So it happened: Barack Obama has officially taken his place as the country’s 44th President (complete with a shout-out to science during the inaugural address!). And, with the country facing enough massive problems to sink a fleet of aircraft carriers, the word is he’ll waste no time getting to work. But what can a new president accomplish in his first few days in office? Plenty, if you count issuing executive orders that reverse policies from the previous administration (which should by all means be counted). And when it comes to science and medicine, there are miles to go before the new POTUS sleeps.
So what are some top science priorities that President Obama can stick on his “ASAP” list? Here’s a few ideas, along with the likelihood that they’ll be addressed in the super/semi/not-so-near future:
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You still can’t get away with saying it in Hollywood, but after a lawsuit by a Christian anti-choice group, now you can smack it in the center of a Google ad. The New York Times reports that Google is now allowing religious organizations to buy ads in the search giant’s vast network that contain the keyword “abortion.” In the past, the search juggernaut had followed a policy of not selling the “abortion” keyword to religious groups—though it would allow other groups, including doctors offering abortions and resource sites like Our Bodies, Ourselves, to purchase ads with the keyword.
Enter Britain’s staunch anti-choice group the Christian Institute, which took its case to court after Google rejected its ad containing the following: “UK abortion law: Key news and views on abortion law from The Christian Institute.” The ad was referring to a bill before the House of Commons concerning potential abortion restrictions.
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The big story today: A new study from the University of Liverpool found that birth control pills could be messing with women’s ability to find genetically dissimilar partners, thereby upping the chances of infertility, miscarriage, and offspring with weakened immune systems.
The key issue, according to Craig Roberts, an evolutionary psychologist who led the study, is body odor:
Humans choose partners through their body odor and tend to be attracted to those with a dissimilar genetic make-up to themselves, maintaining genetic diversity. Genes in the Major Histocompatibility Complex (MHC), which helps build the proteins involved in the body’s immune response, also play a prominent role in odor through interaction with skin bacteria. In this way these genes also help determine which individuals find us attractive.
The pill has been shown to affect the sense of smell in the past, and while the exact reason for this side effect isn’t known, researchers have speculated that, since the areas of the brain that control both the sense of smell and the ovaries are located near one another, taking a pill that alters one could alter both.
The problem with the odor effect, argue the authors, is that it alters subjects’ preferences for genetically dissimilar men—a loaded idea, given that it hints there might be serious repercussions from the world’s most popular form of birth control. The odor-changing theory has been around for a while, and until now most of the data on MHC differences were gathered from rodents.
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