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'And makes too much out of 'synthetic biology'. For every nasty, dangerous issue that purely synthetic biology is faced with, the same issues occur with our current technology. Want to weaponize an E. coli - you could do that with current recombinant techniques. Creating the sequence de novo won't necessarily make the problem more dangerous - or even easier.'

Which is pretty much the most insightful comment in this thread. We've been manipulating bacteria and viruses for decades. Arbitrary genes encoding any nasty protein that takes your fancy can be inserted into a wide range of microorganisms using existing technology. The Venter group's work is a fantastic technical achievment, but does not increase the risk of a terrorist group or rogue state developing a biological weapon. Far easier for them to tweak an existing pathogen that billions of years of evolution have exquisitely adapted to infecting humans. Easier still (and much more plausible) to take an 'off the shelf' bug like Anthrax and weaponise it without the need for any genetic manipulation at all.

I'm also curious about how the writer of TFA thinks molecular biology research actually works. The sequences of any number of pathogens, down to the individual genes that make them virulent, are freely available on the net from sites like NCBI, making them rather easier to get hold of than The Economist's own paywalled 'premium content'. Pretty much everything else that has been sequenced is out there too, including the Venter group's synthetic mycoplasma genome, which can be found right here:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nuccore/296455217

In what way is this not already 'open source'?

Since my experience is primarily in molecular and computational biology, my opinions are obviously biased towards those fields. I have worked in both academia and industry (i.e. >15 years of "Science" experience with 9 years at the PhD level). In my opinion, you should be concentrating on these science skills in upper grade level high school (11-12 grades, preferably just 12).

1) Really get to know MS Office or some other package of word processing (with references support, like Endnote), spreadsheet, and presentation software. You will need a good understanding of the word processor to write grants, reports, and manuscripts. A good understanding of the spreadsheet to organize and analyze your data, with special attention on doing correct statistical analysis. A good understanding of the presentation software for ... presentations. Macs or Windows since it doesn't matter.

2) Really know how to use websites such as http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ and http://expasy.org/. The biological science world revolves around biomolecule and biopolymer databases. Then, make them find manuscripts in http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed and evaluate them. They also need to learn to evaluate the quality of the information that they find.

3) Make them do journal club. That will hit all levels of Bloom's taxonomy, is student-centered, and buzzword compliant!

Other skills that maybe useful:

3) Entering, searching, and retrieving information from a SQL-like database. Oracle, MySQL, or PostgreSQL servers are everywhere in both academia and industry. Maybe industry has enough resources to create a frontend for their scientists, but most likely they will have to wait for the comuputer analyst group to provide the data you want. Better to ask for read access and do it yourself. Any operating system can be used to access the data. MySQL and PostgreSQL are well supported in Linux.

4) Industry is moving to Lab Information Management Systems (LIMS) and large data generating academic labs are also using LIMS. I don't know if there are free/low-cost LIMS software available, but this would be extremely nice exposure considering most universities won't have such a system for undergraduates. Most LIMS are web-based so it really doesn't matter about the front-end. The back-end is probably Linux or Windows Server.

5) In academia, knowing Linux/Unix/BSD is very useful as most academic software packages are made to run on a Unix-like OS. MacOS X support is actually pretty decent for academic software due to its BSD underpinnings. CygWin is a must if you want to run on Windows. Academics program for the computers that they have, and they mostly have Macs and Unix-like systems.

5) Programming languages that are used extensively by computational biologists are C/C++, PERL, PYTHON, JAVA, and Fortran (more legacy now). From what I saw, PERL and PYTHON dominate on the bioinformatics side.

As for hardware/OS...
For computational biology or computers in biology, Windows is winning that market share. Macs are pretty much only found in academia and mainly for MS Office. They can be used as front-ends obviously, but the general trend of specialized software is to run on XP, for now. I don't know how many science software developers have moved their code to support Win7 natively, but probably not many as these companies are rather slow in adopting new tech. Still, obtaining these licenses is pretty much impossible for a high school. I doubt even the district could find the budget for them.

Setting a Linux cluster for computational number crunching is seen very often in academia and probably in industry, too. So, maybe you can salvage some of the older computers and turn them into a small computational cluster. However, setting up things like this may be impractical with your IT department...

Overall, I think it is very ambitious to provide "real world" science

Since my experience is primarily in molecular and computational biology, my opinions are obviously biased towards those fields. I have worked in both academia and industry (i.e. >15 years of "Science" experience with 9 years at the PhD level). In my opinion, you should be concentrating on these science skills in upper grade level high school (11-12 grades, preferably just 12).

1) Really get to know MS Office or some other package of word processing (with references support, like Endnote), spreadsheet, and presentation software. You will need a good understanding of the word processor to write grants, reports, and manuscripts. A good understanding of the spreadsheet to organize and analyze your data, with special attention on doing correct statistical analysis. A good understanding of the presentation software for ... presentations. Macs or Windows since it doesn't matter.

2) Really know how to use websites such as http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ and http://expasy.org/. The biological science world revolves around biomolecule and biopolymer databases. Then, make them find manuscripts in http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed and evaluate them. They also need to learn to evaluate the quality of the information that they find.

