The population of the earth will exceed 9 billion people by 2050. Arable land is decreasing, dietary preferences are shifting in the emerging economies of the world, and climate change will present further challenges to food production. Meeting the needs of the growing, changing planet will require new approaches and technologies. Biotechnology is an important approach to improve agricultural productivity that, combined with other practices, has the potential to solve some of these challenges. The commercialization of genetically modified plants began in the mid-1990s with launch of herbicide tolerant and insect protected crops, which were widely adopted by farmers in the US and other countries. More varieties with new and improved traits have been released since then, with a robust pipeline for the future.

Sounds great doesn’t it? Not so fast, say some. There is currently an ongoing, robust debate involving many sectors of society, include skeptics, over how agriculture and food production should work, the role of new and emerging technologies, including the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and the role of multi-national corporations in agriculture.

At this meeting of the Boston Skeptics, Dr. Larry Gilbertson will talk about the science of GMOs and the research at Monsanto Company. He will also answer questions collected from skeptics via social media, facilitated by Mary Mangan, a member of Boston Skeptics, as well as from the audience in the room.

Dr. Gilbertson is a Monsanto scientist in the company’s Biotechnology organization. He fell in love with basic research while taking biology courses as a pre-med major, and quickly changed plans to attend graduate school instead. He became so infatuated with lab work that he courted his girlfriend (now wife) with heart shaped pink and white Saccharomyces cerevisiae (yeast) designs in petri plates.

Dr. Gilbertson joined Monsanto in 1995 as a post-doctoral researcher out of curiosity (and a bit of skepticism) about industrial career paths, and was won over within a week by the shared passion for science that he saw among his colleagues. He has worked on and led a variety of teams performing original research in plant transformation, gene expression, vector technology, and insect control, leading to 26 patents and breakthroughs that have enabled the advancement of the Biotechnology pipeline. He currently leads a Monsanto protein engineering team in Cambridge MA.

Dr. Gilbertson has been a Monsanto Science Fellow since 2004, and was recently recognized with the 2014 Monsanto Science and Technology Career Award.

Dr. Gilbertson is from the heart of the corn belt, Iowa, but rarely came close to corn plants until he joined Monsanto. He received a B.S degree in Biology from the University of Iowa and a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Oregon. He has taught graduate courses plant biology and genomics at the University of Missouri – St. Louis and at Washington University in St. Louis.

Location: We will be meeting at 7PM on Monday, June 22, 2015 in the third floor of The Hong Kong Restaurant, 1238 Mass Ave in Harvard Square, Cambridge.

RSVP or leave questions for Dr. Gilbertson on our Facebook event page. You can also leave questions for Dr. Gilbertson on our Meetup page, at reddit/r/skeptic, or on the SGU forums, or tweet them to Mary (@mem_somerville).

Gluten is a protein structure found in wheat, barley and rye. It is the substance that gives bread its chewiness and because it is strong and stretchy, it helps bread dough trap the CO₂ produced by yeast or baking powder, making it light and airy. To paraphrase Homer Simpson, “Mmmm gluten, is there anything you can’t do?”

Gluten has become one of the most controversial topics in the modern diet. Celiac disease is an autoimmune disease triggered by one of the components of gluten. It causes abdominal pain and discomfort, constipation and diarrhea, anemia and fatigue. It affects millions of people, and in extreme cases, especially in children, it can cause serious vitamin and nutritional deficiencies because the inflamed small intestine doesn’t function properly. Long term, untreated celiac can lead to many serious complications. Celiac is distinct from wheat allergy, which also exists.

(Wheat allergies involve different components of the immune system reacting in different ways than what occurs in celiac, and are similar to other food allergies. Wheat allergies can be triggered by one or more of the many proteins in wheat, not just those in gluten.)

Many people who don’t have the classic symptoms of celiac or wheat allergies, or who were determined not to have those diseases by various diagnostic tests (which according to the Wikipedia articles appear to have very low false negative rates), none the less claim or suspect they have some sort of gluten sensitivity. Hence the enormous current interest in gluten-free foods. (“Gluten free” gets 107,000,000 hits on Google.)

So is wheat the staff of life, responsible for getting humanity out of the stone age, and in the top five discoveries ever (along with fire, the wheel, beer and video games), or is it the greatest evil ever perpetrated, responsible for more misery and death than cigarettes, automobiles, alcoholism and war combined?

The Boston Skeptics are fortunate to have as our guest for April’s Skeptics in the Pub world-renowned pediatric gastroenterologist, research scientist and entrepreneur Alessio Fasano, M.D., who is director of the Center for Celiac Research and Treatment at MassGeneral Hospital for Children (MGHfC). His prevalence study published in 2003 established the rate of celiac disease at 1 in 133 Americans.

