Seth Berkley's TED Talk on HIV/Flu Vaccine Development

Seth Berkley's recent TED talk focuses on HIV and influenza vaccine research.  In general, I think the talk does a good job of reviewing why it is so hard to develop an AIDS vaccine or a universal flu vaccine.  However, there are some times when I thought that Dr. Berkley was overselling the research results.

For example, Dr. Berkley says "let's take a look at a video that we're debuting at TED, for the first time, on how an effective HIV vaccine might work."  Now, I think the video does do a very good job illustrating the general principle of how vaccines work, but it does not provide any specific details regarding how an effective HIV vaccine can be developed.

At another point in the video, Dr. Berkley suggests that a universal flu vaccine can be created by designing vaccines that target conserved regions on the surface of the influenza vaccine.  These proteins would be located in roughly the equivalent of the blue region of the following 3D rendition of a flu virus (from http://johnfenzel.typepad.com/john_fenzels_blog/images/flu_image.jpg):

As you might imagine, these proteins have not been used because the scientists believed that the immune system would not respond well to them because the H and N spikes (the green and yellow things in the picture above) would block most antibodies produced during the immune response.  Judging from a quick search of the internet, it seems like most images agree with the picture shown above (and in the TED talk).

To be fair, I found one example of a flu virus with less densely packed surface proteins, and the candidate proteins (M2e proteins) may be large enough to clear enough room to interact with the host antibodies.  However, I fear this new vaccine design may be based on data which shows encouraging results during pre-clinical research but is not very effective during clinical trails.  That said, I would obviously be pleasantly surprised if this design does lead to a successful universal flu vaccine, and I honestly do think Dr. Berkley does a good job of broadly describing of how new technology can aid in rational vaccine design.

I also thought that Dr. Berkley did an excellent job describing how changes in vaccine production could significantly increase the effectiveness of flu vaccines.  Namely, Dr. Berkley points out that flu vaccines have been produced from chicken eggs ever since the 1940s.  Different flu strains vary in their ability to grow in chicken eggs, and production of flu vaccines using chicken eggs takes "more than half a year."  Dr. Berkley proposes a method that would allow companies to produce flu vaccines in E. coli.  I think this is an excellent strategy that could significant improve the process of vaccine development.

I think it is also worth mentioning that Dr. Berkley does acknowledge how hard it is to predict the future of vaccine development.  When asked to give a time line to expect an effective HIV vaccine, Dr. Berkley responds "everybody says it's 10 years, but it's been 10 years every 10 years."  In general, it is always important for people to always interpret preliminary research findings with a grain of salt.

Overall, I think Dr. Berkley does a good job providing an interesting talk about a very important subject.

Temple Grandin's TED Talk on Autism

After listening to Temple Grandin’s TED talk, “The world needs all kinds of minds,” I spent a lot of time learning more about Temple and her accomplishments. As a child, Temple Grandin suffered from severe autism, but as an adult she became famous for developing more effective and humane protocols in the cattle industry and she become a prominent speaker to help others understand autism. She posits that her acute visual thinking (and hampered verbal abilities) helped her gain insight into the animal mind and this is the cause for her success in the cattle industry.

In addition to her TED talk, I also listened to the BBC special “The Woman Who Thinks like a Cow.” I would strongly recommend watching this video if you want to gain some insight into Temple’s life and accomplishments. I also plan to check out one of her books sometime in the near future.

I think Temple does a fantastic job of accomplishing two things: 1) helping the audience understand how autistic people think and 2) emphasizing the need for individuals with “autistic-like” traits and encouraging those with “unique [minds]” to find jobs that suit their abilities.

For reasons of brevity, I will simply encourage you to watch the TED talk if you want to gain insight into how an autistic mind works. However, I would like to think more carefully about Temple’s second point.

Temple emphasizes that society needs different types of thinkers for different types of jobs. For example, she often remarks that an autistic mind is well-suited for a job in Silicon Valley. Now, I do agree that we should be aware that people (such as highly functioning autistic individuals) can very talented at certain things but bad at other tasks. However, I think she occasionally takes this argument a little too far.

Namely, I think Temple overestimates the role of autistic individuals in society and underestimates the tragic life of severely autistic individuals. Previous to this TED talk, she claimed “[society] would still be socializing around the fire if it was not for autistic individuals.”  When questioned about this claim during the question and answer session after her TED talk, she responded “Who do you think made the first spears? An Asperger guy.” While it is true that many highly functioning autistic individuals can have a heightened sense of perception and analytical abilities, it is not safe to assume that social skills are always antagonistic to analytical thinking. There are many individuals who have both verbal and visual talents. For example, a good physician needs both analytical and communication skills in order to succeed at his or her job. Although I agree that most people have a dominant style of thinking, overall aptitude varies significantly between individuals and it is not necessarily safe to assume that verbal and visual skills are mutually exclusive. To be fair, Temple does mention that about one-half of autistic individuals will never learn how to talk and therefore cannot maintain a job and independent lifestyle. For this reason, I question Temple’s broad claim that autism genes are good for society. Autism is a spectrum of disorders, and severe autism devastates the lives of many individuals. Even Temple has to take antidepressants in order to conduct everyday functions (as I learned from the BBC special). Therefore, I think it is good to have individuals with a “brush” of autism, but I also think that society would benefit from the development of novel therapeutics that could correct the developmental delays in communication associated with autism and/or genetic diagnostics that can help predict if a child is likely to develop a case of severe autism.