3) Make them do journal club. That will hit all levels of Bloom's taxonomy, is student-centered, and buzzword compliant!

Other skills that maybe useful:

3) Entering, searching, and retrieving information from a SQL-like database. Oracle, MySQL, or PostgreSQL servers are everywhere in both academia and industry. Maybe industry has enough resources to create a frontend for their scientists, but most likely they will have to wait for the comuputer analyst group to provide the data you want. Better to ask for read access and do it yourself. Any operating system can be used to access the data. MySQL and PostgreSQL are well supported in Linux.

4) Industry is moving to Lab Information Management Systems (LIMS) and large data generating academic labs are also using LIMS. I don't know if there are free/low-cost LIMS software available, but this would be extremely nice exposure considering most universities won't have such a system for undergraduates. Most LIMS are web-based so it really doesn't matter about the front-end. The back-end is probably Linux or Windows Server.

5) In academia, knowing Linux/Unix/BSD is very useful as most academic software packages are made to run on a Unix-like OS. MacOS X support is actually pretty decent for academic software due to its BSD underpinnings. CygWin is a must if you want to run on Windows. Academics program for the computers that they have, and they mostly have Macs and Unix-like systems.

5) Programming languages that are used extensively by computational biologists are C/C++, PERL, PYTHON, JAVA, and Fortran (more legacy now). From what I saw, PERL and PYTHON dominate on the bioinformatics side.

As for hardware/OS...
For computational biology or computers in biology, Windows is winning that market share. Macs are pretty much only found in academia and mainly for MS Office. They can be used as front-ends obviously, but the general trend of specialized software is to run on XP, for now. I don't know how many science software developers have moved their code to support Win7 natively, but probably not many as these companies are rather slow in adopting new tech. Still, obtaining these licenses is pretty much impossible for a high school. I doubt even the district could find the budget for them.

Setting a Linux cluster for computational number crunching is seen very often in academia and probably in industry, too. So, maybe you can salvage some of the older computers and turn them into a small computational cluster. However, setting up things like this may be impractical with your IT department...

Overall, I think it is very ambitious to provide "real world" science

So, here are the statistics for Taiwan (as of 2005, but I bet it hasn't changed by much):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2259336/
and the most relevant figure:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2259336/figure/F2/

So, for women 15-24 you have about 6 per 100,000 per year suicide rate and for 25-44 you have 15, which comes out to about about 10 per 100,000 per year (assuming there are the same amount of people in both age groups; I know it isn't necessarily so, but I'm not off by much). If they have 400K workers, this comes to about 40 suicides per year. btw, for males the suicide rates are higher for people 25 and older, so the fact that not all the workers are female doesn't weaken my case.
Anyhow, I am not trying to downplay the workers' condition in those factories, I'm just saying that 9 suicides in a year isn't so much, statistically speaking.

OTOH, this I think is much more disturbing:
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2007/10/xkcd-comic-reenactment-leads-to-100-deaths.html

So, here are the statistics for Taiwan (as of 2005, but I bet it hasn't changed by much):
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2259336/
and the most relevant figure:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2259336/figure/F2/

So, for women 15-24 you have about 6 per 100,000 per year suicide rate and for 25-44 you have 15, which comes out to about about 10 per 100,000 per year (assuming there are the same amount of people in both age groups; I know it isn't necessarily so, but I'm not off by much). If they have 400K workers, this comes to about 40 suicides per year. btw, for males the suicide rates are higher for people 25 and older, so the fact that not all the workers are female doesn't weaken my case.
Anyhow, I am not trying to downplay the workers' condition in those factories, I'm just saying that 9 suicides in a year isn't so much, statistically speaking.

OTOH, this I think is much more disturbing:
http://www.bbspot.com/News/2007/10/xkcd-comic-reenactment-leads-to-100-deaths.html

Debt-related suicide in Taiwan has been going up for some time and it's likely to just become worse.

Life kinda sucks there for the underclass, so maybe that's why. I don't think this is limited to just Apple. It's just business as usual in Taiwan.

Kinda a preview for what the growing underclass will be experiencing in the USA in a decade or so..

Here's the article about Debt-related suicides btw: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2259336/

Homeopathy has been proven countless, countless times to do absolutely jack-fucking-shit. About five seconds of wiki-ing found this. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1874503/?tool=pmcentrez There is nothing ignorant or arrogant about disregarding some ancient bullshit when every single piece of legitimate scientific evidence shows that it's just ancient bullshit.

True (on the homeopathy part), though he is correct on the natural and herbal part.

Three quarters of plants that provide active ingredients for prescription drugs came to the attention of researchers because of their use in traditional medicine.

Many of the pharmaceuticals currently available to physicians have a long history of use as herbal remedies, including opium, aspirin, digitalis, and quinine.

Among the 120 active compounds currently isolated from the higher plants and widely used in modern medicine today, 80 percent show a positive correlation between their modern therapeutic use and the traditional use of the plants from which they are derived.

More than two thirds of the world's plant species - at least 35,000 of which are estimated to have medicinal value - come from the developing countries.

At least 7,000 medical compounds in the modern pharmacopoeia are derived from plants.