His visionary research has led to the awareness of celiac disease and other gluten-related disorders as a growing public health problem in the United States and worldwide. As Visiting Professor at Harvard Medical School and Chief of the Division of Pediatric Gastroenterology and Nutrition at MGHfC, Dr. Fasano treats both children and adults for gluten-related disorders, including celiac disease, non-celiac gluten sensitivity and wheat allergy.

A passionate advocate for collaboration in research and clinical work, Dr. Fasano recently authored Gluten Freedom to provide patients, healthcare providers and general readers an evidence-based yet entertaining book to dispel some of the current confusion about gluten and how it can affect your health.

Dr Fasano will tell us about his research, the causes and treatment for celiac disease, wheat allergies and gluten sensitivity, and I’m sure we have many questions on these topics.

We will be meeting at 7PM on Monday, April 6, 2015 in the back room at The Burren, 247 Elm St. in Davis Square, Somerville. RSVP on our Facebook event page. If enough people say they will attend in advance, the Burren will provide us with our own wait staff and/or bartender, which will avoid a crush of people trying to get food or drinks. Also, it might be a good idea to arrive a little early if you possibly can.

BTW, someone asked if the Burren has any gluten-free items on their menu. I am informed that the Cod Espanola, the Balsamic Chicken, the veggie shepherds pie and nachos are all gluten free.

Hopefully, we won’t have yet another blizzard!

UPDATE Dr Fasano’s talk is now available on Vimeo:


Dr. Alessio Fasano speaks at the Boston Skeptics in the Pub, April 6, 2015

The Boston Skeptics are lucky to have members like Clay Jones, pediatrician and Science Based Medicine blogger. Clay will be joining us on Monday, March 2 for our next Skeptics in the Pub, to discuss yet another case of people ignoring the best scientific evidence for a medical treatment, to the detriment of their children. Tragically, several children have recently died and many more have suffered serious brain injury from internal bleeding that can easily be prevented by a vitamin K injection shortly after birth.

As Clay ably explains in a post on SBM, most or all newborns suffer from vitamin K deficiency. This is due to a variety of causes, ranging from an immature digestive system that can’t readily absorb vitamin K, an immature liver that doesn’t process vitamin K efficiently, lack of gut bacteria that help digest foods and release the vitamin K in them, and the low levels of vitamin K in human breast milk. (Infant formula is fortified with vitamin K, so deficiency is less a problem but not eliminated in formula-fed babies.) The first three causes are significantly worse in premature babies.

Vitamin K is essential to several processes involved in forming blood clots, and people with vitamin K deficiency are much more likely to suffer from bruising and bleeding, both external and internal. Early vitamin K-deficient bleeding (VKDB) occurs in the first week after birth. It is fairly common, about 1.7% of all babies experience it (or would if vitamin K injections weren’t SOP since 1961), usually in the form of bleeding under the skin or (more scarily) under the membrane that covers bones. The latter can result in disturbing lumps on the skull and terrified parents, but usually resolves itself fairly quickly. Much more serious, but much rarer, is late VKDB, which occurs between 2 and 12 weeks. This can result in serious internal bleeding into the gut and the brain. Brain bleeds can cause serious brain injuries or even death. Babies not given vitamin K suffer late VKDB at the rate of about 4.4 to 7.2 per 100,000 children, 20% of them die and half the remainder suffer long term problems. Before vitamin K treatment became routine, VKDB was an important cause of infant mortality.

Fortunately, both forms of VKDB can be virtually completely eliminated by a simple, single intramuscular vitamin K injection

within a few hours of birth. Vitamin K is a fat-soluble vitamin, and is retained in the babies muscle and slowly released for several months, long enough for the baby’s digestive system and internal organs to mature sufficiently to process vitamin K from food on their own. Oral vitamin K also works, but not quite as well, and requires daily or weekly doses of liquid vitamin K over several weeks or months, and it is difficult for harried parents to stick to the schedule. Oral vitamin K is standard treatment in some countries, but many of them are switching to (or switching back to) injections.

Increasingly, and frighteningly, more parents are refusing consent for their babies to receive the injection. This seems to be correlated with the anti-vax movement, though their objections are much more tenuous. Similar to the bogus autism-vaccine link espoused by Andrew Wakefield and others, there was a tiny, poorly done study (since thoroughly refuted) that claimed to link vitamin K to childhood leukemia. The anti-K movement lacks the prominent purveyors of nonsense that keeps the anti-vax movement alive. (Even Dr. Joeseph Mercola doesn’t believe vitamin K shots cause leukemia, but he does prefer oral doses, of course.) Clay will tell us, we hope, about other motivations parents have for refusing the vitamin K jab.

