Some Qs. people asked me on science and my replies to them - Part 60

                                                             Interactive Science series

Q: For something to be scientific should it agree with all scientific laws or is there an exception?  

Krishna: There won’t be any exceptions in science. For something to be scientific it should be based on or characterized by the methods and principles of science. Or it has to come into the arena by adhering to strict scientific methods and methodology.

Otherwise it becomes pseudo-science, opinion, and an irrational belief.

This universe itself is based on scientific principles. If you don’t understand them and try to interpret things in ways other than science, you are actually going against this science based creation!

Intelligent human beings cannot afford to do that! If you seek exceptions in the name of religion, emotions, affiliations and individual freedom, you are going against this scientific universe! It is not good for anyone!

Q: Is animal testing justifiable? Should animal testing be used for scientific or commercial purposes?  

Krishna:  NO!

Animals have to be used for teaching and learning basic biology and are needed as models for health research. That is true. However, they can be handled in a humane way and their usage can be reduced. There is no need to kill animals for the scientific research to the extent we are doing right now. Animals too have a nervous system and they feel pain the same way we do. Do we allow somebody to conduct experiments on us and treat us so cruelly? We should treat animals and other human beings just the way we want others to treat us. There shouldn't be any dual standards. Scientists working in the life sciences area should be the first persons to realize how animals and human beings feel when subjected to cruel experiments because they know how a nervous system really works and causes pain. There is no need to kill animals to keep them as specimens in the labs. Detail photographs will do. Non-life models can be used to teach Biology. How about using mannequins? Virtual Demonstrations in medical colleges and universities, can be done now on computer-aided learning methods . These can be used by pharmacology and physiology students easily. Research or experiments can be done through in-vitro methods instead of in-vivo methods which require use of an animal. India is the first country to issue guidelines for such experiments and we should be proud of it. The guidelines are very progressive. We hope that similar rules are issued for toxicity testing of drugs on animals. Alternatives like cell culture, use of human cells and robotics can be used. Then where is the need to use live animals in large scale to conduct experiments? This is my firm opinion.

Science and Ethics

Q: What does science say about stoic response to pain?

Krishna: A stoic response to pain is when a person  can endure pain or hardship without showing his or her feelings or complain about it.

I have a different view on this.

My mother was in a hospital and was wincing and crying with severe pain some years back. The doctor asked her to keep quiet and bear it out in silence. Then I told the doctor that  being a doctor he should be well aware of the fact that the pain threshold for different persons would be different and for some people it would be very low and such people cannot bear it without crying. If crying helped her to bear it a little better, let her do it. The doctor left the room without saying another word.

My father’s pain threshold was very high. He used to bear everything in silence. He was a hero to me when I was young because of this quality of his.

But after getting a Ph.D. and reading several research papers on pain, I realized you cannot compare people and say some are heroes because of their stoic response (like my father) and some are zeros because of their crying (like my mother). Each person’s response to pain will be different based on his or her physical qualities or conditions.

But you can develop mental capabilities to bear pain without complaining. However, if emotions and complaining help cope with their pain better, please allow such people to express them and don’t ridicule them for what they are.

Q: Do people understand you properly and respect you for being so factual?

Krishna: If you truly respect a person, you must look past their words to see their intended meaning. Most people I interact with do understand exactly what I say. If they agree, they just get surprised at the authenticity and bold reality I put before them. If they don't agree, they just keep quiet and walk away because, they know they cannot argue with a mathematical theorem and an evidence fortified fact. I know their minds would undergo severe torture. Why? Because they are now awakened into reality but still are unable to overcome their conditioned mind. 

Most of them told me I made their hands go up! What does that mean? It means they are surrendering to my reasoning power :)

It is a great triumph for science! 

Q: Do scientists believe in reincarnation?

Krishna: Real Scientists who base their thinking process on facts and evidence, don’t believe in it because there is no evidence. But there are people in the scientific community who hang in the territory of pseudo-science. They cleverly interpret things to suit their irrational beliefs and feed mystery-hungry people and gain popularity and money in the process. And the public who don’t know the difference between real science and pseudo-science gobble it up and make these people rich and famous in the process!

Now decide who the ‘real scientists’ are. Not ‘any scientist’ who can say anything or believe in anything to make himself popular.

Q: What is the use of learning science? There are several people who don't know a thing you say but still live a good life. 