An interesting side question... I wonder if the ideas behind homeopathy (In the 16th century the pioneer of chemical medicine Paracelsus declared that small doses of “what makes a man ill also cures him", anticipating homeopathy) are in any way related to current vaccines and their purpose and use in the human body - though a slightly different idea, and very different implementation (in doses or lack thereof) there is a noticeable corollary.

There's already been studies looking at changes in gene expression following millimeter-wave irradiation of skin: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18302488

Overall, given the reviews of the literature it's still unclear whether there's a potential for long-term health damage.

However, even if there was, I doubt anyone will care. The security theater must be kept up, even if it means that people would be harmed by repeated exposure.

"Sir, we will protect you from yourself, even if it kills you".

Yes. If only someone out there funded medical research. But what could be the benefit from such abstract studies of these "humans" and their "sleep"?

Homeopathy has been proven countless, countless times to do absolutely jack-fucking-shit. About five seconds of wiki-ing found this. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1874503/?tool=pmcentrez There is nothing ignorant or arrogant about disregarding some ancient bullshit when every single piece of legitimate scientific evidence shows that it's just ancient bullshit.

Wow, way to read into my post, dude.

Something most Slashdotters probably know is that science journalism is very derivative. Since a lot of journalists don't know squat about science, most of them just end up regurgitating stuff. Sometimes random irrelevant facts are added, sometimes important information is stripped out. Mentioning that both hearts are from sows without mentioning why seems strange. There could be a reason why, or it could have just been an extraneous fact that was included..

Now, the sentence from TFA ("Thatte and his group harvested two female pig hearts and placed them in two different containers.") is very similar to a sentence in a cited source here ("The researchers harvested hearts from female pigs, stored them in one of the two solutions, then biopsied them at several points over the next four hours.") Was there an original story somewhere that said why sow hearts were preferable, or was it just a random detail that someone added without context? Unfortunately, I can't access what appears to be the original paper at the moment to find out either way.

I have been paid to work in a research lab. I have also been paid to work for a newspaper. The interaction between science and the media fascinates me. And in my experience, there's a lot of truth to this comic.

Why would the gender of the heart donors matter?

The question is, why wouldn't it? Do you know? I don't.

Yeah, I'm hoping for a response from someone who does know. Thanks for making gross, incorrect assumptions about me, though.

The US RDA is for 200 units per day at my age, and while it's hard to get hypervitaminosis D, there's no real need for 35,000 units per week unless you're seriously deficient. Even 5000 per week is almost four times the recommended dose.

"This Is" disappeared from my post, weird.

um, you do know that primary aphasia is one of the risk factors for vasectomy, right?

'Not having read TFA, I could be wrong, but it sounds like an array-based detection system.'

You're spot on. There's a better article than TFA at LLNL Public Affairs:

https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/news_releases/2010/NR-10-05-02.html

Looks like they're using a Nimblegen platform, at least in the original version of the array:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18478124

One application is screening human vaccines for contamination with various viruses:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20375174

'Not having read TFA, I could be wrong, but it sounds like an array-based detection system.'

You're spot on. There's a better article than TFA at LLNL Public Affairs:

https://publicaffairs.llnl.gov/news/news_releases/2010/NR-10-05-02.html

Looks like they're using a Nimblegen platform, at least in the original version of the array:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18478124

One application is screening human vaccines for contamination with various viruses:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20375174

First, there is no proof there's a conspiracy to deny publication of dissenting papers. Several investigations have decided that there is no conspiracy. There is an outside chance that one little corner of science may have slipped into pseudoscience, but that's hardly justification for your statements about science in general.

The nondisclosure of data is a serious issue, but it's also not universal and even in this case it sounds like it's more due to the CRU not having the legal right to disclose the data in question, NOT to their unwillingness to do so. That's a problem with the law or with the commercial right-holders, not science. Again, even in the worst case scenario, it's not a justification for your statements about science in general.

Following are a few examples of large, publicly available scientific datasets that were assembled at considerable cost, entirely voluntarily (a small selection, several that I have personal experience with and others that I've included to try to give some breadth to the list):

http://physionet.org/
http://mouldy.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/brainweb/
http://www.med.harvard.edu/AANLIB/home.html
http://archive.eso.org/skycat/servers/usnoa
http://www.astrometry.net/data.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/GenbankOverview.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/guide/data-software/

And some publicly available code:

http://noodles.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/ServicesSoftware/HomePage (the MINC tools are apparently available from Debian as well)
http://www.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/~ilana/diffusion/diffusion_tools.html
http://www.vlfeat.org/~vedaldi/code/sift.html
http://www.itk.org/
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cil/v-source.html
http://iraf.noao.edu/

There's hardly an overwhelming culture of closed and proprietary secret keeping in science as you suggest. Quite the opposite. Sure, some of the non-scientific appendages to science do have issues in that area (journals, for example) but scientists are usually all too willing to do end runs around such things. If you want to read a paper, e-mail the author and he's likely to send you a PDF despite that often being technically a violation of copyright. Failing that, go to a library and they'll let you read it, free.

First, there is no proof there's a conspiracy to deny publication of dissenting papers. Several investigations have decided that there is no conspiracy. There is an outside chance that one little corner of science may have slipped into pseudoscience, but that's hardly justification for your statements about science in general.

