life, with the flattened skull due to powerful blows to the head. Subsequent discoveries and research showed that the Neanderthals are, indeed, ancient.Virchow also contributed substantially to anthropology, paleontology, and archeology. It should be noted that even men of great accomplishment, like Virchow, are fallible. Virchow believed that the Neanderthal man was a modern


The broad outlines—transcription increases when the local chromosomal environment is opened up and decreases when it condenses—and even many of the details are well known. On the other hand, a quantitative understanding of the regulatory logic governing the activation or repression of any particular gene is less well known. In a new study, Janos Kelemen, Attila Becskei, and colleagues elucidate one aspect of that logic, showing that the same regulatory protein can have two quite different effects, depending on the number and spatial positioning of its binding sites around its target gene.The regulatory regions of a eukaryotic gene are complex and include both enhancer and repressor binding sites. Enhancer sites bind activator proteins, which increase the activity of the transcription machinery. Repressor sites bind silencing proteins, which decrease transcription, either by interfering with the machinery directly, or by linking up with one another, forming inhibitory chromosomal structures that prevent access to the gene within.To explore the effect of silencer positioning, the authors flanked a fluorescent reporter gene in yeast with binding sites for the silencing protein Sir3p. They then added both silencer and activator proteins, and watched what happened. They found that with an intermediate level of activator, some cells lit up, whereas others didn't—the gene was essentially switched all the way on in some, but all the way off in others.The ability of a system to exhibit two stable states—on and off—under one set of conditions is called bistability. To understand how bistability could arise in their system, the authors constructed a mathematical model. It took the form of a “reaction-diffusion” equation, with each term representing one influence on the concentration of the silencing protein, including its ability to slide along the DNA until it finds its binding site, its propensity to associate with other Sir3p molecules, and the mutually reinforcing effects of chromatin condensation on protein concentration. Importantly, when Sir3p binds to the chromosome, it acts as a “nucleation site” for other Sir3p proteins, a process that speeds up as more proteins bind.By running simulations with their model, they showed that when there were two silencing sites on opposite sides of the gene, two different patterns of Sir3p concentration over time could arise, depending on the initial concentration of the protein. When the initial concentration was high, the two sites reinforced one another, with nucleation at one speeding up the accumulation of protein at the other. But when the initial concentration was low, the effect of the two silencing sites remained isolated, with a weak accumulation at both sites.When the authors varied activator levels in the simulations, they reproduced their experimental observations. At intermediate levels, bistability emerged, predicting that some cells in a population—those with high initial Sir3p—remain “off,” whereas others—those low in Sir3p—switch “on.”The bistable pattern collapsed, however, when they removed one of the binding sites. In that situation, there was only a single source for Sir3p nucleation and no reinforcement between sites. Instead, the system exhibited “monostability”—cells exhibited a graded, rather than on/off response to increasing levels of activator. Further tinkering with the model indicated that weakening the strengths of interaction among Sir3p proteins could turn a bistable system into a monostable one, as well.The quantitative understanding of how the spatial pattern of silencer binding sites distinguishes bistability from monostability is likely to have some important consequences. In silico, it should allow researchers to fine-tune model systems to better approximate gene expression in living systems. It should also lead to a better understanding of the more complex regulatory control underlying expression of individual genes in vivo. Although the experiments in this study were performed in yeast, it is likely that the findings are relevant to humans as well, given that at the level of gene regulation eukaryotes of all kinds share many of the same fundamental mechanisms.Kelemen JZ, Ratna P, Scherrer S, Becskei A (2010) Spatial Epigenetic Control of Mono- and Bistable Gene Expression. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.1000332


