It’s so cold that

the snow squeaks
nose hairs freeze
the tires on my car are loud on the ground
pneumatic hinges stop working and your trunk door falls on your head
people hold doors open
hat head is epidemic
there is not enough water in the world to slake your thirst, not enough moisturizer in the world for dry skin
knuckles crack
eyelashes grow icicles
dogs get stir crazy
the river steams
dogs outside do the paw-paw dance
car exhaust clings to the ground
cars stall, complain
LED displays are slow to refresh
whole milk freezes
the northern lights stop dancing
days stop getting longer
xylem and phloem in trees can burst; on a quiet night, you can hear it
time indoors in long underwear and boots make you crazy
school buses stop running
running room running groups stop running
pedestrians stop watching for cars because getting warm is a bigger priority than avoiding collision
coffee, soup, hot chocolate, tea, and energy consumption sky rocket
malls fill
tongues freeze to zippers
coyotes come closer to town
jackrabbits howl
bears snicker in their dens
I sleep early

As the holidays wind to a close, and I finish off a Bernard Callebaut white chocolate snowman, I’m starting to think about how I can undo the damage of the holiday season. Don’t all mommy blogs have to have an article or two on losing the baby weight/having more time for you/reclaiming lost youth and promise? Basically, I’m tired of feeling like a badly spayed cat. I don’t think I’m a lot heavier than I was before Hannah, but I’m definitely, um, wider? Increased in girth? I remember reading Victorian novels that described the matronly characters as “slightly thickened in the middle,” and suddenly I have a vivid insight into what that actually looks like. It sucks.

