genomeboy.com

Pretty soon I’m gonna get indoor plumbing…

From the HIPAA, SHMIPAA files:

A new survey of medical-school deans finds that unprofessional conduct on blogs and social-networking sites is common among medical students. Although med students fully understand patient-confidentiality laws and are indoctrinated in the high ethical standards to which their white-coated profession is held, many of them still use Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and other sites to depict and discuss lewd behavior and sexual misconduct, make discriminatory statements and discuss patient cases in violation of confidentiality laws, according to the survey, which was published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The report said 85 percent of science association members surveyed said public ignorance of science was a major problem. And by large margins they deride as only “fair” or “poor” the coverage of science by newspapers and television.

Only 3 percent of the scientists said they “often” spoke to reporters.

In a telephone news conference announcing the survey, Alan I. Leshner, chief executive of the science association, said scientists must find new ways to engage with the public.

“One cannot just exhort ‘we all agree you should agree with us,’ ” Mr. Leshner said. “It’s a much more interactive process that’s involved. It’s time consuming and can be tedious. But it’s very important.”

Hmmm. The head of the most important science organization in the country, if not the world, starts from the premise that educating and interacting with the public about science is time consuming and “can be tedious.” I can’t imagine why so much of the citizenry knows and cares so little about what we do. Can you?

I’m not always the biggest Gina Kolata fan, but her piece in this morning’s New York Times is a must-read:

Yet the fight against cancer is going slower than most had hoped, with only small changes in the death rate in the almost 40 years since it began.

One major impediment, scientists agree, is the grant system itself. It has become a sort of jobs program, a way to keep research laboratories going year after year with the understanding that the focus will be on small projects unlikely to take significant steps toward curing cancer.

“These grants are not silly, but they are only likely to produce incremental progress,” said Dr. Robert C. Young, chancellor at Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia and chairman of the Board of Scientific Advisors, an independent group that makes recommendations to the cancer institute.

I spend many of my waking hours thinking about DNA. Not hydrogen bonds, histones and angstroms per se, but genes and genomes, SNPs, third-generation sequencing, gene patents, genetic testing, privacy, redaction, etc. Consequently, I sometimes get jaded. I take nucleic acids for granted; I think of them as a useful but quotidian aspect of life on earth.

And then I open the newspaper and read this:

Investigators said they are also looking for video accounts of the plane’s brief flight. They have split into teams and invited outside specialists, including some from the Department of Agriculture, who will help analyze the reports about birds. Ms. Higgins said that the engines’ internal parts will generally yield enough DNA to allow investigators to identify not only whether there were birds, but “down to precisely the exact type of bird,” said Ms. Higgins.

Q: Don’t you think most of us want to be loved for who we are, as opposed to some artificially enhanced version of ourselves?
A: That will never happen. Are you out of your mind?

Joan Rivers on the enhancement imperative.

Slate says to quit slagging your Mama’s uterus:

It’s easier—for parents, doctors, educators—to say an obese toddler has a slow metabolism than to teach the family better eating and exercise habits. Since 1970, childhood obesity rates have quadrupled. If fetal programming mattered a lot, adult obesity increases would lag years behind. But they don’t. According to intelligence researcher James Flynn, the average IQ of the first wave of professional Asian-American immigrants was almost 10 points lower than that of white professionals; within one generation, the gap closed, suggesting that genes don’t shackle the mind. As Malcolm Gladwell points out: “There should be no great mystery about Asian achievement. It has to do with hard work and dedication to higher education.”

Although the price tag for genetic studies is dropping, clinicians’ expertise remains expensive, and that worries Brunner. “Certainly with the amount of money people are spending genotyping thousands of patients, they are finding that the quality of the phenotype data is crucial,” Brunner says. That’s why, he says, a ‘phenome project’ is needed to investigate connections between phenotypes. The idea has been proposed before but stalled for lack of funding.