9/22/2018
September Williams'Bioethics Screen Reflections: THE WIFE and Bioethics
September Williams' Bioethics Screen Reflections: THE WIFE and Bioethics: THE WIFE PART I: Bioethics, Breaking Oaths, and Stockholm Syndrome This week I saw two films that were about the theft of cre...
9/21/2018
THE WIFE and Bioethics
THE WIFE PART I: Bioethics, Breaking Oaths, and Stockholm Syndrome
This week I saw two films that were about the theft of creative property. One of the films was THE WIFE and the other THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER. Peculiarly, in each case the stealing is linked to a profound purgatorial love for another character. This is not the way one typically thinks of plagiarism.
THE WIFE, stars Glenn Close and Johnathan Pryce playing a long married couple, Joan and Joe Castleman. They are thrown into a circumstance that brings on a full throttle life review , the type that people need as they move into their later years — a great adventure backward. The intimacy of those years does not wain but has an intensity that leaves the viewer waiting for the other shoe to drop.
There is a first grandchild on the way. Their twenty-something son seeks his own creative path from beneath the shadow of his famous literary giant of a father and— we think— shrinking personality of his mother. This is a story of two writers whose lives, children and work are so immeshed that it has allowed them to sublimate the truth that they are neither one intellect nor a single spirit.
At first, the soft beauty of a New England landscape in early winter lures us into the family romance of the film couples’ enduring love affair. Then, the stark early winter of Stockholm, with its block architecture and grid format streets is quickly unsettling. The dialog written by Jane Anderson and based on the novel The Wife by Meg Wolitzer is delivered like bread crumbs trailing to the climax not of a melodrama but a riveting suspense.
Close’s portrayal of Joan, the wife, is magnificent in its simplicity. The actress creates a woman who keeps her cards so near her chest that she seems to have forgotten they are there. But, the audience hunches forward in anticipation. Joan’s stoicism is contrasted with the eccentricities of her husband’s faded sexiness, as he pushes 80, while still trying to philander. Clearly, director Bjorn Runge’s bent toward mystery— and veteran stars capable of taking direction so well they reach beyond the stratosphere— brings this “little movie” into the arena of the grande—maybe even the grandest.
And for Bioethicists? It’s an exploration of the role of life review in relationships and health. The simplicity of copyright handling intellectual property dissolves into a bioethical concern momentous as the complexities of creative threads which spawn a finished art work. The film is a teasing apart of strands. It is dizzying enough to drive one to split the baby in half to redistribute its parts.
Just when you can barely tolerate the high pitched squill of this marriage between Joan and Joe a moment longer, the darn string ruptures. We are left wondering how and why people get themselves tangled in such clearly toxic webs. Oddly, I found the answer to that question while considering the film the KINDERGARTEN TEACHER. That is Part II of this exchange — on Bioethics, Breaking Oaths and Stockholm Syndrome.
The Wife Official Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d81IM0loH7o
Celia Jameson (2010) The “Short Step” from Love to Hypnosis: A Reconsideration of the Stockholm Syndrome, Journal for Cultural Research, 14:4, 337-355, DOI: 10.1080/14797581003765309
THE WIFE PART I: Bioethics, Breaking Oaths, and Stockholm Syndrome
This week I saw two films that were about the theft of creative property. One of the films was THE WIFE and the other THE KINDERGARTEN TEACHER. Peculiarly, in each case the stealing is linked to a profound purgatorial love for another character. This is not the way one typically thinks of plagiarism.
THE WIFE, stars Glenn Close and Johnathan Pryce playing a long married couple, Joan and Joe Castleman. They are thrown into a circumstance that brings on a full throttle life review , the type that people need as they move into their later years — a great adventure backward. The intimacy of those years does not wain but has an intensity that leaves the viewer waiting for the other shoe to drop.
There is a first grandchild on the way. Their twenty-something son seeks his own creative path from beneath the shadow of his famous literary giant of a father and— we think— shrinking personality of his mother. This is a story of two writers whose lives, children and work are so immeshed that it has allowed them to sublimate the truth that they are neither one intellect nor a single spirit.
At first, the soft beauty of a New England landscape in early winter lures us into the family romance of the film couples’ enduring love affair. Then, the stark early winter of Stockholm, with its block architecture and grid format streets is quickly unsettling. The dialog written by Jane Anderson and based on the novel The Wife by Meg Wolitzer is delivered like bread crumbs trailing to the climax not of a melodrama but a riveting suspense.