1. The uber swank solution: My sister, the lawyer, generously offered me a Christmas gift to which I had a hard time saying no: a membership to one of the city’s swankiest health clubs so that we could go Wednesday and Friday mornings to the best fitness classes that Calgary has to offer. She is also consulting with a personal trainer. I love that idea but who has the money or the time? While she would pay for my membership, I’d still have to upgrade my work out gear, and I just read an article in Elle on the newest gym gear – that stuff is crazy expensive. I don’t think my Joe Fresh yoga top would cut it. While I love the idea, it’s hard to get over the social awkwardness and forced frugality that years of graduate school have drilled into me. And mornings? Don’t talk to me about mornings. Mornings and I don’t get along.
2. The yuppy solution: Speaking of my Joe Fresh yoga top, I did try to rekindle one of my long standing loves – I went to a yoga class earlier this week. Actually, I got into my SUV with my yoga bag, swanky purse, iPhone and new tea thermos filled with Teaopia’s Christmas Green Tea blend, and just about had a yuppie seizure. The yoga class was a similar rude awakening. On the one hand, I love yoga for the fact that the classes are filled with bodies of all types, and it teaches you to stop looking around and caring how you compare. On the other hand, the university students with the skimpy outfits who come in large gaggles do their utmost to make you care how you compare. Why do they come in such loud, large groups, and where on earth do they get that accent? Did I talk like that when I was 20? That rapid, ironic banter that’s more clever than truly funny makes my ears bleed. Anyway, while it was nice to finally warm up enough to touch my toes for the first time in a long while, that work out was the closest I’m come to throwing up in a large group of people since I was pregnant. Here’s a New Year’s resolution to remember: don’t eat half of a Bernard Callebaut chocolate snowman before going to yoga.
3. The granola solution: When I was young and pretty I lived in a remote mountain town and spent my free time skiing or climbing, both pastimes I loved and sorely miss. SO, in the last month I have revisited both pursuits. All I want to say about climbing is that it was a relief that my harness still fit, and my two climbing buddies were the source of the best inadvertent “that’s what she said” I’ve heard in a long time: Nick, belaying Pierre Olivier who was taking too long and sitting in his harness too much, yelled at him to “please hurry up and finish because my crotch is burning.” The skiing was less successful – in my mountain days going skiing required throwing the skis in the back of my truck, loading up the dog, and driving five minutes to some suitable snowy area. Now, it requires finding all my old gear, negotiating the use of the car, finding a babysitter and rearranging strollers and seats to make room for skis, then driving for 1.5 hours. Nonetheless, I did it to meet a dear friend of mine driving in from the mountains to meet me. Just as I was parking in Banff, I got a phone call from Brian to let me know that my ski boots were waiting patiently for me by the front door. My friend and I had a nice walk, and I managed to not cry. I miss these sports so much, but the organization required taxes my already desultory time management skills such that it’s a real endeavor.
4. The mommy solution: I’m a sucker for crazy fitness trends and Brian knows this, and supported my weakness by buying me a fitness game for the wii. He managed to find me a zumba game that manages to be both entertaining and not hopelessly juvenile, so kudos to Brian. The advantage to the home video approach is that it’s easier to schedule and no one sees you dancing like Elaine from Seinfeld. The disadvantage is that it’s an invitation to your toddler to climb on mommy during the stretches, and that rare is the home with an area big enough for exercise without running into furniture. My zumba workout this week was hard on the Christmas tree and consisted of me swearing at the television: “Not done YET? Whatever, you dozy bitch, you’re not even REAL!”
5. The grad school solution: For the overworked and underpaid, there’s no workout quite like running. It’s cheap, portable, and can be done at any time. I remember my grad school days where I was running three times a week, in any weather, and running half marathons just for the hell of it. It’s easy to complain about how much harder it is now, with scheduling and sore joints, but the truth is with a baby jogger there’s no excuse and it remains my favorite pastime. This last summer Hannah and I would hit the trails and be gone for an hour or so, going farther and farther distances, and it’s the closest I’ve come to being fit and happy in a long time. Here’s the kicker though – neglect running for a few weeks and it will make its disappointment known to you. Every time I return to running after a hiatus it triggers some nasty respiratory ailment that convinces me that my lab work has finally managed to kill me with bacterial pneumonia.
6. The gym membership solution: this must be a banner time of year for owners of gyms. People disgusted by their gluttony and sloth over the holiest time of the year are filled with penitence and ripe for exploitation. A year ago Brian and I broke down and considered getting a membership to the local Gold’s Gym. Given my distaste for the younger generation evidenced in point 2, this should have been a non-starter, as Gold’s Gym is the notorious breeding ground for the shallow, underfed, and over tanned. But we heard there was a pool and some good classes, so we thought we should shelve our preconceptions and check it out. We shouldn’t have. We entered and were greeted by some emaciated caricature who let us know in her disinterested drawl that we would be required to fill out a “waiver,” complete with address and phone number, for insurance reasons, just to look around. When I said I had no problem signing something but would not leave a number, she smugly apologized and insisted that it was company policy. No one enters unless they can be harangued later to join the gym. That night was one of two times in my whole life that I was mad enough to employ the “talk to the hand” in all seriousness. The point of this rant is that the majority of people sign up for gym memberships that are underused, at best, and the cheaper option is to pay for a drop in when you want to lift weights. Apparently people like to lift weights. Who knew? Anyway, pay as you go.
7. The west coast solution: I went to university in Victoria, and learned to play ultimate in the 90s when it was mostly potheads playing a sport that didn’t require any aggression, skill or financial investment of any sort. It was perfect for me, a skinny, uncoordinated girl who mostly loved sprinting aimlessly across the muddy fields. I actually got slightly good at it –faint praise, I know. When I moved to Calgary, single and lonely, I joined an ultimate team to make friends. Ultimate in Calgary was a much different creature: there was no loving, supportive cheers and arguments over fouls such as “no, I fouled you! No, I fouled YOU!” My team actually started a brawl with a rugby team over field space. On our first game, one player dislocated his shoulder, one threw up on the sidelines, and one broke her nose walking into the door of the bar after the game. I’m ok now leaving ultimate as a wonderful game of my past.
8. The sensible solution: It would be irresponsible of me to talk about healthy living and neglect talking about diet, but that really is how I live my life. If I could persist in my delusion that a diet of nothing but pasta and Bernard Callebaut snowmen were the recipe for beauty and happiness, then I would. Apparently you’re supposed to eat seven to ten servings of fruit and vegetables a day. I love fruits and especially vegetables, but I binge on them the way I do Bernard Callebaut chocolate snowmen. I can eat a whole bag of carrots in one sitting. Apparently it’s healthier and much easier on your stomach to spread those carrots out over separate meals. Anyway, if you can squeeze in those 7-10 servings a day, it leaves a lot less room for chocolate snowmen. So maybe I’ll give that a try.

I thought I’d come up with 10 get-fit-quick schemes, but this year I’m resolving to be an underachiever. With that in mind, get active, have fun, and like any good resolution: set your sights high, but keep your expectations low.