This agrees with our Bruegel …. Indeed, I would not call him the best of painters, but rather the very nature of painters. So I think that he is worthy of being followed by all,” noted Ortelius, not alone in his praise.“Nature was wonderfully felicitous in her choice when, in an obscure village in Brabant, she selected the gifted and witty Pieter Breughel to paint her and her peasants and to contribute to the everlasting fame of painting in the Netherlands,” wrote Karel van Mander in his Book of Painters in 1604. The obscure village was Breughel, a name the painter took for himself, though he later dropped the “h” in its spelling. Not much is known about him outside van Mander’s account. “He learned his craft from Pieter Koecke van Aelst, whose daughter he later married.” He settled in Antwerp and joined the guild of painters. He did much work for Hans Franckert, a merchant, who joined him often in his excursions among the peasants to know and paint them. He traveled to Rome but lived most of his 44 years in Antwerp and Brussels.He was a “quiet and able man who did not talk much but was jovial in company, and he loved to frighten people, often his own pupils, with all kinds of ghostly sounds and pranks that he played.” His penchant for levity carried into his work. “He practiced a good deal in the manner of Jeroon [Hieronymus] van den Bosch and made many similar weird scenes and drolleries,” van Mander wrote, “Indeed, there are very few works from his hand that the beholder can look at seriously, without laughing. However stiff, serious, and morose one may be, one cannot help laughing or smiling.”Mirth was welcome in Bruegel’s times, much as today. The Netherlands, then a kingdom under Spanish rule, was torn by religious fanaticism, and many were killed for heresy. Some of Bruegel’s works are allegories of the struggles between religious factions, but “it would be very hard to enumerate everything Bruegel did―fantasies, representations of hell, peasant scenes, and many other things …. He painted a picture in which Lent and Carnival are fighting; another, where all kinds of remedies are used against death; and one with all kinds of children at games; and innumerable other little, clever things.” His paintings were popular in his lifetime. They were collected by the Habsburgs and brought high prices; 49 works survive. Yet his reputation among the critics suffered from his overstated connection with Bosch and from his reluctance to follow the idealized styles prescribed by the Italian Renaissance.Bruegel painted The Fall of the Rebel Angels, on this month’s cover, while he lived in Antwerp. This work, one of very few in the tradition of Bosch, shows Bruegel’s inclination toward the monumental, an aspect of the Italian Renaissance he did adopt. This, like many of his other works, shows a panoramic scene entirely filled with figures. The simplicity of form that characterizes these figures is what distinguishes Bruegel from other Flemish artists of his generation. The flat shapes, clean contours, and expressive faces devoid of extraneous detail are readily recognizable.The fall of the rebel angels was described in the Book of Revelation as conflict between Archangel Michael and the forces of good against “that ancient serpent” and his fallen angels. The conflict, a favored theme in art from the Middle Ages onward, was commemorated in literary works from John Milton to Jonathan Edwards and William Blake. Bruegel approached the subject with his usual good humor, creating as a result a new version of Pandemonium. And moving away from biblical judgments, he fashioned for the good angels to remedy not so much a theological crisis as a “fine kettle of fish.”While Bosch may be credited for inspiring this venture into the fantastic, Bruegel moved away from exotic ethereal creatures in favor of more earthy beasts with facial expressions, peering eyes, human limbs. These are no phantoms glowing in the painter’s imagination. They are pests―annoying, grotesque and interfering, prickly, buzzing, mocking, biting, threatening―even as they fall in total disarray into the depths of darkness. To make the scene more intriguing, Bruegel throws in realistically drawn detail: butterfly wings, an embellished robe, a grinning possum, a musical instrument or two, giving the scene more credibility and the fallen a certain wicked charm.Fierce creatures as a metaphor for evil abound in literature. “Tyger! Tyger! Burning bright / in the forests of the night,” wrote William Blake (1757–1827) in Songs of Experience, “What immortal hand or eye / could frame thy fearful symmetry?” These famous lines generated countless discussions and interpretations, many about the possible link between Blake’s legendary carnivore and the struggle between good and evil in the world, between the tiger and “man in his fallen state.” “When the stars threw down their spears, / And watered heaven with their tears, / Did he smile his work to see? / Did he who made the lamb make thee?”Lit by heaven, angels in flowing robes with the archangel in the lead, his princely gown billowing, are swatting dozens of monsters, while still more are hatching. Though outnumbered, the angels seem unfazed. The proceedings provide a tantalizing spectacle, not just of failed angels but of all monsters, among them nature’s ferocious bloodsucking nation of fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, and other horrors, pestering without provocation and spreading pain and disease, from epidemic typhus to bartonellosis, from rickettsioses to relapsing fever.“I dried my tears and armed my fears / with ten thousand shields and spears,” wrote Blake in Songs of Experience, lamenting the loss of a guardian angel and building up personal defenses and strength. When it comes to swatting monsters in today’s infectious Bedlam, we can do no less. Like Bruegel’s angels we are outnumbered. Either we remain vigilant and keep the pests at bay, or we join them and fall.


