Otters Explain It All

Since hardly anyone reads Respectful of Otters on the weekends, I thought it might be a good time to answer reader questions.

No, not questions you've actually asked me. Questions people asked in Google searches which brought them to this site. In some cases, they found exactly what they needed, be it flowers from the heartland or evidence that gender myth similarities outweigh differences. Others left with their questions unanswered, until now:

why should someone be respectful
At its most basic level, this is a question of self-preservation. Rules for respectful behavior originally emerged as a way for smaller, weaker people to keep bigger, stronger people from killing them. More broadly, respectfulness, like courtesy, promotes civil interactions between individuals and contributes to a civil tone in society, which in turn facilitates greater involvement in public life. Psychologists have a duty to be fair and respectful of otters, as you can see from this blog's tagline, but it also behooves us to be fair and respectful of other living things as well. We don't always manage it.

how much seroquel does it take to kill a person
You make me nervous, but in the spirit of sharing psychological knowledge I researched your question. It takes an awful lot of seroquel to kill a person. The average prescription is for 400-700mg per day, and overdoses of up to 9600mg haven't produced deaths. Seroquel is simply not a very lethal drug, although a person could really mess themselves up trying. Nor does it seem like a very efficient way to commit murder. If you're writing a mystery novel, I suggest that you try another method.

how did otters get discovered
Otters told some of their closest friends they had a weblog, but it didn't really catch on until they entered the now-defunct Truth Laid Bear Showcase. Some nice folks at the Liberal Coalition - particularly Scout - discovered me through the showcase, took me under their wings, and left the first precious comments on my lonely blog. I got discovered discovered by Tapped, after Patrick Nielsen Hayden linked to my now-famous boob post. (Which was translated into Spanish! How crazy is that?) In one day, my daily hit count shot up from 50 to 1000. Not that it lasted, but it certainly counts as discovered.

gay otters
No, actually, although I can see why the long string of posts about gay marriage might have led you to believe otherwise. We here at Respectful of Otters are merely bisexual. In researching the answer to your question, though, I discovered that "otter" is a term with specific meaning in the bear subculture of the gay community, referring to a gay man who is hairy, yet slim. Huh. I had no idea. I just assumed the person was looking for some otter analogue of the gay penguins. I guess you learn something new every day.

political involvement virginia statistics
Yes, Virginia, if you're going to be involved in politics you'll need to have a head for statistics. How else are you going to understand what's wrong with John Lott? Fortunately, you probably don't need to get deep into the complicated stuff like logistic regression. Unless you just happen to be interested in reading my disserta - hey, where are you going?

do otters change their appearance
Not as such. Otters have had essentially the same haircut since halfway through college - except for a brief flirtation with head-shaving, which ended about the time I moved to Iowa and experienced my first 20-below-zero winter weather. I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that a childhood friend who hadn't seen me since age eleven recently found me again because she recognized my picture on the net. So no, I can't say that otters change their appearance.

kansas city blog urban february depressed
Yes. If there's one thing in this world of which I'm certain, it's that anyone stuck in Kansas City in February is probably depressed. As I'm sure you'd know if you read their blog. Being in an urban environment is probably a slight protective factor, compared to being in a small town or something, but it can only help so much.

(All search strings unedited. Please excuse this utterly shameless exercise in self-indulgence.)

There Must Be A Pony In Here Somewhere!

It's been blogged all over the place by now - I got it from Julia -but I just can't resist linking to this masterful deconstruction of libertarian philosophy, from John & Belle Have a Blog.

Reason recently published a debate held at its 35th anniversary banquet. The flavor of this discussion is indescribable. In its total estrangement from our political and social life today, its wilfull disregard of all known facts about human nature, it resembles nothing so much as a debate over some fine procedural point of end-stage communism, after the state has withered away. [...]

Just wish that we might all live in a state of perfect liberty, free of taxation and intrusive government, and that we should all be wealthier as well as freer. Now wish that people should, despite that lack of any restraint on their actions such as might be formed by policemen, functioning law courts, the SEC, and so on, not spend all their time screwing each other in predictable ways ranging from ordinary rape, through the selling of fraudulent stocks in non-existent ventures, up to the wholesale dumping of mercury in the public water supplies. (I mean, the general stock of water from which people privately draw.) Awesome huh? But it gets better. Now wish that everyone had a pony.

Go read the whole thing, and then follow it up with Brad DeLong's invitation of a few more people - Adam Smith, Thomas Hobbes, David Hume - to the Reason dinner-debate.

