I said it a few comments down... but I will take lawyers, polisci majors, bankers, and economists who support liberal democracy in a heartbeat over scientific leaders who endorse prison camps, massive censorship, brutal suppression of political dissent, for some reason want to crush the most non-threatening people on the face of the planet, and who (at the very minimum tolerate) endorse forced sterilization!
>Did you know that China doesn't have a "President" in any meaningful sense of the word? President Hu Jintao is an "organ of the state" who is a figurehead for the National People's Congress, a largely powerless body selected by the Chinese Communist Party.
So, he's a figurehead not a president. That's not a slam against presidents (or figureheads of repressive oligarchies) but I believe that the two outlooks are very different.
It would be completely illegal without informed consent. They would have had to go to their Internal Review Board (IRB) and get approval and would be required to follow federal guidelines. This is a highly regulated part of medical privacy and IRBs do not screw around with the rules because the institutional consequences are massive. They range from massive lawsuits to federal crimes. The scientists doing the SNP arrays would also be forbidden from knowing any patient information. Only the doctors involved with patient treatment would know any identifying information.
Now one of the interesting caveats to this is that the doctors involved with the patient's care are privy to the results of the SNP array. Presumably they would be told "Patient X Y and Z have mutations correlated with early onset Alzheimers and Huntington's Disease. They would be obligated to tell their patients and begin any appropriate care. My guess is that is why they decided to study patients around 65 years old. Any genetic predispositions would already have manifest themselves. I am curious if it was done to avoid any ethical concerns with "diagnoses" arising from the study.
This is not the same as sequencing their genomes. This will not provide a full sequence of each person's genome. It will look for specific mutations that have already been identified and tell us who has certain point mutations.
Think of it as the difference between having the full text of the file in the case of sequencing and having a count of the number of times the writer wrote "teh" instead of "the"
This is not to say that this study is without merit but it is not gene sequencing or genomic sequencing.
For more information on SNP arrays wikipedia is helpful and if you really want details you can talk to Affymetrix (I bet these are the arrays they will use).
I think we in the US did learn from Britain's mistakes. It's called the First Amendment and was written by some then-until-very-recently British subjects who were learning from mistakes made.
The answer to all of your "follow up examples" is this: they shouldn't
"Why on earth should engineering majors study optics, when so few will work with optics?"
They shouldn't be precluded from engineering for being bad at optics. If they need to learn it in the future they can... or someone who is good at optics will do it.
"Why should a computer science major study operating systems, when scant few of them will actually work on an operating system?"
They absolutely shouldn't "study operating systems" unless they are working on some kind of operating system science. What they should do is be proficient at using a computer enough so that they can analyze their data. Perhaps more computer savvy for physicists and less so for cell biologists.
"Why should English majors study poetry, when so few will become poets?"
Your one good example. Studying poetry would actually benefit someone writing prose if only to allow their prose to be more poetic. However, a lack of poetry knowledge shouldn't preclude you from being a writer.
"Why should Business majors study economics, when so few will actually become economists?"
Once again... knowledge of economics probably can help businessmen. Although you should remember that Bill Gates never finished college and most likely never took Economics and that didn't stop him from being the most successful businessman on the face of the earth. Steve Jobs is also a dropout, as well as Michael Dell, Paul Allen, Ralph Lauren, David Geffen, Larry Ellison, and Andrew Carnegie to name a few. No one told them that they couldn't be businessmen because they didn't take Econ 101.
'Why should a home owner buy fire detectors, when so few will have their house burn down?"
This has nothing to do with organic chemistry and medical school. This is akin to saying how could someone be a doctor without taking organic chemistry when people always look both ways before crossing the street. Its a good idea to have smoke detectors but not having them doesn't prevent you from living without burning to death in your home.
"Why should people buy the Journal, when it publishes such stupid crap?"
As someone currently applying for medical school I can tell you the whole thing is a shot in the dark.
