Viswanathan K's Thoughts

After a certain age, some students feel terrified by exams. This goes far beyond the usual nervousness everyone experiences prior to an exam. But, being a subjective experience, how does know what a particular student is feeling? Conversely, has the pendulum of concern/compassion swung a bit too far nowadays?   Lisa Marchiano, a psychoanalyst, describes a student who’d experienced what she (the student) described as a panic attack during the first exam, but “successfully completed the first exam — and did okay on it”. And yet, that student didn’t take the second exam because she was afraid she’d have another panic attack. Marchiano tried telling the student that the fact that she had “pushed through the fear feelings” meant she could deal with it. “But I had a panic attack,” responded the student and did not budge. Marchiano asks the forbidden question: “I found myself wondering where she had learned that she ought not to be expected to tolerate ordinary distress or discomf...

I talked of the why-China is the origin of so many zoonotic diseases in recent times (SARS, bird flu,  COVID-19). The key point in those wet markets is the presence of live animals of multiple species, giving viruses opportunities to make the multiple hops across different species.   On the other hand, we haven’t seen zoonotic disease transfer from the temples of India and Buddhist countries, where monkeys are all over the place. They are so numerous, and come close to humans all the time. In his awesome book, Spillover , David Quammen writes of one such temple: “Thousands of bites, thousands of scratches, thousands of opportunities, and zero cases (anyway, zero reported cases) of humans sickened.” So why have no zoonotic diseases started off from those temples? Is it because there aren’t other species in close proximity (just monkeys and humans), which means the multiple hops can’t be made? Or is it because the monkeys aren’t under threat around these temples, which...

As part of the Anglosphere (the English-speaking world), I am acutely aware of the bias my sources of information (the paper, websites, books) creates: they’re all in English. If you don’t see what I mean, consider this: which Western country do you hear endless praise for in its handling of COVID-19? Is it New Zealand? Or Germany? Even though Germany is far bigger, shares borders with numerous countries, matters far more globally, and did more tests than almost anyone else in the West, we only hear of English-speaking New Zealand…   Consider this my humorous effort to get a different opinion. A Frenchman’s opinion. And one with views that one, er, doesn’t hear often. From Niccolo Soldo’s interview with Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry, here are a few snippets.   The interview started with the usual complaint against the French, of “looking at you like a filthy peasant when you dare ask them a question in English”, and that the “French are the epitome of snobbery”. Gobry’s respo...

It takes time for the law to understand a scientific principle. We may take finger prints and DNA as cast in iron evidence today, but that takes time. Carl Zimmer talks about one such instance involving the famous actor, Charlie Chaplin, in his book on heredity, She has her Mother’s Laugh . A serial womanizer, Chaplin had an affair with Joan Berry, got bored with her, and dumped her for the next girl.   Berry, however, would not go away quietly. In 1943, she filed a paternity suit claiming that her in-the-womb baby was Chaplin’s and demanded he pay for the child’s upbringing. Back then, DNA comparison wasn’t an option, so lawyers tried an inherited trait as a test instead: the blood type.   At that time, scientists knew that the blood variant proteins (A, B and O) had certain characteristics: A and B both dominated over O. This implied certain patterns: if you got A from one parent and O from the other, you’d be an A. To be an O, you needed an O from both parents. Conv...

In their very short romp through history titled The Lessons of History , Will and Ariel Durant, start by flipping that famous quote and ask: “Is history “a fable” not quite “agreed upon”?” And on a related note, they ask: “As his studies come to a close, the historian faces the challenge: Of what use have your studies been? Have you found in your work only the amusement of recounting the rise and fall of nations and ideas?” Or: “Have you derived from history any illumination of our present condition, any guidance of our judgment and policies, any guards against the rebuffs of surprise or the vicissitudes of change?”   Some believe that history repeats itself. Others, like Mark Twain, believed that history rhymes, but doesn’t repeat. James Carse, in his book, Finite and Infinite Games , says there are other historians who believe that history can never be objective, that it is affected by the observer (Heisenberg would probably have agreed!). Carse then says: “The ...

What is it about Chinese markets that seems to unleash viruses on mankind? SARS, bird-flu, now COVID-19. No, this isn’t China-bashing. Spillover , David Quammen’s awesome book on inter-species disease transfer, looks into this question in the spirit of genuine curiosity. He cites a (true) point: “Southern Chinese have always noshed more widely through the animal kingdom than virtually any other peoples on earth.”   Quammen then cites major changes in those “wet markets” (animals for eating are alive in the market, killed only when you buy) between 1993 and 2003: The volume of wild-animal trade had increased enormously; Cross-border trade of animals with Southeast Asian countries had shot up; Commercial breeders had sprung up for species like snakes, civets etc. You can see where this is going. Like all such places across the developing/poor world, wet markets cram these animals in tiny spaces. Crates, one on top of the other. And remember, the animals are alive, whi...

In his awesome book on pathogens that jump species, Spillover , David Quammen has one section on how the process of identifying a pathogen proceeds. He uses the SARS breakout of 2003 as an example. When it went global starting at Hong Kong, he writes nobody knew what caused it, hence the name: “Ebola is a virus. Hendra is a virus. Nipah is a virus. SARS is a syndrome.”   Most tests in medical labs are designed in a particular way: “Such tests essentially give you a positive, negative, or approximated answer in response to a specific question: Is it this ? Finding an entirely new pathogen is more difficult. You can’t detect a microbe by its molecular signature until you know roughly what that signature is.” So when trying to identify a new pathogen, scientists try growing it in a culture and then peer at it through a microscope. Then they tried peering through an electron microscope, and thus realized it was a coronavirus, i.e., viral particles “encircled by a corona of k...