Humans have dark side that loves crime and violence. We all may deny it but the contrary is true. And it applies regardless of our age, caste, social status, region, religion or education. The television, movies, sports and many happenings reported in news papers and magazines are indicative of our obsession with the fact and fiction of crime and violence. Modern culture is infact can be referred to as the most violent culture in history in the number of crimes and in the nature brutality.Recently, Nithari hogged the lime light and the press was full of wild speculations and assumptions. It was sBartol argues effectively that ‘our inability to prevent crime is partly due to our problems in understanding criminal behavior, a complex phenomenon. Since crime is complex, it goes without saying that explanations of crime require complicated, involved answers. Research indicates that most people have a very limited tolerance for complexity and ambiguity. They apparently want simple, straight forward answers for even a very complex issue. As behavioral scientists we need to understand that criminal behavior is a vastly complex, yet poorly understood phenomenon. There is no all encompassing psychological explanation for crime, than there is sociological, anthropological, psychiatric, economic or historic one. Without ‘Conformity’ perspective: Classical example is the strain theory of Merton R. K. which argues that ‘humans are fundamentally good people and conforming beings who are strongly influenced by values and attitudes of the society in which they live. It assumes that humans, as creatures of conformity who want to do the ‘right’ thing’. ‘Right’ thing therefore is what the society says is the ‘right’ thing. For example, the American society advocates ‘accumulation of wealth or status is all important and many continue to accept these well advertised goals’. Education, social network, contacts and family influence can help access these to many but not to all. When there is ‘perceived discrepancy’, between materialist values and goals cherished and the availability of legitimate means, then crime and delinquency occurs. Groups and individuals experience high level of ‘strain’ are forced to decide whether to accept of violate norms or laws, consequently they conform, withdraw or rebel.‘Non-conformist’ perspective: Assumes that human beings are basically undisciplined creatures, given the chance would flout society's convention and commit crime indiscriminately. Travis Hisschi's social cThe third perspective assumes that human beings are basically ‘neutral’ by birth and they learn all their behaviors, beliefs and tendencies from social environment and this is the cornerstone of learning approach. A good example is Sutherland's differential association theory. Accordingly, criminal behavior is learned through social interaction with other people. “It is not the result of emotional disturbance, mental illness or innate qualities of ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ “……. People learn to be criminal as a result of messages they get from others, who were also thought to be criminals. The conventional wisdom that “bad company promotes bad behavior” aptly summarizes the theme.Bartol again reHence, criminology utilizes multi-disciplinary approach. Knowledge about criminal actions encompasses psychology, sociology, psychiatry, anthropology, biology, neurology, political science, economics etc. Though our expertise is in the field of psychological principles, we need to learn concepts, theories and research knowledge from other disciplines to understand, explain and prevent criminal behavior.The demographic and group variables such as “age, race, gender, socio-economic status, interpersonal relationships, ethnic-cultural application” are significant for certain categories and patterns of crime. It also probes situational or environmental factors that are conducive to criminal action such as the time, place, kind of weapon used, circumstances surrounding the crime etc. In the broader sense, it covers underlying social conditions - which may be inequities in education, employment or criminal justice system.et al[What can be called ‘Psychological criminology’ encompasses science of behavior and Mental processes of the criminal. Here the focus is “individual's criminal behavior - how it is acquired, evoked, maintained or modified”. It considers both the social and personality factors and how these are mediated by mental processes. Recently there is a shift in its focus to the cognitive aspects of offending. Explorinet al contend Psychiatric criminology is also called forensic psychiatry. Traditionally, at least in America and Europe, Freudian psycho-analytic or psycho-dynamic tradition and subsequently neo-Freudian formulations are common. The psycho-analytic position assumes that one must dwell into the abysses of human personality to find unconscious determinants of human behavior, including criminal behavior. Abramsen had noteThe earliest definition of crime in Tappan, 1947 quoted in Bartol as ‘an iWhether one should restrict oneself to a legal definition and study only those individuals who have been convicted of crime?Whether one should include individuals who indulge in antisocial behavior but have not been detected by the criminal justice system?Can we include persons predisposed to be criminal and how to identify them?Bartol reports In U.S the system of recording incidence on basis of official police report, self-report studies and national or regional victimization studies may be fine to an extent but what about many other countries, including India where the system itself needs many corrections? Sellin and otheSociety and for that matter judicial system which are part of that society, perceive and process violators with some discrimination, so much so the offenders background, social status, personality, motivation, sex, age, race, legal council and circumstances surrounding the offence, all affects the legal process. It is highly likely that individuals who have been arrested, convicted or punished represent a distinctly different sample from those who participate in illegal activity but avoid detection, conviction or punishment. Also error and subjectivity cannot be removed realistically for determination of guilt, innocence or sentencing process. It is reported that if the victim is respectable citizen, the offender will receive stiffer sentence than if the case involves an ‘unrespectable’ Victim. It is alThe psychological or psychiatric criminology has to look beyond the individuals who have reached the final stage of the legal process to understand the ‘criminal mind’. There is a filtering as ‘suspect’, ‘arrested’, ‘charged’, ‘convicted’ to the ultimate label of convict, inmate prisoner or criminal shows funneling effect. That means only fewer and fewer individuals reach subsequent step in the criminal justice process, which is called ‘the great pyramid of legal order’ or ‘legal iceberg’. Our appr