Krishna: Right. Several people send me messages saying they are in distress and asking me to help them.  Like this student , like this lady  and this one . 

Do you know how many questions I answered till now? More than two thousand! Why would so many people ask me so many questions if they think that science doesn't help them? 

Why would a person who doesn't even know the alphabets of science go to a doctor to get relief from his health condition? Why would a farmer listen to a weather forecast before sowing his seeds? 

All these people might not know anything about science, but still they take the help of science to survive and lead a good life. That is the importance of science.

And if they learn something in science, they can make use of it and lead a more better life.

Q: You praise science so much. But it can't even stop one cyclone or a hurricane. What is the use?

Krishna: So you want us to stop  cyclones or a hurricanes in its tracks. Don't you think scientists never thought about it? They did!

Project Stormfury was an attempt to weaken tropical by flying aircraft into them and seeding with silver iodide. The project was run by the United States Government from 1962 to 1983.

The hypothesis was that the silver iodide would cause super-cooled water in the storm to freeze, disrupting the inner structure of the hurricane. This led to the seeding of several Atlantic hurricanes. However, it was later shown that this hypothesis was incorrect. It was determined that most hurricanes do not contain enough super-cooled water for cloud seeding to be effective. Additionally, researchers found that unseeded hurricanes often undergo the same structural cahnges that were expected from seeded hurricanes. This finding called Stormfury's successes into question, as the changes reported now had a natural explanation. The last experimental flight was flown in 1971, due to a lack of candidate storms and a changeover in NOAA's fleet. More than a decade after the last modification experiment, Project Stormfury was officially canceled. Although a failure in its goal of reducing the destructiveness of hurricanes, Project Stormfury was not without merit. The observational data and storm lifecycle research generated by Stormfury helped improve meteorologists' ability to forecaste the movement and intensity of future hurricanes.

There was a time when scientists and US government agencies were themselves seriously considering the nuclear option. But can this energy be unleashed as a hurricane killer?

But the thing is cyclones and hurricanes have tremendous power. Like the wind energy. The water power.

To stop that power you need to use tremendous power too. If you use such a great power, you destroy more things on Earth than a hurricane can! Now tell me is it wise to do such a thing?

International law prohibits us from even trying. The Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty, signed and ratified by the United States in 1990, limits the yield of weapons for non-military purposes to 150 kilotons—a formal acknowledgement that you can’t fight Mother Nature, especially with nukes.

So?! To fight tremendous power, you need to unleash tremendous power. Are you ready to face the consequences? Think about that before ridiculing science and scientists.

Q: Why can't science be a matter of opinion?

Krishna: I have answered a similar question earlier also.

Right. Go ahead and have an opinion  that Earth is flat! That the Earth is at the center of the universe. That people think with their hearts! That you can cure cancer with your mind power!

How silly that looks when all these things have been proven wrong! You just can't have an opinion on facts. Why? Because there will be only one fact given the conditions in which it is derived are constant. You cannot have another opinion on it unless you can prove your opinion right which becomes a fact when you do that.

Opinion and fact are not equivalent, but this distinction has been lost in recent  times. Everybody is becoming an expert. Everybody tries to deal with science creating pseudo-science in the process. Some are denying science saying they have another opinion on it. When it becomes highly inconvenient to accept the facts, some say they have alternative ones! 

Just because you believe in something, it doesn't become a fact. Accept  this reality. Science doesn't accept your opinions, beliefs, emotions and alternate truths. They cannot answer the whys, hows, whens, whats of the field in the correct way. They don't stand a chance when scientific methodology  and methods comes into the picture.

When what we know for a fact contradicts with what we believe, we should stick to facts. Otherwise, we become irrational which is completely against science!

Q: Do scientific laws get you money?

Krishna: If you just study them, they don't. But if you join an industry and  apply those laws to produce something, they might!

Q: How do we know that scientific laws are true? Should we believe in what is written in text books?

Krishna: You need not blindly believe in what is written in the text books and what you study. You can always test them in your lab using scientific methods and methodology! Only if you find them to be true you can trust them. Otherwise you can disprove and discard them! That is the beauty and perfectness of science. 

Q: What has someone done that impressed you with their intelligence?  

Krishna: Donning a white coat, they entered their labs. Worked madly - forgetting food, sleep, family, entertainment until they found a solution to the problem they are dealing with and nobody dared to deal with till then. The world cannot sleep or eat properly or get comfortable without them. Can you find more intelligent people than

The Scientists

If you are into research in science...

