Here is the photo of the proud grandparents taken from US Weekly's web site.
Can you imagine trying to remember all the birthdays, anniversaries, etc? I wonder how many twins there are, or how many folks celebrate the same day as a birthday.
Thursday, May 28, 2015
100th grandchild
Holy Christmas - can one believe this? 12 children, 53 grandchildren, 45 great grandchildren and 1 great-great grandchild. Can you imagine, dear reader, doing the tree for this family? One doesn't have enough space on the screen!
Here is the photo of the proud grandparents taken from US Weekly's web site.
Can you imagine trying to remember all the birthdays, anniversaries, etc? I wonder how many twins there are, or how many folks celebrate the same day as a birthday.
Here is the photo of the proud grandparents taken from US Weekly's web site.
Can you imagine trying to remember all the birthdays, anniversaries, etc? I wonder how many twins there are, or how many folks celebrate the same day as a birthday.
Sunday, May 10, 2015
Basin Seafood & Spirits - A Review
My husband and I just found ourselves here - no one having mentioned the restaurant to us. The restaurant seems to have a very unassuming presence on Magazine Street - almost to the point that it would be very easy to over look.
I am very glad we did not overlook it, because we were delighted enough to dine on Saturday night and return on Sunday for brunch. I thought the Octopus Ceviche - Orange and Lime Juice, Habanero, Avocado, Red Onions, Cilantro, Jicama Slaw - and Smoked Snapper Dip served with Crostinis - were fabulous. Well worth the trip. The next day I dined on the Fried Green Tomatoes Benedict. The brunch portion did seem small, but they made up for it with bottomless mimosas at something like $14. (But, I had things to do, so I had to limit myself on those!)
They describe themselves thusly:
Basin located at 3222 Magazine Street New Orleans, LA 70115 504.302.7391
And they are open Monday - Thursday 1130am to 10pm Friday - Saturday 1130am to 10pm Sunday 1130am to 9pm
HAPPY HOUR Weekdays 3pm to 7pm - One day I will have to go to a happy hour when they serve Local Craft Drafts $3, Happy Hour Food Items $4, House Wines by the glass $5 and Cocktail of the Day $5
I am very glad we did not overlook it, because we were delighted enough to dine on Saturday night and return on Sunday for brunch. I thought the Octopus Ceviche - Orange and Lime Juice, Habanero, Avocado, Red Onions, Cilantro, Jicama Slaw - and Smoked Snapper Dip served with Crostinis - were fabulous. Well worth the trip. The next day I dined on the Fried Green Tomatoes Benedict. The brunch portion did seem small, but they made up for it with bottomless mimosas at something like $14. (But, I had things to do, so I had to limit myself on those!)
They describe themselves thusly:
The idea for Basin began several years ago when Chef and Owner of Baru, Edgar Caro, returned from a fishing trip with his friends. He caught a snapper and made it into a dockside ceviche. His friends said it was one of the best fish preparations they had ever tasted.
Along with his friend Antonio Mata, they decided to open Basin, a seafood restaurant serving modernized, lighter versions of traditional Louisiana dishes. Basin sources the best possible ingredients from local sources, highlighting seasonal vegetables and Gulf fish in our daily specials.
Basin offers sidewalk seating along the busiest sector of Magazine Street. We also have a lush courtyard for additional seating and a relaxing escape from the city.
Basin located at 3222 Magazine Street New Orleans, LA 70115 504.302.7391
And they are open Monday - Thursday 1130am to 10pm Friday - Saturday 1130am to 10pm Sunday 1130am to 9pm
HAPPY HOUR Weekdays 3pm to 7pm - One day I will have to go to a happy hour when they serve Local Craft Drafts $3, Happy Hour Food Items $4, House Wines by the glass $5 and Cocktail of the Day $5
Saturday, May 9, 2015
Coffee & Bugs!
Goody, goody - insect protein with my morning cup of coffee; what could be better and more efficient? And the fact that the borer sex is incestuous, well that keeps us right in line with previous posts about Queen Mother Cersei. Perfect.
A study from the University of Sao Paulo published in the Journal of Insect Behavior describes the shocking behavior of coffee berry borers. These insects, which Discovery News calls "the most serious pests of coffee plants worldwide," have sex in coffee beans before they're roasted into the delicious drink.
The coffee berry borers are a type of beetle native to Africa. The females are just .07 inches long, and the males are about .06 inches long — tiny enough to get down inside coffee beans.
That's not even the weirdest part — the beetles' coffee bean sex is also incestuous. Weliton Dias Silva, author of the study, writes that females "have to be copulated by their sibling males before leaving the native coffee fruit to improve their chances of successful colonization." And sometimes, females don't even need their brothers — they can reproduce on their own, through parthenogenesis.
So how can you tell if your coffee beans are the site of insect sex? Discovery News reports that the female beetles bore "minute holes" to escape from the beans, and the beans may also seem more hollow than others. If you're a fan of Coffee arabica, you might be more at risk — it's also the beetles' coffee of choice. You probably shouldn't be too concerned, though, because most of the "infested" beans are taken off the market.
By Meghan DeMaria
Aren't you curious what Herb is up to? I am, you'd think I'd get back to him.
The coffee berry borers are a type of beetle native to Africa. The females are just .07 inches long, and the males are about .06 inches long — tiny enough to get down inside coffee beans.
That's not even the weirdest part — the beetles' coffee bean sex is also incestuous. Weliton Dias Silva, author of the study, writes that females "have to be copulated by their sibling males before leaving the native coffee fruit to improve their chances of successful colonization." And sometimes, females don't even need their brothers — they can reproduce on their own, through parthenogenesis.
So how can you tell if your coffee beans are the site of insect sex? Discovery News reports that the female beetles bore "minute holes" to escape from the beans, and the beans may also seem more hollow than others. If you're a fan of Coffee arabica, you might be more at risk — it's also the beetles' coffee of choice. You probably shouldn't be too concerned, though, because most of the "infested" beans are taken off the market.
By Meghan DeMaria
Aren't you curious what Herb is up to? I am, you'd think I'd get back to him.
Friday, May 8, 2015
Delicious Grub
I have taken you readers here before... here and here. I suspect I am trying to psyche myself up for the day I start eating insects myself... There is wisdom in it - and goodness knows plenty of humans enjoy bugs of all kinds. And wouldn't it be great to chase that roach in your house and pop it in your mouth instead. Flushing them is too hard - and they can crawl out of your vacuum cleaner. This is a much more efficient way to clean your house and get proper nutrition. Crawfish, crabs and lobsters are just another form of water bug, really.
I am contemplating beef blood protein... why should this be any less icky?
Written by Emily Anthes
AT FIRST MY meal seems familiar, like countless other dishes I've eaten at Asian restaurants. A swirl of noodles slicked with oil and studded with shredded chicken, with the aroma of ginger and garlic. And then I notice the eyes. Dark, compound orbs on a yellow speckled head, joined to a winged, segmented body. I hadn't spotted them right away, but suddenly I see them everywhere — my noodles are teeming with insects.
I can't say I wasn't warned. On this warm May afternoon, I've agreed to be a guinea pig at an experimental insect tasting in Wageningen, a university town in the central Netherlands. My hosts are Ben Reade and Josh Evans from the Nordic Food Lab, a nonprofit culinary research institute. Reade and Evans lead the lab's "insect deliciousness" project, a three-year effort to turn insects — the creepy-crawlies that most of us squash without a second thought — into tasty, craveable treats.
The project began after René Redzepi (the chef and co-owner of Noma, the Danish restaurant that is often ranked the best in the world) tasted an Amazonian ant that reminded him of lemongrass. Redzepi, who founded the Nordic Food Lab in 2008, became interested in serving insects at Noma and asked the researchers at the lab to explore the possibilities.
The Food Lab operates from a houseboat in Copenhagen, but Reade and Evans are in the Netherlands for a few days, and they've borrowed a local kitchen to try out some brand-new dishes. I, along with three other gutsy gastronomes, am here to taste the results.
We take our seats at a long, high table as Reade and Evans wheel in a trolley loaded with our meals. We each receive a different main course. I get the Asian-style noodles and fixate on the bug I can see. "That's a locust," Reade says. "[It] was alive this morning. Very fresh." But he's much more excited about another, hidden ingredient: fat extracted from the larvae of black soldier flies (or, to put it less delicately, maggot fat). The whole dish has been stir-fried in it.
"I believe you're the first human being on the planet to have ever been served anything cooked with this," Reade tells me. But not to worry: "I've eaten some of it myself, an hour ago. I'm still alive."
THE NEXT MORNING, Reade and Evans join 450 of the world's foremost experts on entomophagy, or insect eating, at a hotel down the road in Ede. They are here for Insects to Feed the World, a three-day conference to "promote the use of insects as human food and as animal feed in assuring food security."
The attendees are all familiar with the same dire facts. By 2050, the planet will be packed with 9 billion people. In low- and middle-income countries, the demand for animal products is rising sharply as economies and incomes grow; in the next few decades, we'll need to figure out how to produce enough protein for billions more mouths. Simply ramping up our current system is not really a solution. The global livestock industry already takes an enormous toll on the environment, gobbling up land and water. It's a potent polluter, thanks to the animal waste and veterinary medicines that seep into soil and water. And it emits more greenhouse gases than planes, trains, and automobiles combined.
The insect authorities assembling in Ede believe that entomophagy could be an elegant solution to many of these problems. Insects are chock-full of protein and rich in essential micronutrients, such as iron and zinc. They don't need as much space as livestock, emit lower levels of greenhouse gases, and have a sky-high feed conversion rate: A single kilogram of feed yields 12 times more edible cricket protein than beef protein. Some species of insects are drought resistant and may require less water than cows, pigs, or poultry.