Close’s portrayal of Joan, the wife, is magnificent in its simplicity. The actress creates a woman who keeps her cards so near her chest that she seems to have forgotten they are there. But, the audience hunches forward in anticipation. Joan’s stoicism is contrasted with the eccentricities of her husband’s faded sexiness, as he pushes 80, while still trying to philander. Clearly, director Bjorn Runge’s bent toward mystery— and veteran stars capable of taking direction so well they reach beyond the stratosphere— brings this “little movie” into the arena of the grande—maybe even the grandest.
And for Bioethicists? It’s an exploration of the role of life review in relationships and health. The simplicity of copyright handling intellectual property dissolves into a bioethical concern momentous as the complexities of creative threads which spawn a finished art work. The film is a teasing apart of strands. It is dizzying enough to drive one to split the baby in half to redistribute its parts.
Just when you can barely tolerate the high pitched squill of this marriage between Joan and Joe a moment longer, the darn string ruptures. We are left wondering how and why people get themselves tangled in such clearly toxic webs. Oddly, I found the answer to that question while considering the film the KINDERGARTEN TEACHER. That is Part II of this exchange — on Bioethics, Breaking Oaths and Stockholm Syndrome.
The Wife Official Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d81IM0loH7o
Celia Jameson (2010) The “Short Step” from Love to Hypnosis: A Reconsideration of the Stockholm Syndrome, Journal for Cultural Research, 14:4, 337-355, DOI: 10.1080/14797581003765309
8/19/2018
Bioethics and No Mas Bebes
Madrigal v. Quilligan:Forced Sterilization of Hispanic Women at LA County Hospital
Lack of appropriate informed consent is historically the most common bioethical violation in medical, research and other settings. The history of bioethics is replete with such examples. Among those examples is the forced sterilization of Hispanic, Black and other vulnerable women.
Given the recent events where the United States Immigration and Custom Enforcement service separated Hispanic parents from their children at the USA-Mexico border, the film, No Mas Bebes is particularly poignant. This theft of children showed complete disregard for the Declaration of Human Rights and the Declaration of the Rights of the Child. It seems appropriate to recall the depths of disregard for Hispanic women and children that has been shown at other times in recent USA history. Listening to the rationalizations of men empowered by medicine for the heinous acts describe in No Mas Bebes is chilling -- but so very familiar with events in our current times
In the 1970s, at Los Angeles-County Hospital, the University of Southern California Obstetrics and Gynecology services systematically sterilized Latina and Black women. Film director Renee Tajima-Peña and producer Virginia Espino have created the definitive documentation of major medical sterilization of those women under the guise of therapeutic privilege. The 2015 award winning film No Más Bebés tells the story of a little-known but landmark event in reproductive justice.
A small group of Mexican American immigrant women, on behalf of a much larger class, sued the state of California, and the US federal government after they were sterilized while giving birth at Los Angeles County–USC Medical Center. The violations occurred during the late 1960s and early 1970s where such events had become common. The filmmakers’ statement explains, “Marginalized and fearful, many of these mothers spoke no English, and charged that they had been coerced into tubal ligation.,” during the late stages of labor.
The No Más Bebés production spent five years tracking down sterilized mothers and witnesses of the bioethical violations at Los Angeles County Hospital. Those violations occurred under the direction of the University of Southern California division of Obstetrics and Gyneocology.
Most of the women abused were reluctant at first to come forward, but ultimately agreed to tell their painful stories. Set against a debate over the impact of Latino immigration and perceived overpopulation by university physicians, and the birth of a movement for Chicana rights and reproductive choice, No Más Bebés revisits a powerful story racism and sexism that still resonates today.
The forced sterilization of Hispanic Women at USC-LA County Hospital coincided with the book the 'Population Bomb'. The footage of several physicians involved in the 1970s lawsuit was chilling and referenced that book. In the film, shot 40 years later, some clinicians interviewed maintained that they were "helping the Hispanic women by sterilizing them." Most of the women plaintiffs in the law suit were unaware that they had undergone tubal ligations unlit the legal challenge was mounted. These Latina mothers had only known that they were no longer able to have additional babies. Many became depressed and felt inadequate.