The nondisclosure of data is a serious issue, but it's also not universal and even in this case it sounds like it's more due to the CRU not having the legal right to disclose the data in question, NOT to their unwillingness to do so. That's a problem with the law or with the commercial right-holders, not science. Again, even in the worst case scenario, it's not a justification for your statements about science in general.

Following are a few examples of large, publicly available scientific datasets that were assembled at considerable cost, entirely voluntarily (a small selection, several that I have personal experience with and others that I've included to try to give some breadth to the list):

http://physionet.org/
http://mouldy.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/brainweb/
http://www.med.harvard.edu/AANLIB/home.html
http://archive.eso.org/skycat/servers/usnoa
http://www.astrometry.net/data.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genbank/GenbankOverview.html
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/guide/data-software/

And some publicly available code:

http://noodles.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/ServicesSoftware/HomePage (the MINC tools are apparently available from Debian as well)
http://www.bic.mni.mcgill.ca/~ilana/diffusion/diffusion_tools.html
http://www.vlfeat.org/~vedaldi/code/sift.html
http://www.itk.org/
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~cil/v-source.html
http://iraf.noao.edu/

There's hardly an overwhelming culture of closed and proprietary secret keeping in science as you suggest. Quite the opposite. Sure, some of the non-scientific appendages to science do have issues in that area (journals, for example) but scientists are usually all too willing to do end runs around such things. If you want to read a paper, e-mail the author and he's likely to send you a PDF despite that often being technically a violation of copyright. Failing that, go to a library and they'll let you read it, free.

You mean like the carcinogenic aftermath of bovine growth hormones showing up in milk? You're right, no corporation would be that stupid...

There would need to be evidence of that, and I've not seen any mention of such from any credible article indexed on MedLine. You can find any articles like that here:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/

And even if there was an article or two on Medline that still wouldn't meet the Daubert standard:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daubert_standard

Even then, bovine growth hormone would need to have a significant effect at the concentrations found in dairy products. I haven't heard of anything like that yet, and with that in mind, please provide some evidence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._R._Grace_and_Company
On the other hand, W.R. Grace and Company did sell vermiculite insulation contaminated with tremolite asbestos, one of the really nasty forms of asbestos. The crysotile asbestos that is intentionally used in asbestos containing products is not nearly so bad. Neither form is that dangerous unless you are disturbing its fibers on a daily basis, like in an occupational setting.

The individuals suffering the most from the tremolite asbestos W.R. Grace and Company unintentionally mined, are those living near where it was mined originally near Libby, Montana and the factory workers and their family members where the vermiculite was processed into insulation.

In any case, how much the executives at W.R. Grace knew, when they knew it, what they did with the information, and how much one could have done is another question. The residents of Libby, Montana suffering from health problems related to asbestos are receiving compensation for medical care from W.R. Grace. To a certain degree it isn't perfect, but it is better behavior than Exxon's with respect to its actions to a certain oil spill in Alaska.

I'm not sure that I buy that 90% number. The percentage of our DNA that is composed of endogenous retroviral material is around 5-8%. ERVs are horizontal gene transfers that occur in germ-line cells, such as sperm, ova, and all of the cells in their ancestry back to the original zygote for that individual. Genetic changes to these cells (and only these cells) will be passed down to future generations.

Now, it's true that ERVs are not the only type of viral DNA that an individual may have in their cells. Any infection of a somatic (non-germ-line) cell by the appropriate type of virus since the individual's conception will lead to chimeric DNA in some part of the body. For example, well over 90% of American adults have had some form of herpes infection during their lives, such as chicken pox or herpes simplex. This becomes a permanent addition to the DNA in the infected portions of the body, but it is NOT passed down to offspring.

The reason that your 90% figure doesn't pass the sniff test is because it would mean that more than 80% of the DNA in an individual's body would be acquired AFTER birth. If this were true, then wouldn't we expect to see huge, obvious differences between individuals throughout the entire genome? This is definitely not what we see when we sequence DNA. After all, which diseases an individual contracts, when they contract them, and in what order is essentially never the same. Hell, the difference between a human and a chimpanzee's genome is only about 4%. The difference between individual humans is far smaller than that, so it seems likely that only a small (probably 1%) percentage of an individuals genome is made up of viral material obtained since birth. This passes the sniff test as well; you'd expect the genetic insertions that have accumulated over millions upon millions of years in germ-line cells to far outweigh the horizontal gene transfers that happen within a single individual's lifetime.

It was the treatment of tonsillar squamous cell carcinoma but I can't find the reference at present. Read about it in med school.

However, may I draw your attention to a couple of other cancers that seem to benefit from localised immune activation due to injected bacteria:

Stomach: http://www.nature.com/bjc/journal/v84/n4/abs/6691599a.html
Mouth: http://www.springerlink.com/content/rw3kk056t4014t5j/
Bladder: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20205607

does anyone know if the NSF has similar requirements?

I don't know if NSF does, but NIH definitely does.

