With the passage of health care reform, and the shift of the medical profession away from private practice and toward large institutions already, I wanted to revisit some data about the political orientation of medical students and recent graduates surveyed in the mid-aughts. One of the major issues among American elites has been the occupational bifurcation politically between liberals and conservatives, with the former concentrated in the professions which are often affiliated with the managerial state, and the latter within the business sector. Until recently I had assumed that medical doctors were an example of a profession which tended toward conservatism because of the bias toward private practice and the general lack of direct state involvement (as opposed to regulation) in their occupation, but this seems an older model. Political Self-characterization of U.S. Medical Students shows that medical students actually tend toward liberalism vis-a-vis the general population, and even young adults in their primary age group. No doubt this may change as they age, but I am skeptical of this because it looks as if medicine is going to resemble a public sector occupation more, not less, as we proceed. I reformatted table 1, removing a few rows which I felt were extraneous. Additionally, I added columns which show the proportions of medical students by ethnicity and religion (where they received close to 100% response) and the general population ~2008 (from the American Community Survey & Religious Landscape Survey).

There were a few religion categories which don’t seem to map well between what was asked in the survey of medical students and the general population, so I omitted them. Specifically, it seems that many medical students are nominal Christians who simply selected “Other Christian,” while in the general population this class consists mostly of heterodox groups such as Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian scientists. The “Other” religious segment also seems inordinately large, and I suspect that they would be “Unaffiliated” in the Pew survey (if the question is asked so that “Atheist” is part of the category that will scare away a substantial subset of those who aren’t members of organized religions but have some vague supernatural beliefs). Finally, it seems strange to me that they clumped “Native” and “Other” races together in the medical student survey, as it seems likely that many who didn’t want to respond or were mixed-race are in this group, so I didn’t compare it to anything in general population.

No great surprise that pediatricians are more liberal than surgeons. Perhaps I’m employing stereotypes that people may find scurrilous, but I don’t particularly care. Some of the trends among specialties are confounded with the fact that there are differences in sex ratio across them; specialists or those who wish to be specialists are more likely to be male than female, and females are more likely to be liberal than male. Correlations are not necessarily transitive, but I think that’s what you’re seeing here. The liberalism of Asian Americans is not that surprising, but notice that Hindus and Buddhists are even more liberal. The majority of young Asian Americans are now of non-Christian religions, or irreligious, but a significant minority are Christians, and often conservative ones at that. The higher proportion of conservatives among the whole Asian American group is probably a function of the fact that Christians are more comfortable with the conservative movement than non-Christians. If you are a racial minority being a non-Christian makes it very difficult to identify with the modern Republican movement; being a white person at least allows for racial solidarity, while being a conservative Christian allows for ideological solidarity. No matter the “family values” or high incomes of Asian Americans, those who are non-Christian are going to be deeply alienated from the party for reasons of identity for the foreseeable future (yes, I know there are secular libertarian Asian Americans who are Republican. When I was more politically engaged I was in that category).

Interestingly, non-Hispanic whites are represented in proportion to their numbers in the general population among young doctors and medical students, though a bit overrepresented in proportion to their age bracket. As older individuals are more likely to need medical care, and these are more often non-Hispanic white, it will be common for non-white doctors to interact with older patients who grew up at a time when America was an explicitly biracial, and implicitly white, country. I have talked to young Asian American friends who recount experiences with very elderly patients whereby it is difficult for these individuals to grok that they were born and raised in the United States because these patients have an image of America which is derived from their youth.

The prominence of ethnically Asian software engineers, or in scientific institutes, is a well known feature of the American landscape. But these are not occupations which require a great deal of interface with the general American public. Professions like medicine do require that interface, that is one reason that there is focus on getting underrepresented minorities into medicine, so that they can better serve their communities. When it comes to elderly white patients who are going through chronic illnesses at the end of their lives I think it is probably not practical or appropriate to expect too much consciousness raising in regards intercultural dynamics and sensitivity. Rather, I think the onus is going to be on young Asian American doctors to try and understand the perspectives of their patients and the America from which they came, an America which they and their parents have changed in fundamental ways by their very presence.

Humans have travelled all over the planet but many uncharted regions of the globe still hide unknown animal species waiting to be discovered. With some exceptions, these new finds are largely small creatures that are hard to spot amid the bustle of a tropical forest. So imagine Luke Welton’s surprise when he came across an entirely new species of giant monitor lizard in the forests of northern Philippines.

At two metres in length, it’s not quite as large as its close relative the Komodo dragon, but it’s hardly inconspicuous either. It’s also brightly and beautifully coloured with intricate golden spots running down its otherwise black back. As is often the case, the lizard may be new to science but the local tribespeople – the Agta and Ilongot – have known about it for centuries. It’s actually one of their main sources of protein. Their name for the monitor, bitatawa, is now part of its official species name – Varanus bitatawa

Rafe Brown, who leads Welton’s group, says, “Clues to its existence had filtered in over the last ten years.” Photos of the mysterious animal had been circulating since 2001, but the clincher came when Welton and another student, Cameron Siler, salvaged a specimen that had been brought to them by a hunter. “They knew it was something special, either a rare colour pattern or a new species,” says Brown.