I’ve been asked to tell some disgusting stories from the trenches – almost literally, our lab is in a very neglected basement – of microbiological research. I’m not emotionally prepared to talk about the soggy, dead rat that I pulled out of our broken down and moldy -80 freezer, so instead I’m going to start a series of articles on the microbiome, which is what we study. Microbiome research is currently in vogue in scientific circles, but despite the hype has some fascinating implications to medicine, ecology, and even how we define what makes up a human.

We like to think that the only barrier between the world outside and inside our bodies is our skin, but in fact, the interface between our bodies and the world is mediated by bacteria. Trillions of them. Bacteria outnumber our own cells by a factor of ten. Your gut, eyes, respiratory tract, ears and vagina are covered with a mucosal layer that is inhabited by bacteria. What’s more interesting is that these aren’t just any bacteria that you would find in the environment, but species that are exquisitely evolved for life on or in the human body. Bacteria begin their colonization of our bodies the moment we are born, are nurtured by our mother’s milk, and without their presence, our immune and digestive systems would not develop correctly. In fact, the bacteria within our guts contribute a great deal to our digestion, and can be considered a distinct organ in their own right (O’Hara, A.M., Shanahan, F. 2006, EMBO Reports 7(7):688)

Despite the importance of all these bacteria, we know almost nothing about them. Very few can be cultured in the laboratory, and until recently microbiology was only concerned about the bacteria that cause problems. It could be argued that our current ultra-hygienic lifestyle and over-use of antibiotics stems from the bias that drove years of microbiological research: bacteria are bad for you. In fact, your associated bacteria are overwhelmingly benign, and some protect you, improve your digestion, and can even improve your mood.

I am involved in research on bacteria that colonize the upper airways of children.  I’ve compared the bacteria that live in adults to those that live in children and the communities are different in a number of ways, but most strikingly, children can harbour one to two orders of magnitude more bacteria in their upper respiratory tract than adults. The type of bacteria they have may differ but they are definitely more likely to surprise you with the odd enteric bacteria than adult samples. In other words, I can prove that children pick their bums and noses interchangeably. We are interested in developing therapeutics against pathogenic bacteria that can cause ear infections, pneumonia, and meningitis in children. However, what is fascinating is that respiratory pathogens can hang out in the respiratory mucosa for years and not cause any problems. In fact, the amongst healthy children, 30-40% can be carrying the causative organism for a nasty pneumonia, Streptococcus pneumoniae (serotypes covered by the PCV-7 vaccine in the Netherlands, Spijkerman, J., et al. 2011. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 17), 22-50% of teenagers can be carrying the causative organism for bacterial meningitis, Neisseria meningitidis (among university students in the UK, Ala’Aldeen, D.A.A. et al. 2011. Emerging Infectious Diseases, 17), and almost all children 1 year – 18 months seem to carry the bacteria that can cause ear infections, Moraxella catarrhalis, in my study (unpublished data). Clearly, not all these children are getting sick from the bacteria they are carrying, but what can trigger a potentially deadly infection is not well known. A viral infection, such as a cold or flu, often precedes an infection, but why some kids get sicker and others get well is very unclear.

The question may be addressed by not only identifying the bacteria in these samples but determining what they can do. What I am looking at right now is how many of these bacteria exhibit traits that we normally associate with pathogenesis. We’re finding that the presence of many of these phenotypes within the same species can be quite variable (Grinwis M.E. et al. 2010. Journal of Clinical Microbiology 48(2): 395). Complicating matters is the predilection for respiratory bacteria to share their genes. Many bacteria that inhabit the respiratory tract are capable of taking up DNA they find in their environment, and either eating it, or incorporating it into their own chromosome. This is called natural transformation, and greatly complicates our ability to put bacteria into neat categories. In fact, natural transformation has been shown to be extremely prevalent amongst this group of bacteria, far more so than bacteria from other body sites, or from the environment (Shapiro, B.J., and Alm, E. 2011. PLoS Genetics, in press). The ability of bacteria to share their genes also means that they are capable of rapid evolution, which makes it difficult to treat them. Antibiotic resistance has been increasing amongst many bacteria, and even those cellular characteristics targeted by vaccines have been shown to be switched out by pathogens, mostly due to natural transformation (Croucher, N. J., et al. 2011. Science, 331: 430).