Earning A Doctorate In Spin

Blink, and you'll miss the health warning in this press release:

The NIH issued a statement today stating that although the data are preliminary they appear to show, among other things, that, as compared to placebo, oral estrogen alone taken by women between 50 and 79, for up to seven years, caused no increased risk of breast cancer or heart disease. As in the previously published WHI study, a benefit in preventing hip fractures and an increased risk for stroke were identified in this older population. The NIH has determined that the results would not likely change if the estrogen trial continued to its planned completion in 2005. A full report of the results is expected in the next two months.

It is important to note that the study did not find an increase in the risk of breast cancer.

Did you catch it? The critical health warning? Here's the un-spun version:

A large federal study of estrogen therapy in postmenopausal women has been stopped a year ahead of schedule because the hormone increased the risk of stroke and offered no protection against heart disease, the government announced yesterday.

The study included only women taking estrogen alone, not those who take combined hormones. An earlier study, halted abruptly in 2002 after the researchers found an increased risk of breast cancer, involved only women taking the combined hormones estrogen and progestin.

The National Institutes of Health, which sponsored the estrogen study, part of the Women's Health Initiative, said it stopped the study because ``an increased risk of stroke is not acceptable in healthy women in a research study.''

Notice how, in the drug company press release, NIH's decision to stop the study for safety reasons has been blanded down to "The NIH has determined that the results would not likely change if the estrogen trial continued." Yes indeed, and the particular result the NIH thought wouldn't change was that the study participants would continue to be at increased risk of stroke.

I was particularly struck by this quote from the New York Times article:

Dr. James Simon, president of the North American Menopause Society, said, ``I think the findings for women are actually quite reassuring, namely that the major issue which women fear, breast cancer, was not increased on estrogen alone after approximately seven years.''

What struck me as funny was that Dr. Simon said the study was good news with respect to "the major issue which women fear," and not, for example, "the major issue which endangers women's health." So I checked the National Vital Statistics Reports, and suddenly his wording made a lot more sense. In 2001, 100,361 American women died of cerebrovascular disease (strokes). According to the American Cancer Society, in the same year an estimated 40,200 women died of breast cancer. In other words, women are more than twice as likely to die from a stroke as they are to die from breast cancer.

So the estrogen study didn't show an increased risk for the feared result, just an increased risk for the more deadly result - and that's supposed to be good news for women? It seemed unlikely, so I checked Dr. Simon's quote again. And in fact, he doesn't say that the study is "good news" for women - he says it's "quite reassuring" for women. It calms their fears of getting breast cancer, and makes them feel safer about taking a drug that increases their risk of stroke. Aren't you reassured?

(I wouldn't be giving Dr. Simon such a hard time about his precise wording if it weren't for the fact that the confusion of "feeling safe" with "being safe" is so often a deliberate PR move. This guy is smart enough and well-educated enough to understand the relative risks involved. I don't think it's an accident that his comment echoes the drug company's own spin so precisely.)

"They Fall Like A Row Of Dominoes..."

Oregon's most populous county to authorize same-sex marriages.

My former home! I'm so proud.

I never understood the whole concept of people who didn't make up their minds until they stepped into the voting booth. Until today, when I walked up to a Diebold voting machine and cast my ballot for John Edwards.

I felt surprisingly sad afterward. I thought I'd already come to terms with the end of Dean's candidacy - and yet, until the last minute, I thought about voting for him anyway. Maybe I should have. I wanted to make a meaningful not-Kerry choice, but in the end, it doesn't look like I did that anyway.

In a little while, I'm going to rally full-strength behind John Kerry and we're going to elect him to be the 44th President of the United States. That time will come. But that time is not yet, and until it comes I'm going to sit here and be sad for a while.

Almost Like Pure Heroin

I've always kind of rolled my eyes when people bring up the finding that homophobic men show more arousal than non-homophobic men when they're exposed to homosexual stimuli. You remember the study:

Men in both groups were aroused by about the same degree by the video depicting heterosexual sexual behavior and by the video showing two women engaged in sexual behavior. The only significant difference in degree of arousal between the two groups occurred when they viewed the video depicting male homosexual sex: 'The homophobic men showed a significant increase in penile circumference to the male homosexual video, but the control [nonhomophobic] men did not.' [...]

When asked to give their own subjective assessment of the degree to which they were aroused by watching each of the three videos, men in both groups gave answers that tracked fairly closely with the results of the objective physiological measurement, with one exception: the homophobic men significantly underestimated their degree of arousal by the male homosexual video.

I know, I know, it's great stuff from a political standpoint, and it's a respectable research design - but I've never put much credence in it. It just seems a little too perfect to be regarded without suspicion. Besides, I hate that psychoanalytic bullshit about how what people really feel is always the opposite of what they think they feel.

