Permafrost permayouth

You might have heard about people consuming pills of dried shark cartilage as nutritional supplements.  They're still widely available, in fact.  It's supposed to be anti-carcinogenic.  Why, you might ask, did people get this idea?

Because, the purveyors of shark cartilage pills say, sharks don't get cancer.  So if you grind up shark parts and consume them, you won't get cancer either.

There are just two problems with this practice:

• Sharks actually do get cancer, something that has been known since at least 1908.
• Shark cartilage has been tested and found to have no beneficial therapeutic value whatsoever.  It is, however, kind of critical for the shark itself, and the practice of killing sharks for their cartilage has led to widespread decline in sharks in many parts of the world.

This did not stop two of the most prominent cartilage shark spokespeople, I. William Lane and Linda Comac, from writing a book called Sharks Don't Get Cancer.  When the book was completely trashed by scientists and other reviewers, Lane responded by writing a second book four years later called Sharks Still Don't Get Cancer.

His publisher wisely recommended that Lane eliminate the subtitle he was planning to use, which was So Take That Nyah Nyah Nyah Nyah pfffttptbtbtbtbtb.

As usual, we have people who aren't letting little things like evidence and facts stand in the way of their claim.  You can still buy shark cartilage pills in many pharmacies, including a brand called, I kid you not, "BeneFin."

I bring all this up because yesterday I ran across a story about a woman who is doing something even stupider than consuming shark cartilage to prevent cancer; she is injecting herself with bacteria so she won't age.

It's not just ordinary, garden-variety bacteria, either.  These are bacteria that had been frozen in the permafrost of Siberia for, by some estimates, 3.5 million years, and now have been resuscitated by the thaw.  A Russian professor of geology named Anatoli Brouchkov noticed that the Yakut people who live in the area have a reputation for long lifespans, so he decided that (of course) it had to be because they were drinking melted permafrost water that had the bacteria in it.

Couldn't be genetics, or diet, or anything.

So he treated some plants, fruit flies, and mice with the bacteria, which has been dubbed "Bacillus F."  Brouchkov that they "seemed to have a rejuvenating effect," although gives no details about how he knew.  How do you distinguish between a rejuvenated houseplant and a tired, listless one?  Do non-rejuvenated fruit flies fly about in a dejected fashion?

Be that as it may, Brouchkov is certain enough of his claim that he's drinking water with Bacillus F in it himself.  But an actress who calls herself "Manoush" has gone a step further; she is now injecting herself with the bacteria.

Manoush, best known for such A-list blockbusters as Zombie Reanimation, The Shrieking, Philosophy of a Knife, and The Turnpike Killer, says she started taking the bacteria because like many of us, she's not so fond of the idea of getting old.  "Aging is a disease," she says.  "It is a genetic flaw to me.  Even as a teenager I could never accept the concept of getting older one day.  I don’t care what people think. I will stop at nothing to look and feel younger.  Nothing."

Which, I think we could all agree, would leave us with no option other than injecting 3.5 million-year-old Siberian permafrost bacteria directly into our bodies.

Manoush is absolutely convinced she's now aging backwards.  Me, I'm not sure.  I'm not fond of the gray hair, stiff joints, and crow's feet I've gotten in the past few years, but I don't think the answer is to jump on some loopy idea about anti-aging bacteria.  In fact, injecting bacteria into yourself is kind of a bad idea in general; perfectly normal, ordinary skin bacteria become a serious problem if they get into your bloodstream.  A friend of mine's father, in fact, almost died of a Staphylococcus aureus infection when his thumb got skewered by a rose thorn.

Staphylococcus aureus, I should point out, is a ubiquitous part of our skin flora.  On the surface of your skin, it's harmless.  Inside you, it can result in blood sepsis, which is a quick and spectacularly nasty way to die.

Staphylococcus aureus [image courtesy of the National Institute of Health]

So as much as I'd like perpetual youth, I'm not going to get in line behind Manoush for my bacteria injection.  I'll put up with the gray hair, which I'm told makes me look "distinguished," which isn't as good as "drop-dead sexy," but I guess I'll deal.