Insect meal could also replace some of the expensive ingredients, like soybeans and fish meal, that are fed to farm animals, potentially lowering the cost of livestock products and freeing up feed crops for human consumption. As a bonus, bugs can be raised on refuse, such as food scraps and animal manure, so insect farms could increase the world's supply of protein while reducing and recycling waste.
Officials at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) became interested in the role of insects in food security about a decade ago, after documenting the significant part that insects play in Central African diets. Since then, the FAO has been commissioning studies, issuing reports, and arranging small meetings on eating insects. The gathering in Ede is the culmination of all these efforts — the first major international conference to bring together entomologists, entrepreneurs, nutritionists, chefs, psychologists, and government officials.
Over the next three days, participants will lay out their vision for the future. It is ambitious and optimistic. They will speculate about creating an insect aisle at the supermarket and fast-food restaurants that serve bug burgers. They will imagine putting packages of "beautiful, clean" shrink-wrapped mealworms on display at the meat counter, alongside the skirt steak and chicken wings. And they will dream about a world in which forests are thick, land is fertile, the climate is stable, water is clean, waste is minimal, food prices are low, and hunger and malnutrition are rare. But are we ready for six-legged livestock?
AT LEAST 2 BILLION people worldwide eat insects. Yellow jacket wasp larvae are popular in Japan, cicadas are treasured in Malawi, and weaver ants are devoured in Thailand. Termites, a food favorite in many African nations, can be fried, smoked, steamed, sun-dried, or ground into a powder. The list of edible insect species is at 1,900 and growing.
Laura D'Asaro's first brush with entomophagy came in Tanzania. In the summer of 2011, D'Asaro — a tall, freckled Harvard student with a relentlessly cheerful disposition — had gone to East Africa to take classes in Swahili. One day, she came across a Tanzanian woman standing by the side of the road, selling fried caterpillars out of a big basket. D'Asaro, an on-again, off-again vegetarian, wasn't sure she wanted to eat an insect, but curiosity trumped apprehension. "When else am I going to try fried caterpillar?" she wondered. So she tried not to look too hard at the brown, inch-and-a-half-long caterpillar as she placed it in her mouth and chewed. She was pleasantly surprised — the texture and the taste reminded her of lobster.
When the summer ended, D'Asaro returned to the U.S. and moved on with her college life until, two years later, she stumbled across an article on the environmental benefits of bug eating. "All these things clicked," she recalls.
D'Asaro decided to start a company to introduce insects to American diners and enlisted two of her college classmates to join her. They began ordering boxes of bugs from pet-food companies and playing around in the kitchen, making waxworm tacos and smothering crickets in soy sauce. "We were immediately very impressed with the taste of it all," D'Asaro says. But when they shared samples with friends, it did not go well. "People seemed very frightened."
They had run smack into what may be the biggest hurdle in expanding insect cuisine: getting people to eat it. Some foods, like chocolate, sell themselves. Insects are not one of those foods. "Insects," says Paul Rozin, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, "are disgusting. It's not that insects taste bad. It's that the idea of an insect is upsetting to people."
Why do we find insects so disgusting? Because they're animals. As a general rule, most of the foods that humans find disgusting are animal products, and most animal products are disgusting; even the most insatiable carnivores eat only a small fraction of the species that exist on the planet. Many insect species are found on, in, or around waste, and they're commonly associated with dirt, decay, and disease, all of which can significantly up the yuck factor.
D'Asaro and her partners realized that they'd need to ease consumers into the idea of bug gastronomy, so they abandoned the idea of serving whole insects and decided to work instead with cricket flour, which could be invisibly incorporated into familiar foods. They decided to launch their company, which they named Six Foods, with a product Americans already love: chips. They created Chirps, a triangular chip made of black beans, rice, and cricket flour, which is lightly spritzed with oil and then baked. Chirps are high in protein and low in fat and taste similar to tortilla chips, D'Asaro says, although the cricket flour adds a slightly nutty, savory flavor.
In some ways, Chirps are a Trojan horsefly, a way to sneak bugs into American diets and transform skeptics into insectivores. In the past few years, there's been an explosion in businesses trying to put the "meal" into mealworms. A Belgian outfit called Green Kow makes carrot-mealworm, tomato-mealworm, and chocolate-mealworm spreads. Ento, based in the U.K., sells mealworm and cricket pâtés at food festivals and last year created a pop-up restaurant devoted to insect cuisine. In the U.S., Chapul and Exo sell protein bars chock-full of cricket flour, while New Generation Nutrition, in the Netherlands, has experimented with a falafel-like chickpea-and-buffalo-worm patty.
Then there are the companies that are raising insects for animal feed, such as Agriprotein, which is based in South Africa and building "a damn big fly factory," as co-founder David Drew puts it. The plant is scheduled to open next year and will produce 24 tons of larvae and 7 tons of maggot meal, or MagMeal, every day. Agriprotein plans to create nine more of these factories across the globe by 2020. Enviroflight in the U.S., Ynsect in France, and Protix in the Netherlands have also built large-scale insect production facilities.
Many companies have arrived at the same conclusion as Six Foods — that it's best not to confront consumers with insects too directly. That often involves processing and disguising the bugs, but it can also mean doing a little clever rebranding. Take waxworms, which live in beehives and eat honeycomb. By all accounts, they're delicious: buttery, with a taste reminiscent of bacon. But the word "worm" can be a deal breaker for diners, so Six Foods has rechristened them "honey bugs." Ento calls them "honeycomb caterpillars."
THE CONFERENCEGOERS IN Ede seem to find comfort in telling and re-telling the story of sushi — a strange, foreign dish that showcased raw fish (raw fish!) and yet became not just acceptable but trendy in the West. "There's no question that food preferences can change," says D'Asaro.
I survived the maggot fat, as well as other delicacies like locust tabbouleh, bee larvae ceviche, and tempura-fried crickets. Although I found many of the dishes to be psychologically difficult to stomach, none of them had actually tasted bad. The insects themselves were quite bland.
The edible insect industry is still in its infancy, and it's too soon to tell how it will develop or whether it will succeed. Will we accept insect flour in our snack foods? Will crickets become a grocery store staple?
For their part, Evans and Reade reject the notion that insects will be some sort of silver bullet to food security. Bugs, they say, will be part of the solution only if we are careful and thoughtful about how we integrate them into the food system. "Insects can be a vehicle for something," Reade says. "But it has to be recognized that it's not the insects themselves that are going to make it sustainable. It's the humans."
Excerpted from a piece that originally appeared in MosaicScience.com and taken from the November 28th edition of The Week Magazine.
I am contemplating beef blood protein... why should this be any less icky?
Written by Emily Anthes
AT FIRST MY meal seems familiar, like countless other dishes I've eaten at Asian restaurants. A swirl of noodles slicked with oil and studded with shredded chicken, with the aroma of ginger and garlic. And then I notice the eyes. Dark, compound orbs on a yellow speckled head, joined to a winged, segmented body. I hadn't spotted them right away, but suddenly I see them everywhere — my noodles are teeming with insects.
I can't say I wasn't warned. On this warm May afternoon, I've agreed to be a guinea pig at an experimental insect tasting in Wageningen, a university town in the central Netherlands. My hosts are Ben Reade and Josh Evans from the Nordic Food Lab, a nonprofit culinary research institute. Reade and Evans lead the lab's "insect deliciousness" project, a three-year effort to turn insects — the creepy-crawlies that most of us squash without a second thought — into tasty, craveable treats.
The project began after René Redzepi (the chef and co-owner of Noma, the Danish restaurant that is often ranked the best in the world) tasted an Amazonian ant that reminded him of lemongrass. Redzepi, who founded the Nordic Food Lab in 2008, became interested in serving insects at Noma and asked the researchers at the lab to explore the possibilities.
The Food Lab operates from a houseboat in Copenhagen, but Reade and Evans are in the Netherlands for a few days, and they've borrowed a local kitchen to try out some brand-new dishes. I, along with three other gutsy gastronomes, am here to taste the results.
We take our seats at a long, high table as Reade and Evans wheel in a trolley loaded with our meals. We each receive a different main course. I get the Asian-style noodles and fixate on the bug I can see. "That's a locust," Reade says. "[It] was alive this morning. Very fresh." But he's much more excited about another, hidden ingredient: fat extracted from the larvae of black soldier flies (or, to put it less delicately, maggot fat). The whole dish has been stir-fried in it.
"I believe you're the first human being on the planet to have ever been served anything cooked with this," Reade tells me. But not to worry: "I've eaten some of it myself, an hour ago. I'm still alive."
THE NEXT MORNING, Reade and Evans join 450 of the world's foremost experts on entomophagy, or insect eating, at a hotel down the road in Ede. They are here for Insects to Feed the World, a three-day conference to "promote the use of insects as human food and as animal feed in assuring food security."
The attendees are all familiar with the same dire facts. By 2050, the planet will be packed with 9 billion people. In low- and middle-income countries, the demand for animal products is rising sharply as economies and incomes grow; in the next few decades, we'll need to figure out how to produce enough protein for billions more mouths. Simply ramping up our current system is not really a solution. The global livestock industry already takes an enormous toll on the environment, gobbling up land and water. It's a potent polluter, thanks to the animal waste and veterinary medicines that seep into soil and water. And it emits more greenhouse gases than planes, trains, and automobiles combined.
The insect authorities assembling in Ede believe that entomophagy could be an elegant solution to many of these problems. Insects are chock-full of protein and rich in essential micronutrients, such as iron and zinc. They don't need as much space as livestock, emit lower levels of greenhouse gases, and have a sky-high feed conversion rate: A single kilogram of feed yields 12 times more edible cricket protein than beef protein. Some species of insects are drought resistant and may require less water than cows, pigs, or poultry.