Q: I am not a qualified scientist. But did some experiments on my own and got good results. When I tried to contact some scientists to show them my work they just ignored me.  Why is this?

Krishna: Glad to hear about your interest in science. If you think your work is good, go publish your work in good peer-reviewed journals. If you publish papers, all the  scientists in the field will read them and they themselves will contact you if they think you really have great substance in you.

Don't try to disturb scientists. They have better things to do than entertaining peoples' wild dreams. 

Q: Is there any scientific explanation behind taking cow urine as medicine? Aren't people at risk if the cow is sick?  

Q: How is cow urine said to be good for health? Are there any scientific studies?

Q: What is the medical evidence for benefits of cow urine?

Krishna: There are no medical or scientific data to support this practice, but it has roots in history and in some religious and spiritual traditions.

The opposite has been proved right in most cases!

Some people use it thinking that it can ‘cure’ certain diseases like cancer! If we could eradicate cancer with “Urine therapy” that would be a miracle! And miracles don’t occur 99.99% of the time!

While it is true that urine can contain tumor antigens, there is no evidence to show that drinking, massaging with, bathing in, or any other application of urine will stimulate antibody production or in any way fight off a cancer. The quantities of substances, including tumor antigens, present in urine are typically minuscule compared with those already present in the blood and elsewhere in the body. The bottom line is that drinking urine has no known medical benefit.

Contrary to the claims of alternative therapies that say urine has curative powers, urologists and nephrologists say that the increasing concentration of toxins will quickly do more harm than good. The American Cancer Society states that "[n]o well-controlled studies published in available scientific lite...."

There is some research on this

Patent US6410059 - Pharmaceutical composition containing cow urine ...

Patent US6896907 - Use of bioactive fraction from cow urine distill...

And this is my explanation...

The patent says…the applicants thought of utilizing cow urine, which is not MICROBICIDAL but when present with a drug or active molecule, enhance its activity and availability (bioenhancers). The present invention was the result of planned experiments to provide a novel method for improving activity and bioavailability of antibiotics, drugs and other molecules using ‘cow urine distillate’ in different formulations.

It is similar to saying methi seeds ‘enhance’ the diabetic drug performance but they don’t actually act as drugs themselves.

THE PAPTENT CLEARLY SAYS gaumutra IS NOT A MEDICINE BUT JUST A BIO-ENHANCER.

OH, YES IN LAB CONDITIONS SEVERAL THINGS HAPPEN WHEN ONLY TWO THINGS ARE TAKEN INTO ACCOUNT BUT IN ACTUAL COMPLEX HUMAN BODIES DIFFERENT REACTIONS might take place.

Gaumutra (cow-urine) might contain bioenhancers but they also contain several toxins too that the cow’s body is trying to excrete. A distillate is a liquid which is condensed from a vapor during distillation and removes microbes and other substances that are harmful.

The best possible way to use bio-enhancers is to extract them, purify and use them.

Raw ‘gaumutra’ as it is excreted by a cow is harmful. 

Some apply it for eye injuries which is harmful too..

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23777721

Raw ‘gaumutra’ as it is excreted by a cow is harmful. }.

Cow's urine poisoning in Nigeria. Experimental observations in mice.

Gaumutra has no benefits in cancer therapy. It is harmful in its raw form.

Please don’t take it while undergoing chemotherapy as your immune system will be already under severe stress and taking raw gaumutra can cause more severe infections.

There are over 200 types of cancer. Which cancer exactly does cow urine cure?  So far, there is no definite "cure for cancer" because cancer isn't one disease to begin with. 
 There's a "patent" for cow urine's efficacy in treating cancer floating around on the web. But a patent does not mean pharmaceutical efficacy. The patent was was based on testing on mice, not humans. Unless there is pharmaceutical testing with human trials approved by a competent regulator such as the US FDA or the Indian Drug Controller General would be valid. 

What is disturbing is a study that reveals how cow urine, being administered to mice can cause "significant side effects, including convulsion, depressed respiration, and death." Cow's urine can also be a source of harmful bacteria and infectious diseases.

Q: What do you make of the news that cow urine has shown to cure cancer? Would you accept it because it is a scientific claim by real scientists and not just some politician saying it??