ANARCHIST THEORY:

KROPOTKIN AND SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN:

Molly is a subscriber to Scientific American, probably the premier popular science magazine in the world. Imagine the pleasant surprise that I experienced when I read the latest (February, 2009) edition to find the theories of the anarchist Peter Kropotkin discussed in Michael Shermer's 'Skeptic' column. The title of the essay was 'Darwin Misunderstood'. the first part of Shirmer's screed was devoted to the term "natural selection" and how this can be misunderstood as implying either a conscious 'selector' or the idea that there is some sort of "progressive arrow" to evolution that adapts organisms to future conditions rather than the conditions in which they survive and reproduce. The second misconception discussed is that 'fitness' means simplistically individual competition rather than the capacity to cooperate. This is where Kropotkin's ideas come in. Organisms that cooperate often increase their fitness by such cooperation and thus contribute genes to their progeny that incline them to cooperation because this is the optimum strategy for both survival and reproduction.

Molly knows that the genetics that Kropotkin held to were outdated, being as he was a life-long Lamarkist. Still, Kropotkin's work pretty well has to be acknowledged as a precursor of the present research programs in the fields of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology. If you are inclined look up the article and send a little thank you note to Shirmer and Scientific American. The email for SA's letters is editors@SciAm.com

CLIMATE CHANGE RESOURCES:
While looking over the latest edition of Scientific American to arrive at her door Molly came across an article entitled 'Conservative Climate' (Scientific American, April 2007, pp16-19). The article is all about how the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change meeting in Paris on February 2, 2007 perhaps understated the effects of future climate change. The IPCC has continued to issue reports about their deliberations, the latest being 'Confronting Climate Change' on Feb. 27th. This report goes further than the initial report in that it addresses policy recommendations while the original report addressed only the scientific issues.





What Molly found most interesting about the article was how the SciAm report contrasted with numerous articles in what I call the "trash-con" press soon after the original report was issued in February. The trash-con press is basically those propaganda organs that "pretend" to a conservative view while, in actuality, trying desperately to make as much money as possible by catering to the lowest intelligence level and most violent emotions amongst the "conservative audience". You know-hang me high!, the "lib-conspiracy", the Papal infallibility of America, the etc.,etc.,etc.. These people give conservativism a very bad name. Just like every family every political position has its "trash relatives" in the family skeleton closet. Anarchism has its primmies, post-leftists and insurrectionists. Leftism has its unrepentant Stalinists. The difference is that you can add up the audiences of the anarcho-nuts and the Jurassic commies, and their combined audience multiplied by 10,000 wouldn't equal the audience of the trash-con publications. As the old saying goes, like Coca-Cola, Christ on the cross and syphilis these buggers are everywhere.





What Molly remembers in particular is that publications like the National Post and the Winnipeg Sun devoted "insults"(no better term is available) to the idea that there was "disagreement" amongst the scientists represented in Paris. The SciAm article points out where this disagreement came from ie from the delegations from China (more coal !) and from Saudi Arabia (more guess what !). Neither country is exactly famous for freedom of scientific inquiry.
So...in addition to the two reports mentioned above which can be accesssed from their websites so that you can see the original rather than some distorted version in the press Molly has decided to present the following resources for her readers. In our Links section the websites of the sponsoring organizations have been included in some cases rather than the original text given here. In all cases the text or page is readily accessible from the website in our 'Scientific Links' section:

1. Global Warming Facts and Our Future from the Marian Koshland Science Museum
2. Woods Hole Research Center, a site devoted to research on global sustainability.
3. Global Climate Change Resources from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
4. Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, a report produced for the Treasury of Great Britain.

5. Global Warming by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the US government.

As the astute reader can see none of the above are frothing, drooling ideologues fantasizing about the end of civilization and how they will direct other people's lives in that Gotterdamerung. These are resources that point towards the best of the worldwide scientific consensus on this matter, and they may be helpful in judging just how far from reality trash-con publications on this matter are.