This makes the question that I deal with suddenly more interesting to me, because now a question of human health is also a question of bacterial evolution and ecology. I wonder whether the species that inhabit the upper airways of healthy kids are really neatly defined by their species identification. When we identify a bird in the wild, it has many characteristics that make it, say, a robin. It has a red breast, shows up in my neighbourhood in the spring, and sings beautiful songs from the peaks of roofs to attract a mate. It eats worms and lays blue eggs. It’s a robin for many reasons. However, quite often bacteria are identified on the basis of the DNA sequence of their ribosomal 16s gene. Given the prevalence of horizontal gene transfer, we can’t be certain that the each individual within a group that have the same 16s sequence has the same suite of genes. This makes understanding the ecology and evolution of bacterial communities in our various microbiomes so much more interesting, and so very important for understanding our health.

Over the next few weeks I’ll talk about fascinating new research into how the microbiome affects our immune system, our weight, and even our moods. I’ll talk some more about the respiratory microbiome of small children, or as I like to call them, walking cesspools. I hope that in the end you’ll appreciate the trillions of beings that are with you for the ride.

Hello, Today’s Parent. My name is the Mommiologist and this is my audition for a featured blog. Is this thing on?

Motherhood is a beautiful, disgusting, hilarious, difficult and rewarding experience. On the one hand, I have been pooped on, spat on, coughed up on, cried on, hit, kicked, and puked on. I have teared up at her first smile, word, step, giggle, and day at day care. I expected the extremes of disgusting and sublime. What I did not expect, is how she would fascinate me so.

I am a scientist. My transition to motherhood meant a large adjustment to my career track, but I couldn’t turn off my brain that easily. I became a scientist because it allows me to explore the world with a constant sense of wonder, because it meant that I can have that feeling of having my blinders removed, again and again. It’s indulging the feeling of turning a new corner, every now and then, and being able to see the world in a new way. In many ways, it’s choosing to see the world through my daughter’s eyes – eyes that are always curious and full of wonder.

When you think about it – about how improbable the development of a human being from its humble origins – how could motherhood not be full of wonder? Two simple cells unite, and through a highly orchestrated series of events, give rise to a completely new human, whose personality, talents, shortcomings – even her face – is a random mix of her parents. It made me wonder how babies see the world when they’re first born, why they’re attracted to music, and how they learn language. Even the disgusting aspects of being a parent are fascinating. Why do pregnant mothers get morning sickness, and what’s in a baby poop? I write about science, and motherhood, and the crazy world I live in. I think it’s pretty entertaining.

Hannah is an extraordinarily chatty girl. She talked before crawling, before walking, and while other toddlers gleefully climb the apparatuses at the playground Hannah’s content to go up and down a ramp, and tell you all about it. She’s a talker, not a fighter. It’s remarkably entertaining – she is constantly coming up with new commands and stories for us and sometimes I have no idea where she got them. The other day she marched into the living room and said “Ok, here’s the plan.” I didn’t catch the rest, but there was clearly a plan of some sort.

Unfortunately, she also learns words that I would rather she didn’t, and it’s drawn our attention to aspects of our relationship that might be hard to explain to outsiders. One morning, running around the kitchen, Hannah started saying Shazbat. That’s weird, I thought, because Mork and Mindy hasn’t been on in probably 30 years. A few laps of the kitchen later, I realized she was actually saying “shut up.” Once she got the pronunciation right it was unmistakable.

I’m embarrassed to admit that it wasn’t the question of where she learned to speak such a cruel thing that was hard for me to answer. Brian and I have a charming and quirky relationship – a typical evening starts with a “How was your day, dear?” followed by a “Shaddaaaap.” It’s sweet. The Shaddaaap is just as likely to be delivered by me as it is by Brian. And now, apparently, just as likely from Hannah. I’d like to say that that’s the only bad thing she’s ever said, but that’s not true. She’s been in hearing range when I’ve misplaced my keys. No one ever said I was super mom.

What’s interesting to me is not where she hears the bad words, but how she decides that they should be part of her lexicon. Easy words clearly come first – for Hannah it was “wassat?” It’s like the gateway drug of baby speak – with that one simple amalgamation of “what’s that” she was able to quickly move on to harder words. But why was “fence” in there before “kitty”?