Still, I'll admit, sometimes I do wonder:

“Untrammeled homosexuality can take over and destroy a social system,” says [Paul] Cameron. “If you isolate sexuality as something solely for one’s own personal amusement, and all you want is the most satisfying orgasm you can get- and that is what homosexuality seems to be-then homosexuality seems too powerful to resist. The evidence is that men do a better job on men and women on women, if all you are looking for is orgasm.”

So powerful is the allure of gays, Cameron believes, that if society approves of gay people, more and more heterosexuals will be inexorably drawn into homosexuality. “I’m convinced that lesbians are particularly good seducers,” says Cameron. “People in homosexuality are incredibly evangelical,” he adds, sounding evangelical himself. “It’s pure sexuality. It’s almost like pure heroin. It’s such a rush. They are committed in almost a religious way. And they’ll take enormous risks, do anything.”

He says that for married men and women, gay sex would be irresistible. “Marital sex tends toward the boring end,” he points out. “Generally, it doesn’t deliver the kind of sheer sexual pleasure that homosexual sex does” So, Cameron believes, within a few generations homosexuality would be come the dominant form of sexual behavior.

So maybe there is something in that study after all. Cameron, incidentally, was kicked out of the APA for ethical violations involving distortions of the state of psychological science as it relates to homosexuality. Given the state of the science, well, you can see why he'd be tempted.

I can't believe I've encountered this bizarre argument twice in one week. I know plenty of heterosexuals ('cause I'm liberal), and they always seem to be perfectly happy with straight sex. Even the ones who haven't particularly internalized the societal prohibitions against homosexuality, which are supposedly the only things that make men and women want to have sex with each other in the first place. Do these guys, Cameron and Orson Scott Card, even know how they sound? Or do they really think they're voicing something that all straight people feel, deep down?

(via TBogg)

Putting HIV Prevention In Women's Hands

Just as fairy tales do, policy debates about HIV prevention tend to end with marriage - "and they lived happily ever after." Teenagers should abstain until marriage (if you are conservative) or use condoms until marriage (if you are liberal). But of course, only in fairy tales do people's life stories end with marriage, and an article in yesterday's New York Times illustrates that the risk of HIV infection doesn't end there either:

Teenage brides in some African countries are becoming infected with the AIDS virus at higher rates than sexually active unmarried girls of similar ages in the same areas, the director of Unicef and other United Nations officials said here on Saturday. [...]

The officials said the findings pointed to an inadequacy in programs that focus on abstinence among teenagers as a main means of preventing H.I.V. infection because they failed to take into account fully the risk of transmission in marriage.

The young brides are apparently acquiring H.I.V., the AIDS virus, from their husbands, who tend to be many years older and were infected before marriage, the officials said.

The head of UNAIDS suggests promoting condom use in marriage, an idea which seems to me to be a non-starter. A sixteen-year-old girl married to a much older man is unlikely to have sufficient personal power to insist on condom use. It's no coincidence that HIV rates among women are highest in cultures which emphasize female submission - those women have great difficulty negotiating safer-sex practices within their relationships. Most African countries have no laws against marital rape, leaving married women with no legal right to protect themselves from their husbands. And even when brutality is not at issue, most married people - especially in traditional cultures - intend to have children. For that reason alone, condoms simply will not be widely accepted within marriage.

Requiring HIV testing at marriage might be helpful, although, as this article explains, many marriages are not registered with the government. But widespread male infidelity in marriage limits the degree to which women are protected by premarital testing.

So, if married women aren't protected by the much-lauded ABC approach (Abstain, Be faithful, use Condoms), what hope do they have? Microbicides. Microbicides are chemical products - usually delivered as a lubricant gel or a vaginal suppository - which either kill HIV or block it from cell entry. They're probably not quite as effective as barrier methods, but have substantial advantages anyway: women can use them without their partners' knowledge; they don't reduce sexual sensation; and they don't interfere with pregnancy.

Microbicide research has historically been underfunded. The former director of UNAIDS said in 2002 that microbicide research is "a classic case of market failure. The profit incentive for a first generation microbicide simply isn't there." But in the past few years, governments and foundations have managed to scrape together enough money that we're now, finally, looking at several promising lines of research.

Right now, many people's ability to protect themselves from HIV depends, not on what they do, but on what they can convince their partners to do. (This applies to gay men as well as to women.) Microbicides could change that - but as they near FDA approval, expect to hear conservatives focus on their failure rates, as they've done with condoms. Then ask those conservatives what they would tell a seventeen-year-old Zimbabwean girl whose parents have just married her to a forty-year-old trucker who spends months on the road sleeping with who-knows-who. Fidelity in marriage is great, but no one's life should depend on it.