Molly

'THREATS OF WAR, CHANCES FOR PEACE'
The latest (March, 2007) edition of Scientific American has an interesting item by Earth Institute director Jeffrey D. Sachs with the title above. It basically a retelling of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and the lessons that can be drawn therefrom.
Now, the Earth Institute is certainly a worthy institution. Its mission statement says,
"The Earth Institute at Columbia University brings together talent from throughout the university to address complex issues facing the planet and its inhabitants, with particular focus on sustainable development and the needs of the world's poor. The Earth Institute is motivated by the belief that science and technological tools already exist, and could be expanded to greatly improve conditions for the world's poor while preserving the natural systems that support life on Earth."
The site is a wealth of information about research being undertaken in support of sustainable development. Jeffrey Sachs himself is an economist with special interests in development issues, and there's no doubt that he is "on the side of the angels". His telling of the tale, however, leaves little to the imagination about what his politics are. He's an American liberal who looks back to the Kennedy era as a sort of lost golden age. What is left out is as significant as what is included in his brief summary. The omitted fact that the USA started this whole game of brinkmanship by installing nuclear missiles in Turkey the year before is a convenient omission- one almost universally ignored in most popular western accounts of the crisis. For a fuller story of the Cuban missile crisis see the Wikipedia article on same. As a good liberal Sachs praises Kennedy- a praise that is hardly universally voiced- and ignores the good faith initiatives of the Soviets. Also, like a good liberal he ignores not just the crazies on the American side but also an equally detached set of hardliners in the Cuban ruling class. In the endgame the missiles in Turkey were removed albeit "secretly" without fanfare, and Sach's claim for the Kennedy administration that they "stressed the need to avoid humiliating one's adversary" really applies much more to the Soviet actions as opposed to the American ones. It was also the one, only and last time that the Soviet ruling class ever exposed their strategic nuclear forces in a position where they might escape from their immediate and total control (into the hands of Cuban ideologues in this case).
Anyways, whatever one may think of the moral rectitude of the various players in this game a point Sachs makes is that it was indeed a "game". He says,
"Today's game theorists would describe Kennedy's strategy as 'generous tit-for-tat(GTFT)' (The Soviet moves should also be so described- Molly). A player adopts a position of cooperation as long as the other side does too. If the second player begins to cheat, the first player stops cooperating as well, to show the cheater that there are adverse consequences to the collapse of this arrangement. The door remains forgivingly open to future cooperation, however, if the cheater reverts to form. And generously the first player might initiate renewed cooperation, with a view to enticing the former cheater to reciprocate. GTFT is so successful and robust that many evolutionary biologists suppose that the basic strategy is somewhat hardwired in human attitudes.".
Whatever one may think of Sach's assignment of blame and praise the essential point that he is trying to make is true. There are ways towards peace and security that are different from and more effective than the bluster of the present American administration and their equally ideologically driven Islamofascist opponents. The two sides actually mirror each other very well. Have a look at the essay for the full story. It will likely be posted on the net next month at the Scientific American website, which is usually one month behind the printed version.
It's also an example the application of game theory in real life, something that Molly will return to as she slowly posts her complete review of 'A Beautiful Math' on this site. The book is long finished, but reading is faster than writing about it.
Molly

