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Nuns Donate Their Brains to Alzheimer's Research
Many Catholic religious orders are participating in a long range Alzheimer's disease study. Rush University's Religious Orders Study began in 1993 and tracks the participants' mental abilities through yearly memory testing. In addition to the annual tests, the study subjects agree to donate their brains. From the article: "The researchers sought members of religious orders, hoping they would be willing to donate and would not have children or spouses interfering with that arrangement at the last minute. More than 1,100 nuns, priests and brothers across the country representing a wide range of ethnic groups are taking part."
Why not? Like it or not, it is fairly normal to believe in religion.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Nice trie, zombie scum! Your little charade won't fool me, you want this grey matter you've got to work for it. NO FREEBIES!
The nuns heard that helping science was a good habit to get into.
"I'm not a quack, I'm a mad scientist! There's a difference." - Dr. Cockroach
Given that the environmental structure is common to all persons at the location, it should remove some of the variables that exist and allow researchers to focus on the changes over time with regards to the disease itself rather than the differences that would be experienced with a geographical larger study.
Why your question? Perhaps you are not a fan of religion in general, or catholicism in particular? Like the rest of us, they probably believe every religion they don't belong to is misguided.
Unlike the rest of us, they have made the extraordinary decision to dedicate their lives completely to the service of others. If somehow a bias for altruism sneaks into some neurologic baseline, perhaps DSM-V will someday list greed as a psychosis. No other problems seem obvious to me.
I doubt monastic brains are hardwired for superstition any more than those of the general population. Of those slashdotters who believe that we are visited by extra-terrestrials, how many came to that conclusion based on the forensic evidence and proven physics?
Yep. Lot of caring people in this thread, who bash other peoples beliefs, while I'm sure they tout that they're very tolerant.
Let me know if your brainwave applies to MS as well. Two monasteries around here have members who donate.
Om, nomnomnom...
How is their decision to stay in a religiously themed communal housing structure any different (from the standpoint of the cultural norm) from your decision to avoid sunlight and social interactions, and to live in your mother's basement collecting manga, video game paraphernalia, and a super huge collection of raunchy porn locked away on an encrypted filesystem?
These people are motivated by their religious precepts to help other people, and believe in a spiritual afterlife. As such, they are less concerned about what happens to their bodies after they die than some other people, and more concerned about how they can continue helping people after they are gone (at least the ones that aren't pedophile priests anyway). Their brains get Alzheimers just like everyone elses, and such a huge turnout (over 1000 individuals in the study, for something that requires you to donate your brain, is a pretty huge turnout) means that there is a considerable chance that significant findings could be obtained through the study. That kind of thing alone merits some form of hat tipping.
Why is everybody poking fun that they are all celibate, instead of praising them for their altruism in this respect? I mean, it's not like the average slashdot reader gets busy every friday night in his mother's basement you know. (no, Palmula Handerson and a bottle of Jergins doesn't count.)
Why not? Like it or not, it is fairly normal to believe in religion.
I don't think that has anything to do with it. I remember reading elsewhere that nuns are ideal test subjects for longitudinal studies because the affect of a lot of independent variables can be eliminated or reduced when compared to people who have a more normal lifestyle.
As someone with religious tolerance and have actually have worked with catholic Priests, Nuns, Monks, Bishops, etc... A lot of these people are Smart and have PHD and MDs in many areas of science and often with other areas of study as well. Don't let the traditional dress fool you, these people are actually well educated with sharp minds.
Just because you don't agree with their religion or religion in general, don't let yourself think for a second that these people are any less then you.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The reality is that nuns are a very good group of subjects, since they not only donate their brains after death - which is essential in determining AD status, but we have full medical histories on them for many decades.
None of our current studies focus on religion. The major risk factors are genetic and linked to diet and lifestyle.
Thanks for helping, sisters!
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Well, unless there is some atypical distribution between alzheimers in religious an non-religious brains, I seriously doubt that what you suggest will actually affect what they're studying.
They have access to 850+ brains of aging people, all of which will go through annual testing to check for degradation in skills and the like, and be able to compare that to long-term medical histories. Getting that big of a sample of anybody is a huge big deal -- the fact that some of these people have been in this survey since the early 90's gives them a truckload of data, and speaks volumes about how helpful and committed they've been.
I'm the first to disagree with mindless adherence to religion, but these ladies are willingly participating in science, so we're not talking drooling zealots who think the Earth is 6000 years old. Hell, one of the smartest (and nicest) people I ever met was an old Jesuit Priest who was a university lecturer in physics and astronomy at the university I went to. He was nice enough to let me access his UNIX machine since the CS department didn't have one and I wanted to learn it.
Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater -- the religious people who can accept the science can be pretty nice people, and they're generally not talking about things that science can intelligently speak to (or even want to). They're certainly not all groping the choice boys or smacking people with rulers. Like with the rest of society, that's a small subset of the overall population.
You're still breathing, so it's not too late to open your mind. :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Doh. That, of course, should be "choir boys". :-P
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
But seriously guys, you are going way, way out there in this nun hate.
Fuck you.
No, seriously: Fuck You.
Just one of these women does more real, genuine capital 'G' Good in a week than a land-fill of snarky Internet tough guys like you will do in your entire life.
If you start picking and choosing, you have to prove that your sample matches the general population FIRST.
Nonsense. They study Alzheimers in nuns, period. If they find something that's interesting regardless of whether it is specific to nuns or not. If they come up with a treatment in nuns, they can then apply it to the general population and see whether it works. They don't need to show that anything matches the general population "FIRST". Heck, we do tons of medical research in mice, and they certainly don't match the general population.
You must be new here
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You know, it is possible to scorn religion without scorning the religious. ... Same for religion. You can bash irrational beliefs in magic sky dictators, while still loving and befriending the people who suffer under such beliefs. That's why they call it "tolerance" and not "blind acceptance".
Odd. You've just successfully argued against yourself, by bashing what a person believes in but saying it's all okay, here have hugs and cookies, and saying by the way, your beliefs suck. Tolerance is about not stepping on someones toes, or disagreeing with what they believe in while not stating that they 'suffer' from something.
Om, nomnomnom...
I do a lot of work with my local parish's rectory and convent (not a believer myself, but a 20-something "computer person" willing to lend a hand), and the nuns' daily activities involve organizing soup kitchens, visiting nursing homes, arranging excursions for people who live in group homes for the mentally disabled (taking them bowling, out for ice cream, whatever), tutoring, all in secular settings. I suppose they project the image of Catholicism (they wear a 'modernized' habit and veil), but the institutions for which they volunteer are not, by and large, part of any religious organization. There are cloistered orders, but those are rare. When I was a wee lass, the nuns could sing along to the Backstreet Boys. No one is safe from the reaches of pop culture, apparently. ;)