Spare a thought for the urban elite

I have been on furlough during which I have been thinking about the plight of a much-maligned group who are currently under the cosh.

It has become fashionable to blame them, the “liberal metropolitan elite,” as they are called, for some dodgy political decisions voters have been making recently. (Of course, the people are always right. How could one possibly think that they might be otherwise?). 

Anyway, the analysis goes something like this: the ordinary man or woman is fed up with being told what to do or think. Therefore, they are now rebelling and asserting their independence of thought, word and deed.

The charge is of course bogus and, ordinarily, in a world where there is common sense it should be summarily thrown out. But the world is one queer place these days. Now, anything goes, as long as it can be said in soundbites or delivered in 140 characters or thereabouts. Either way, such pronouncements can contain an enormous amount of misinformation, frequently laced with venom and other noxious substances. We’re not even talking about insults here. For those, four-letter expletives remain sufficient and for which certain world leaders are notable.

Demolishing untruths and misrepresentations packed into only 140 characters fashioned during the wee hours, for example, can, surprisingly, be quite tough, not to say irritating, requiring considerable skill and deftness in word craft. Re-formatting a bad sector, as old computer lingo used to have it, in a corrupted mind, can be incredibly difficult. Minds like that are just not amenable to the devices of common sense. You don’t have to look hard for examples. They are everywhere in the political landscape of today.

But who are these “liberal metropolitan elite” anyway? According to the label on the tin, you can infer that they live in the city or in a big town. Though not necessarily. What probably defines them most is that they fashion their wicked ways within a thoughtful network of innovative individuals. They nourish each other. Their currency is ideas. Ideas about what makes the world work. And indeed, how, in fact, the very thing itself revolves around the sun rather than the other way round, for example.  It is also not flat. It is a globe. Remember, these were the kinds of ideas that people got their eyes gouged out for or had some other unpleasant things done to them.

Most of these so-called elites would have spent years learning stuff. Although not necessarily.  They are just able to think clearly and sift wheat from chaff as well as show readiness to jettison ideas that obviously don’t make sense. Beyond that, they tend to take the long view too, both forward and back and pick out lessons from history.  Also, they try to warn us not to repeat the mistakes of previous generations. Most importantly, they welcome new ideas and show willingness to change position when facts warrant.

It is through this receptivity that the world has become a better place. Readiness to receive new ideas and, create new ones in turn, has guided human progress and contributes bigly, to coin a phrase, to the making of today’s world, where food is generally plentiful and people live longer, healthier lives. Life expectancy is increasing progressively, even in countries that are relatively poor. 

So what’s not to like about the urban elite? Nothing. Except, of course, when you have no alternative to offer. Especially, if your agenda is merely to seek public office for office's sake. In those circumstances, facts can be rubbished and substituted with “alternative” facts in a strange universe where the laws of physics and maths don’t apply, a place where 2 plus 2 does not add up to 4. There are many practitioners of these strange arts, some in seriously important positions from which they make a lot of noise, and with the power to mess our world about. Think of the vaccine rejectionists, the climate change deniers, the evolution deniers, to mention just a few of the really pesky ones. And there are many others as well of various dimensions. Together, they are a formidable force that makes the job of defining policy truly hard.

This is why it is important for scientists and technologists to resist and call out these destructive elements in society that aim to take us back to their “golden age” when they called the shots and held all the cards that kept the vast majority of us in our place.

But I might be too pessimistic. The urban elite are alive and well and will remain fighting fit to beat back the forces against progress. Starting in France. And the UK.

Tell Fren Tru

A Day To Remember-- World Sickle Cell Day, June 19th

The calendar is loaded. Just about every day of the year is spoken for for celebrating or marking some event, idea, concept and dare I say, obsession. Some are worthy and even brilliant. The rare one is deeply embedded within the canon and even more rarely have attained the stature of shibboleths that are not to be messed with. I will steer clear of these latter, though some are so entrenched that they are beyond appearing in the international order of world days. Indeed, all of us, in our own way, enjoy, celebrate and revere these rare examples.

