Toward Cultural Oncology: The Evolutionary Information Dynamics of Cancer

'Racial' disparities among cancers, particularly of the breast and prostate, are something of a mystery. For the US, in the face of slavery and its sequelae, centuries of interbreeding have greatly leavened genetic differences between 'Blacks' and 'whites', but marked contrasts in disease prevalence and progression persist. 'Adjustment' for socioeconomic status and lifestyle, while statistically accounting for much of the variance in breast cancer, only begs the question of ultimate causality. Here we propose a more basic biological explanation that extends the theory of immune cognition to include elaborate tumor control mechanisms constituting the principal selection pressure acting on pathologically mutating cell clones. The interplay between them occurs in the context of an embedding, highly structured, system of culturally specific psychosocial stress which we find is able to literally write an image of itself onto disease progression. The dynamics are analogous to punctuated equilibrium in simple evolutionary proces

The cultural psychology of obesity: diffusion of pathological norms from Western to East Asian societies

We examine the accelerating worldwide obesity epidemic using a mathematical model relating a cognitive hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis tuned by embedding cultural context to a signal of chronic, structured, psychosocial threat. The obesity epidemic emerges as a distorted physiological image of ratcheting social pathology involving massive, policy-driven, economic and social 'structural adjustment' causing increasing individual, family, and community insecurity. The resulting, broadly developmental, disorder, while stratified by expected divisions of class, ethnicity, and culture, is nonetheless relentlessly engulfing even affluent majority populations across the globe. The progression of analogous epidemics in affluent Western and East Asian socieities is particularly noteworthy since these enjoy markedly different cultural structures known to influence even such fundamental psychophysical phenomena as change blindness. Indeed, until recently population patterns of obesity were quite different for these cultures. We attribute the entrainment of East Asian societies into the obesity epidemic to the diffusion of Western socioeconomic practices whose imposed resource uncertainties and exacerbation of social and economic divisions constitute powerful threat signals. We find that individual-oriented 'therapeutic' interventions will be largely ineffective since the therapeutic process itself (e.g. relinace on drug treatments) embodies the very threats causing the epidemic

Predicting Health Impacts of the World Trade Center Disaster: 1. Halogenated hydrocarbons, symptom syndromes, secondary victimization, and the burdens of history

The recent attack on the World Trade Center, in addition to direct injury and psychological trauma, has exposed a vast population to dioxins, dibenzofurans, related endocrine disruptors, and a multitude of other physiologically active chemicals arising from the decomposition of the massive quantities of halogenated hydrocarbons and other plastics within the affected buildings. The impacts of these chemical species have been compounded by exposure to asbestos, fiberglass, crushed glass, concrete, plastic, and other irritating dusts. To address the manifold complexities of this incident we combine recent theoretical perspectives on immune, CNS, and sociocultural cognition with empirical studies on survivors of past large toxic fires, other community-scale chemical exposure incidents, and the aftereffects of war. Our analysis suggests the appearance of complex, but distinct and characteristic, spectra of synergistically linked social, psychosocial, psychological and physical symptoms among the 100,000 or so persons most directly affected by the WTC attack. The different 'eigenpatterns' should become increasingly comorbid as a function of exposure. The expected outcome greatly transcends a simple 'Post Traumatic Stress Disorder' model, and may resemble a particularly acute form of Gulf War Syndrome. We explore the role of external social factors in subsequent exacerbation of the syndrome -- secondary victimization -- and study the path-dependent influence of individual and community-level historical patterns of stress. We suggest that workplace and other organizations can act as ameliorating intermediaries. Those without acess to such buffering structures appear to face a particularly bleak future

Vaccine strategy when the smallpox model fails: 1. immune cognition, Malaria and the Fulani