Hark, hark, the shark

I guess it was bound to happen.

It started decades ago, with Jaws.  Then you had the hyped-up "documentaries" of the 80s and 90s featuring lines like, "Let's put the bikini-clad Baywatch wannabee in the giant metal cage, lower it into the water, and throw around bleeding fish parts, and see what happens."  But things ramped up considerably when the Discovery channel started "Shark Week."  Then we had the following, which made a lot of us science types shake our heads and say, "Um... really?":

Oh, if only it were "enough said."  Because you know it's not.  It is never enough said, once the ball gets rolling, especially if the ball has teeth and fins.  Because just a few days ago we had a new "documentary" on Discovery, one that upped the ante even further, by claiming that one of the largest seagoing predators that has ever lived... is still alive.

 Called Carcharodon megalodon, or just "Megalodon" for short, this thing was, to put it bluntly, freakin' huge.  Fossils have been found that indicate that the biggest ones could reach 18 meters in length (for reference, the largest great white sharks get to be about 6 meters long).  So, this was one scary-ass beast, the likes of which would make me hesitant to set foot in the ocean again.

If it still existed.  Which it doesn't.  Scientists are in agreement that Megalodon went extinct about 1.5 million years ago.  But of course, given the foolishness that has appeared on Discovery (remember Finding Bigfoot?  and The Haunted?  and, most germane to our discussion here, Mermaids: The Body Found?), I shouldn't really be surprised.

Oh, but there's a poll!  Because scientific truth is determined by public consensus, evidently.  You can vote that "YES! The evidence for Megalodon can't be ignored! The monster shark lives!" or "Maybe.  95% of our oceans remain unexplored, so it's possible that Megalodon is still out there."  Or (and I imagine this choice accompanied by a sad shake of the head), "No.  The scientists are right."  So, anyway, I voted (guess which way?), mostly so I could see what the results were, and was unsurprised that 32% of the respondents voted "yes," and 48% "maybe," leaving the poor scientists in the dust with a paltry 20% of the vote.

Of course, given that a common attitude is that public school biology curricula should eliminate the teaching of evolution "because lots of people don't believe in it," I shouldn't be surprised that (1) the public is easy to hoodwink into believing nonsense, and (2) there's a sense that science is a democracy.

Now, don't misunderstand me.  I love the ocean, and I think sharks are really cool.  And there's no doubt that charismatic megafauna are big sellers, explaining why you see lots of calendars and framed prints and greeting cards and tattoos with images of wolves, lions, and jaguars, and far fewer with wombats, possums, and naked mole rats.  I get why there's never been a film called Rabbitnado, although I have to admit I would watch it, especially if the bunnies turned out to be like the Beast of Caer Bannog:

But that's just me.  And since these media outlets exist to make money, not to promote good science, it's no wonder they jump on the bandwagon.

Sharon Hill, in her wonderful blog Doubtful News, did a piece on Megalodon recently, and expressed hope that "Shark Week" and other dubious attempts at nature documentary would raise awareness of shark conservation.  Me, I'm less sanguine.  When the movie Jaws came out in 1975, there followed a senseless slaughter of sharks of all sorts, including the completely harmless gray nurse shark.  Just as people don't get that science is done based on evidence, not on voting in a poll, they also don't tend to respond rationally when an irresponsible media outlet has ramped up the fear.

Anyhow, that's today's exercise in futility.  Given that Megalodon got "record ratings," I'm doubtful that anything I say is going to have an effect.  Maybe I should make my own documentary, you think?  You can't beat 'em, join 'em.  How about Hopping Mad: Is Australia's Carnivorous Kangaroo Still Alive in the Outback?  Start with some photographs of fossil skeletons:

Follow up with some scary drawings:

Hire a scientist or two to weigh in on how we can never be sure that an animal is extinct, because the Coelacanth, you know, and so on.  Then have a poll.   Sure fire winner, right?

Of course, right.