Insect meal could also replace some of the expensive ingredients, like soybeans and fish meal, that are fed to farm animals, potentially lowering the cost of livestock products and freeing up feed crops for human consumption. As a bonus, bugs can be raised on refuse, such as food scraps and animal manure, so insect farms could increase the world's supply of protein while reducing and recycling waste.
Officials at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) became interested in the role of insects in food security about a decade ago, after documenting the significant part that insects play in Central African diets. Since then, the FAO has been commissioning studies, issuing reports, and arranging small meetings on eating insects. The gathering in Ede is the culmination of all these efforts — the first major international conference to bring together entomologists, entrepreneurs, nutritionists, chefs, psychologists, and government officials.
Over the next three days, participants will lay out their vision for the future. It is ambitious and optimistic. They will speculate about creating an insect aisle at the supermarket and fast-food restaurants that serve bug burgers. They will imagine putting packages of "beautiful, clean" shrink-wrapped mealworms on display at the meat counter, alongside the skirt steak and chicken wings. And they will dream about a world in which forests are thick, land is fertile, the climate is stable, water is clean, waste is minimal, food prices are low, and hunger and malnutrition are rare. But are we ready for six-legged livestock?
AT LEAST 2 BILLION people worldwide eat insects. Yellow jacket wasp larvae are popular in Japan, cicadas are treasured in Malawi, and weaver ants are devoured in Thailand. Termites, a food favorite in many African nations, can be fried, smoked, steamed, sun-dried, or ground into a powder. The list of edible insect species is at 1,900 and growing.
Laura D'Asaro's first brush with entomophagy came in Tanzania. In the summer of 2011, D'Asaro — a tall, freckled Harvard student with a relentlessly cheerful disposition — had gone to East Africa to take classes in Swahili. One day, she came across a Tanzanian woman standing by the side of the road, selling fried caterpillars out of a big basket. D'Asaro, an on-again, off-again vegetarian, wasn't sure she wanted to eat an insect, but curiosity trumped apprehension. "When else am I going to try fried caterpillar?" she wondered. So she tried not to look too hard at the brown, inch-and-a-half-long caterpillar as she placed it in her mouth and chewed. She was pleasantly surprised — the texture and the taste reminded her of lobster.
When the summer ended, D'Asaro returned to the U.S. and moved on with her college life until, two years later, she stumbled across an article on the environmental benefits of bug eating. "All these things clicked," she recalls.
D'Asaro decided to start a company to introduce insects to American diners and enlisted two of her college classmates to join her. They began ordering boxes of bugs from pet-food companies and playing around in the kitchen, making waxworm tacos and smothering crickets in soy sauce. "We were immediately very impressed with the taste of it all," D'Asaro says. But when they shared samples with friends, it did not go well. "People seemed very frightened."
They had run smack into what may be the biggest hurdle in expanding insect cuisine: getting people to eat it. Some foods, like chocolate, sell themselves. Insects are not one of those foods. "Insects," says Paul Rozin, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, "are disgusting. It's not that insects taste bad. It's that the idea of an insect is upsetting to people."
Why do we find insects so disgusting? Because they're animals. As a general rule, most of the foods that humans find disgusting are animal products, and most animal products are disgusting; even the most insatiable carnivores eat only a small fraction of the species that exist on the planet. Many insect species are found on, in, or around waste, and they're commonly associated with dirt, decay, and disease, all of which can significantly up the yuck factor.
D'Asaro and her partners realized that they'd need to ease consumers into the idea of bug gastronomy, so they abandoned the idea of serving whole insects and decided to work instead with cricket flour, which could be invisibly incorporated into familiar foods. They decided to launch their company, which they named Six Foods, with a product Americans already love: chips. They created Chirps, a triangular chip made of black beans, rice, and cricket flour, which is lightly spritzed with oil and then baked. Chirps are high in protein and low in fat and taste similar to tortilla chips, D'Asaro says, although the cricket flour adds a slightly nutty, savory flavor.
In some ways, Chirps are a Trojan horsefly, a way to sneak bugs into American diets and transform skeptics into insectivores. In the past few years, there's been an explosion in businesses trying to put the "meal" into mealworms. A Belgian outfit called Green Kow makes carrot-mealworm, tomato-mealworm, and chocolate-mealworm spreads. Ento, based in the U.K., sells mealworm and cricket pâtés at food festivals and last year created a pop-up restaurant devoted to insect cuisine. In the U.S., Chapul and Exo sell protein bars chock-full of cricket flour, while New Generation Nutrition, in the Netherlands, has experimented with a falafel-like chickpea-and-buffalo-worm patty.
Then there are the companies that are raising insects for animal feed, such as Agriprotein, which is based in South Africa and building "a damn big fly factory," as co-founder David Drew puts it. The plant is scheduled to open next year and will produce 24 tons of larvae and 7 tons of maggot meal, or MagMeal, every day. Agriprotein plans to create nine more of these factories across the globe by 2020. Enviroflight in the U.S., Ynsect in France, and Protix in the Netherlands have also built large-scale insect production facilities.
Many companies have arrived at the same conclusion as Six Foods — that it's best not to confront consumers with insects too directly. That often involves processing and disguising the bugs, but it can also mean doing a little clever rebranding. Take waxworms, which live in beehives and eat honeycomb. By all accounts, they're delicious: buttery, with a taste reminiscent of bacon. But the word "worm" can be a deal breaker for diners, so Six Foods has rechristened them "honey bugs." Ento calls them "honeycomb caterpillars."
THE CONFERENCEGOERS IN Ede seem to find comfort in telling and re-telling the story of sushi — a strange, foreign dish that showcased raw fish (raw fish!) and yet became not just acceptable but trendy in the West. "There's no question that food preferences can change," says D'Asaro.
I survived the maggot fat, as well as other delicacies like locust tabbouleh, bee larvae ceviche, and tempura-fried crickets. Although I found many of the dishes to be psychologically difficult to stomach, none of them had actually tasted bad. The insects themselves were quite bland.
The edible insect industry is still in its infancy, and it's too soon to tell how it will develop or whether it will succeed. Will we accept insect flour in our snack foods? Will crickets become a grocery store staple?
For their part, Evans and Reade reject the notion that insects will be some sort of silver bullet to food security. Bugs, they say, will be part of the solution only if we are careful and thoughtful about how we integrate them into the food system. "Insects can be a vehicle for something," Reade says. "But it has to be recognized that it's not the insects themselves that are going to make it sustainable. It's the humans."
Excerpted from a piece that originally appeared in MosaicScience.com and taken from the November 28th edition of The Week Magazine.
Thursday, May 7, 2015
Scandal in the British Royal Family
Of course I am happy about the new princess, but Royals are not as interesting to me as DNA and genealogy. I love this scandal. A non-paternal event some where along the line. I will confess, watching the video, I am not sure I understand what they are saying, as there could have been a non-paternal event not 19 generations up, how about just above the most recently deceased Beaufort? I mean, couldn't that be the non-paternal event and all other sons are direct descendants? How can the geneticists know where it happened? Or that dozens of illicit liaisons didn't occur? I mean come on. The text is a little clearer on that point than the video.
And can you imagine the scandal when the geneticists get a hold of Queen Mother Cersei's DNA.
When the skeleton of Richard III was discovered in a car park in Leicester in 2012, archaeologists knew it was a momentous find.
But little did they realise that it might expose other skeletons — those in the cupboard of the British aristocracy, and may even call into question the blood line of the Royal family.
In order to prove that the bones really were Richard III's, scientists needed to take a DNA sample and match it to his descendants.
Genetic testing through his maternal DNA proved conclusively that the body was the king's. However, when they checked the male line — the unnamed descendants of Henry Somerset, the 5th Duke of Beaufort — they discovered something odd. The DNA did not match Richard's, meaning that at some point in history an adulterous affair had broken the paternal chain.
Although it is impossible to say when the affair happened, if it occurred around the time of Edward III (1312–1377) it could call into question whether kings such as Henry VI, Henry VII and Henry VIII had royal blood, and, therefore, the right to rule.
Richard III: skeleton is the king 04 Feb 2013
Without his claim to royalty, it is unlikely Henry VII would have been able to raise an army for the Battle of Bosworth, in which Richard III was killed, and the history of England could have been very different.
And it has implications for our current Royal family who share a direct blood line to the Tudors.
Kevin Schurer, professor of English local history at the University of Leicester, said: "The first thing we need to get out of the way is that we are not indicating that Her Majesty should not be on the throne. There are 19 links where the chain could have been broken so it is statistically more probable that it happened at a time where it didn't matter.
"However, there are parts of the chain which, if broken, could hypothetically affect royalty."
Because Richard III was childless, scientists looked at the descendants of Edward III, his great–great–grandfather. Fathers pass on a copy of their Y chromosome to their sons, so Richard and Edward should carry the same DNA.
Likewise, any descendant of Edward's would share the same Y chromosome as Richard, and a match would prove his royal descent.
They tested the DNA of five anonymous living donors, all members of the extended family of the present Duke of Beaufort.
Scientists were intrigued to find that the DNA did not match, suggesting that a "non–paternity event" occurred somewhere between Edward III and his descendants. In other words, someone was unknowingly illegitimate.
If the illegitimate baby was Edward's son John of Gaunt (1340–1399) or his son Henry IV (1366–1413) then the royal blood line would be lost. Prof Schurer added: "If there is one link that has more significance than any other it has to be the link between Edward III and his son John of Gaunt.