The pay wall model for journals is what allows them to afford their rigorous peer review process, which is critical to science. Plus all research papers resulting from research funded by the National Institutes of Health end up posted for free -- we Americans paid for that research, after all. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/

'But as far as I know, theres nothing stopping you from putting it up on your web site as well or submitting it in publication in other journals.'

Nature has exclusive publication rights for the first 6 months, after which you're free to submit the paper to a public repository or put it up on your own site:

http://www.nature.com/authors/editorial_policies/license.html

This is rather more enlightened than some other major journals, which still require a copyright transfer to the publisher, but obviously falls short of full open access from day 1. But I think most people who get a paper in Nature will happily accept this compromise! (at least for now).

Incidentally, some form of open access is pretty much being forced on traditional publishers by major funding bodies, which now commonly require that most or all funded publications are submitted to journals that provide this (time delays are generally allowed), e.g.:

http://publicaccess.nih.gov/

http://science.cancerresearchuk.org/gapp/terms/openaccess_ukpmc/

So things are at least moving in the right direction.

He finally went on Atkins and was able to shed enough weight that he was able to start walking around the house, then around the block, etc until he was back down to near his original weight. It's one of the few instances where I'd advocate Atkins.

Even people with impaired glucose tolerance will lose weight on a caloricaly appropriate diet based on complex carbohydrates -- and in so doing, will avoid the negative health effects of a high protein Atkins-style diet.

As the summary mentions, every field has cheaters, and there probably aren't tremendous differences in percentages between them. It makes sense evolutionarily, since it's beneficial to be a stealthy cheater. I've observed it personally at all stages of my academic career, and while it's more shocking at higher levels, I don't think the prevalence is decreasing.

I don't understand the mentality, but apparently some people just don't see a problem with academic dishonesty. The only justification that I have heard is that "everybody" [uses stolen tests / steals lunches / copies assignments / lies about credentials / "pirates" audio lectures, textbooks, and software / etc.]. It's sickening, but this trend continues even into professional careers.

> There are a number of cultures in the world that consume a diet of meat and milk and cheese that's extremely high in saturated fats... and yet live very long lives

There's a hypothesis going around that the milk is different and has different health effects (if that's true, then perhaps the meat is also different too).

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11015514
http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/116-1168/295/
Counter study: http://www.nzma.org.nz/journal/116-1170/368/

I guess we'll have to wait a few more years to find out :).

It may also be that humans don't do well at mixing the two metabolic modes - carb burning and fat burning, so being on a low carb diet high fat diet is OK, and a moderate carb + low sat fat diet is ok, but a diet with carbs + saturated fat is bad.

Pacific coastal water was 1.02 +/- 0.26 x 10(-14) g

Source: PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18964014

That's "iridium is about as rare as chicken lips in sea water."

--
BMO

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18294691

The more time you spend indoors the more likely you are to develop myopia (near sightedness) - which makes sense since your eyes aren't getting any practice/development in focusing on distant objects.

I would think tech geeks spend less time doiung outdoor activities than average - after all "tech" is usually indoors.

I'm sorry for your delusions, but any one of your anecdotes above would be enough to overturn science as we know it.

The reason that hasn't been done is because your anecdotes aren't what you believe them to be. They're completely natural, nothing out of ordinary medicine/science/diagnosis* has happened and prayer in itself had nothing to do with it. ... as controlled tests, including those done with believers, show.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2802370/

I'm going to go out on a limb and assume you know at least some statistics, that a stopped clock is right two times a day and that anecdotes, really, mean nothing.

*) you know, sometimes the diagnosis is just wrong. finding that out does not mean God intervened.

We have passed a law about the same. But there's so few Police on patrol the law just isn't being enforced. I still see plenty of drivers hand holding a mobile, despite the fact you can get a bluetooth headset for £8 in the UK.

The trouble with this is that using a hands free phone while driving is just as dangerous as using a normal phone. _All_ studies (not sponsored by headset manufacturors) have shown this, again and again. See here here here and most obviously here for a few examples. From that last : "Conclusions - When drivers use a mobile phone there is an increased likelihood of a crash resulting in injury. Using a hands-free phone is not any safer.". From Wikipedia : "Driving while using a handsfree cellular device is not safer than using a hand held cell phone, as concluded by case-crossover studies.[15][16] epidemiological,[1][2] simulation,[4] and meta-analysis[6][7]. The increased "cognitive workload" involved in holding a conversation, not the use of hands, causes the increased risk.[17][18][19] One notable exception to that conclusion is a study by headset manufacturer Plantronics.

I can't believe this is not common knowledge yet. The law in the UK differentiates between hands free and normal phoning for _no_ reason whatsoever. Many of these studies were released prior to the introduction of the law in the UK. The cynic in me wonders whether the differentiation is due to the fact that police use hands free, and radios all the time, and making them illegal would make them sad :(. Just to conclude, the people who are tutting at mobile users while talking on their hands free are _just_ as dangerous as those they are frowning upon.