We begin to examine the implications of IR Cohen's work on immune cognition [1-3] for vaccine strategies when simple elicitation of sterilizing immunity fails, as is the case for HIV, tuberculosis, and malaria. Cohen's approach takes on a special importance in the context of recent work by Nisbett et al. [4] showing clearly that central nervous system (CNS) cognition is not universal, but rather differs fundamentally for populations having different cultural systems. A growing body of evolutionary anthropology indeed suggests that such effects are inevitable, since culture is as much a part of human biology 'as the enamel on our teeth.' Thus a successful vaccine strategy for use when the smallpox model fails must address a condensation of sociocultural and immune cognition, in the same sense that neuroimmunology and immunogenetics describe the condensation of CNS and genetic 'languages' with immune function. We reinterpret recent studies of African cultural variation in immune response to malaria from this perspective

On the social induction of Alzheimer's disease: An index theorem aging model for amyloid formation

The central 'risk factor' for Alzheimer's disease (AD) is age. From first principles, we construct a mathematical model of protein folding and its in vivo regulation that gives this result in a natural manner. We extend the basic approach using topological information theory methods, and examine a case history of socially-induced premature aging in the United States

Community Lynching and the US Asthma Epidemic

We explore the implications of IR Cohen's work on immune cognition for understanding rising rates of asthma morbidity and mortality in the US. Immune cognition is inherently linked with central nervous system cognition, and with the cognitive function of the embedding sociocultural networks by which individuals are acculturated and through which they work with others to meet challenges of threat and opportunity. Externally-imposed patterns of 'structured stress' can, through their effect on a child's socioculture, become synergistic with the development of immune cognition, triggering the persistence of an atopic Th2 phenotype, a necessary precursor to asthma and other immune diseases. Structured stress in the US particularly includes the cross sectional and longitudinal effects of a systematic destruction of minority urban communities occurring since the end of World War II which we characterize as community lynching. Reversal of the rising tide of asthma and related chronic diseases in the US thus seems unlikely without a 21st Century version of the earlier Great Urban Reforms which ended the scourge of infectious diseases, in particular an end to the de-facto ethnic cleansing of minority neighborhoo

Immune cognition, social justice and asthma: structured stress and the developing immune system

We explore the implications of IR Cohen's work on immune cognition for understanding rising rates of asthma morbidity and mortality in the US. Immune cognition is conjoined with central nervous system cognition, and with the cognitive function of the embedding sociocultural networks by which individuals are acculturated and through which they work with others to meet challenges of threat and opportunity. Using a mathematical model, we find that externally- imposed patterns of 'structured stress' can, through their effect on a child's socioculture, become synergistic with the development of immune cognition, triggering the persistence of an atopic Th2 phenotype, a necessary precursor to asthma and other immune disease. Reversal of the rising tide of asthma and related chronic diseases in the US thus seems unlikely without a 21st Century version of the earlier Great Urban Reforms which ended the scourge of infectious diseases

Structured Psychosocial Stress and Therapeutic Intervention: Toward a Realistic Biological Medicine

Using generalized 'language of thought' arguments appropriate to interacting cognitive modules, we explore how disease states can interact with medical treatment, including, but not limited to, drug therapy. The feedback between treatment and response creates a kind of idiotypic 'hall of mirrors' generating a pattern of 'efficacy', 'treatment failure', and 'adverse reactions' which will, from a Rate Distortion perspective, embody a distorted image of externally-imposed structured psychosocial stress. This analysis, unlike current pharmacogenetics, does not either reify 'race' or blame the victim by using genetic structure to place the locus-of-control within a group or individual. Rather, it suggests that a comparatively simple series of questions to identify longitudinal and cross-sectional stressors may provide more effective guidance for specification of individual therapy than complicated genotyping strategies of dubious meaning. These latter are likely to be both very expensive and utterly blind to the impact of structured psychosocial stress -- a euphemism for various forms of racism and ethnic cleansing -- which, we contend, is often a principal determinant of treatment outcome at both individual and community levels of organization. We propose, to effectively address 'health disparities' between populations, and in contrast to current biomedical ideology based on a simplistic genetic determinism, a richer program of biological medicine reflecting Lewontin's 'triple helix' of genes, environment, and development, a program more in concert with the realities of a basic human biology marked by hypersociality unusual in vertibrates. Aggressive social, economic, and other policies of affirmative action to redress the persisting burdens of history would be an integral component of any such project