An enormous number of people who will obviously go on to be awful doctors become doctors because they test well and do well in organic chemistry.
The opposite is also true. Plenty of great future doctors never get a shot at even going to med school. I have a good friend who has worked in medical research since high school. She has spent the last two years working directly with patients and physicians at the best oncology hospital in the world. She was a Russian language major but got a minor in chemistry. She got a masters degree while working (doing the medical research) after college. Every single medical school she applied to turned her down save one. That is despite the fact that every single physician she worked with would have placed her in medical school if they could.
People that ace orgo will often make good doctors because they can do the work. But folks that don't are not precluded from being doctors. The system is set up to minimize false positives without caring about false negatives.
Just remember the only part of the MCAT that at all correlates with success in medical school is the writing sample (which of course is rarely considered by medical school admissions committees).
Rep. John Culberson of Texas is covering the "blackout" via his Tiwtter account and on Qik. I like the idea of Congressmen speaking without mics like the 1800s but Twittering away in the darkened chamber (even if it isn't really exactly like that).
As the fiance of a female physicist (who has been following the attempted "Title Nining" of sciences I hear that sentiment most often from women actually in male dominated science fields. Femal physicists are usually quite taken aback by the idea of gender quotas. It always seem to be people outside the sciences campaigning for this kind of nonsense.
"Facing a medical community that is fiercely resistant to change..." really? Thats a bold claim to make especially considering the amount of medical research that happens in this country.
While I do respect Obama's choice on this one and I like a lot of his ideas, you absolutely must look at underlying philosophies.
Obama has repeatedly made it clear that he wants the government to control or interfere with large parts of the economy. This has almost without exception been deleterious to advancement, competition, research and development. He can have the best stances in the world on tech and still bork the economy rendering it a moot point.
I don't know if McCain would be better specifically for tech but I do think he is more likely not to regulate it into oblivion. I really wish someone would sit down with him and let him know that people despise control by big business just as much as he hates control by government directive.
A little libertarianism (liberal or conservative) goes a long way in the free market.
It would be wonderful if people all thought this way... the old "sticks and stones" mentality. However, many people do not.
The world is full of people that want it to be illegal for you to talk bad about them, their god, their glorious leader, etc. etc.
I had a Vietnamese physics graduate student tell me he didn't believe in the freedom of speech. He just simply believed the government could tell you what not to say. Personally I think it is crap and we would all be better off if people were less outraged over perceived insults.
What I find disturbing is that otherwise freedom loving people support this kind of soft, liberal, friendly, fascism because it keeps people from being mean to people.
We had this guy come to our website and begin spouting a bunch of nonsense about curtailing free speech so as not to offend anyone.
We tried to rationally explain why this was a bad idea. It turns out that he was a Canadian who was a huge supporter of these HRCs.
The lengthy and bizarre discussion that is here is a good view into the mind of people who believe what I consider to be utter rubbish.
...the Wikipedia cites copyrighted works ALL THE TIME. I am not clear on exactly what the publisher believes to have. Take a look at any science related page (for example: Interferon Alpha Receptor 1) and you will see a whole raft of copyrighted citations. Fair use allows for paraphrasing, quoting, and citation, especially in an academic context (or at least that is what I have always understood). What is it exactly that publishers are preventing? Citation? Paraphrase? Quotation?
The best part was they showed it to be true by using h. pylori to give THEMSELVES ulcers... then cured themselves with the standard treatment.
Althought I love how you troll with the "American-developed" cures. I guess there were no European or Asian companies that also had treatments?
Slashdot Mirror
Uhhh ok fair enough. There is always emigration to China when it gets intolerably oppressive in the US.
I said it a few comments down... but I will take lawyers, polisci majors, bankers, and economists who support liberal democracy in a heartbeat over scientific leaders who endorse prison camps, massive censorship, brutal suppression of political dissent, for some reason want to crush the most non-threatening people on the face of the planet, and who (at the very minimum tolerate) endorse forced sterilization!