Automation, better design, voluntary social networks and limited demand mean that the value of most human labor is rapidly decreasing. Implicit in your comments is the assumption we need everyone to be working to produce all the goods and services we need (or want). But, that assumption is less and less true. Depending on who you believe and how you define unemployment, unemployment in the USA right now is somewhere between 10% and about 25%. Further, compared to a century or two ago, when children worked in factories and mines, and practically no one "retired", and practically no one went to college or graduate school, and people worked 70 hour work week (in factories or on farms), unemployment now could be thought of as 50% to 75% or higher compared to a century ago. The fact is, compared to then, essentially nobody in the USA is working, and those who work are not doing very much of it. It's true that if you go back to hunter/gatherer times (see Marshall Sahlins), you'll find a similar pattern (only some worked, and then it was not very hard).

For example, look at this video of a robot arm throwing a cell phone into the air and catching it, and tell me that most human labor will be needed in manufacturing in twenty years:
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation
Even China is starting to have issues with manufacturing unemployment. How long before many services go the same way as agriculture and manufacturing? Yet our entire schooling system is still oriented around turning out mostly factory workers and soldiers.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

Anyway, so I think current trends show that work has long been going away (even as demand has increased greatly up to a point). Further, in the USA, most people have long gone past the point of diminishing returns for more stuff and bigger homes to the point of negative returns (due to the destruction of community and family) -- even as some 10% to 20% of the US population has been left out of that and is relatively impoverished and would benefit greatly from more stuff.
"The Culture of Affluence: Psychological Costs of Material Wealth"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1950124/
"Children of the Affluent: Challenges to Well-Being"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1948879/

The happiest places in the world usually have both material abundance and strong social programs:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=7585729&page=1
"According to a 2005 editorial, published in the British Medical Journal and authored by Dr. Tony Delamothe, research done in Mexico, Ghana, Sweden, the U.S. and the U.K. shows that individuals typically get richer during their lifetimes, but not happier. It is family, social and community networks that bring joy to one's life, according to Delamothe. "

Some related links:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://users.ipfw.edu/ruflethe/american.html
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm

Automation, better design, voluntary social networks and limited demand mean that the value of most human labor is rapidly decreasing. Implicit in your comments is the assumption we need everyone to be working to produce all the goods and services we need (or want). But, that assumption is less and less true. Depending on who you believe and how you define unemployment, unemployment in the USA right now is somewhere between 10% and about 25%. Further, compared to a century or two ago, when children worked in factories and mines, and practically no one "retired", and practically no one went to college or graduate school, and people worked 70 hour work week (in factories or on farms), unemployment now could be thought of as 50% to 75% or higher compared to a century ago. The fact is, compared to then, essentially nobody in the USA is working, and those who work are not doing very much of it. It's true that if you go back to hunter/gatherer times (see Marshall Sahlins), you'll find a similar pattern (only some worked, and then it was not very hard).

For example, look at this video of a robot arm throwing a cell phone into the air and catching it, and tell me that most human labor will be needed in manufacturing in twenty years:
http://www.hizook.com/blog/2009/08/03/high-speed-robot-hand-demonstrates-dexterity-and-skillful-manipulation
Even China is starting to have issues with manufacturing unemployment. How long before many services go the same way as agriculture and manufacturing? Yet our entire schooling system is still oriented around turning out mostly factory workers and soldiers.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

Anyway, so I think current trends show that work has long been going away (even as demand has increased greatly up to a point). Further, in the USA, most people have long gone past the point of diminishing returns for more stuff and bigger homes to the point of negative returns (due to the destruction of community and family) -- even as some 10% to 20% of the US population has been left out of that and is relatively impoverished and would benefit greatly from more stuff.
"The Culture of Affluence: Psychological Costs of Material Wealth"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1950124/
"Children of the Affluent: Challenges to Well-Being"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1948879/

The happiest places in the world usually have both material abundance and strong social programs:
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/Economy/story?id=7585729&page=1
"According to a 2005 editorial, published in the British Medical Journal and authored by Dr. Tony Delamothe, research done in Mexico, Ghana, Sweden, the U.S. and the U.K. shows that individuals typically get richer during their lifetimes, but not happier. It is family, social and community networks that bring joy to one's life, according to Delamothe. "

Some related links:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://users.ipfw.edu/ruflethe/american.html
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html
http://educationanddemocracy.org/FSCfiles/C_CC2a_TripleRevolution.htm

On the other hand, this could be exceptionally nasty in third world nations, especially in places where condoms aren't available or expensive.

You might want to revisit the statistics. Up to 1 in 6 Americans has herpes. Meanwhile, chlamydia infection rates have doubled in the last 10 years. Young people (15-24) make up half of all new STI infections each year. This is not some third world problem.

It won't be popular to say this on Slashdot, but it also turns out that your grandparents' solution (waiting until marriage) is very effective indeed: from the medical article "About 4 percent of those with one lifetime sex partner were found to have herpes, compared with about 27 percent of those who reported having 10 or more partners."

Sorry.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20219526

The rats which had 12 hr access to a 8% solution of HFCS got fatter than rats which had 12 hr access to 10% solution of sucrose.

This was even though they ingested fewer calories from the HFCS solution.

All of the recent advances are done using stem cells from the patient's own body

FTFY. And yes, it’s perfectly legal. Nobody protests adult stem cell therapy.

Maybe the restrictions against using embryonic stem cells advanced medical technology by pushing researchers and doctors to use the patient's own stem cells instead.