The dead lizard went on a round-the world trip from the Philippines to Kansas. There, Brown’s team counted its scales, examined its internal organs and sequenced its DNA. Their meticulous examination revealed that the animal was closely related to the Gray’s monitor (Varanus olivaceus), which also lives on the same island. But it was distinct enough to count as a species in its own right. “The team in the field were very celebratory,” says Brown.

V.bitatawa has an unusual habit that separates it from all but two other monitor species – it mostly eats fruit. Even before the animal had been discovered, the field team had suspected that a fruit-eating monitor lizard was prowling the forests, based on scratch marks all over the local fruiting Pandanus trees. The final bit of evidence came when Welton opened up the stomach of the specimen he recovered. Inside, he found Pandanus fruits, figs and pili nut fruit, with no trace of a single insect, rodent or bird. Snail shells were the only sign that the lizard occasionally eats other animals.

So far, the team have recovered three specimens of the new lizard and it seems that V.bitawawa only lives in a small band of mountainous forests in the Philippine island of Luzon. It shares the island with the Gray’s monitor, but the two animals are separated by over 150km that includes three river valleys. They’re unlikely to mingle.

How could such a large and conspicuous animal have gone unnoticed by the many biologists who have studied the northern Philippines? Welton admits that it’s an “astonishing set of circumstances”. He suggests that few scientists have tried to survey the reptile life of the area. And if the new species is anything like the Gray’s monitor, it is a secretive animal that almost never leaves the forests to cross open areas.

The discovery of such an eye-catching new animal cements the Philippines’ reputation as one of the planet’s most important hotspots of biodiversity. In the past decade, scientists searching the islands have found new species of lobsters, meat-eating pitcher plants, rails, flying foxes, parrots, mice, shrews, snakes, frogs and orchids.

You get the feeling that we’ve only just started scratching the surface of the islands’ wildlife secrets. Indeed, if the northern and southern parts of Luzon could harbour two distinct species of monitors, separated by physical barriers, there will probably be other pairs of sister species waiting to be found.

Sadly, as with many new discoveries, the animal’s future is being called into question just as it is unveiled to the world at large. Luzon Island has a thriving human population who have cut down much of its forests. The Gray’s monitor is classified as vulnerable due to the loss of its habitat, and V.bitawawa may be similarly endangered. Welton hopes that the new animal will be beautiful and charismatic enough to act as a “flagship species” for the local area, promoting the need to conserve this most bountiful of habitats.

Reference: Biology Letters http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2010.0119

Images: by Joseph Brown and Luke Welton

More on lizards:

• Venomous Komodo dragons kill prey with wound-and-poison tactics
• The pink Galapagos iguana that Darwin never saw
• Virgin birth by Komodo dragons
• Running dragon lizards do wheelies
• Mayfly-like chameleon lives mostly as an egg

A little square that has been left blank on the periodic table for all these years might finally be filled in. A team of American and Russian scientists have just reported the synthesis of a brand new element–element 117. Says study coauthor Dawn Shaughnessy: “For a chemist, it’s so fundamentally cool” to fill a square in that table [The New York Times].

If other scientists confirm the discovery, the still-unnamed element will take its place between elements 116 and 118, both of which have already been tracked down. A paper about element 117 will soon be published in Physical Review Letters, and scientists say the new element appears to point the way toward a brew of still more massive elements with chemical properties no one can predict [The New York Times].

Element 117 was born in a particle accelerator in Russia, where the scientists smashed together calcium-48 — an isotope with 20 protons and 28 neutrons — and berkelium-249, which has 97 protons and 152 neutrons. The collisions spit out either three or four neutrons, creating two different isotopes of an element with 117 protons [Science News].

The new element 117, takes it place between two superheavy elements that scientists know to be very radioactive and that decay almost instantly. But many researchers think it is possible that even heavier elements may occupy an “island of stability” in which superheavy atoms stick around for a while [Science News]. If this theory holds up, scientists say, the work could generate an array of strange new materials with as yet unimagined scientific and practical uses [New York Times].

The excitement continues for the scientists who toiled to synthesize the new element, as they wait to hear what it will be named. Usually, a new element is named after someone or someplace involved in the research. The element berekelium, which was used in the experiment, was named after the University of California at Berkeley, where it was first synthesized, while element 112 was just recently named Copernicium in honor of the 16th century scientist Nicholas Copernicus.

So far, the scientists have been exceptionally mum about what the element might be called. Yuri Oganessian, a nuclear physicist at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research in Dubna, Russia and the lead author on the paper, said in an e-mail message: “Naming elements is a serious question; in fact…This takes years” [New York Times]. His silence is reinforced by team member Shaughnessy, who was equally cagey about possible names for the new element: “We’ve never discussed names because it’s sort of like bad karma…It’s like talking about a no hitter during the no hitter. We’ve never spoken of it aloud” [New York Times].

Till the element is confirmed and it takes its formal place on the periodic table, scientists say it shall simply be referred to as element 117–or by the Latin reference to its number, ununseptium.

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Image:Wikimedia