"John of Gaunt was the father of Henry IV, so if John of Gaunt was not actually the child of Edward III, arguably Henry IV had no legitimate right to the throne and, therefore, neither did Henry V, Henry VI and, indirectly, the Tudors.
"Likewise, if the break is in the part of Richard III this would also ask questions about legitimacy of the claims of Richard and his brother Edward. However, you are never going to get an answer without exhuming a dead person."
Henry VII (1457–1509) claimed a right to the throne through his wife Elizabeth of York, who was the daughter of Edward IV (1422–1483). Her royal line also came through John of Gaunt. Henry also had a royal blood line through Margaret Beaufort, his mother, who was the great–great–great–greatgranddaughter of Edward I (1239–1307), but the Beauforts were banned by statute from ruling by Henry IV.
Elizabeth Norton, a Tudor historian and author, said that the research could have wide implications for British history. "This is a very interesting finding. There are huge arguments about whether Elizabeth of York was legitimate," she said.
"This might suggest that she did not have a royal blood line and, if so, then the Tudors did not either."
She believes that the break is unlikely to have happened with John of Gaunt. "John of Gaunt and his wife are really a love story," she said. "He married her and legitimised the children he had with her. So it's unlikely that the link was broken there."
The DNA results also revealed new details about the appearance of Richard III. It proves that he is likely to have had blue eyes and blond hair, which may have darkened over time. Experts say a portrait of Richard in the Society of Antiquities in London is the closest representation of the former king.
The portrait of Richard from The Society of Antiquities
Dr Turi King, of the department of genetics at the University of Leicester, added: "There are no contemporary portraits of Richard — they all post–date his death by about 25 to 30 years onwards.
"So what I was interested in doing was looking at what the DNA evidence could tell us about what his hair and eye colour was predicted to be and see which portrait that most closely matches.
"The DNA evidence indicates that he has a high probability of having blue eye colour and blond hair. That would be a childhood hair colour, and hair can darken with age."
The Royal Household said it did not wish to comment on the research, which is published in the journal Nature Communications.
And can you imagine the scandal when the geneticists get a hold of Queen Mother Cersei's DNA.
When the skeleton of Richard III was discovered in a car park in Leicester in 2012, archaeologists knew it was a momentous find.
But little did they realise that it might expose other skeletons — those in the cupboard of the British aristocracy, and may even call into question the blood line of the Royal family.
In order to prove that the bones really were Richard III's, scientists needed to take a DNA sample and match it to his descendants.
Genetic testing through his maternal DNA proved conclusively that the body was the king's. However, when they checked the male line — the unnamed descendants of Henry Somerset, the 5th Duke of Beaufort — they discovered something odd. The DNA did not match Richard's, meaning that at some point in history an adulterous affair had broken the paternal chain.
Although it is impossible to say when the affair happened, if it occurred around the time of Edward III (1312–1377) it could call into question whether kings such as Henry VI, Henry VII and Henry VIII had royal blood, and, therefore, the right to rule.
Richard III: skeleton is the king 04 Feb 2013
Without his claim to royalty, it is unlikely Henry VII would have been able to raise an army for the Battle of Bosworth, in which Richard III was killed, and the history of England could have been very different.
And it has implications for our current Royal family who share a direct blood line to the Tudors.
Kevin Schurer, professor of English local history at the University of Leicester, said: "The first thing we need to get out of the way is that we are not indicating that Her Majesty should not be on the throne. There are 19 links where the chain could have been broken so it is statistically more probable that it happened at a time where it didn't matter.
"However, there are parts of the chain which, if broken, could hypothetically affect royalty."
Because Richard III was childless, scientists looked at the descendants of Edward III, his great–great–grandfather. Fathers pass on a copy of their Y chromosome to their sons, so Richard and Edward should carry the same DNA.
Likewise, any descendant of Edward's would share the same Y chromosome as Richard, and a match would prove his royal descent.
They tested the DNA of five anonymous living donors, all members of the extended family of the present Duke of Beaufort.
Scientists were intrigued to find that the DNA did not match, suggesting that a "non–paternity event" occurred somewhere between Edward III and his descendants. In other words, someone was unknowingly illegitimate.
If the illegitimate baby was Edward's son John of Gaunt (1340–1399) or his son Henry IV (1366–1413) then the royal blood line would be lost. Prof Schurer added: "If there is one link that has more significance than any other it has to be the link between Edward III and his son John of Gaunt.
"John of Gaunt was the father of Henry IV, so if John of Gaunt was not actually the child of Edward III, arguably Henry IV had no legitimate right to the throne and, therefore, neither did Henry V, Henry VI and, indirectly, the Tudors.
"Likewise, if the break is in the part of Richard III this would also ask questions about legitimacy of the claims of Richard and his brother Edward. However, you are never going to get an answer without exhuming a dead person."
Henry VII (1457–1509) claimed a right to the throne through his wife Elizabeth of York, who was the daughter of Edward IV (1422–1483). Her royal line also came through John of Gaunt. Henry also had a royal blood line through Margaret Beaufort, his mother, who was the great–great–great–greatgranddaughter of Edward I (1239–1307), but the Beauforts were banned by statute from ruling by Henry IV.
Elizabeth Norton, a Tudor historian and author, said that the research could have wide implications for British history. "This is a very interesting finding. There are huge arguments about whether Elizabeth of York was legitimate," she said.
"This might suggest that she did not have a royal blood line and, if so, then the Tudors did not either."
She believes that the break is unlikely to have happened with John of Gaunt. "John of Gaunt and his wife are really a love story," she said. "He married her and legitimised the children he had with her. So it's unlikely that the link was broken there."
The DNA results also revealed new details about the appearance of Richard III. It proves that he is likely to have had blue eyes and blond hair, which may have darkened over time. Experts say a portrait of Richard in the Society of Antiquities in London is the closest representation of the former king.
The portrait of Richard from The Society of Antiquities
Dr Turi King, of the department of genetics at the University of Leicester, added: "There are no contemporary portraits of Richard — they all post–date his death by about 25 to 30 years onwards.
"So what I was interested in doing was looking at what the DNA evidence could tell us about what his hair and eye colour was predicted to be and see which portrait that most closely matches.
"The DNA evidence indicates that he has a high probability of having blue eye colour and blond hair. That would be a childhood hair colour, and hair can darken with age."
The Royal Household said it did not wish to comment on the research, which is published in the journal Nature Communications.
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Rondell Fiber Art at Jazz Fest 2015
I'm afraid I was on a tear and did not have the opportunity to talk with Mr. Witherspoon. I absolutely loved his art, though. Wonderful images of joyful people.
I was unable to find a web site for him, but I found this and yet under the category of art by clients, I saw some of the same types of work as seen at Jazz Fest. He clearly is a very talented photographer, too.
Man, how do these artists find the time? I can't get everything I want to do done... But then I guess it's true what has been observed in the past, the task takes the time allotted to it.
But I digress.
I scanned his business card which shows some of his art:
I found this piece, entitled Diva, from a pinterest site.
How can you not love it?
I was unable to find a web site for him, but I found this and yet under the category of art by clients, I saw some of the same types of work as seen at Jazz Fest. He clearly is a very talented photographer, too.
Man, how do these artists find the time? I can't get everything I want to do done... But then I guess it's true what has been observed in the past, the task takes the time allotted to it.
But I digress.
I scanned his business card which shows some of his art:
I found this piece, entitled Diva, from a pinterest site.
How can you not love it?
Tuesday, May 5, 2015
Ancient DNA Tells a New Human Story
By Matt Bradley in the Wall Street Journal
I was talking with a friend of my husband and he was lamenting immigration and the changes to the (current) indigenous culture by the lack of assimilation. My argument back was that, so long as humans still exist, it doesn't matter what culture exists, just so long as it is human culture. He didn't care for that answer. And of course I understand, as his culture is my culture and I don't want my culture eliminated or wiped out, but still, one needs to remember in the grand scheme of things, all human cultures have value and if one culture chooses to value something which is ultimately self-eliminating - like owning possessions and not having more children - then the majority's culture ultimately dominates. Does that make sense? There was a campaign in France many years ago - decades ago? - which showed a picture of a white infant and had the tag line 'il n'y a pas que la sexe dans la vie' (Google translate indicates to me my memory is not sound...) But it was saying, 'hey, Frenchies, you need to up the birth rate...' At the time, this campaign, like my husband's friend, was saying if the indigenous people do not have more children, then the migrant families will become the majority. This is a whole can of worms which I am not interested in getting in to, but I understand everyone's desire to live in their own culture because it is what is most comfortable for them. But, if we look to the human race as a whole... (Yes, I recognize that is hard to do. I once read that we, as individuals, can only truly care for about 150 people, 'our tribe.') So, very hard to look out for the entire human race and not only for one's tribe.
And what is one's tribe nowadays? I couldn't tell you mine, as I do not have 150 people actually blood related to me that I would identify that way. But, we did explore this a bit in this previous post about friends and genetic make-up.
On a related subject, my husband and I were exploring the concept of tribe and financial benefit and we couldn't come up with a group/tribe we would trust. I have heard of groups of recent immigrants who create lotteries and essentially forced savings plans. Each member of the group contributes $100/week (or some number) and one lucky winner gets a lump of cash as seed money for a project. In my non-religious WASP culture I can't think where I'd turn other than a bank for that.... (Hmmm, might say a little something about WASPs and culture....)
So, in this article about DNA it mentions migrations and - new word - miscegenation. Of course we can never know if the blending of the races was by rape or genocide, but we can hope it was practical and a desired blend of DNA. It does amuse me that a discussion of genetics also overtly discusses politics.