The ones that I have no truck with are the obscure and the pointless. Like, for example, Defend The Donot Day (Feb 24) - for crying out loud! - or ADWN, an acronym for a A Day Without News, Feb 22, that Wikipedia gaily assures me exists. And there is World Cat Day (August 8) - for goodness sake - and World Tripe Day (October 24), as if we don’t already have enough of that dished out on a daily basis. You just have to listen to certain world leaders, especially what they say in their early morning rants. And then there is World Pest Day (June 6) - good grief! -which, in the spirit of conservation or parsimony, could be twinned with the day for Trump, sorry, Tripe and, which gives me an idea. Why not have a World Parsimony Day when the entire caboodle could be dispensed with in one massive blowout? But judging by the range of days that already plague us, I wouldn’t be surprised if there is already such a beast in existence somewhere.

So, if one is fed up with all these pointless days, why promote another one? Well, there are some days that are heavy, not only with symbolism, but also with real value. So, it is with some confidence that I present to you, again, this June 19, World Sickle Cell Day. This day reminds us that the battle against sickle cell is still on and that the fight against this debilitating and often fatal disease continues. Even though there are advances every year, sickle cell disease is still responsible for a significant number of deaths in children under five years of age in many countries.

Do your bit to help the fight. Go visit the website: www.sleonesickle.org to see what you can do to help.

Tell Fren Tru

Is This The Cure For Sickle Cell Disease?

Sickled Cells in a patient with Sickle Cell Disease

It’s all over the place. Everywhere you turn there is this buzz. Relief, one is happy to say, from the relentless reports of wars, conflicts and disgraceful tweets. The thing that is causing the buzz is the story about a new cure for sickle cell, a disease that affects hundreds of thousands, if not millions throughout the world.

There is nothing unusual about new cures. Breakthroughs for this or that are regularly announced, both in the regular media and in fringe outlets. And we humans seriously take them on board together with their hope and their hype, especially for diseases that stubbornly resist the best efforts of our medicine men and women, scientific or shamanistic. The cure for cancer, especially (as if cancer is just one disease, like appendicitis), is one that regularly grabs the imagination. But one must always be cognizant of the fact that however relevant these “cures” might be, their impacts are mostly incremental and, in any case, require time to mature into full-fledged remedies.

The cure that was announced last week must, as in other similar examples, be the subject of a reality check. Nevertheless, this is one announcement that should be taken very seriously because the procedure directly targets the engine that drives the terrible clinical consequences of the disease. In the report, French researchers describe how they harvested blood stem cells from a 13-year- old boy suffering from the disease and inserted normal haemoglobin genes into them. They then returned the modified stem cells back into the boy, who subsequently began to make normal red blood cells. Fifteen months later he is free of all the symptoms of the disease. Pretty good, when you consider that for most of his young life he had suffered severe symptoms. Everybody is now talking excitedly about how this treatment can be rolled out to all those hundreds of thousands of patients throughout the world suffering from sickle cell.

Conceptually, the procedure is simple enough. But in practical terms, it could be devilishly complicated as demonstrated by the huge number of researchers that pulled off the treatment. Indeed, when I looked at the report, I had to give up counting the named individuals and institutions that collaborated in the work. I can say, though, that their number, combined, might well exceed the entire scientific and medical capital in some countries where sickle cell is prevalent.

Another point: This is just one case. That of a13-year-old located in a well-resourced setting and is a long way from signalling that the treatment can be extended everywhere, even to other rich countries, never mind into the swamp-like conditions that prevail in poor ones. To show that the treatment can be applied elsewhere calls for a clinical trial that would involve many patients preferably from more than one big institution. Undertaking such would require time and money. We’re probably looking at, may be, five years, if not longer, not to mention the necessary amount of cash.

In the mean time we do have other measures which, though not curative provide much relief for patients. These are the things we should focus on at present. But even here, there is an urgent need for peoples and governments to step up and do their duty.

Tell Fren Tru