That’s a fair theory, and it shows that you’re thinking, but if you research the matter it is actually incorrect. There are enough embryonic stem cell lines for researchers and doctors to use to find cures, etc. if they were so inclined. They have, basically of their own accord, chosen to pursue adult stem cell therapies instead, because those were what yielded results, and since they are paid for producing results that is the direction that they have been inclined to go. There are severe problems with embryonic stem cells that nobody has been able to overcome, whereas adult stem cells are used in multitudes of successful treatments. If it were not for special interests pushing the embryonic stem cell research via grants, etc., and lobbying for increased federal funding and trying to make it all more acceptable in the public eye, industry would naturally gravitate toward the adult treatments that actually yield results.

I wish I could find better sources to back up some of what I’ve been saying, but I did come across these:
Why Embryonic Stem Cells Are Obsolete
Adult vs. Embryonic Stem Cells

Unfortunately there is so much hype generated over stem cells that it is difficult to sift through it all. As I understand it, embryonic cells can be harvested from fetuses if they were aborted at an early enough stage, and the abortion industry is putting a lot of pressure on the issue because they see this as a way to monetize their grisly waste product. As a result you have many claims of “potential” for the embryonic stem cells with no actual cures ever coming of it.

And now, with this study, we can state with a fair degree of certainty that the AMA was wrong. So now, hopefully, this will put to rest the question of whether the rise in HFCS has caused the temporally coincident rise in obesity in the U.S. (which was previously only suspected due to correlation) so researchers can focus on the more important question of why the body treats it differently.

But it won't. This isn't the first study that has suggested a strong causal link between HFCS and obesity. This one will be ignored by the nay-sayers just like all the others. (Note that some of those links aren't to studies, but rather to papers about the studies, etc., but the links in their references are staggering.) *sigh*

Diabetes (along with many serious conditions) is buggery expensive to treat. In the real world, many sufferer's options are realistically:

• Live in a country which provides at least basic healthcare without you having to sacrifice your first born (or at least regulates insurance companies such that they can't say "Oh, you've got something expensive? Sucks to be you, then.").
• Be rich.
• Die.

Most civilised countries decided that the final option on that list wasn't a particularly desirable one some years ago.

Or... You could live in a country with programs to help people or you could live in one of the 46 states that require insurance companies to cover diabetes , existing condition or not.

Why do we need this debt-accelerating new federal bureaucratic boondoggle again?

Surely, I'm not joking. Yes they do.. I guess this is just another case of facts having a well-established liberal bias.. http://www.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=14560 http://gateway.nlm.nih.gov/MeetingAbstracts/ma?f=103625013.html

I posted this in reply to another post, below. Yeah, I know that makes it redundant, but I believe this is relevant to both discussions, and I don't know how to direct you to that post.

A DNA sample is taken of every child born in the US, to test for potential genetic diseases. The original specimen is stored for a period of time, based on state laws. Here are some citations:

Genetic Screening

Controversy

Specimen retention by state

A DNA sample is taken of every child born in the US, to test for potential genetic diseases. The original specimen is stored for a period of time, based on state laws. Here are some citations:

Genetic Screening

Controversy

Specimen retention by state

Good idea. But that still leaves Caucasian Womens' magazines and TV. Have you picked up an issue of Home and Garden lately? That mag and those like it are chock full of two-page spreads of women frolicing in fields aside pink-and-blue of bipolar graphic design.

Meanwhile, erectile dysfunciton medicine ads are featuring younger and younger men. Then there's the awkwardness of having to explain them to your kids who see them on TV.

...I'd imagine basic rules of economics and capitalism are at work here, i.e.

If these things really cost so much less, someone would produce them and sell them for less. While you can get a netbook for a few hundred dollars, keep in mind that it is using largely shared/similar hardware and is not required to be ultra small to the extent that is can be worn. The degree of precision engineering to make a high quality hearing aid is understandably not insignificant.

You could walk around with a netbook, a microphone, and a pair of headphones if you like :)

It seems there are indeed less expensive models out there that might do the job -- I'd check out http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18519576 and http://www.amazon.com/MDHearingAid-Acoustitone-PRO-Hearing-Aid/dp/B002RH4SN4

Good luck :)

See this nih.gov article:
Acetaminophen (paracetamol) use, measles-mumps-rubella vaccination, and autistic disorder: the results of a parent survey

The theory is that after they started giving children Tylenol with their vaccinations instead of aspirin due to the Reye's Syndrome scare in the 1980's, that caused the autism rate to spike. Tylenol impairs the liver's ability to purge the additives in vaccines (not just the minuscule amount of mercury but some aluminum-based ones designed to boost immune response so that they can use less vaccine), increasing the risk of side effects. The child will probably run a mild fever if you don't use a med such as aspirin or Tylenol. I'm not clear on whether the fever reducer is simply for the child's comfort or if it's medically necessary.