The wronged Latina mothers’ cause was taken up by a then recently admitted to the California Bar, attorney Antonia Hernandez. She was armed with hospital records secretly gathered by the whistle-blowing Dr. Bernard Rosenfeld. Rosenfeld’s moral intuition was peaked by eyebrow raising events witnessed while on Obsterics & Gynecology rotation at Los Angeles County Hospital. In their landmark 1975 civil rights lawsuit, Madrigal v. Quilligan, the women argued that a woman’s right to bear a child, as well as not to, is guaranteed under the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade.
The wronged Latina mothers’ cause was taken up by a then recently admitted to the California Bar, attorney Antonia Hernandez. She was armed with hospital records secretly gathered by the whistle-blowing Dr. Bernard Rosenfeld. Rosenfeld’s moral intuition was peaked by eyebrow raising events witnessed while on Obsterics & Gynecology rotation at Los Angeles County Hospital. In their landmark 1975 civil rights lawsuit, Madrigal v. Quilligan, the women argued that a woman’s right to bear a child, as well as not to, is guaranteed under the Supreme Court decision of Roe v. Wade.
The Madrigal v. Quilligan case was lost by the women who had been sterilized. However, when the United States Public Health Service Syphilis Study case—Pollard v. the United States—was settled in favor of the plaintiffs, the state of California immediately passed legislation upholding the doctrine of informed consent.
No Maas Bebe's http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/films/no-mas-bebes/
Stern, Alexandra, M. Sterilized in the Name of Public Health. Race, Immigration, and Reproductive Control in Modern California. Am J Public Health. 2005 July; 95(7): 1128–1138. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449330/
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/
The declaration of the Rights of a Childhttps://www.unicef.org/malaysia/1959-Declaration-of-the-Rights-of-the-Child.
Parts of this article are found in the book by Williams, S. and Mothers' Milk Bank San Jose, The Elephant in the Room: Bioethical Concerns in Human Milk Banking available
09 /2018.
2/05/2018
THE SHAPE OF WATER: Bioethics, Surrealism, Personhood & Environmental Justice
January 24, 2018
THE SHAPE OF WATER set up is highly character driven. A mute Hispanic woman janitor, her Black woman colleague suffering a bad marriage, a gay unemployed artist, and a Sadist walk into a Cold War bunker. It could have been the beginning of a bad joke. Instead, it is the start of an amazing work of postmodern surrealist film.
If we consider surrealism, as Andre Breton suggests, to be an attempt to reconcile the simultaneous existence of the awake and sleep states—THE SHAPE OF WATER is a poster child for that movement. The phenomenon applies to characters as well as the movie’s viewers. Visually, THE SHAPE OF WATER contrasts a hypnogogic state with harsh reality. Scenes are often in a gritty nightmarish Cold War industrial military bunker. In the bunker dangerous ‘isms’ compete for ranking—fascism, racism, sexism, and classism are all at play. A visually serene fantasy world exist beyond the bunker’s locked doors. It is a place where old Hollywood musical choreographies hold key product placement territory. Anything can happen and does. Those entitled to hatred by persecution for any number of reasons, choose love instead.
The relationships between the living beings in that outer realm defy all the conventions of the time, history, environment and evolution. There is one exception, the convention of ‘Villain’ has no wiggle room for alteration. He is just an unadulterated evil.
The theatrical ensemble is remarkable—Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Dough Jones are among them. There is not much else to say other than be prepared to watch the awards roll in.
THE SHAPE OF WATER feels like a sequel to Del Toro’s earlier film, PAN’S LABYRINTH. But, there are differences. While the current work is a cross genre piece which traverses cultures, the earlier movie is culture locked. PAN, and the girl for whom he provided escape, lived in the confines of the rise of Francoists. The politic is physicalized by an archaic estate operated by the girl’s fascist stepfather. THE SHAPE OF WATER set realizes many different types of signifying characters from multiple cultural and economic backgrounds. The time period is the USA Cold War. In both THE SHAPE OF WATER, and PAN’S LABYRINTH, the “monsters” are supposedly human, but it is they who actually give monsters a bad name.
