20th century is showing us, if anything,what is unknowable using the scientificmethod [and] what is reserved for reli-gious beliefs,” argues Mitchell P. Mar-cus, chairman of computer science atthe University of Pennsylvania. “Inmathematics and information theory,we can now guarantee that there aretruths out there that we cannot find.”

“The inability of science to provide abasis for meaning, purpose, value andethics is evidence of the necessity of reli-gion,” Sandage says—evidence strongenough to persuade him to give up hisatheism late in life. Ellis, who similarlyturned to religion only after he was wellestablished in science, raises other mys-teries that cannot be solved by logicalone: “the reasons for the existence ofthe universe, the existence of any physi-cal laws at all and the nature of the phys-ical laws that do hold—science takes allof these for granted, and so it cannotinvestigate them.”

“Religion is very important for an-swering these questions,” Sandage con-cludes. But how exactly? Pressing thescientists on the details of their beliefs re-

veals that most have carved a few coreprinciples out of one of the major reli-gious traditions and discarded the rest.“When you start pushing on the dog-ma, most scientists tend to part compa-ny,” observes Henry S. Thompson of theUniversity of Edinburgh.

Indeed, for Ellis, “religion is an exper-imental endeavor just like science: alldoctrine is a model to be tested, and noproof is possible.” Sandage confessesthat, like many other theoretical physi-cists, “I am a Platonist,” believing theequations of fundamental physics areall that is real and that “we see onlyshadows on the wall.” And Pauline M.Rudd, a biochemist at the University ofOxford, observes: “I have experiencesthat cannot be expressed in any lan-guage other than that of religion. Wheth-er the myths are historically true or falseis not so important.”

There seem only two points on whichall the religious scientists agree. ThatGod exists. And that, as Albert Einsteinonce put it, “science without religion islame; religion without science is blind.”

—W. Wayt Gibbs in Berkeley, Calif.

News and Analysis22 Scientific American August 1998

New Planet? A California astronomer has snappedwhat appears to be the first image of aplanet outside our solar system. Using

the Hubble SpaceTelescope, SusanTerebey photo-graphed the object,believed to be twoto three times themass of Jupiter, es-caping from a pairof young binarystars 450 light-yearsaway. The supposedplanet is connectedto the stars by a fila-

ment of light, probably an artifact of itstrajectory. Life on the new body is un-likely, as its surface temperature is sev-eral thousands of degrees. Even so, thediscovery could change ideas of howplanets usually form.

Polarized VisionResearchers have figured out why squiddon’t squint: like several other color-blind animals (but unlike people), theseleggy ocean dwellers are visually sensi-tive to polarized light. Roger T. Hanlon,director of the Marine Resources Centerat the Marine Biological Laboratory inWoods Hole, Mass., and his colleaguesdetermined that polarization helps toenhance the contrast of the squid’sblack-and-white vision—enabling it tobetter detect prey, such as plankton,that have evolved transparent bodiesfor protection from predators.

Nintendo Neurology Video games play with your brain. PaulM. Grasby and his colleagues at Ham-mersmith Hospital in London gave adrug called raclopride, which binds toreceptors for the neurotransmitterdopamine, to eight male volunteers.The drug was tagged with low-level ra-diation. Next, they monitored brain ac-tivity using positron emission tomogra-phy (PET) as the subjects played videogames or stared at blank screens. Dur-ing the games, raclopride binding de-creased in the striatum, indicating asurge of dopamine secretion there.Moreover, the increase in dopaminewas as large as that seen when subjectsare injected with amphetamines or thestimulant Ritalin.

IN BRIEF

More “In Brief” on page 24

A N T I G R AV I T Y

Hoop Genes

You know how close I came to playingprofessional basketball? About 17

inches. Seventeen inches taller, and I wouldhave been an even seven feet, which atleast would have given me a shot at seeingjust how close a shave Michael gets on thetop of his head. Having immense strength,acrobatic agility, catlike coordination, unbri-dled desire and a soft touch on my fall-away jumper would also have come inhandy, but the height thing couldn’t havehurt. All of which brings us to genes.

Although the Human Genome Projectwill probably fail to uncover a DNA sequencegoverning three-point shooting, British re-searchers have indeed found a jock gene.The gene in question, which comes in twoforms called I and D (for “insertion” and“deletion”), is for angiotensin-convertingenzyme (ACE), a key player in modulatingsalt and water balance, blood vessel dila-tion and maybe more. People carrying theD form are perfectly normal but will proba-bly be at home watching television reportsof people who have the I form plantingflags on the top of Mount Everest.

“We got into this system because it wasthought to control heart growth,” says

Hugh E. Montgomery of the University Col-lege London Center for Cardiovascular Re-search, who is the lead author of the ACEgene study, which appeared in the May 21issue of Nature. “We started looking at exer-cising athletes purely because their heartsgrow when they exercise.” Assuming that acrucial factor in endurance would be effi-cient use of oxygen, Montgomery and hiscolleagues tested “extreme endurance ath-letes exposed to low oxygen concentra-tions,” namely mountaineers, all of whomwere also British. (Why did the British re-searchers test British mountain climbers?Because they were there.)

Montgomery’s group found a dispropor-tionately high representation of the I formamong elite mountaineers, some of whomhad repeatedly climbed to 8,000 meters(over 26,000 feet) without supplementaloxygen. In another study, they followed 78army recruits through a 10-week trainingprogram. Those with I and D forms testedequally before the workouts began, butsoon the Is had it. All the exercisers increasedtheir endurance, as measured by curls of a15-kilogram (33-pound) barbell, but I folksimproved 11 times more than the Ds.