SOGGY NUCLEAR FIRECRACKERS:
The January, 2007 edition of Scientific American has a couple of interesting article surrounding the recent (Oct. 9th, 2006) attempt by North Korea to test a nuclear devise. The first article under the 'News Scan' section of the magazine is entitled 'Kim's Big Fizzle', and it is more than dismissive of the North Korean attempt. (Molly Note: the history of "real existing socialism" in the last century is a very exemplary example of behavioral analysis applied to humans in that it proves beyond a shadow of a doubt how much "operant conditioning" (the carrot) is superior to "aversive conditioning" (the stick). Western economies that offer rewards rather than threats produce missiles that fly-unlike NK missiles- and nuclear devises that actually explode properly- once more unlike NK devises. This is not a matter of a superior 'economy". It is simply a matter of proper understanding of what produces results on a "lower" biological level) The article in SA reported that the consensus was that the yield of the devise was very much lower than that usually for a 'first devise". Most countries initial tests range from 5 to 25 kilotons (the first US test 'Trinity' yielded 20 kilotons). The consensus was that the NK test had a yield of about half a kiloton. Sceptics who opined that the test had not been "nuclear" were confounded by air samples collected by satellite two days after the explosion that confirmed the nuclear nature of the event, especially detection of radioactive isotopes of xenon that can only be produced by nuclear reactions.
What went wrong with the NK devise depends on the type of nuclear material used. The consensus is that it was a plutonium based devise, and this is supported by what is known of North Korea's enrichment programs. The state of uranium enrichment in NK is unknown at this time. Plutonium devises may "misfire" because the implosion that triggers the the critical mass of the devise may be asymmetrical. This depends on engineering skill to combine both fast and slow conventional explosives that compress the plutonium core. It also depends upon a skilled labour force that can machine the designed components into a configuration that will produce a precisely !!!! spherical implosion upon detonation. The critical density is at least 2 to five times the natural density of plutonium. The higher the density the greater the final nuclear yield.
If the initial implosion is not symmetrical (by even a factor of 100 nanoseconds ie 1/100,000,000th of a second) then the plutonium core will "squirt out" in the direction where the shock wave is the weakest, and the core will not reach "critical mass".
Another potential engineering problem is the "initiator", a small area at the centre of the plutonium core that in a functioning nuclear devise will emit a burst of neutrons that will trigger the chain reaction of a nuclear explosion. If this core triggers too early, as may occur when too much of the isotope Plutonium 240 is present the burst of neutrons will occur too early, and the explosion will "fizzle". This is called "predetonation". When nuclear fuel rods are originally processed there is much more of the desired isotope plutonium 239, but as they are stored plutonium 240 becomes more abundant. Nobody knows the storage time of NK plutonium. (Molly Note: including the North Koreans because, as I have mentioned before, a system depending upon punishment rather than reward encourages lying at such a high level that few can tell truth from fiction. Certainly heads have rolled because of Kim's latest failure, but the structural problems have NOT been addressed. Sell the technology to a country such as Pakistan where there is "reward" rather than terror, and the engineering problems are solved decades before they are solved in the source country. Simple animal conditioning that political theories don't take account of).
The January edition of Scientific American goes on to describe the methods whereby the detonation of nuclear devises are detected in the further article entitled 'Seismic Sentries'. This article describes the worldwide network of seismic devises that have been set up to detect both ordinary seismic devises and nuclear explosions. The article notes that nuclear explosions "typically" produce a different seismic signature than ordinary earthquakes do. To those who are familiar with ECGs/EKGs the language is similar, but for those who are not this is the best I can do to translate. Nuclear explosions produce a initial pulse of "P waves" that propagate in ALL directions and produce intense spikes that gradually and regularly quite down. In contrast classic earthquakes begin with a VERY slight reading of P waves followed in a few seconds to minutes by "S wave" representing shear forces as the earthquake develops and faults slip side to side along each other.
The Scientific American article goes on to describe the complications of this simple model and how a nuclear detonation can create the same sort of shear forces t5hat an ordinary earthquake cane depending upon the local geology or how P waves can turn into S waves upon transmission through certain strata. There is also the complicating factor of certain strata "muffling" the much more intense S waves so that they appear like P waves.
(Molly Note: this is VERY much like how we take an ECG (a term that I!!!! prefer to EKG). The "S" waves that the speak about above are part of the "QRS" complex that we measure in the electroconductivity of the heart, and the reason why we use several different leads in these tests will become apparent as I go on in this article. Quite frankly I find this a matter of deep pleasure. To find connections between diagnosing problems in one area of a mammalian heart and "diagnosing" "what has happened with the Earth. This is ONE of the reasons I recommend people become acquainted with science rather than superstition. The connections are much deeper and more rewarding. ...but anyhow...)
The method that people have discovered to separate the effects of intervening geological strata is basically to "sum" the reading from various monitoring stations across the Earth and also to compare the signals from these stations with known events. Seismographic stations in China "located" the Korean event while American stations gave an estimate of the "fizzle" yield" od said event. Some stations may be of greater accuracy as to "location" while others, because of geological structure, may be better for "yield". Such is life and reality.
None of these methods are EXACT. During the Cold War the US missed 26 of the Soviet Union's 366 underground tests in Central Asia, mostly because there were no "local" seismographic stations available. Unlike the situation today where Chinese stations report automatically worldwide.
(Molly Note:Pull one of the leads from an ECG and see how much information you get. It isn't totally useless, but it is less than if you had all leads attached attached)
Further Molly Notes: To get an idea of the worldwide seismographic network consult http://www.iris.edu/about.GSN . The Scientific American article actually quoted outdated statistics in terms of the monitoring stations available today (2006). For the latest updates see http://ctbto.org where the most recent numbers for seismic/hydrasound and other monitoring stations are gathered.
One more further Molly Note. It may be hard for me to gauge the North American "popular press" response to the North Korean test as I was "out of the country" when it happened. Let's take the following- as may be apparent from what I have said above- I am of the opinion that commies can do nothing right without great effort. Stalinist Russia advanced their industry by the "great effort" of eliminating 10 to 15 % of their population. That's a GREAT EFFORT !!!! No fascist regime has exerted this effort and therefore no fascist regime has achieved such "success". The Chinese Maoist regime killed 50 million with far less economic effect, often a regression rather than a progression.
What I can say about the popular press is as follows. I am sure that the whole matter of North Korea and its "nukes" (whether they be be 'real nukes' or the usual 'socialist nukes' that fizzle like the SA article suggests) was far,far,far,far,far less of a matter of concern in Europe where I was when it happened than it was back in Canada. The event took place while I was in Praha in the Czech Republic, and it did not register on the news there at all. By the time we reached Venezia in Italy where I could more or less understand news broadcasts and papers I found the same thing. In Italia the news was dominated by the Pope's visit to Verona, how he had criticized "secularism" in his visit and how the right wing forces in Italia had turned his visit into a demonstration for their (his ?) views. The news was also dominated by either further revelations of the corruption of the right wing (and some lefties) forces that supported Il Papa. This is Italy. Is this news ? Fascists, Catholics, Socialists, Greenies, Communists--they are ALL the same grey money grabbers to the average Italian.
The news was also dominated by the local opposition to expansion of the American Air Force/Strike Force base in North East Italy. Whether in favour of such or against it the papers/TV/radio gave far more play to this plan than was given to the NK events.
I have no idea how the North Korean tests played out in the USA. All that I can do do is compare the play that they got in Canada "before" we left the continent and compare it to the "non-play" in Europe. The degree of hysteria would undoubtedly have been far greater in the USA without the realistic view of NK's "achievements" presented in Scientific American. I have little doubt that OVER 98% of the American population believes that North Korea is presently able to rain an infinite amount of nukes down on then as we speak. It would be a great proof of conservative ideology IF it was true. But "truth" has little to do with ideology. So much of American neo-con ideology resembles the NK devise. It exploded and produced a "puff" rather than an explosion.