Why is the SHAPE OF WATER not just another “Beauty and the Beast” but worthy of bioethical consideration? This is not a medical movie though it is a scathing rebuke of the forces that thwart good science. At stake in the SHAPE OF WATER is the personhood of all the characters in our previously depicted Cold War bar joke. Dignity, a state of the healthy intelligent mind, is carried about by the body. Abuse the body, abuse the dignity. Malign the body, malign the dignity. Remove the dignity, remove the personhood. By this reasoning, restoration of dignity in large part means protection of the body from torture and other forms of abuse. That protection is requisite, though not always sufficient for the reclamation of personhood. One never knows what is most effective until one tries. It is the organized beneficence of trying to ‘do good,’ tempered by autonomy, in order to render equipoise and justice, which ought to be delivered by bioethical consideration.
This film helps explore the aforementioned cascade. In Del Toro’s hands, the ominous danger and political distrust manifest in science fiction shifts toward fantasy. The mystery, myth and truth escape of those most vulnerable to the abuse of dignity, because of their bodies, is fully manifest in The SHAPE OF WATER. The process of the film dissolves disability into strength. In the tradition of super heroes, Del Toro’s SHAPE OF WATER sheds the horn-rimmed glasses and neck ties of its characters so they leap, fly or swim into their own made magic. THE SHAPE OF WATER is technically exquisite. This film is one to watch on as large a screen as you can afford.
The Shape of Water annotation http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5580390/
Pan’s Labyrinth annotation http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/
THE SHAPE OF WATER set up is highly character driven. A mute Hispanic woman janitor, her Black woman colleague suffering a bad marriage, a gay unemployed artist, and a Sadist walk into a Cold War bunker. It could have been the beginning of a bad joke. Instead, it is the start of an amazing work of postmodern surrealist film.
If we consider surrealism, as Andre Breton suggests, to be an attempt to reconcile the simultaneous existence of the awake and sleep states—THE SHAPE OF WATER is a poster child for that movement. The phenomenon applies to characters as well as the movie’s viewers. Visually, THE SHAPE OF WATER contrasts a hypnogogic state with harsh reality. Scenes are often in a gritty nightmarish Cold War industrial military bunker. In the bunker dangerous ‘isms’ compete for ranking—fascism, racism, sexism, and classism are all at play. A visually serene fantasy world exist beyond the bunker’s locked doors. It is a place where old Hollywood musical choreographies hold key product placement territory. Anything can happen and does. Those entitled to hatred by persecution for any number of reasons, choose love instead.
The relationships between the living beings in that outer realm defy all the conventions of the time, history, environment and evolution. There is one exception, the convention of ‘Villain’ has no wiggle room for alteration. He is just an unadulterated evil.
The theatrical ensemble is remarkable—Sally Hawkins, Michael Shannon, Richard Jenkins, Octavia Spencer, Michael Stuhlbarg, and Dough Jones are among them. There is not much else to say other than be prepared to watch the awards roll in.
THE SHAPE OF WATER feels like a sequel to Del Toro’s earlier film, PAN’S LABYRINTH. But, there are differences. While the current work is a cross genre piece which traverses cultures, the earlier movie is culture locked. PAN, and the girl for whom he provided escape, lived in the confines of the rise of Francoists. The politic is physicalized by an archaic estate operated by the girl’s fascist stepfather. THE SHAPE OF WATER set realizes many different types of signifying characters from multiple cultural and economic backgrounds. The time period is the USA Cold War. In both THE SHAPE OF WATER, and PAN’S LABYRINTH, the “monsters” are supposedly human, but it is they who actually give monsters a bad name.
Why is the SHAPE OF WATER not just another “Beauty and the Beast” but worthy of bioethical consideration? This is not a medical movie though it is a scathing rebuke of the forces that thwart good science. At stake in the SHAPE OF WATER is the personhood of all the characters in our previously depicted Cold War bar joke. Dignity, a state of the healthy intelligent mind, is carried about by the body. Abuse the body, abuse the dignity. Malign the body, malign the dignity. Remove the dignity, remove the personhood. By this reasoning, restoration of dignity in large part means protection of the body from torture and other forms of abuse. That protection is requisite, though not always sufficient for the reclamation of personhood. One never knows what is most effective until one tries. It is the organized beneficence of trying to ‘do good,’ tempered by autonomy, in order to render equipoise and justice, which ought to be delivered by bioethical consideration.
This film helps explore the aforementioned cascade. In Del Toro’s hands, the ominous danger and political distrust manifest in science fiction shifts toward fantasy. The mystery, myth and truth escape of those most vulnerable to the abuse of dignity, because of their bodies, is fully manifest in The SHAPE OF WATER. The process of the film dissolves disability into strength. In the tradition of super heroes, Del Toro’s SHAPE OF WATER sheds the horn-rimmed glasses and neck ties of its characters so they leap, fly or swim into their own made magic. THE SHAPE OF WATER is technically exquisite. This film is one to watch on as large a screen as you can afford.