>Did you know that China doesn't have a "President" in any meaningful sense of the word? President Hu Jintao is an "organ of the state" who is a figurehead for the National People's Congress, a largely powerless body selected by the Chinese Communist Party.
So, he's a figurehead not a president. That's not a slam against presidents (or figureheads of repressive oligarchies) but I believe that the two outlooks are very different.
I will take liberal democracy by lawyer any day of the week when the alternative is communist oligarchy by scientist.
Oh SNAP the government really CAN spur innovation! No one would have ever built this machine without the government of PA. How can we thank you!?
..."is looking for 10,000 volunteers" to monitor for all kinds of stuff.
...in this presentation.
... I was kind of wondering why the hell terrorists needed VIM on an *IED*
It would be completely illegal without informed consent. They would have had to go to their Internal Review Board (IRB) and get approval and would be required to follow federal guidelines. This is a highly regulated part of medical privacy and IRBs do not screw around with the rules because the institutional consequences are massive. They range from massive lawsuits to federal crimes. The scientists doing the SNP arrays would also be forbidden from knowing any patient information. Only the doctors involved with patient treatment would know any identifying information.
Now one of the interesting caveats to this is that the doctors involved with the patient's care are privy to the results of the SNP array. Presumably they would be told "Patient X Y and Z have mutations correlated with early onset Alzheimers and Huntington's Disease. They would be obligated to tell their patients and begin any appropriate care. My guess is that is why they decided to study patients around 65 years old. Any genetic predispositions would already have manifest themselves. I am curious if it was done to avoid any ethical concerns with "diagnoses" arising from the study.
This is not the same as sequencing their genomes. This will not provide a full sequence of each person's genome. It will look for specific mutations that have already been identified and tell us who has certain point mutations.
Think of it as the difference between having the full text of the file in the case of sequencing and having a count of the number of times the writer wrote "teh" instead of "the"
This is not to say that this study is without merit but it is not gene sequencing or genomic sequencing.
For more information on SNP arrays wikipedia is helpful and if you really want details you can talk to Affymetrix (I bet these are the arrays they will use).
I think we in the US did learn from Britain's mistakes. It's called the First Amendment and was written by some then-until-very-recently British subjects who were learning from mistakes made.
The "critics" seem to know that customers are where businesses get their $$ from. Who knew?
...in peer reviewed journals. That is unless someone pays a fat subscription fee on my behalf.
The answer to all of your "follow up examples" is this: they shouldn't
"Why on earth should engineering majors study optics, when so few will work with optics?"
They shouldn't be precluded from engineering for being bad at optics. If they need to learn it in the future they can... or someone who is good at optics will do it.
"Why should a computer science major study operating systems, when scant few of them will actually work on an operating system?"
They absolutely shouldn't "study operating systems" unless they are working on some kind of operating system science. What they should do is be proficient at using a computer enough so that they can analyze their data. Perhaps more computer savvy for physicists and less so for cell biologists.
"Why should English majors study poetry, when so few will become poets?"
Your one good example. Studying poetry would actually benefit someone writing prose if only to allow their prose to be more poetic. However, a lack of poetry knowledge shouldn't preclude you from being a writer.
"Why should Business majors study economics, when so few will actually become economists?"
Once again... knowledge of economics probably can help businessmen. Although you should remember that Bill Gates never finished college and most likely never took Economics and that didn't stop him from being the most successful businessman on the face of the earth. Steve Jobs is also a dropout, as well as Michael Dell, Paul Allen, Ralph Lauren, David Geffen, Larry Ellison, and Andrew Carnegie to name a few. No one told them that they couldn't be businessmen because they didn't take Econ 101.
'Why should a home owner buy fire detectors, when so few will have their house burn down?"