The problem of vitamin K rejection is receiving increased media attention. Chris Mooney wrote about it last summer in his Mother Jones blog, and Mooney and Indre Viskontas interviewed Clay about it on the Inquiring Minds podcast. (Interview starts about 6 minutes in.)

We will be meeting at 7PM on Monday, March 2, 2015 in the back room at The Burren, 247 Elm St. in Davis Square, Somerville. Please RSVP* on our Facebook event page. If enough people say they will attend in advance, the Burren will provide us with our own wait staff and/or bartender, which will avoid a crush of people trying to get food or drinks. Also, it might be a good idea to arrive a little early if you possibly can.

Hopefully, we won’t have yet another blizzard!

[*] Yes, I know “Please RSVP” is redundant.

WEATHER UPDATE: Due to the impending 4th Blizzard, Darwin Day has been postponed one week, to Feb. 22.

Thursday, Feb 12 is Charles Darwin’s 206th birthday.

We’re celebrating with noodles and dinosaurs.

Join us at 11 AM Sunday, Feb 15 Feb 22 at Santouka Ramen in Harvard Square for brunch, followed by a voyage† to the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

RSVP on our Facebook event page.

Date: Sunday, Feb 15 Feb 22, 2015
Brunch Time: 11 AM
Place: Santouka Ramen
1 Bow Street
Cambridge MA

Museum Time: 1 PM
Place: Harvard Museum of Natural History
26 Oxford Street
Cambridge MA

[†] Boat not provided‡.
[‡] Boat not needed, since it’s just a 10 minute walk, not a 5 year circumnavigation. Spaceship not needed either.

Facebook no longer automatically invites all members of a group to group events, if the group has more than 250 members. The Boston Skeptics group currently has 557 members, so most of you aren’t getting notified of events unless you check the page (or here) frequently.

But Facebook members can invite their friends! Go to the event page, click on Invite, pick Choose Friends on the menu, and then an Invite window will pop up with a list of suggestions on the left side. Pick Boston Skeptics under MY GROUPS (you might have to scroll down) and a list of your friends who are members of the Boston Skeptics will appear in the middle column. Click on Select All at the top and all your Skeptical Friends will get selected (except those who have already been invited by someone else, so they won’t get spammed.) Of course, you can also invite people who aren’t members, since all (AFIAK) our events are public!

There’s more! We’ve invented a Facebook user, Charles Beagleson, who is a friend to everyone. (At least, to everyone who has accepted a friend request from him.) Charlie will probably be sending you a friend request soon, or you can send him one. Chuck will be sending invites to all his friends for all future events. (If you don’t want to be inundated by the average of 2 events per month, just don’t accept his friendship, or unfriend him if you’ve already accepted. He won’t be insulted. ;-(

Good News, everybody! We have a new home for Skeptics in the Pub. Our first event will be watching a DVD about the immune system, the threat of communicable diseases, how vaccines work, why some people choose not to vaccinate, and what the public health consequences of that choice are.

Invisible Threat is a 40-minute documentary made by a group of students at the Carlsbad High School in Southern California. Judging by the trailer and reviews (and the anti-vax reactions to it), it is very well done and informative. Their scientific technical adviser was Dr. Paul Offit, pediatrician and vaccine developer at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and author of several books about vaccines, alternative medicine.

Before the video was released, and unseen by its critics, the students making it received bullying and threats from the anti-vax and conspiracy theory communities. Some of the teachers and adult advisers wanted to pull out of the project, but fortunately for us, the students persevered. Still the intimidation continued and anti-vax propaganda was aired unchallenged on a Teach the Controversy report on local TV.

Following the film, we will have a discussion led by some members of our group with an interest in and knowledge of vaccines, communicable diseases and autism.

Our new location is The Burren, located at 247 Elm Street in Davis Square, Somerville. We will be meeting in the back room at 7PM on the first Monday of every month. If you want to familiarize yourself with the Burren, please come to our Getting Acquainted event on Monday January 26.

You can RSVP on Facebook. The Burren wants a preliminary estimate of attendance so they can decide whether to assign a bartender and/or wait staff to the back room for that night. It would make it easier, quicker and less disruptive for us to get food and drinks if they do, so please sign up ASAP if you are planning to attend. (But if you aren’t sure or don’t sign up, no worries. There is plenty of room, and we want to see you again.)

Summary:

When: February 2, 2015 at 7:00 PM

Where: The Burren, 247 Elm St, Davis Square, Somerville

What: Invisible Threat video and discussion

(The official starting time is 7PM, but if people arrive early, they can order dinner and/or drinks. The Burren said they could open up the room to us earlier than 7 if there is demand.)

