So now the eminent James Watson has stuck his foot in his mouth, adding to the long list of accomplished geneticists and behaviorists who perish in the minefield of actually saying what you believe. We'll add him to the club, which includes the great William Shockley, inventor of the transistor and those guys that wrote the Bell Shaped Curve.

He has courted controversy in the past, reportedly saying that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn child if tests could determine that it would be homosexual. He has also suggested a link between skin colour and sex drive, proposing a theory that black people have higher libidos, and claimed that beauty could be genetically manufactured.

Watson, a co-discoverer of the structure of DNA (along with Francis Crick, although one could make a strong case for some skulduggery concerning their 'expropriating' much of the work of Rosalind Franklin) ignited an uproar last week with remarks about the intelligence of people of African descent.

The 79-year-old geneticist reopened the explosive debate about race and science in a newspaper interview in which he said Western policies towards African countries were wrongly based on an assumption that black people were as clever as their white counterparts when "testing" suggested the contrary. He claimed genes responsible for creating differences in human intelligence could be found within a decade.

Utter hogwash. "Intelligence" has long been shown to be undefinable, largely because it is heavily subject to cultural, environmental and financial filters. Even more significantly, it is more likely determined at the epigenetic level (postgenomically) than at the levels of the genes themselves, being influenced by the health habits of the immediately preceding generations, or even more likely, the prenatal environment of the child.

"Absolute power corrupts absolutely," so perhaps Watson's gaff is just the result of having too many people kissing his butt for too long a time.

Have started learning the R computer language. Perl's graphic and statistic packages are quite weak, and a quick look at R shows me that the graphing capabilities alone are awesome. A lot of the multivariate data that was used in the GenoType Diets may fit in very well with this language, since most people have a hard time visualizing data in more than 3 dimensions, though in mathematics this is not a big problem. Perl remains my preferred language (mainly for sure quick and dirtiness; it's amazing just how fast you can get something up and going in Perl) and for 'data mining' (or perhaps in my case, 'data dredging').

Well, gotta go. The car service is picking Martha and I up in an hour to take us to the airport. We're headed up to Toronto where I'll be giving one of the presentations to the Ontario Naturopathic Doctors Association. It's a homecoming of sorts, since we lived up there for a while about twenty years ago. It's definitely one of my favorite cities, and I like attitude of the people at lot.

A recent article in the NY Times on online amateur map making got my hacker juices going. If you follow these blogs, you might have noticed that I have a love for the art of graphically displaying data.

So what better way to get things going than to plunk the current IFHI membership into an online mapping device. It's still pretty rough and tumble, but eventually you will be able to find an IFHI resource by zooming in and out of some very cool maps.

Here is a taste:

IFHI Practitioners and Educators in the Eastern US and Canada

IFHI Practitioners and Educators in the UK

When I get all the membership into the software I'll put up the live link.

If you are affiliated with IFHI, place contact the head office and make sure that your information is current.

I've long thought of using the measurement of breath hydrogen levels as a way of gauging digestive and detoxification improvements in those individuals following the BTD. Last week, I bit the bullet and went ahead and purchased a unit.

Carbohydrate in the intestines can be fermented by bacteria in the small intestine, forming hydrogen as one of the by-products. Some of this hydrogen is absorbed into the blood stream and there is a direct relationship between the hydrogen concentration in expired breath and the amount of unabsorbed carbohydrate in the intestine.

The Hindenberg was full of hydrogen gas.

Each test takes about two hours, since you need several readings. The readings are then sent over to a computer program, which inventories the results.

When I get all the kinks worked out, I'll set up some sort of research study (should be easy to double blind and control it: Randomized assignments. A's who get the Standard American Diet (SAD); A's who get the A diet, etc.

‘Unabsorbed carbohydrates from the small intestine are rapidly broken down in the large intestine by colonic bacteria. This degradation liberates hydrogen, which passes into the circulation by diffusion and is then exhaled. The main source of endogenous carbohydrate secreted into the colon is mucus, an intestinal glycoprotein that is 80% carbohydrate.' –Pizzorno and Murray Textbook of Natural Medicine

Probably looking at doing the study sometime in the late fall. If you are in the Metro NYC Tri-state area and want to participate, there will be an announcement posted on the website.

Brutally cold in the NE USA. Always seems to happen at about this time, when you've just about had enough of indoor heating, early darkness, greys and browns. However, spring is going to have to arrive eventually. I'm hoping to get out on the Sound more this spring and sail. Anything to get away from the computer.

A morning spent trolling through the medical literature. In subsequent blogs, I'll add a few about each type. Some interesting findings, predominantly about type O:

People who are Type O appear less likely to kill themselves, but more likely to want to kill you:

Pub Med Link

Probably because they get a bit more depressed:

Pub Med Link

Considering the lack of any results from supplementing post menopausal women with calcium, which in the Women's Health Initiative Studies was shown to be of no benefit, perhaps those researchers should have looked at ABO blood type, since there appear to be almost three-fold differences in the rate of osteoporosis:

Pub Med Link

If you are type O, you'll want to take those headphones off:

Pub Med Link

If you are type O, your predilection for inflammation may play a role in obesity:

Pub Med Link

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

Cool is a complex aesthetic of motion and interval, of tension and tranquility, of juxtaposition and coexistence, that has its roots in various West African cultures. Over time, it has been transformed by African-Americans and appropriated by American and Western popular culture, generally.

A new study seems to indicate that Tai Chi may reduce falls in the elderly. The researchers concluded that ‘Improved functional balance through Tai Chi training is associated with subsequent reductions in fall frequency in older persons,' the authors write. ‘Healthcare providers and clinicians contemplating fall-prevention programs for older persons at risk of falling should consider Tai Chi, both as a balance-retraining program, and as part of a multifaceted treatment intervention for fall prevention.'On of the main topics at ifHI 2003 was the link between elevated levels of a 'soluable endothelial factor' called E-Selectin, and individuals who are blood type A. In a nutshell E-selectin is one of several molecules that are involved in the adhesion of certain white blood cells to the artery wall, typically as a result of inflammation. Higher levels of E-selectin may contribute to the overall greater levels of heart disease seen in type A individuals.

New research indicates (again) that a 'western' level of red meat consumption results in increased levels of E-selectin. Also worth noting is that the artery inflammation caused by E-selectin is greatly enhanced by elevated levels of other blood clotting factors (Factor VIII, von Willebrand Factor) which can be up to 25% lower in normal, healthy, type O individuals when compared to type A.

E-selectin levels drop with a vegetable based diet. so if you're type A an think you need to do Atkins or Paleo, think again. You may well wind up cooking your arteries.