Darwin At The Zoo:
The latest edition of Scientific American (Dec., 2006) has an interesting review of Frans de Waal's latest book 'Primates and Philosophers: How Morality Evolved' by science writer Jonathan Weiner. The title of the review comes from an experience that Darwin had in March, 1838, a year and a half after the voyage of the Beagle had ended. Darwin was an observer of what Darwin could only see as a "temper tantrum" that an orangutan took because of the "unfairness" of her keeper. Darwin speculated about the emotions and their possible connections with morality throughout his life. The culmination of this was his 1872 book 'The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals' (see Darwin-Online in the links section of this blog for the complete text). Therein he gives the key to human morality, empathy, in the following quote,
"The movements of expression in the face and body, whatever their origin may have been, are in themselves of much importance in our welfare. They serve as the first means of communication between the mother and her infant; she smiles approval, and thus encourages her child on the right path, or frowns disapproval. We readily perceive sympathy in others by their expression, our sufferings are thus mitigated and our pleasures increased; and mutual good feeling is thus strengthened."


The reviewer states De Waal' position in the following paraphrase'
"In his scientific papers and popular books (including 'Chimpanzee Politics', 'Our Inner Ape' and 'Good Natured') he argues that Darwin was correct from his first view of Jenny at the zoo. Sympathy, empathy, right and wrong are feelings that we share with other animals; even the best part of human nature, the part that cares about ethics and justice, is also part of nature."


The reviewer states that in this book de Waals "tries to refute a popular caricature of Darwinism...people assume that to be good, be nice, behave, play well with others we have to rise above our animal nature."


The truth is the exact opposite. Weiner says,
"In reality, as de Waal reminds us, dogs are social, wolves are social, chimps and macaques are social, and we, ourselves, are "social to the core". Goodness, generosity and genuine kindness come just as naturally to us as meaner feelings."