With all that being said... on to the article:
Imagine what it must have been like to look through the first telescopes or the first microscopes, or to see the bottom of the sea as clearly as if the water were gin. This is how students of human prehistory are starting to feel, thanks to a new ability to study ancient DNA extracted from bodies and bones in archaeological sites.
Low-cost, high-throughput DNA sequencing—a technique in which millions of DNA base-pairs are automatically read in parallel—appeared on the scene less than a decade ago. It has already transformed our ability to see just how the genes of human beings, their domestic animals and their diseases have changed over thousands or tens of thousands of years.
The result is a crop of new insights into precisely what happened to our ancestors: when and where they migrated, how much they intermarried with those they met along the way and how their natures changed as a result of evolutionary pressures. DNA from living people has already shed some light on these questions. Ancient DNA has now dramatically deepened—and sometimes contradicted—those answers, providing a much more dynamic view of the past.
It turns out that, in the prehistory of our species, almost all of us were invaders and usurpers and miscegenators*. This scientific revelation is interesting in its own right, but it may have the added benefit of encouraging people today to worry a bit less about cultural change, racial mixing and immigration.
Consider two startling examples of how ancient DNA has solved long-standing scientific enigmas. Tuberculosis in the Americas today is derived from a genetic strain of the disease brought by European settlers. That is no great surprise. But there’s a twist: 1,000-year-old mummies found in Peru show symptoms of TB as well. How can this be—500 years before any Europeans set foot in the Americas?
The exceptionally well-preserved skeleton of Kennewick Man is represented by nearly 300 bones and bone fragments. PHOTO: CHIP CLARK, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION
In a study published late last year in the journal Nature, Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, and his colleagues found that all human strains of tuberculosis share a common ancestor in Africa about 6,000 years ago. The implication is that this is when and where human beings first picked up TB. It is much later than other scientists had thought, but Dr. Krause’s finding only deepened the mystery of the Peruvian mummies, since by then, their ancestors had long since left Africa.
Modern DNA cannot help with this problem, but reading the DNA of the tuberculosis bacteria in the mummies allowed Dr. Krause to suggest an extraordinary explanation. The TB DNA in the mummies most resembles the DNA of TB in seals, which resembles that of TB in goats in Africa, which resembles that of the earliest strains in African people. So perhaps Africans gave tuberculosis to their goats, which gave it to seals, which crossed the Atlantic and gave it to native Americans.
Another genetic puzzle has been the fact that most modern Europeans have certain DNA sequences that are similar to those of some American Indians but different from those of most Asians, including natives of Siberia. How can this be, since American Indians are supposedly descended from Asians who migrated across the Bering land bridge from Siberia to Alaska about 14,000 years ago? Were there ancient seafarers in the Atlantic? Or is it simply from mating between European settlers and American Indians after Columbus? Neither, as it happens.
Modern DNA could not resolve these issues, but ancient DNA provides answers. Eske Willerslev’s research group at the University of Copenhagen, working with Russian scientists, read the genomes of two bits of human remains found near Lake Baikal in Siberia; one of these individuals lived 24,000 years ago, the other 17,000.
Both had genes similar to modern Europeans and modern American Indians but distinct from modern Siberians or other East Asians. As the researchers say in a paper published early last year in Nature, this implies that a population of hunter-gatherers lived in northern Eurasia in the last ice age and partly gave rise to the first Americans in the East and to Europeans in the West, before they themselves died out in Siberia and were replaced by immigrants from elsewhere in Asia.
This may help to explain the enigma known as Kennewick Man, a 9,000-year-old skeleton from Washington state, which seems to have features more like those of a modern European than of a modern American Indian. The earliest inhabitants of the Americas seem to have been distant cousins of Europeans, connected through Siberia, with their genes later diluted by other Asians migrating through Alaska.
As this example shows, one of the common themes of research on ancient DNA is that the mixing of native and immigrant populations happened much more often than previously suspected. The new research allows us to identify the many different elements of that complex history. It is like watching a cake being reverse-engineered into flour, sugar, eggs, milk and its other ingredients. The familiar textbook notion that, for most of human existence, people native to one region developed in isolation from those native to a different region no longer makes sense.
A long-running debate in archaeology revolves around how to explain such key events as the advent of agriculture or the replacement of a certain type of tool by another. The key divide is over what caused the change: Did hunter-gatherers take up farming, or did farmers move in and replace hunter-gatherers? This is sometimes called the “pots versus people” debate.
Geneticists studying the genes of people alive today have leaned toward theories based on “serial founder effects” rather than on mass migrations. The idea is that while most people stayed put, small groups of farmers would have moved short distances and started new colonies, which would then have expanded. This would account for the fact that the further from Africa a population lies, the lower is its genetic diversity: The populations had been through a series of genetic bottlenecks caused by small numbers of founders.
The study of ancient DNA has challenged this view. We now know that mass migrations occurred repeatedly, overwhelming natives while absorbing some of their genes. In a study published in 2009 in the journal Science, analysis of ancient DNA by Joachim Burger and Barbara Bramanti of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, and Mark Thomas at University College London, showed that the first farmers of central Europe could not have been descended solely from their hunter-gatherer forerunners.
In response to such research and to their own findings, Joseph Pickrell of Columbia University and David Reich of Harvard University argue that “major upheavals” of human population have been “overwriting” the genetic history of the past 50,000 years. The result, they say, is that “present-day inhabitants of many places in the world are rarely related in a simple manner to the more ancient peoples of the same region.” In short, we are none of us natives or purebred.
Perhaps the most striking example of this is a discovery announced by Dr. Reich’s team in a paper recently published in Nature: Just 4,500 years ago, long after the arrival of farming in Europe from the near East—a transition that had largely displaced the genes of the indigenous hunter-gatherers—another “massive migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern periphery” occurred. People from the steppes northeast of the Black Sea swamped the European genome with their DNA, and that relatively new pool of DNA is still ubiquitous among Europeans today.
This tips the balance in another long-running argument among anthropologists about the origin of the “Indo-European” languages. From Irish to Sanskrit, there are close similarities of vocabulary among most of the languages of Europe and those spoken in parts of Central Asia, Iran and India—connections not shared by languages like Basque, Turkish, Arabic, Hungarian and Finnish.
Two main rival theories have been offered to explain this pattern. The first holds that proto-Indo-European was spoken by the first farmers who left the fertile crescent of Syria, Turkey and Iraq for adjacent regions. The second view is that the foundational language was spoken not by these early farmers but, as certain shared words seem to suggest, by horse-riding sheep and cattle herders who spilled out of the Ukrainian steppe a few thousand years later.
The recent research of Dr. Reich and his colleagues supports this latter hypothesis: Indo-European languages probably originated in the steppes just two millennia before the Christian era.
The discovery of the massive migration from the steppes 4,500 years ago was made possible by the analysis of DNA from 69 different individual bodies from between 8,000 and 3,000 years ago and the comparison of nearly 400,000 different sections on their genomes. This sort of massive analysis would have been impossible just a decade ago, but since the advent of low-cost, high-throughput DNA sequencing, as well as advances in statistical analysis, it is now almost routine.
Before these technical innovations, reading DNA required the laborious amplification of short segments, one at a time. By 2008, companies such as 454 Life Sciences in Branford, Conn., and the San Diego-based Illumina began marketing machines that could read millions of DNA samples in parallel. In the past, researchers wanting to study ancient or modern DNA had to sip from raindrops; now they can drink from fire hoses.
A tooth from Denisova Cave in the Altai Mountains of Siberia, which DNA shows belonged to a previously unknown archaic human population, now called the Denisovans. PHOTO: MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE
For now, such work can only be done in a few laboratories—not just because the sequencing requires big machines but also because the procedures needed to avoid contamination of ancient samples by modern DNA are elaborate and expensive, to say nothing of the skills required to analyze the massive amounts of data produced. As a result, says Greger Larson, head of a new ancient-DNA research group at Oxford University, scientists are conducting this work not at many different laboratories but in huge teams gathered around the leading experts in the field, such as David Reich at Harvard Medical School, Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen or Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.
Dr. Pääbo is best known for his achievement in sequencing the Neanderthal genome in 2009 and for his discovery that a small amount (up to 4%) of Neanderthal DNA is found in modern Europeans and other non-Africans. This suggests that when African emigrants overwhelmed the Neanderthal populations of Europe and western Asia some 40,000 to 30,000 years ago, they interbred with them to some small extent—thus anticipating the scenarios of admixture described by studies of later waves of migration.
In 2010, Dr. Pääbo and his colleagues startled the world again by discovering (from the DNA in a 50,000-year-old finger bone found in a cave at Denisova in the mountains of western Siberia) that a hitherto unsuspected third type of early human lived in Asia at this time. These “Denisovans” are as distantly related to the Neanderthals as they are to us “Africans.” A small amount (up to 6%) of their DNA survives in the genomes of Melanesians and Australian aborigines, which suggests that somewhere on their way east from Africa, probably in southeast Asia, modern humans mated occasionally with Denisovans.
Now comes evidence that Tibetans also have a Denisovan connection. In the thin air of the Tibetan plateau, the local people can survive only because of specially evolved versions of a gene called EPAS1. In a study published last summer in Nature, Emilia Huerta-Sánchez and Rasmus Nielsen of the University of California, Berkeley, and their colleagues found this version of the DNA sequence around EPAS1 in the ancient genetic material of the Denisovans. Mating with Denisovans seems to have enabled people to survive at high elevations in Tibet.