The Shape of Water annotation http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5580390/
Pan’s Labyrinth annotation http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/
3/05/2017
MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN
My Love Affair With the Brain: The Life and Science of Dr. Marian Diamond (clip) from Luna Productions on Vimeo.
TV Screenings and Viewing options for MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN:
SOME TV SCREENINGS:
My Love Affair with the Brain will screen in the San Francisco Bay Area On TV,
March 22, Wed., 8 pm on KQED9 Plus the following7 other times (note that KQED9 is a different channel than KQED WORLD, etc.)·
KQED World: Fri, Mar 10, 2017 -- 6:00am ·
KQED World: Fri, Mar 10, 2017 -- 12:00pm ·
KQED 9: Thu, Mar 23, 2017 -- 2:00am ·
KQED Plus: Fri, Mar 24, 2017 -- 3:00pm ·
KQED World: Sun, Mar 26, 2017 -- 2:00pm ·
KQED Life: Tue, Mar 28, 2017 -- 9:00pm·
KQED Life: Wed, Mar 29, 2017 -- 3:00am
PURCHASE: MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN is available for ACADEMIC PURCHASE (Libraries, Colleges, Schools.) http://lunaproductions.com/buy-love-affair-brain-marian-diamond/individuals: http://lunaproductions.com/personal-use-dvd-my-love-affair-with-the-brain/
SOME TV SCREENINGS:
My Love Affair with the Brain will screen in the San Francisco Bay Area On TV,
March 22, Wed., 8 pm on KQED9 Plus the following7 other times (note that KQED9 is a different channel than KQED WORLD, etc.)·
KQED World: Fri, Mar 10, 2017 -- 6:00am ·
KQED World: Fri, Mar 10, 2017 -- 12:00pm ·
KQED 9: Thu, Mar 23, 2017 -- 2:00am ·
KQED Plus: Fri, Mar 24, 2017 -- 3:00pm ·
KQED World: Sun, Mar 26, 2017 -- 2:00pm ·
KQED Life: Tue, Mar 28, 2017 -- 9:00pm·
KQED Life: Wed, Mar 29, 2017 -- 3:00am
PURCHASE: MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN is available for ACADEMIC PURCHASE (Libraries, Colleges, Schools.) http://lunaproductions.com/buy-love-affair-brain-marian-diamond/individuals: http://lunaproductions.com/personal-use-dvd-my-love-affair-with-the-brain/
Part I: MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN Bioethics, Neuroplasticity and Whimsy
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| Marian Diamond portraits, 1984, photos by Ed Kash |
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| Dr. Marian Diamond, photo courtesy of Luna Productions |
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| Dr. Marian Diamond, photo courtesy of Luna Productions |
MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN is an award winning documentary about the life and work of Dr. Marian Cleeves Diamond, PhD, neuroanatomist, researcher and educator. Filmmakers Catherine Ryan and Gary Weinberg (Luna Productions) make an argument which by all reasonable standards would support Diamond’s candidacy for a Nobel Prize, not only in science but also for peace.
MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN shows Marian Diamond is a filmmakers dream. She is fluid and animated as anyone who routinely spends hours of her day on a stage before a judging audience of hundreds of students ought to be—but often are not. The camera loves her. With aesthetic wisdom the film not only focuses on Marian but on others sharing the territory she inhabits. It is a broad domain of geography, mind and family tradition. She is a catalyst for laughter fueled intelligence.
MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN has established an iconic visual representation of Dr. Diamond’s vantage. It is the long view and the long shot. In Diamond’s mind the brain is always at the forefront, the seat of human intelligence and humanity. It is this view that Luna Production’s camera reflects in the film. We see Diamond watch the brain, from a distance but in sharp focus. Then we see the audience, and the world, watch her. The filmmakers take the opportunity to not only show us her but the joyous reactions of others ignited in the wake of her whimsy.
The lightness of Marian Diamond’s ‘being,’ is even reflected in Ryan and Weinberg’s choice of narrator for MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN, Mayim Bialik. Bialik holds a PhD in neuroscience from UCLA but also plays a neuroscientist on TV’s BIG BANG THEORY.
