28th
What I learned today.
you down with MHC?
Just read this interesting article in Time Magazine about how romance is linked to smell. We respond to olfactory cues and in fact, smell helps us narrow our choices of potential partners.
MHC (the major histocompatibility complex), a set of genes that controls the immune system and influences tissue rejection is especially critical. You jive best with a partner whose MHC is sufficiently different from your own. Studies show that couples with similar MHC’s have trouble conceiving or an increased risk of miscarriage.
A study had females smell various t-shirts worn by different anonymous men, then pick the one that appealed to them most. Most women chose ones worn by men with a MHC dissimilar to her own (=good). Those who chose the t-shirts worn by men with similar MHC (=bad) were on birth control. The daily dose of hormones confounds the MHC-smell detection system.
A chemist associated with the studies “wonders if the Pill may contribute to divorce… Women pick a husband when they’re on birth control, then quit to have a baby and realize they’ve made a mistake.” Here’s an in depth description of the study & a scientific explanation here.
Watch out Match.com, ScientificMatch.com is taking over. My friend Pavla read about this online dating service where you send in saliva samples and the program matches you with a mate with dissimilar immune system genes. Only $1,995.95 for a year for anyone except convicted criminals or women on birth control.
— dihard
Musicbrain, great qualification on a topic the media loves to go crazy about - instant ramifications of genetic behavior data. Flies do it, and so do we! See, this one human study that looks at it in a roundabout way because that’s the only way possible confirms it! The roundup of this article doesn’t suggest it, but it stands confirming that we still don’t know for sure about human pheremones, and even once we do, their importance will probably be much more limited than they are in any other species. Scientists (myself included, I study stress and behavior and implications for depression and PTSD in rodents) always love to take choice out of human behavior. It’s interesting and fun, because as Americans we place such importance on personal choice and personal responsibility, it’s always crazy to think that maybe we aren’t as in control as we think, that our ‘subconcious’, to use a crappy term, is calling the shots. There is a whole industry trying to make money off of scientific research in this general area. For instance, a few years back at UCLA a scientist partnered with a company to do fMRIs on democrats and republicans to find out how they respond differently to political ads, with the hope of figuring out the innate differences in their brains so they could sell ads to political groups that either group would more strongly respond to for a huge fee. As if these political identities are distinct and separate organisms or something. Besides the fact that this is pretty much impossible to figure out in the first place, they had almost no idea what they were looking for, and besides the fact that I bet money no women were included in the study, as the pregnancy/possible pregnancy would rule them out, and women respond differently to everything emotional anyway, as the few fMRI studies that do include women show.
Anyway, lost my point almost. My point was that these olfaction studies are cool, and olfaction is one of the coolest areas of behavior research right now because of the ability to do so much genetic and behavior research at the same time in the same organism (flies), but every time studies get extrapolated to and performed in humans, capital BUTS need to be attached, even though theoretically it’s fun to take them away and eliminate all choice from human-human interactions. Cool thought exercise, interesting, and when we finally determine the extent of truth to how much we choose and how much our brain/genetics choose on its own, that will be cool. But, I worry that research and stories like this get digested by the government without qualifiers, and they then think, “see, birth control IS evil,” and then we all have to deal with another round of attacks on our access to birth control, except now they supposedly have Science backing them up.
So, thanks for covering a really cool cutting edge area of behavioral research, Time, but you suck.
— cremefracas who also posted this follow up:
Lots of people have crappy mood responses to the pill. I did too. But there are many different formulations, lots of different synthetic progesterones (which I believe to be the culprit of most of the nasty). Tell your doctor the pill makes you crazy, and they will try out another one, which you may respond to totally differently. I did, I found one that was awesome, called Estrostep. Some of the formulas on the market are ancient, made back before they even thought about emotional effects, when they were bombarding women with hormones like cattle, just to make sure the job got done. It sucks and is time consuming to keep on trying new pills, but there are good ones, they just aren’t always the first prescribed, because they aren’t good for everyone. Don’t settle for synthetic progesterone made in 1970! Cancer is scary, here is a medicine that not only destroys your period, it puts your fertility in your control, and now they say it possibly reduces your risk of ovarian cancer FOREVER? Even the possibility is a hell yeah.I recognize that this is sounding condescending. I’m sure a lot of people have tried many different pills, and they still don’t like the way they feel. Okay. I guess I am still just worked up about my earlier post in regards to dihard’s post, which has sparked a lot of anti-pill chatter. That’s fine, and I’m not offended by the talk. I am offended that the article published a diss on birth control that it can’t really back up, that claims the pill is so unnatural and is fundamently hurting our lives, and states that Science says so. Articles like this get eaten up by those that are already anti, and can be used recklessly to pass laws that then downstream affect my ability to make my own medically sound and justified choices that have already been extensively reviewed and proven by actual science, and I find that scary. You know, my rational and informed choice versus their ideology, blah blah? I just worry everytime I see studies reported like this that sooner or later the whole thing will turn up blown out of proportion on talk radio and in congress and coming out of my aunt’s mouth at Christmas like it always does, and I’m tired of it.
This is the most interesting tumblr discussions I have ever read. I came across dihard’s post this morning, thought about the subject a bunch throughout the day, and then caught up on all the reblogs this evening. It’s definitely generating emotional and personal responses (appropriate for the topic obvs.). I am posting my favorite series of posts/responses here (there are bunch more interesting ones, but this post is already super long). I was really happy to see Creamfracas’ super reasonable responses, with a bunch of thoughtful points about the study results and the pill.
I have thought about this all way too much for one day. I’m going to bed, and I’m never being serious again.