There are people out there who are more badly afflicted with OCD than me, and they have compiled statistics on what words tend to come first when babies learn to speak. Called the Bates-McArthur Communicative Development Inventory, this database compiles the frequency of a word’s use as a child learns the language. You can access the database for both English and Spanish and take a look at the words that babies or toddlers tend to say for each month of life (http://www.sci.sdsu.edu/cdi/lexical_e.htm). For example, at one year, 35.2% of children say “uh oh,” while only 1.1% say “blanket.” “Shut up” wasn’t in the database.

You can see quickly that simple words and sounds, like “baa baa” or “uh oh” appear early in baby speak. These simple words are like the low-hanging fruit. Once these words are mastered and more complex words are attempted, a toddler enters the time called the “language explosion” which can vary quite widely but is generally around 18 months. Some research suggests that this explosion is the result of brain development that allows children to begin to process language. Conversely, the statistical distribution of simple versus complex words suggests that the language explosion corresponds to the time when a child has mastered simple words and moves on to those words that are both more difficult and more numerous. If word difficulty is distributed like  a bell curve, then the language explosion could simply correspond to the time when the toddler reaches the steeply rising portion of the curve (AAAS news 2007 )

However, this theory does not account for the highly social context in which children learn language. If all words were heard by a child at the same rate, then the simple metric of word difficulty might have more explanatory power. But children learn language from parents and caregivers who all have unique ways of communicating. For example, I’m sure that not all families lovingly say “shut up” as much as we do. However, teasing apart the context in which a non-verbal child starts to understand words is quite difficult.

Luckily, these metrics are much more simple to determine for adults and can be measured by a simple game of word association. For example, if I say the word “dog”, most people come back with the word “cat,” and if you test enough people with enough words, you can compile a very thorough database of word associations. Furthermore, you can look at these associations graphically and use graph theory statistics, such as the measurement of a word’s connectivity. If you consider words to be nodes in a network, the links between them are these simple associations, and the more links a word has, the more contexts in which it appears. For example, the word “bath” is often reached from the word “soap”, because they have a common context, but it can also be reached by “bird,” because those two words can form a compound word. In this simple example, the word “bath” has two links, and this is the measure of a word’s connectivity. So here’s a thought – does this connectivity of a word predict its time of acquisition by children? Turns out it does. In other words, if a child hears a word in a number of different contexts, that word is easier to learn (Hills et al. 2010. Journal of Memory and Language. 63:259).

This type of learning is much like data mining, wherein large amounts of data are sifted to find statistical relationships. In a test of this hypothesis, Linda Smith and Chen Yu of Indiana University taught toddlers new words by showing them two objects and reading their names at the same time, but without any information as to what word went with what object. Instead the objects and words were presented in new combinations a number of times. The children were surprisingly good at teasing it all apart and learning the new words, demonstrating how the word’s context was instrumental to the child’s ability to learn it (Science Daily 2008.)

So maybe the idea that context is everything can make me feel better about Hannah telling me to shut up. In the context of our family, I know that this is actually a loving and playful phrase to say. I just hope that the other kids at day home interpret it as such.

I was going to start this post with “why didn’t anyone tell me how exhausting it is to be a working mother?” when really, people say it all the time. Sadly it’s not one of those truisms that’s diminished by repetition. I went back to work almost exactly a year ago and have done two posts in the interim. This, my beloved blog, has been left by the wayside, along with a dozen home improvement plans and my pre-pregnancy jeans.

Working moms, as my friend Christy and I commiserate, spend their lives in a sleepless, hazy world of being two unfulfilled people. The worst part is that even if I had the chance I still wouldn’t quit – because that perfectionist beast inside me that insists I could still win a Nobel Prize would be a complete basket case without at least a small outlet. But, a perfectionist is a nagging harridan that is not easily appeased, and the positive reinforcements that we thrive on become fewer and far between as we get deeper into careers that turn into, well, jobs. Just a job. You can either work 80 hours a week and claw your way up the ladder, or accept the jobbishness of it.

So now I’m at a real quandry – I can either work myself into the ground and never be satisfied with the work I’m doing as either a scientist or parent, or accept that maybe, for the next little while, that perfectionist strategy that got me so far is not going to do me any favours and I’ll try a new strategy. Perhaps contentment?

And I’m going to practice the skill that’s imperative for all moms, those working and those working harder at home. I’m going to make sure to spend at least a little time doing something I love. Even if it’s an hour a week, I want to write my blog. It’s all mine. And I got lots to talk about.