The reviewer quotes de Waal,
"Instead of empathy being an endpoint it may have been the starting point".
Weiner goes into the case of one of de Waal's most famous experiments in which he demonstrated that capuchin monkeys appreciate fairness and unfairness. The second half of de Waal's book consists of a critique of his theories by several commentators and de Waal's replies to them. The reviewer concludes that "it seems clear that we can no longer look at morality as a sort of civilized veneer on a cold and selfish animal, even though that view goes back long before Darwin went to the zoo. Its origins lie in the Western concept of original sin"

Frans de Waal has had a long and distinguished career in primatology. He was born in 1948 in Utrecht, the Netherlands and received his doctorate in Biology from the University of Utrecht in 1977. His dissertation was on aggressive behavior and alliance formation in macaques. At this time he had been 2 years into a 6 year project studying the world's largest chimpanzee colony at Arnhem Zoo. This resulted in a number of scientific papers and his first book 'Chimpanzee Politics'. In 1981 he moved to the USA, and in 1991 he took up his present position at Emory University and the Yerkes National Primate Research Center. For a brief introduction to de Waal see the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frans_de_Waal . For a more in depth profile see the 'Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (August 1,2005) at http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/102/32/11137 . For a complete bibliography see his profile at the Emory University site at http://www.psychology.emory.edu/nab/dewaal .
De Waal was one of those originally broke a long standing taboo in ethology, that one couldn't ascribe human like emotions to anaimals. Since the time of 'Chimpanzee Politics' the view has changed dramatically due to the work of people like De Waal, Jane Goodall and Donald Griffen. De Waal remarked,
"The time was ripe. If I had written that book ten years earlier, probably I would have been burned at the stake. Ten years later and it would have been after the revolution."
There's another interesting quotation from the PNAS article mentioned above (which also has a link to de Waal's "inaugural article" 'The Monkey in the Mirror:Hardly a Stranger',
"In this book I'm arguing that we have two sides. We're really a bipolar ape. We have a very nasty side to us, and we are nastier than almost any other animal that you can imagine. But we also have a very nice, altruistic side to us. And when we're nice, we're actually much nicer than almost any animal you can imagine."

'Primates and Philosophers'(ISBN 0-691-12447-7) is published by Princeton University Press. Ordering information can be seen online at their website where you can also view a fairly lengthy extract from the book at http://press.princeton.edu . The book contains a rather interesting quote on Kropotkin and other Russian naturalists in Chapter 1 that pup provides on their site. It runs as follows'
"It should be pointed out, though, that in Huxley's time there was already fierce opposition to his ideas (Desmond 1994), some of which came from Russian biologists such as Petr Kropotkin. Given the harsh climate of Siberia, Russian scientists traditionally were far more impressed by the battle of animals against the elements than against each other, resulting in an emphasis on cooperation and solidarity as against Huxley's dog-eat-dog perspective (Todes, 1989).'Mutual Aid' was an attack on Huxley, but written with great deference for Darwin.
Although Kropotkin never formulated his theory with the precision and evolutionary logic available to Trivers (1971)(Molly Note 1) in his seminal paper on reciprocal altruism, both pondered the origins of a cooperative and moral society without invoking false pretense, Freudian denial schemes or cultural indoctrination and both proved the true followers of Darwin. (Molly Note 2)."


If the reader is at all interested in primatology in general I can do no better than to refer them to 'Primate Info Net' at http://pin.primate.wisc.edu . This site contains numerous links to factsheets on individual primate species, on taxonomy, on the sociobiology of primates, to other primate related sites, conservation,etc.,etc, etc.. There is even a continuously updated listing of 'Primates in the News'.