Ancient DNA is telling us, in short, not only who mated with whom and when but which genes were then promoted by natural selection in the resulting offspring to improve their chances of survival. As Dr. Thomas of University College London points out, changes in the frequency of particular DNA sequences are the stuff of evolution itself. Directly measuring how DNA changed over time, by comparing samples from different periods of human history, allows us to see evolution not in the survival rates of organisms (that is, through a middleman of sorts) but in genetic material itself.
Consider, for example, the invention of farming in Europe about 8,500 years ago, a shift that caused rapid evolutionary change in the genes of Europeans as they adapted to new diets, new pathogens and new social structures. Some of this can be inferred from the study of modern DNA, but ancient DNA can catch it in the act.
A forthcoming paper by Dr. Reich’s group looks at 83 individuals from the period before, during and after the arrival of agriculture. The study analyzes 300,000 different sections of their genomes and pinpoints just five genes that changed rapidly.
The strongest signal came from the mutation for lactase persistence—that is, the ability to continue digesting the milk sugar lactose after infancy. Normally, mammals don’t need to digest lactose as adults, and the necessary lactase gene switches off when a baby is weaned from its mother.
This changed for human beings, however, when dairy farming introduced milk into the adult diet. A mutation that prevented the weaning switch-off spread in Europeans fairly late, around 4,300 years ago, probably long after dairy farming was invented, but it gave its possessors a significant advantage: They derived more nutrition from drinking milk (and suffered less indigestion) than their rivals.
Two genes that affect skin color were also subject to rapid evolutionary selection as early farmers tried to subsist on grain-rich, vitamin-D-poor diets in northern areas with low levels of sunlight. (Sunlight helps the body to convert a form of cholesterol into a form of vitamin D.) The shift to pale skin—which produces vitamin D more efficiently than darker skin—among northern Europeans after the advent of farming appears to have proceeded rapidly, pointing to some of the strongest selection pressures ever recorded in human genetics.
Since the discovery of DNA’s structure more than a half-century ago, genetic science has promised—and begun to deliver—a medical revolution, but it keeps producing other kinds of revolutions too. In the 1990s, it transformed the field of forensics, for example, and now it is having a similar effect on history and archaeology. Today, the prehistory of humanity is an open book as never before.
The lessons of this DNA revolution are not just scientific, however; they are social and political as well. The discoveries made possible by our new access to ancient DNA show that very few people today live anywhere near where their distant ancestors lived. Virtually no one on the planet is a true native—an instructive fact to consider at a time when ethnic and national differences still abound and the world continues to throw human beings together in new and unexpected ways.
Mr. Ridley is the author of “The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves” and “The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge,” to be published in November.
* a mixture of races
I was talking with a friend of my husband and he was lamenting immigration and the changes to the (current) indigenous culture by the lack of assimilation. My argument back was that, so long as humans still exist, it doesn't matter what culture exists, just so long as it is human culture. He didn't care for that answer. And of course I understand, as his culture is my culture and I don't want my culture eliminated or wiped out, but still, one needs to remember in the grand scheme of things, all human cultures have value and if one culture chooses to value something which is ultimately self-eliminating - like owning possessions and not having more children - then the majority's culture ultimately dominates. Does that make sense? There was a campaign in France many years ago - decades ago? - which showed a picture of a white infant and had the tag line 'il n'y a pas que la sexe dans la vie' (Google translate indicates to me my memory is not sound...) But it was saying, 'hey, Frenchies, you need to up the birth rate...' At the time, this campaign, like my husband's friend, was saying if the indigenous people do not have more children, then the migrant families will become the majority. This is a whole can of worms which I am not interested in getting in to, but I understand everyone's desire to live in their own culture because it is what is most comfortable for them. But, if we look to the human race as a whole... (Yes, I recognize that is hard to do. I once read that we, as individuals, can only truly care for about 150 people, 'our tribe.') So, very hard to look out for the entire human race and not only for one's tribe.
And what is one's tribe nowadays? I couldn't tell you mine, as I do not have 150 people actually blood related to me that I would identify that way. But, we did explore this a bit in this previous post about friends and genetic make-up.
On a related subject, my husband and I were exploring the concept of tribe and financial benefit and we couldn't come up with a group/tribe we would trust. I have heard of groups of recent immigrants who create lotteries and essentially forced savings plans. Each member of the group contributes $100/week (or some number) and one lucky winner gets a lump of cash as seed money for a project. In my non-religious WASP culture I can't think where I'd turn other than a bank for that.... (Hmmm, might say a little something about WASPs and culture....)
So, in this article about DNA it mentions migrations and - new word - miscegenation. Of course we can never know if the blending of the races was by rape or genocide, but we can hope it was practical and a desired blend of DNA. It does amuse me that a discussion of genetics also overtly discusses politics.
With all that being said... on to the article:
Low-cost, high-throughput DNA sequencing—a technique in which millions of DNA base-pairs are automatically read in parallel—appeared on the scene less than a decade ago. It has already transformed our ability to see just how the genes of human beings, their domestic animals and their diseases have changed over thousands or tens of thousands of years.
The result is a crop of new insights into precisely what happened to our ancestors: when and where they migrated, how much they intermarried with those they met along the way and how their natures changed as a result of evolutionary pressures. DNA from living people has already shed some light on these questions. Ancient DNA has now dramatically deepened—and sometimes contradicted—those answers, providing a much more dynamic view of the past.
It turns out that, in the prehistory of our species, almost all of us were invaders and usurpers and miscegenators*. This scientific revelation is interesting in its own right, but it may have the added benefit of encouraging people today to worry a bit less about cultural change, racial mixing and immigration.
Consider two startling examples of how ancient DNA has solved long-standing scientific enigmas. Tuberculosis in the Americas today is derived from a genetic strain of the disease brought by European settlers. That is no great surprise. But there’s a twist: 1,000-year-old mummies found in Peru show symptoms of TB as well. How can this be—500 years before any Europeans set foot in the Americas?
In a study published late last year in the journal Nature, Johannes Krause of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Jena, Germany, and his colleagues found that all human strains of tuberculosis share a common ancestor in Africa about 6,000 years ago. The implication is that this is when and where human beings first picked up TB. It is much later than other scientists had thought, but Dr. Krause’s finding only deepened the mystery of the Peruvian mummies, since by then, their ancestors had long since left Africa.
Modern DNA cannot help with this problem, but reading the DNA of the tuberculosis bacteria in the mummies allowed Dr. Krause to suggest an extraordinary explanation. The TB DNA in the mummies most resembles the DNA of TB in seals, which resembles that of TB in goats in Africa, which resembles that of the earliest strains in African people. So perhaps Africans gave tuberculosis to their goats, which gave it to seals, which crossed the Atlantic and gave it to native Americans.
Another genetic puzzle has been the fact that most modern Europeans have certain DNA sequences that are similar to those of some American Indians but different from those of most Asians, including natives of Siberia. How can this be, since American Indians are supposedly descended from Asians who migrated across the Bering land bridge from Siberia to Alaska about 14,000 years ago? Were there ancient seafarers in the Atlantic? Or is it simply from mating between European settlers and American Indians after Columbus? Neither, as it happens.
Modern DNA could not resolve these issues, but ancient DNA provides answers. Eske Willerslev’s research group at the University of Copenhagen, working with Russian scientists, read the genomes of two bits of human remains found near Lake Baikal in Siberia; one of these individuals lived 24,000 years ago, the other 17,000.
Both had genes similar to modern Europeans and modern American Indians but distinct from modern Siberians or other East Asians. As the researchers say in a paper published early last year in Nature, this implies that a population of hunter-gatherers lived in northern Eurasia in the last ice age and partly gave rise to the first Americans in the East and to Europeans in the West, before they themselves died out in Siberia and were replaced by immigrants from elsewhere in Asia.
This may help to explain the enigma known as Kennewick Man, a 9,000-year-old skeleton from Washington state, which seems to have features more like those of a modern European than of a modern American Indian. The earliest inhabitants of the Americas seem to have been distant cousins of Europeans, connected through Siberia, with their genes later diluted by other Asians migrating through Alaska.
As this example shows, one of the common themes of research on ancient DNA is that the mixing of native and immigrant populations happened much more often than previously suspected. The new research allows us to identify the many different elements of that complex history. It is like watching a cake being reverse-engineered into flour, sugar, eggs, milk and its other ingredients. The familiar textbook notion that, for most of human existence, people native to one region developed in isolation from those native to a different region no longer makes sense.
A long-running debate in archaeology revolves around how to explain such key events as the advent of agriculture or the replacement of a certain type of tool by another. The key divide is over what caused the change: Did hunter-gatherers take up farming, or did farmers move in and replace hunter-gatherers? This is sometimes called the “pots versus people” debate.
Geneticists studying the genes of people alive today have leaned toward theories based on “serial founder effects” rather than on mass migrations. The idea is that while most people stayed put, small groups of farmers would have moved short distances and started new colonies, which would then have expanded. This would account for the fact that the further from Africa a population lies, the lower is its genetic diversity: The populations had been through a series of genetic bottlenecks caused by small numbers of founders.
The study of ancient DNA has challenged this view. We now know that mass migrations occurred repeatedly, overwhelming natives while absorbing some of their genes. In a study published in 2009 in the journal Science, analysis of ancient DNA by Joachim Burger and Barbara Bramanti of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, and Mark Thomas at University College London, showed that the first farmers of central Europe could not have been descended solely from their hunter-gatherer forerunners.
In response to such research and to their own findings, Joseph Pickrell of Columbia University and David Reich of Harvard University argue that “major upheavals” of human population have been “overwriting” the genetic history of the past 50,000 years. The result, they say, is that “present-day inhabitants of many places in the world are rarely related in a simple manner to the more ancient peoples of the same region.” In short, we are none of us natives or purebred.