Marian Diamond is a scientist who is also a woman. She came up through a period when women did not teach in academia. Well qualified and well suited to lecturing she may have never have found that passion were it not for the persecution of her employer and mentor while working at Cornell University. That professor was fired during the rise of the witch-hunt of McCarthyism in the 1950s. However, the professor’s parting shot was to recommend the only person he knew could, and should, take his lectern— a woman, Marian Diamond,PhD. And so, at that University, Diamond became the first woman science lecturer in its history.
Marian Diamond did not mean to dismantle archaic science with new truths, she’s just made that way—a fact to which she is not oblivious. Her youth and adult life has been filled with brilliant scientist husbands, mother, father and free thinking siblings first then her own children. She did not only study dead brains as specimens, but watched the living ones around her. They were all collaborators and conspirators in her quest to understand.
Dr. Marian Diamond’s major scientific contributions are generally divided into three: discovery of the impact of the environment on brain development; differences between the cerebral cortex of male and female rats independent of sex hormones; and the likely link between positive thinking—or happiness—in maintaining individuals immunological health reflected in brain tissue and function. Rigorous scientific inquiry often divides domains of investigation of a single entity. But Dr. Marian Diamond’s hallmark is: that which others might think static she suspects is mobile, multifaceted, unified though plastic—and when needs be— able to be remodeled.
See an extensive Bibliography of M.C. Diamond’s work at
Marian Diamond’s brief autobiography ohttps://www.sfn.org/~/media/SfN/Documents/TheHistoryofNeuroscience/Volume%206/c3.ashx
Concussion, http://www.bioethicsscreenreflections.com/2016/05/concussion-bioethic-foot-ball-and-post.html
States of Grace, http://www.bioethicsscreenreflections.com/2015/01/states-of-grace-disability-and-chronic.html
PART II: MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN Bioethics and Meaning Derived from Science
Catherine Ryan and Gary Weinberg’s documentary film MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN shows Dr. Marian Cleeves Diamond, PhD is not only a theoretical scientist but also an applied one. The Nuremberg Code—the rules for research conduct arising from the Nuremberg trials—has ten points. The second of those ten is that: Experiments should be such as to yield fruitful results for the good of society, unprocurable by other methods or means of study, and not random and unnecessary in nature. Dr. Diamond’s scientific integrity at the work bench has yielded a change in how we view human capacity.
Luna Productions film shows a field clinic on brain growth, Diamond’s project, Enrichment in Action. It uses findings of the doctor’s brain enrichment research to directly benefit impoverished, orphaned children. In Cambodia a group of children are provided with an environment fortified with supplementary vitamins, language skills, computer lessons, and promotion of the children’s wider social acceptance. She has been facilitating, watching and documenting those children’s growth over years.
There are multiple other clinical applications to the insights of brain malleability derived from Marian Diamond’s work. In the not too distant past, medical students were routinely taught that only a tenth of the cerebral cortex (the heaviest part of the brain) was actively used. The implication was that if brain cells were lost that portion of the brain’s function was permanently diminished. The observation that nurture, as well as abuse, can alter brain function through structural change—is among neuroanatomist Marian Diamond’s major contributions to scientific history. That truth defines a choice to be made, by humanity, about how we can proceed, as individuals and a group. We either promote brain health or we do not.
The idea of the mind-body complex evolved in western culture more slowly than in others. After time in China, Kenya and Australia, Dr. Diamond’s paradigm expanded even the Mind-Body complex to include the significance of the brain as a switching station—validating a Mind-Brain-Body complex as it were. Science at its best over turns old beliefs with new information. There are many applied applications to Diamond’s science. Clinicians now see their tasks as recruiting brain cells and promoting their growth and function within the window of best opportunity to promote neuro-plasticity, or brain flexibility. This is as important in maximizing function after any neurological insult like stroke or traumatic brain injury, dementia or aging—as it is in early childhood development.
Those recently experiencing the birth of a baby in a hospital may notice that policy has shifted so that mothers and babies are no longer easily separated in the first moments after delivery. We now know that immediate breast feeding is essential for best growth and development of infants brains, and also prevention of chronic disease later in life for children and their mothers. These phenomena are in part nutritional but also the effect of early bonding—nurture.