Molly Notes
1) Triver's 1971 paper, 'The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism' (Quarterly Review of Biology, 46, 35-57) actually examined a "special case" of altruism ie between non-kin. The ground for his work had been thoroughly prepared by others such as J.B.S. Haldane and W.D. Hamilton who worked on kin selection and inclusive fitness. The ground had also been prepared by the development of game theory in mathematics.
2) De Waal refers-a little- to difficulties with the data that Kropotkin accumulated in his researches in Siberia but even more so to Kropotkin's attempts to theorize about same. Those unfamiliar with the field may find it startling that pretty well any legitimate sociobiological line of research takes observations by people such as Kropotkin (and Darwin and Kropotkin's Russian colleagues,etc.) as an historical "starting point" for what the perhaps the central question of sociobiology---how do you explain the obvious occurrence of altruistic behavior?.
The problems with Kropotkin are a)he was writing in a time when the modern science of genetics simply didn't exist. Kropotkin's genetics were Lamarkian to the core, a mistake that he actually shared with Darwin himself. b) Kropotkin was something of an extreme group selectionist. Kropotkin actually usually took the position that the "level of selection" was the species. This is extreme even by the standards of modern group selectionists who represent a distinct minority amongst present day evolutionary biologists. I tend to hold a rather a conservative position on this matter. I don't believe that "group selection" never happens, just that it is an uncommon and slight influence in most evolutionary situations. Conversely I have a hard time accepted a "genocentric" view of the unit of selection. Genes are always in "tight combinations" with tens of thousands of other genes in any individual so it is hard to see how selective pressure can operate at anything but the most demonstrable of genetic advantages. In most situations a "slight advantage" of a given gene will be drowned out by the "noise" of the random genes that it is combined with. and c) the mathamatical techniques of game theory were not developed at the time when Kropotkin wrote. While he was not a basic mathematical illiterate, such as Marx was, the mathematics of his time were simply not up to the demands of describing the social interactions involved.
3)The reader who consults the original review in SA will notice that this blog has wandered off the subject more than a little. Sorry...but some things seem to grow on their own.
Molly

An aside,
Scientific American always has a 'Working Knowledge' section in each edition dealing with various practical technologies. In the September edition that I have mentioned previously the title is 'Tall Task', and it is on water towers and their role in the water supply system of towns and cities. What I find odd is the mention of rooftop water towers in cities. To be honest I've never seen such things in prairie cities. But now I am on the lookout for them here in Winnipeg. If they aren't there why ? Are they an affectation of American rather than Canadian cities ? Are they unnecessary in prairie cities ? A question to ponder.

I've just finished reading the September edition of 'Scientific American'. It's a special edition (one subject for various articles) entitled 'Energy's Future:Beyond Carbon' and the subject is technological change necessary to reduce carbon emissions. After the Introduction there is an overview that divides this task up into "wedges" of different technological and policy changes that have to be undertaken to avoid catastrophic global warming. Seven articles on various aspects of these changes follow. They are about:
1)Transportation
2)Efficiency
3)Coal
4)Nuclear Power
5)Renewable Energy
6)Hydrogen
7)Various more "fanciful" options
More on this issue later.

"Naturally Crooked"
A little item from the recent past here. In the March, 2006 edition of 'Scientific American' 'Skeptic' columnist Michael Schirmer takes aim at one of the more astounding purveyors of the "natural medicine swindle. This is the author Kevin Trudeau who wrote the book 'Natural Cures "They" Don't Want You To Know'. Trudeau has previously been convicted of credit card fraud and had spent two years in the federal pen. He had also been barred from his old scam of infomercials in any medium. yet books are protected speech under the US Constitution, and the old fox can go on with his old game if the matter is in print. The natural "cures" (of which Shirmer cites a humorous selection) that the book promotes refer the reader to Trudeau's website where a life membership costs $499- or $9.95 monthly. it's one way to keep on stealing even if you've been caught. Trudeau's book unfortunately reached the NYT's best sellers list.
Shirmer ends his article with an old Japanese proverb, "Baka ni tsukeru kusuri wa nai" which translates as "there's no medicine that cures stupidity".

Interesting articles in the July, 2006 edition of 'Scientific American'
1)'A Regulation on Regulations'.
Seems there is a provision in US law called the 'Data Quality Act' that allows corporations to challenge scientific data being presented in public forums as to the "quality" of the research. Interesting in that this "quality" is supposed to be decided in courts rather than in the peer reviewed literature. According to this article about 100 petitions have been filed under this act, most of then from industry groups.
2)'Not So Super'
In the wake of the disastrous failure of TeGenero's clinical trial of their "superantibody", TGN1412, in which 6 volunteers proceeded to rapid shock and multi-organ failure, researchers are re-evaluating the pathway for about 1,000 clinical use antibodies in the research pipeline. The basic problem seems to be that humans lack certain "brakes" on the immune response that other primates possess. The antibody was tested on rabbits and monkeys, and the preliminary clinical trial was the first human test. According to a sidebar from the article chimpanzees have 20 times more immune damping receptors called "Siglecs" than humans in terms of T-cells expressing this protein, and each cell expresses 10 to 100 more receptors as compared to a human T-cell.