The studies bring to mind the eerie caseof Eero Maentyranta, winner of three cross-country skiing gold medals at the 1964Winter Olympics in Innsbruck. In 1993 re-

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News and Analysis Scientific American August 1998 23

If diabetics don’t eat, they stop tak-ing insulin and can develop ke-toacidosis, a potentially life-threat-

ening complication of diabetes that canbe severe enough to send someone intoa coma. So when Nicole Lurie noticedthat many of her diabetic patients werecoming to Hennepin County MedicalCenter in Minneapolis with ketoacido-sis because they could not afford to eat,she was understandably alarmed. Lurie,a professor of medicine and publichealth at the University of Minnesota,along with her colleagues Karin Nelsonand Margaret E. Brown, decided to in-vestigate just how prevalent hungerwas among all their patients at the hos-pital. Now Lurie describes the diabetics

as “canaries in the coal mine,” provid-ing advance warning of hunger’s wide-spread threat to health.

The Minnesota team reported its find-ings in a recent issue of the Journal ofthe American Medical Association: ofthe 567 patients interviewed in early1997, 13 percent reported that duringthe previous year they had, on severaloccasions, not eaten for an entire day,because they could not afford food. Aseparate survey of 170 diabetics re-vealed that almost 19 percent had suf-fered complications that resulted fromnot having enough money to eat. Hen-nepin County Medical Center, which isa public hospital in an urban setting,treats many low-income patients. In-deed, Lurie and her colleagues note thatamong patients reporting hunger or un-certainty about when they might eatnext, many had annual incomes of lessthan $10,000. Many also shared an-other characteristic—recent reductionsin their food stamp benefits.

The 1996 welfare reform bill trimmed$27 billion over six years from the foodstamp program, which is run by the U.S.

Department of Agriculture (USDA). Theprogram provides food vouchers topeople with gross incomes of less than130 percent of federal poverty guide-lines. (That is, the income of a family ofthree must be less than around $1,450per month.) Nearly all recipients havefelt the effects of the cutbacks, but thereduction hit two groups particularlyhard. The new law denied food stampsto all legal immigrants (illegal immi-grants have never been eligible). And itput new financial pressure on unem-ployed recipients, by limiting the maxi-mum duration of benefits. Now unem-ployed able-bodied adults younger than50 with no dependents may receivefood stamps for no longer than threemonths during any three-year period.

Congress recently voted to restorefood stamp benefits to certain categor-ies of legal immigrants—such as chil-dren, the elderly and the disabled—afterresearchers documented that thesegroups were being harmed by the cuts.One disturbing study by Physicians forHuman Rights, for example, found that79 percent of legal immigrant house-holds surveyed in March were “food in-secure”—meaning they often went hun-gry and worried about when their nextmeal would be. The study coordinator,Jennifer Kasper of the Boston Universi-ty School of Medicine, notes that be-cause hunger has been linked to asth-ma, diarrhea and anemia in children,“policymakers should consider the truecost of cutting food stamps.”

Lurie agrees. “Cuts in food stampsmay not be benign,” she says. “Squeezefood stamps, and people can end up inthe hospital.” She also emphasizes thatphysicians should talk to their patientsabout hunger. “Doctors need to under-stand when patients are making trade-offs, buying food instead of medicine.People don’t volunteer this informa-tion—doctors have to ask,” she states.

When Lurie and her colleagues asked,they found that 8 percent of their dia-betic patients had decreased or stoppedtaking their insulin because they had noteaten enough to need the normal dose.Getting enough food and enough medi-cine can be a challenge not just for dia-betics: a survey by Second Harvest, thenation’s largest charitable hunger-relieforganization, found that 28 percent ofpeople visiting food banks have at somepoint been forced to choose betweengetting medical care and buying food.

Researchers say it is notable that thesealarming new findings were obtained

searchers found that Maentyranta and a lotof his family have a genetic mutation affect-ing red blood cell production. As a result,Maentyranta’s blood carries up to 50 per-cent more hemoglobin than an averagemale’s. And whereas having, say, a thirdlung might get you disqualified from com-petition, a set of genes that grants you ac-cess to half again as much oxygen as thecompetition is still legal.

Biology’s newfound ability to spot indi-vidual genes associated with athleticism isintriguing but, on contemplation, not sur-prising. “Athletics, by already selecting forextreme phenotypes, must be se-lecting for a significant genetic influ-ence,” says Philip Reilly, executive di-rector of the Shriver Center for Men-tal Retardation in Waltham, Mass., aclinical geneticist and an attorneywho has spent the past 25 yearspondering genetics and its implica-tions for society. “In one sense, thisis old news,” he notes. “There is nophysical trait for which we have bet-ter evidence of substantial geneticcontribution to ultimate expressionof phenotype than height.” And formost athletes, jockeys being the ri-diculously obvious exception, beingbig is advantageous. (The late, greatsportswriter Shirley Povich actually

bemoaned all the tallness. “[Basketball] lostthis particular patron back when it went ver-tical and put the accent on carnival freaks,”he wrote. “They don’t shoot baskets any-more, they stuff them, like taxidermists.”)

So genes for robust physical traits helpmake for a good athlete. But the basis forbehavior, which also contributes to athleti-cism, remains more mysterious. Another 45army recruits, with the same proportion of Iand D forms as the 78 who trained for 10weeks, dropped out entirely to go home.“Sometimes,” Montgomery explains, “theyjust miss their mums.” —Steve Mirsky

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Cutbacks in the food stamp program are proving hazardous

to the nation’s health

PUBLIC HEALTH

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