Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Why RNAi matters to me.
I know very little about biology. Just enough to enjoy reading Pharyngula (though I had to go look up what it meant) for the overview PZ Myers provides. When he gets going into the details, I'm usually left behind.
And the math behind a lot of the science reporting done by Carl Zimmer is beyond me as well.
But I turned to both of these sources this morning when I first heard that the Nobel in Physiology/Medicine had been awarded to Fire & Mello, because I knew a little about what their work in RNAi (RNA interference) means from a very personal level. That's because my family has a hereditary disease something like Huntingtons, and RNAi is about the only hope out there for a cure.
No, I don't have the disease (Machado-Joseph Disease, or Spino-cerebullar ataxia type 3 - MJD/SCA-3 for short). But my sister does. And we've seen it kill a number of other family members, up close and personal. There's a small enough population with the disease that it doesn't get a lot of attention or research money. But the basic research that Fire & Mello have done has opened up some possible doors, and there is a chance that there will be some treatment available for suppressing the gene sequence responsible for the disease in time to do my sister some good.
What's this got to do with UTI? Well, go look at the sites linked above, and you'll see that the work recognized by the Nobel committee is a solid example of the theories of evolution being applied.
Yeah, I take that Creationism crap very seriously. It's personal.
Jim Downey
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Rage
It saddens me to hear of a young person with a terrible medical problem. The discovery of RNAi appears to be very promising.
I am enraged by the religious crap used to thwart scientific research; creationism, soul formation, god's plan, etc. How is it possible for people to not understand, or not care, that preventing or delaying medical discoveries causes real, actual people to suffer? It is beyond my comprehension.
Stem cell research
Yeah, the stem cell research 'debate' is another place where this shows up, and it just drives me to distraction to hear the Fundies equate a cluster of cells with real, living people, all because of something their Shaman told them.
Ugh.
Jim Downey
"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
The fundies in a nutshell
Every sperm is sacred, yada yada... the right to life begins at conception and ends at birth. (But begins again after brain death. See: Terri Schiavo.)
- No More Mr. Nice Guy!