There is a story told by a friend who was sitting for days to become a Buddhist Priest. It was arduous. On her brief breaks she would light a stick of incense at the window. Doubting that she may have chosen the wrong direction for her existence she asked the universe for a sign. Just then a magnificent shooting star crossed her eye-line. Then she wondered, ‘But what does it mean?’ This is the quandary of both life and science.
Marian Diamond has written, “The greatest thrill in my life up to that moment was when I held my first newborn child in my arms against my breast. I knew why I existed.” That child was born in immediate proximity to Dr. Diamond’s completion of her PhD, in 1953. Though her life’s work was set at that time it would take decades to realize its meaning.
MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH THE BRAIN spreads the word not only about what Dr. Diamond’s research has been but what it means. Diamond has summarized her take home lessons from her 60 years in brain research. She believes all the signs lead to the idea that brain health is dependent on five things, diet, exercise, challenge, newness, and love.
References:
See an extensive Bibliography of M.C. Diamond’s work. http://lunaproductions.com/my-love-affair-with-the-brain-a-documentary-for-broadcast/all-episodes-marian-diamond/
Marian Diamond’s brief autobiography ohttps://www.sfn.org/~/media/SfN/Documents/TheHistoryofNeuroscience/Volume%206/c3.ashx
2/17/2017
Part I: LOVING and Bioethics The Right to Marry
LOVING - Official Trailer from Mill Valley Film Festival on Vimeo.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights http://www.un.org/en/
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| Courtesy Focus Films |
LOVING was the closing night film of the 39th Mill Valley Film Festival. Jeff Nichols is its writer/director. At 38 years old, born in Little Rock, Arkansas, Nichols is a master at breaking stereotypes about cultures, especially those below the Mason Dixon Line.
LOVING is based on the lives of Mildred and Richard Loving. The portrayals by Ruth Negga and Joel Edgerton in the title roles is an exquisitely intimate, internal portrait. The main characters met young, fell in love in a poor rural neighbor of Virginia where races interacted socially. The love aspect of the story is prominent but the underclass nature of interracial life in the region is equally as strong. In 1958, the couple were forbidden to marry because their state was among many with anti-miscegenation laws.
Nichols’ LOVING is as much about class— working poor—as it is about race. As long as Mildred and Richard kept within the constraints of the geo-social ‘Bottoms’ the state powers would not care. They weren’t so much jailed because Mildred was Black while Richard White but because they dared want their love and children legitimated. Anti-miscegenation laws stemmed, above all else not from morality but economics—controlling who could own property, historically determined by parentage. The law they violated was a vestige of slavery in their state.
LOVING, the feature length fictional film, evolved from director Nichols’ admiration for a documentary made years before. Nichols LOVING defies the Hollywood Film industries tendency to make heroism only a characteristic of overtly “charismatic people.” LOVING is a work that celebrates that every day, ordinary people do the impossible.
The Lovings were interested in living their lives. Referred by Attorney General Robert Kennedy’s office to the American Civil Liberties Union(ACLU) at Mrs. Loving’s initiation, the couple left the lawyers to the legal job. While the Loving’s tended their own work, raising a family.
The ACLU fought and won Loving V Virginia in the supreme court in 1967 — near ten years after the birth of the couple’s first child. The case was won based on Virginia’s anti-miscegenation law being in violation of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution which, provides equal protection under the law — including the right to marry.
The Fourteenth Amendment was one of the Restoration amendments after the US Civil war. The Restoration Amendments among other things legally dismantled the economic system of slavery. The Loving case was fought nearly 100 years after the slavery emancipation proclamation.
Loving v Virginia was proceeded and followed by many other legal presidencies adjudicated by the supreme court and supported by The Fourteenth Amendment including, Brown v. Board of Education (1954) regarding racial school segregation, Roe v. Wade (1973) about abortion, Bush v. Gore (2000) regarding the 2000 presidential election, and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015) regarding same-sex marriage.The foot prints of the Fourteen Amendment are also solidly ensconced in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its 16th Article —The right to marriage and Family.
Why is this film important to Bioethics? The Lovings predicament is a cautionary tell about historical abuse of scientific process in supporting anti-miscegenation practices. LOVING also identifies a victory for the strength of persistent struggle — particularly one having an influence on the understanding not only of humanity but the moral obligations of scientist to do good work, and to monitor its moral implications.
LOVING is a gentle film—not designed to be a blockbuster but one which will stand the test of time.