Perhaps the most striking example of this is a discovery announced by Dr. Reich’s team in a paper recently published in Nature: Just 4,500 years ago, long after the arrival of farming in Europe from the near East—a transition that had largely displaced the genes of the indigenous hunter-gatherers—another “massive migration into the heartland of Europe from its eastern periphery” occurred. People from the steppes northeast of the Black Sea swamped the European genome with their DNA, and that relatively new pool of DNA is still ubiquitous among Europeans today.
This tips the balance in another long-running argument among anthropologists about the origin of the “Indo-European” languages. From Irish to Sanskrit, there are close similarities of vocabulary among most of the languages of Europe and those spoken in parts of Central Asia, Iran and India—connections not shared by languages like Basque, Turkish, Arabic, Hungarian and Finnish.
Two main rival theories have been offered to explain this pattern. The first holds that proto-Indo-European was spoken by the first farmers who left the fertile crescent of Syria, Turkey and Iraq for adjacent regions. The second view is that the foundational language was spoken not by these early farmers but, as certain shared words seem to suggest, by horse-riding sheep and cattle herders who spilled out of the Ukrainian steppe a few thousand years later.
The recent research of Dr. Reich and his colleagues supports this latter hypothesis: Indo-European languages probably originated in the steppes just two millennia before the Christian era.
The discovery of the massive migration from the steppes 4,500 years ago was made possible by the analysis of DNA from 69 different individual bodies from between 8,000 and 3,000 years ago and the comparison of nearly 400,000 different sections on their genomes. This sort of massive analysis would have been impossible just a decade ago, but since the advent of low-cost, high-throughput DNA sequencing, as well as advances in statistical analysis, it is now almost routine.
Before these technical innovations, reading DNA required the laborious amplification of short segments, one at a time. By 2008, companies such as 454 Life Sciences in Branford, Conn., and the San Diego-based Illumina began marketing machines that could read millions of DNA samples in parallel. In the past, researchers wanting to study ancient or modern DNA had to sip from raindrops; now they can drink from fire hoses.
For now, such work can only be done in a few laboratories—not just because the sequencing requires big machines but also because the procedures needed to avoid contamination of ancient samples by modern DNA are elaborate and expensive, to say nothing of the skills required to analyze the massive amounts of data produced. As a result, says Greger Larson, head of a new ancient-DNA research group at Oxford University, scientists are conducting this work not at many different laboratories but in huge teams gathered around the leading experts in the field, such as David Reich at Harvard Medical School, Eske Willerslev of the University of Copenhagen or Svante Pääbo of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig.
Dr. Pääbo is best known for his achievement in sequencing the Neanderthal genome in 2009 and for his discovery that a small amount (up to 4%) of Neanderthal DNA is found in modern Europeans and other non-Africans. This suggests that when African emigrants overwhelmed the Neanderthal populations of Europe and western Asia some 40,000 to 30,000 years ago, they interbred with them to some small extent—thus anticipating the scenarios of admixture described by studies of later waves of migration.
In 2010, Dr. Pääbo and his colleagues startled the world again by discovering (from the DNA in a 50,000-year-old finger bone found in a cave at Denisova in the mountains of western Siberia) that a hitherto unsuspected third type of early human lived in Asia at this time. These “Denisovans” are as distantly related to the Neanderthals as they are to us “Africans.” A small amount (up to 6%) of their DNA survives in the genomes of Melanesians and Australian aborigines, which suggests that somewhere on their way east from Africa, probably in southeast Asia, modern humans mated occasionally with Denisovans.
Now comes evidence that Tibetans also have a Denisovan connection. In the thin air of the Tibetan plateau, the local people can survive only because of specially evolved versions of a gene called EPAS1. In a study published last summer in Nature, Emilia Huerta-Sánchez and Rasmus Nielsen of the University of California, Berkeley, and their colleagues found this version of the DNA sequence around EPAS1 in the ancient genetic material of the Denisovans. Mating with Denisovans seems to have enabled people to survive at high elevations in Tibet.
Ancient DNA is telling us, in short, not only who mated with whom and when but which genes were then promoted by natural selection in the resulting offspring to improve their chances of survival. As Dr. Thomas of University College London points out, changes in the frequency of particular DNA sequences are the stuff of evolution itself. Directly measuring how DNA changed over time, by comparing samples from different periods of human history, allows us to see evolution not in the survival rates of organisms (that is, through a middleman of sorts) but in genetic material itself.
Consider, for example, the invention of farming in Europe about 8,500 years ago, a shift that caused rapid evolutionary change in the genes of Europeans as they adapted to new diets, new pathogens and new social structures. Some of this can be inferred from the study of modern DNA, but ancient DNA can catch it in the act.
A forthcoming paper by Dr. Reich’s group looks at 83 individuals from the period before, during and after the arrival of agriculture. The study analyzes 300,000 different sections of their genomes and pinpoints just five genes that changed rapidly.
The strongest signal came from the mutation for lactase persistence—that is, the ability to continue digesting the milk sugar lactose after infancy. Normally, mammals don’t need to digest lactose as adults, and the necessary lactase gene switches off when a baby is weaned from its mother.
This changed for human beings, however, when dairy farming introduced milk into the adult diet. A mutation that prevented the weaning switch-off spread in Europeans fairly late, around 4,300 years ago, probably long after dairy farming was invented, but it gave its possessors a significant advantage: They derived more nutrition from drinking milk (and suffered less indigestion) than their rivals.
Two genes that affect skin color were also subject to rapid evolutionary selection as early farmers tried to subsist on grain-rich, vitamin-D-poor diets in northern areas with low levels of sunlight. (Sunlight helps the body to convert a form of cholesterol into a form of vitamin D.) The shift to pale skin—which produces vitamin D more efficiently than darker skin—among northern Europeans after the advent of farming appears to have proceeded rapidly, pointing to some of the strongest selection pressures ever recorded in human genetics.
Since the discovery of DNA’s structure more than a half-century ago, genetic science has promised—and begun to deliver—a medical revolution, but it keeps producing other kinds of revolutions too. In the 1990s, it transformed the field of forensics, for example, and now it is having a similar effect on history and archaeology. Today, the prehistory of humanity is an open book as never before.
The lessons of this DNA revolution are not just scientific, however; they are social and political as well. The discoveries made possible by our new access to ancient DNA show that very few people today live anywhere near where their distant ancestors lived. Virtually no one on the planet is a true native—an instructive fact to consider at a time when ethnic and national differences still abound and the world continues to throw human beings together in new and unexpected ways.
Mr. Ridley is the author of “The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves” and “The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge,” to be published in November.
* a mixture of races
Monday, May 4, 2015
Pesticide residue in fruits and vegetables associated with low sperm count
Given my interest in family and food, this seemed like a good share from the Washington Post and the April 17th edition of The Week magazine.
I left the images as large as they are because I thought it good information.
I left the images as large as they are because I thought it good information.
According to the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit advocacy organization, these fruits and vegetables contain the highest levels of pesticides. The organization did not participate in a new Harvard University study of pesticides and male reproductive function. (EWG)
Consumption of fruits and vegetables that contain relatively large amounts of pesticide residue may affect men's sperm counts and the number of normal-looking sperm they produce, a potential factor in fertility problems, Harvard University researchers reported Monday.By Lenny Bernstein March 30, 2015, in the Washington Post.
The study by researchers at the T.H. Chan School of Public Health, described as the first to link pesticides in fruits and vegetables to reproductive problems, leaves many questions unanswered. Because of the study's design, the researchers could not determine whether the pesticide residue caused the problems they found in the sperm of 155 men who provided samples at a fertility clinic.
But the results were clear enough to "suggest that exposure to pesticides used in agricultural production through diet may be sufficient to affect spermatogenesis in humans," the researchers wrote in their paper, published online in the journal Human Reproduction.
Pesticides have long been suspected for a possible impact on sperm production among men who work with them or are heavily exposed to them in the environment. And while consumption of pesticide residue does increase the chemicals' presence in urine, there is so far little evidence that affects human health, according to Jorge Chavarro, an assistant professor of nutrition and epidemiology at the public health school, and one of the authors of the study.
The researchers used U.S. Department of Agriculture data to classify the levels of pesticide residue in 35 fruits and vegetables between 2006 and 2012. They asked 155 men how much of each they ate (they averaged .9 daily servings of high-pesticide produce and 2.3 servings of low- to moderate-pesticide fruits and vegetables), then checked their semen samples for a variety of problems.
When they ruled out smoking, obesity, age, physical activity and other factors, they found that men who consumed the largest amounts of high-residue fruits and vegetables had 49 percent lower sperm counts, 32 percent fewer normal-appearing sperm and a 29 percent lower ejaculate volume than men who ate the smallest amounts of those fruits and vegetables.
"I think this raises a lot more questions," Chavarro said in an interview. "It was actually very surprising to me ... that we were able to identify such a strong association, which to me says there is something going on there." But much more research, including a controlled, randomized study, is needed, he said. The study cautioned that because the research subjects were men who already were seeking help with possible fertility problems, the findings may not be applicable to the general public.
If there is a link, the study also doesn't tell us whether a single chemical in pesticides or many chemicals may be the culprit, Chavarro said. "One of the limitations of this study is that we cannot link exposure to any one pesticide. It may be linking back to a pesticide mixture, which is more difficult to assess," he said.
Nor would washing the foods carefully help eliminate the chemicals, he said. Pesticide residue can get into the roots of fruits and vegetables from the ground and into the substance of the foods themselves, Chavarro said.
Of course, that doesn't mean that people — even men being evaluated for possible fertility problems — should stop eating fruits and vegetables, which are widely recommended as part of a healthful diet. Chavarro said people should choose organic fruits and vegetables, which have been shown to contain much less pesticide residue, if they can, or select fruits and vegetables that don't absorb as much pesticide (see list below).