It’s been a long long hiatus from blogging from me, and not one that has gone unmourned. I miss my blog. I also miss the following things: free time, respiratory health, exercise, the ability to schedule my time, and decent home cooked meals. I have returned to work, and I never realized how loony it would make my daily life.

I went back to work in November, as a postdoc (yet again) working on respiratory infections in kids. I didn’t realize the irony of me taking that job until 4 months, 4 colds, and one ear infection later. Hannah and Brian and I were all sick with them but weirdly only I got the ear infection. This is all on the backdrop of a brand new schedule that is probably not that crazy for most A-type personalities, but is crazy for me: out of the house by 7, drop Hannah off at dayhome, drop Brian off at work downtown, and hopefully into the lab by 8:30 am. Wrap up work by 4:30, and an hour to an hour and a half commute in reverse, then a quick dinner, and Hannah’s in bed by 8:30 pm. And I am completely exhausted.

So I congratulate working moms out there, including my mom and sister, who have blazed this trail already with grace and humor. It wasn’t really until I started back at work that I realized that Every. Single. Minute. Of. Every. Day. Could. Be. Scheduled. Seriously. Every minute. And because I can’t stay late at work I feel like every minute there should be productive (a goal by which I frequently fall short). I also didn’t realize that I would love it. Right now, I love the hectic schedule, and fulfilling these two very different parts of my self. I know that I will always feel like neither side is getting enough attention, but isn’t parenthood mostly an exercise in guilt?

Finally, this brings me to my blog. Oh how I’ve missed thee. I am currently at a conference and while watching Hannah eat on skype I can work on articles that have been languishing in my brain. I have, in the works, various articles about language acquisition in children, more about immune development (I am at a conference on the human microbiome, so get ready for more gross stories), and probably a rant or two about the screwed up system in which I work. When I can squeeze the writing in, that is.

It’s been a stressful month as I move back to work. Typically, my nerdy response to stress is to become nerdier, so with that in mind I just read “Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, From Our Brains to Black Holes” by Charles Seife. It was wonderful. I am probably a failed astronomer or physicist – the math is too difficult but the subject matter fascinates me.

In particular I was struck by the thing called a qubit which is a bit of quantum information. Classical information can usually be reduced to a series of 1s and 0s – for example, yes or no, or letters can be encoded as a series of 0s and 1s, as in binary. However, in the world of the very small particle, the domain of quantum mechanics, some things can be yes and no at the same time. For example, imagine a light shining through a prism such that the light is split into two beams which shine against the wall, so there are now two spots of light. Some photons go one way, and some go the other. Imagine now that you reduce the light so that only one photon approaches the prism. Classical physics would predict that the photon goes one way or the other, but in fact, it goes both. The photon will simultaneously take both paths, and here’s the weird part, until you measure it. And that’s the basis of the qubit – a piece of information that is really both opposites at the same time. It will remain in that weird suspension until you look at it.

At the beginning of the month I took Hannah to her first check up. My new doctor is an eager young family physician, recently out of medical school, who shares my strong opinions on childhood vaccines and antibiotics. I was looking forward to this visit because I love to show off my darling little girl. She’s adorable, social, chatty and wonderful in every way. And in fact her sweetness and easy going nature have meant that I have had the luxury of never worrying about her health.

But to my surprise, Hannah had lost almost 1.3 pounds in the month since her vaccinations. Weight loss in a little one is not a good thing, but she is a good eater, very active and happy. In fact I can almost guarantee that this weight loss was the result of a) learning to crawl finally, b) starting day home, where she plays all day c) a mean stomach virus and d) the arrival of 3 teeth in one month.

But the doctor’s visit placed the tiny seed of doubt in a mother’s fertile imagination. Over the next two days Hannah seemed lethargic and had a poor appetite, symptoms that I would normally brush off as a result of a growth spurt, busy couple of days, or teeth.  But parenthood means a lifetime of worry, and as I read my escapist non-fiction, I wondered, was Hannah a qubit? Had she been in a nether world of health and non-health that lasted until she was examined by a doctor?

In the subsequent weeks we developed tricks for getting her to eat more, and she remains happy, active, and still eats like a horse. My worry is abating. The hard part of parenthood is the uneasy balance between the incredible joy she brings us everyday and the potential for disaster. I am reminded of friends and family who have suffered through the heartbreak of dealing with serious diseases in their children, and I feel for them all the more. Parenthood means being a qubit – both delighted and terrified at the same time.