It's a THEORY. It looks promising. But if we simply shout down people who make logical observations and use "correlation is not causation" as an excuse for not thinking we won't get anywhere. An observation can still be correct even if the reasoning is wrong. Meanwhile, using ibuprofen or naproxen with vaccines, if any fever reducer at all (aspirin allergy is nontrivial), and spreading out vaccinations over time to the maximum recommended extent seems prudent. It does appear likely that immune system dysfunction is key to understanding autism. That's likely why changing diet sometimes helps: most of your immune system is in your gut. Antibiotic overuse could be a factor. Which particular set of problems is affecting a given autistic individual will vary but the immune system appears to be the common theme.

They may not be looking at the exact form of the disorder that is affecting you, but at least it's close. You might want to contact the authors and see what they can do. The posted article points out that researchers are moving into studying more rare and complex disease forms, so your case might interest them.

GWAS = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genome-wide_association_study/. I have no idea if they are using the same technology as in the posted article, but it's a very recent study (2009) so it's an active research area.

As an aside, I really feel for you, man. My mother used to run a care facility for Schizophrenics, so I grew up seeing some of the effects. They usually did not show symptoms as severe as yours, though now and then there were more complicated clients. Not a pretty sight, even for those with more "manageable" forms of the disorder. I can only imagine a case like yours.

Good luck

I found the abstract of the article at PubMed, and that's what the deal was. The researchers selected "good" versus "bad" drawings and reinforced the pigeons for picking at the "good" ones:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19533184

Well, that's not quite the case, rattaroaz. Actually, it's not AT ALL the case. Embryonic stem cells are derived from the "termination" of excess embryos from IVF procedures. These are often frozen embryos in storage. Sometimes, they are fresh embryos who, if they weren't killed for ECS harvesting, would probably be killed anyway. Either way, they're definitely alive and definitely can be (and have been) brought to term (often by so-called "embryo adoption").

Moreover, there are a whole lot of people who think that killing embryos for the sake of their stem cells is a terrific idea. (Indeed, one of the fastest ways to get yourself labeled a "religious fundamentalist" in this country is to propose that that's a monstrous idea.) Look up "therapeutic cloning" at Wikipedia, and, while you're at it, check the NIH's page on ECS research at http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/basics/basics3.asp for a general overview of cell-harvesting techniques.

Some of the replies above attempt to skirt this issue using the ridiculous (and oxymoronic) term "fertilized egg" in a bizarre attempt to deprive the blastocyst of its biological status as a living member of the human race. This attempt to use euphemism to avoid biological and ethical challenges, however, is both transparent and silly.

At bottom, rattaroaz, yeah, I agree with you that the real question is whether the lives of fetuses are ours to do with as we please. If yes, then abortion and ECS are fine. If no, then probably not. But the fetal-life question figures just as prominently -- and directly -- into embryonic stem cell research questions as it does into the abortion question.

Just to be clear here. I'm not formally involved in this field, but I not believe that research using fetal stem cells is illegal. The only restriction I know of is that federal funded research can only use certain pre-existing strains of cells.

You might think this was spearheaded by christian lobbying groups. Nope. They were pawns and puppets of pharma. This was a field showing great promise. If federal dollars developed tools and procedures to use stem cells, that technology would exist in the public domain. The right-to-lifers' perspective was amplified to hide the real agenda-- keep stem cell therapy research in the exclusive hands of the private pharma corporations. The resulting proprietary treatments will be far more expensive and lucrative than if the federal government had made the breakthroughs in this science.

Seth

I think almost everything alive can feel pain. Whether they have the capacity to tell us is a different matter.

If you are experiencing "locked in syndrome", you're not more capable than an amoeba. If I poke you you might feel pain, but what can you do about it? Nothing. At least the amoeba can move away.

As for eating animals, there's plenty of scientific evidence that consuming oceanic fish (nonmercury laden) is good for most humans (all that omega 3 stuff). And consuming red meat is generally not. There are always exceptions of course. So while humans can survive on a pure vegetarian diet, it's hard for them to thrive on it. They are less likely to do as well as those who eat fish.

Unfortunately most vegetarian sources of Omega 3 oils don't provide the long chained ones (DHA, EPA), they provide ALA and:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9637947

"More specifically, most studies in humans have shown that whereas a certain, though restricted, conversion of high doses of ALA to EPA occurs, conversion to DHA is severely restricted."

Okay, then you move to Canada, and don't come back when you have to wait years for that procedure you need.

What evidence do you have that it is better than anecdotal evidence and bias "surveys" that don't include the wait times and ignores the people coming to the US to get the care they need?

What evidence is there that the system in the US is broken at all? Does Canada border a third world nation, taking in Millions of illegal aliens a year?

Of course you ignore such, because even mentioning the invasion from the south is "racist" (never mind that it is true).

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/12/canadas-health-informs-health-care-debate/

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/07/06/canadian.health.care.system/

http://www.lonelyconservative.com/2009/12/27/mark-steyn-obamacare-will-be-even-worse-than-europe-and-canada/

See, I can pull articles that support my position too. But if Canada is so much better than the US, why don't you see people crossing into Canada for health care, like you see people in Canada doing to the US.

This includes having Canada pay US to take some of its people into OUR hospitals!

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1115892/

According to this article from the NIH's medical encyclopedia, pancreas transplants work just fine.

(Also, while I've never observed a captcha worth mentioning before, this time I got "sweeten".)