This has nothing to do with organic chemistry and medical school. This is akin to saying how could someone be a doctor without taking organic chemistry when people always look both ways before crossing the street. Its a good idea to have smoke detectors but not having them doesn't prevent you from living without burning to death in your home.
"Why should people buy the Journal, when it publishes such stupid crap?"
Who knows?
As someone currently applying for medical school I can tell you the whole thing is a shot in the dark.
An enormous number of people who will obviously go on to be awful doctors become doctors because they test well and do well in organic chemistry.
The opposite is also true. Plenty of great future doctors never get a shot at even going to med school. I have a good friend who has worked in medical research since high school. She has spent the last two years working directly with patients and physicians at the best oncology hospital in the world. She was a Russian language major but got a minor in chemistry. She got a masters degree while working (doing the medical research) after college. Every single medical school she applied to turned her down save one. That is despite the fact that every single physician she worked with would have placed her in medical school if they could.
People that ace orgo will often make good doctors because they can do the work. But folks that don't are not precluded from being doctors. The system is set up to minimize false positives without caring about false negatives.
Just remember the only part of the MCAT that at all correlates with success in medical school is the writing sample (which of course is rarely considered by medical school admissions committees).
Rep. John Culberson of Texas is covering the "blackout" via his Tiwtter account and on Qik. I like the idea of Congressmen speaking without mics like the 1800s but Twittering away in the darkened chamber (even if it isn't really exactly like that).
And because Powell in a tutu is not a great image...
As the fiance of a female physicist (who has been following the attempted "Title Nining" of sciences I hear that sentiment most often from women actually in male dominated science fields. Femal physicists are usually quite taken aback by the idea of gender quotas. It always seem to be people outside the sciences campaigning for this kind of nonsense.
"Facing a medical community that is fiercely resistant to change..." really? Thats a bold claim to make especially considering the amount of medical research that happens in this country.
While I do respect Obama's choice on this one and I like a lot of his ideas, you absolutely must look at underlying philosophies. Obama has repeatedly made it clear that he wants the government to control or interfere with large parts of the economy. This has almost without exception been deleterious to advancement, competition, research and development. He can have the best stances in the world on tech and still bork the economy rendering it a moot point. I don't know if McCain would be better specifically for tech but I do think he is more likely not to regulate it into oblivion. I really wish someone would sit down with him and let him know that people despise control by big business just as much as he hates control by government directive. A little libertarianism (liberal or conservative) goes a long way in the free market.
It would be wonderful if people all thought this way... the old "sticks and stones" mentality. However, many people do not.
The world is full of people that want it to be illegal for you to talk bad about them, their god, their glorious leader, etc. etc.
I had a Vietnamese physics graduate student tell me he didn't believe in the freedom of speech. He just simply believed the government could tell you what not to say. Personally I think it is crap and we would all be better off if people were less outraged over perceived insults.
What I find disturbing is that otherwise freedom loving people support this kind of soft, liberal, friendly, fascism because it keeps people from being mean to people.
We had this guy come to our website and begin spouting a bunch of nonsense about curtailing free speech so as not to offend anyone. We tried to rationally explain why this was a bad idea. It turns out that he was a Canadian who was a huge supporter of these HRCs. The lengthy and bizarre discussion that is here is a good view into the mind of people who believe what I consider to be utter rubbish.
...the Wikipedia cites copyrighted works ALL THE TIME. I am not clear on exactly what the publisher believes to have. Take a look at any science related page (for example: Interferon Alpha Receptor 1) and you will see a whole raft of copyrighted citations. Fair use allows for paraphrasing, quoting, and citation, especially in an academic context (or at least that is what I have always understood). What is it exactly that publishers are preventing? Citation? Paraphrase? Quotation?
I always thought the value of the Quantum Wikipedia was that it is so very discrete
The best part was they showed it to be true by using h. pylori to give THEMSELVES ulcers... then cured themselves with the standard treatment. Althought I love how you troll with the "American-developed" cures. I guess there were no European or Asian companies that also had treatments?