I've contacted Croplife America, which represents pesticide manufacturers, distributors and users, and am waiting for their reaction to the study.
According to the Environmental Working Group, these fruits and vegetables are least likely to contain pesticide residues. (EWG)
Sunday, May 3, 2015
THEIR LOST BABIES ARE STILL ALIVE
OMG, unconscionable. Thank goodness for current technology to find the birth parents. How about this for a genealogy puzzle to solve?
BY JIM SALTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Eighteen black women who were told decades ago that their babies had died soon after birth at a St. Louis hospital now wonder if the infants were taken away by hospital officials to be raised by other families.
The suspicions arose from the story of Zella Jackson Price, who said she was 26 in 1965 when she gave birth at Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis. Hours later, she was told that her daughter had died, but she never saw a body or a death certificate.
No one is sure who was responsible, but Price's daughter ended up in foster care, only to resurface almost 50 years later. Melanie Gilmore, who now lives in Eugene, Oregon, has said that her foster parents always told her she was given up by her birth mother.
Price's attorney, Albert Watkins, is asking city and state officials to investigate. In a letter to Gov. Jay Nixon and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, Watkins said he suspects the hospital coordinated a scheme "to steal newborns of color for marketing in private adoption transactions." In a letter to Watkins, the Missouri Department of Health and Human Services called the allegations "troubling" and said it would like to help him track down relevant documents it might have, such as birth or death certificates.
Gilmore's children tracked recently down her birth mother to mark their mother's 50th birthday. The search led them to the now 76-year-old Price, who lives in suburban St. Louis.
In March, an online video caused a sensation when it showed the moment that Gilmore, who is deaf, learned through lip reading and sign language that her birth mother had been found.
The two women reunited in April. DNA confirmed that they are mother and daughter.
"She looked like me," said Price, a gospel singer who has five other children. "She was so excited and full of joy. It was just beautiful. I'll never forget that," she said of the reunion.
After the reunion, Watkins started getting calls from other women who wondered if their babies, whom they were told had died, might have instead been taken from them.
Their stories, he said, are strikingly similar: Most of the births were in the mid-1950s to mid-1960s at Homer G. Phillips. All of the mothers were black and poor, mostly ages 15 to 20.
In each case, a nurse - not a doctor - told the mother that her child had died, a breach of normal protocol. No death certificates were issued, and none of the mothers were allowed to see their deceased infants, Watkins said.
"These are moms," he said. "They are mothers at the end of their lives seeking answers to a lifelong hole in their heart."
He plans to file a lawsuit seeking birth and death records. None of the women are seeking money, he said.
Watkins said he has no idea who, or how many people, may have been responsible if babies were taken. He believes the infants were stolen and put up for adoption in an era when there were few adoption agencies catering to black couples.
Homer G. Phillips Hospital opened in 1937 as a blacks-only hospital at a time when St. Louis was segregated. Even after desegregation in the mid-1950s, the hospital served predominantly African-American patients.
The hospital closed in 1979. Messages seeking comment from officials at the St. Louis Health Department were not returned.
Price said she gave birth to a baby girl born two months' premature on Nov. 25, 1965. The baby weighed just over 2 pounds but Price was able to hold the crying child after birth.
A nurse took the baby away and came back an hour later. The little girl was struggling to live, Price was told. She might not make it.
Shortly thereafter, the nurse came back. The baby, she said, was dead.
Price recovered in the hospital for two more days, in a ward surrounded by happy mothers.
"It was depressing to see when they rolled the babies in and they were taking them to their mothers, but I didn't have my baby," she recalled.
Gussie Parker, 82, of St. Louis, heard Price's story and was shocked by the similarities with her own life. Parker gave birth to a premature girl on Nov. 5, 1953.
Initially, she said, the child seemed fine. A short time later, a nurse told her that her daughter had died.
"I never did see the baby or get a death certificate," said Parker, who has another daughter, Diane, who works for The Associated Press in New York. "When you're young and someone comes and tells you that your baby's dead, in those days you accepted it."
Otha Mae Brand, 63, of St. Louis, said she was 15 when she gave birth to a girl in the spring of 1967. The child was two months' premature and was hospitalized for 10 days while Brand was sent home.
She got a call from a nurse who informed her of her daughter's death.
"I had no reason not to believe them," Brand said. "I got that phone call, and that was the last I heard."
Now, she wonders.
"I told my children, `It's a possibility your sister may be living,'" she said.
Retired physician Mary Tillman was an intern and did a residency at Homer G. Phillips in the 1960s. Calls to her home on Friday rang unanswered, but she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the hospital had protocols and record-keeping to track mothers and daughters. She never had any suspicions of wrongdoing, but said it should have been doctors, not nurses, who broke the news of death to mothers.
Price, who has five other children, said she's saddened by the lost years that she could have spent with her daughter.
"For me not to be able to love on this child like I did with the others, I'm going through a lot of emotions," Price said. "But I'm so blessed to know that she is alive."
BY JIM SALTER
ASSOCIATED PRESS
ST. LOUIS (AP) -- Eighteen black women who were told decades ago that their babies had died soon after birth at a St. Louis hospital now wonder if the infants were taken away by hospital officials to be raised by other families.
The suspicions arose from the story of Zella Jackson Price, who said she was 26 in 1965 when she gave birth at Homer G. Phillips Hospital in St. Louis. Hours later, she was told that her daughter had died, but she never saw a body or a death certificate.
No one is sure who was responsible, but Price's daughter ended up in foster care, only to resurface almost 50 years later. Melanie Gilmore, who now lives in Eugene, Oregon, has said that her foster parents always told her she was given up by her birth mother.
Price's attorney, Albert Watkins, is asking city and state officials to investigate. In a letter to Gov. Jay Nixon and St. Louis Mayor Francis Slay, Watkins said he suspects the hospital coordinated a scheme "to steal newborns of color for marketing in private adoption transactions." In a letter to Watkins, the Missouri Department of Health and Human Services called the allegations "troubling" and said it would like to help him track down relevant documents it might have, such as birth or death certificates.
Gilmore's children tracked recently down her birth mother to mark their mother's 50th birthday. The search led them to the now 76-year-old Price, who lives in suburban St. Louis.
In March, an online video caused a sensation when it showed the moment that Gilmore, who is deaf, learned through lip reading and sign language that her birth mother had been found.
The two women reunited in April. DNA confirmed that they are mother and daughter.
"She looked like me," said Price, a gospel singer who has five other children. "She was so excited and full of joy. It was just beautiful. I'll never forget that," she said of the reunion.
After the reunion, Watkins started getting calls from other women who wondered if their babies, whom they were told had died, might have instead been taken from them.
Their stories, he said, are strikingly similar: Most of the births were in the mid-1950s to mid-1960s at Homer G. Phillips. All of the mothers were black and poor, mostly ages 15 to 20.
In each case, a nurse - not a doctor - told the mother that her child had died, a breach of normal protocol. No death certificates were issued, and none of the mothers were allowed to see their deceased infants, Watkins said.
"These are moms," he said. "They are mothers at the end of their lives seeking answers to a lifelong hole in their heart."
He plans to file a lawsuit seeking birth and death records. None of the women are seeking money, he said.
Watkins said he has no idea who, or how many people, may have been responsible if babies were taken. He believes the infants were stolen and put up for adoption in an era when there were few adoption agencies catering to black couples.
Homer G. Phillips Hospital opened in 1937 as a blacks-only hospital at a time when St. Louis was segregated. Even after desegregation in the mid-1950s, the hospital served predominantly African-American patients.
The hospital closed in 1979. Messages seeking comment from officials at the St. Louis Health Department were not returned.
Price said she gave birth to a baby girl born two months' premature on Nov. 25, 1965. The baby weighed just over 2 pounds but Price was able to hold the crying child after birth.
A nurse took the baby away and came back an hour later. The little girl was struggling to live, Price was told. She might not make it.
Shortly thereafter, the nurse came back. The baby, she said, was dead.
Price recovered in the hospital for two more days, in a ward surrounded by happy mothers.
"It was depressing to see when they rolled the babies in and they were taking them to their mothers, but I didn't have my baby," she recalled.
Gussie Parker, 82, of St. Louis, heard Price's story and was shocked by the similarities with her own life. Parker gave birth to a premature girl on Nov. 5, 1953.
Initially, she said, the child seemed fine. A short time later, a nurse told her that her daughter had died.
"I never did see the baby or get a death certificate," said Parker, who has another daughter, Diane, who works for The Associated Press in New York. "When you're young and someone comes and tells you that your baby's dead, in those days you accepted it."
Otha Mae Brand, 63, of St. Louis, said she was 15 when she gave birth to a girl in the spring of 1967. The child was two months' premature and was hospitalized for 10 days while Brand was sent home.
She got a call from a nurse who informed her of her daughter's death.
"I had no reason not to believe them," Brand said. "I got that phone call, and that was the last I heard."
Now, she wonders.
"I told my children, `It's a possibility your sister may be living,'" she said.
Retired physician Mary Tillman was an intern and did a residency at Homer G. Phillips in the 1960s. Calls to her home on Friday rang unanswered, but she told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that the hospital had protocols and record-keeping to track mothers and daughters. She never had any suspicions of wrongdoing, but said it should have been doctors, not nurses, who broke the news of death to mothers.
Price, who has five other children, said she's saddened by the lost years that she could have spent with her daughter.
"For me not to be able to love on this child like I did with the others, I'm going through a lot of emotions," Price said. "But I'm so blessed to know that she is alive."
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