Loving (2016) Dir. Jeff Nichols http://www.imdb.com/title/
Loving (2016) Trailer: https://youtu.be/9QYEwlzpa9A
Loving V. Virgina Interacial and Mixed documentary HBO Trailer https://youtu.be/h62ZBiHNJoM trailer
The Constitution of the United States http://constitutionus.com
Loving V. Virginal Ruling https://www.law.cornell.edu/
Part II: LOVING, Bioethics and How Miscegenation became a ‘thing’
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| Photo Courtesy of Mill Valley Film Festival |
Long Before Jeff Nichols, writer/director, chose to make the film LOVING (2016), about a heroic couple of modest means striking a blow for the maintenance of humanity—by ending anti-miscegenation laws in the USA—The field of Eugenics had to be born and the term ‘miscegenation’ coined. Miscegenation laws were present in many states of the USA into the 1960s, in defiance of the 14th amendment to the United States Constitution and the Declaration of Human Rights.
Modern “bioethics” emerged from the documentation of the atrocities associated with both WWI and WWII, and the manipulation of science and technology to serve ‘evil’ rather than beneficence, autonomy and justice. The film Loving speaks to the need to carefully consider the obligations of science. There is no evil science, just bad science and immoral applications. In particular, scientist, and physicians (who are all ultimately researchers) should at least read the Nuremberg Code. The document is a page long with only ten points.
How did Anti- miscegenation laws come about? Let’s be clear, they were an economic mechanism to oppress slaves and other underclass people and prevent their owning property. This begs the question of how miscegenation became ‘a thing.’
Philosophy and the applied sciences used to be one school—and still were in the 1800s. Philosophy, was not separated from maths, astronomy, medicine and engineering. The footsteps of philosophy still drive scientific method —theory, hypothesis, proof and argument. Francis Galton was born into that time of interface and development of knowledge. Oddly Galton, a latter day Renaissance thinker in the model of Da’Vinci, is attributed with coining the words miscegenation and eugenics. And yes, Galton started out in Medicine, circa 1838.
In agriculture miscegenation was defined as the “interbreeding of two different species.” Galton’s Cousin Charles Darwin had published the Origin of the Species in the 1850s. Gregor Mendel an Austrian monk had observed variation in pea plants during the same period. Most biology students learned that Mendel is considered the father of genetics. From those works came Galton’s leap implying that human beings’ external appearance could make them different species.
Galton was a Sociologist, Psychologist, Scientist, Geographer, and Statistician. He looked for proof of the patterns of his cousin and the monk in other aspects of the world — looking for a primary pattern in nature which was repeated. That is what good science does. When you think of Galton, think—regression from the mean — that was among his many contributions or to some of us—tortures. The mathematical models of Mendel for peas and other plants were being extrapolated and converted into statistics applied to human beings.
What came first, racism or the science? The essence of scientific integrity is not only honesty in hypothesizing, recording and reporting but coming to unbiased conclusions. Galton began considering ‘lessor social' attributes to be apparent in people who looked one way and not another. The espousing that conclusion, for a statistician, had to be an unfounded extrapolation. But he likely knew that even then.
In 1863, the science of separation, and its conclusions espoused by Galton, was rejected by some as a political tool deciding who should receive the benefits of a society. The difference between animals and people was thought to be decided by humanist to be “the soul.” Perhaps the soul is a more nebulous concept than that ‘a scientific certainty’—but also one less likely to bastardize the scientific process. Nonetheless, it was the soul which ended slavery in the USA and many other parts of the world.
The post civil war Reconstruction Amendments to the United States Constitution, codified the belief that all “men” were created equal. That was adjusted in the 1900's to include women. The devil remains in the detail. However, it was the 14th amendment, which applied to the winning of Loving v. the State of Virginia, and the drafting of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This was generations after Galton, Mendel and Darwin.
What is the lesson? Bioethical conflicts often coincide with historically poor scientific understanding, or abuses. However, they coexist with equal and opposite reactions — leaps of moral and scientific process. Thinking about how the film LOVING, based on the lives of Mildred and Richard Loving,end of Anti-miscegenation laws in the United States. Remember, LOVING is a film not only about law, but about the debunking of archaic, if ever valid, science.
Loving (2016), Dir. Jeff Nichols http://www.imdb.com/title/
The Nuremberg Code, https://history.nih.gov/
Galton Memories of My Life, https://www.google.com/search?
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