We are having one final “Last Monday” Skeptics in the Pub, next Monday, January 26, at the Burren in Davis Square, Somerville.

There is no formal program.

Please come if you would like to meet folks, check out the menu and beer list, practice urban navigation skills, or help us organize, pick speakers, or just rant on your favorite skeptical topic.

This is a prequel to the Big News: We have a new home for Boston Skeptics Skeptics in the Pub! Starting Monday, February 2, 2015, and the first (no longer last) Monday of every month thereafter, we will be meeting in the back room of the Burren for our regular monthly program of speakers, writers, musicians, magicians, movies, trivia contests, or whatever strikes our fancy! (By attending this Monday, you can help us decide future events and speakers.)

If you’re like me and like to lurk investigate a bit before joining in some activity, this is a perfect opportunity. We promise not to force you to participate in any organizational activities unless you want to.

We will be meeting at 7 PM at the Burren in Davis Sq, Somerville on Monday, January 26.

The Burren is located at 247 Elm Street, just a 2 minute walk from the Davis Square T stop. There is loads of parking in the area (the municipal lots seem to be free after 8 PM), though the streets are narrow and car-filled. Detailed directions are on the Burren’s map page.

The Burren is an Irish pub with a strong focus on Irish, traditional American, folk and acoustic music as well as poetry slams and comedy. The Boston Science by the Pint group meets there on the second Monday of each month, so I think we’ll fit right in.

Best of all, the event is FREE!

Please RSVP on the event Facebook page. If enough people sign up in advance, the Burren will reserve us a table or area so we can all sit together.

Join us once again in our search for a new home. This month we are checking out Cambridge Common, on Mass Ave just north of Harvard Square.

No special topic this month. But since it’s Halloween week, maybe we should bring ghost-hunting equipment and see if it’s haunted, like the pub in New York where NECSS has held their Drinking Skeptically on occasion. (There were very mysterious noises coming from the bathroom there, but surprisingly no one seemed keen to investigate.)

We’ll be meeting at 7PM on Monday October 27, 2014. The address is 1667 Mass Ave, Cambridge. It’s about 4 blocks north of Harvard Sq, between Wendell and Sacramento Streets. (On the map, it looks just as close to Porter Square, and it might be easier to walk from there.) You can sign up on our Facebook event page to help us get an idea how many people might show up, though this does tend to tip off the fraudsters ghosts.

P.S. If you have other pub suggestions, please post them on Facebook.

Since Tommy Doyle’s closed we’ve been meeting very sporadically (except the Book Club). We need a new regular meeting place. I’ve put up a post on Facebook* where people can make suggestions.

For people who don’t do Facebook, here’s a copy of the post. (You can email me suggestions or comments, or leave a comment here.)

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Hey, everybody! Let’s crowd-source a new meeting place.

Since Tommy Doyle’s closed, we haven’t had a good meeting place. We had a couple of get-togethers at Meadhall in Kendall Sq, but it isn’t really set up for speakers, music or movies. Good beer, okay food, comfy chairs, but still lacking

I think what we need is a place with:

• room for about 60-80 people (with standing room for 20-30 more)
• near a T station
• accessible (I think this was a problem at Tommy Doyle’s)
• a stage or other easily visible area for speakers and musicians
• comfortable environment
• good but not fancy food
• decent bar
• inexpensive enough that we don’t frighten away students and people on a limited income.
• friendly and accepting staff
• management that is amenable to reserving us a space on the expectation that there would be good business on an otherwise quiet evening
• ability to record the talks (audio and video) if our guest wants us to (I think we can supply our own recording equipment and cameras if needed.)

Any other requirements I missed? Did I get the size right?

Does anyone know the perfect place or have any suggestions?

Should we form an exploratory committee to perform a skeptical investigation (i.e. a pub crawl?)

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[*] I think that’s a link to the group rather than the specific post, but it should be easy to find since we don’t get a lot of posts…

Please join us for another Skeptics in the Pub beer tasting and skeptical inquiry into the science of fermentation on Monday, April 28 at 7:00 PM as we conduct a Phase 2 study of Meadhall in Kendall Square, Cambridge. According to our spies, various online reviews and our Phase 1 trial, it has a vast selection of very good beers and is a good candidate for future events, but I’m still skeptical, so we need as many independent assessments as possible. Please join us!

Location: Meadhall, 4 Cambridge Center, Cambridge
3 minute walk from Kendall T stop
Date: Monday, Apr 28, 2014, 7:00 PM

RSVP on Facebook.