If there were anything I could do as a scientist, it would be to clarify the role of skepticism. I’m a big believer in skepticism. I truly believe that it is the responsibility of every citizen in this society to clearly examine their opinions and decisions of our day to day lives. The things we buy, the people we vote for, and the values that guide our daily decisions all have very large implications for society as a whole. And this is no more apparent than in the decision of parents to vaccinate their children.

Hannah just got her one year immunizations, and even with my background it goes against all my instincts to let a stranger near my baby girl with a sharp instrument. I HATE Hannah getting her shots. But even worse would be her getting bacterial meningitis (Haemophilus influenzae B, Streptococcus pneumonia, Neisseria meningitidis), whooping cough (Pertussis), or measles. I understand that vaccines are overwhelmingly safe and have reduced childhood mortality to levels not before seen in human history.

An article came out in the Globe and Mail recently about dropping vaccination levels in the western world. In the US, 39 percent of parents admitted to delaying or omitting at least one vaccine. One quarter of these parents said that their decision was based on fears of the vaccine causing autism, a worry that has no scientific basis (Fewer Toddlers getting all their vaccines, CDC says). However, the dropping levels of vaccination are reducing herd immunity, meaning that there are now sufficient numbers of unvaccinated children to support outbreaks of diseases that had become extremely rare.

The story of how vaccines came to be the autism movement’s favorite whipping boy is fascinating, and succinctly retold in the blog tallguywrites. In short, in 1998 Andrew Wakefield was the lead author on a small study published in the Lancet examining the link between the MMR (measles, mumps and rubella) vaccine and the onset of regressive autism. The study involved twelve children and the anecdotal recollections of their parents. The study was tenuous, at best, and concluded that there was not enough evidence to support a link between the MMR vaccine and autism. However, at a subsequent press conference, Wakefield recommended separating the combined MMR vaccine into single doses to multiple doses in order to protect children against autism. Without disclosing the conflict, in fact he had patented a single dose vaccine, which would have been of no interest if he hadn’t scared parents out of using the triple dose vaccine. Furthermore, he had been paid by a lawyer to find a link between the MMR vaccine and autism in order to further a law suit. Finally, he subjected the 12 children in the study to unnecessary and invasive medical procedures including lumbar punctures and colonoscopies. Wakefield was stripped of his medical license, settled a malpractice suit stemming from severe complications arising from his tests on an autistic child, and in 2010, the Lancet retracted his paper.

And yet, children are still not getting the required vaccines, and fears over autism are widespread.. Typically, as scientists, we often think of people who refuse vaccination as, frankly, stupid. I still insist a decision to not vaccinate your child is stupid, and that only in the age of vaccines do we have the luxury of forgetting how perilous childhood used to be due to these infectious diseases. But there’s more to the issue of why parents refuse vaccination and parents who refuse vaccination cannot be dismissed as paranoid hippies or conspiracy theorists. Clusters of non-vaccinated children are often located in affluent neighbourhoods, and have well educated parents. People who should be able to interpret evidence are not doing so.

In our generation there are few people who remember what childhood diseases were like and how risky childhood used to be. What people do remember are the numerous and serious scientific missteps of recent ages: thalidomide, BPA, Vioxx. We are a generation who have been lied to by many authorities, and distrust is a healthy modern virtue. Also, science deals with the probability of disease drug side effects on a population level, while medical decisions are profoundly personal (Vaccine Anxieties, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 2008, 86). All of these reasons factor into a complex issue that is quickly becoming a very serious public health problem.

In this debate, as tempting as it is to dismiss vaccination fears as irrational, it clearly is not helping. As distasteful as it seems, fears of vaccines are concerns that the medical community has to take seriously. The drop in vaccination rates cannot simply be dismissed as people believing the research of one shockingly unethical doctor published 12 years ago. Vaccination fears are borne on a wave of profound distrust of science and authority that has a rational basis.

We’ve all heard that scientists need to communicate their findings better. But what that means is not simply describing “what you’re researching and why it’s important” but the more subtle and crucial distinctions of the scientific method: what’s my evidence, what’s the uncertainty, what are my assumptions, and how do they figure into the conclusions. This issue shows that it’s not just communication of the results that failed, but how to interpret the science that failed.