The immortal cells of Henrietta Lack

A book review by Dwight Garner that really makes me want to get this book.

A Woman’s Undying Gift to Science

I put down Rebecca Skloot’s first book, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” more than once. Ten times, probably. Once to poke the fire. Once to silence a pinging BlackBerry. And eight times to chase my wife and assorted visitors around the house, to tell them I was holding one of the most graceful and moving nonfiction books I’ve read in a very long time.

A thorny and provocative book about cancer, racism, scientific ethics and crippling poverty, “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” also floods over you like a narrative dam break, as if someone had managed to distill and purify the more addictive qualities of “Erin Brockovich,” “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” and “The Andromeda Strain.” More than 10 years in the making, it feels like the book Ms. Skloot was born to write. It signals the arrival of a raw but quite real talent.
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The woman who provides this book its title, Henrietta Lacks, was a poor and largely illiterate Virginia tobacco farmer, the great-great-granddaughter of slaves. Born in 1920, she died from an aggressive cervical cancer at 31, leaving behind five children. No obituaries of Mrs. Lacks appeared in newspapers. She was buried in an unmarked grave.

To scientists, however, Henrietta Lacks almost immediately became known simply as HeLa (pronounced hee-lah), from the first two letters of her first and last names. Cells from Mrs. Lacks’s cancerous cervix, taken without her knowledge, were the first to grow in culture, becoming “immortal” and changing the face of modern medicine. There are, Ms. Skloot writes, “trillions more of her cells growing in laboratories now than there ever were in her body.” Laid end to end, the world’s HeLa cells would today wrap around the earth three times.
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Bought and sold and shipped around the world for decades, HeLa cells are famous to science students everywhere. But little has been known, until now, about the unwitting donor of these cells. Mrs. Lacks’s own family did not know that her cells had become famous (and that people had grown wealthy from marketing them) until more than two decades after her death, after scientists had begun to take blood from her surviving family members, without their informed consent, in order to better study HeLa.
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This is the place in a review where critics tend to wedge in the sentence that says, in so many words, “This isn’t a perfect book.” And “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks” surely isn’t. But there isn’t much about it I’d want to change. It has brains and pacing and nerve and heart, and it is uncommonly endearing.

"The U.S.is the largest holder of adjustable rate debt in the world

Another reason why the exploding deficits are such a concern.    Stephen Spruiell explains

Investor Bob Wiedemer likes to say that the United States is the largest holder of adjustable-rate debt in the world — nearly 40 percent of our public debt is short-term and must be refinanced each year.
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In this context, watch Rep. Paul Ryan — fast becoming the intellectual leader of the elected Right — as he puts the screws to an evasive Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner (ff to 62:15). Ryan confronts Geithner with a quote from a Wall Street Journal interview with OMB director Peter Orzag: "The 'unusual situation' the government finds itself in — with other countries willing to finance U.S. debt at low rates — 'won't last.' And, he added, 'When it flips, the question is how do you get ahead of that to avoid the downward spiral' of rising interest rates, a plunging dollar and a sinking economy."

Ryan looks up: "The vigilantes in the bond markets are going to get us, and the American people are going to get hurt.

Politicized science in the stem cell debate

After $3 billion was allocated in the state budget for embryonic stem cell research, there were in the words of Investors Business Daily,  " no cures, no therapies and little progress,"

Although scientists and pro-life advocates have denounced the dead-end science of embryo research for years, the political and ethical furor surrounding embryonic research appears to have obscured the undeniable superiority of adult stem cells' track record.  Not only have adult cells already produced dozens of treatments, but embryonic stem cells have been found prone to multiply out of control, causing tumors, and are less easily cultivated into specific types of tissue than their adult counterparts.

Meanwhile, due to advances in induced pluripotent stem cells, adult cells are now capable of transforming into various types of cells – an ability once thought to be held only by embryonic cells.

Dr. Bernadine Healy, the director of the National Institutes of Health under the Bush administration, wrote in a March 2009 U.S. News & World Report column that "embryonic stem cells, once thought to hold the cure for Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and diabetes, are obsolete."  The same month, however, President Obama reversed the Bush administration ban on taxpayer funding of embryo research, saying that "our government has forced what I believe is a false choice between sound science and moral values."

The IBD editors concluded that "it is ESCR researchers who have politicized science and stood in the way of real progress.

Politicized science again.

Calif. Quietly Shifts Fruitless Embryo Research Funds to Adult Stem Cells

California's Institute for Regenerative Medicine came into being five years ago, fueled by a conviction that the Bush administration's restriction on embryo-destructive research in the National Institutes of Health was stifling the progress of science.

Fish Oil: Known Benefits, Little Risk

The Wall St Journal reports fish oil pills may be able to spare some young people with signs of mental illness from a progression into fully developed schizophrenia.

A Study Finds Mental Benefit of Fish Oil  

No one knows what causes schizophrenia but one hypothesis is that people with the disease don't process fatty acids correctly, leading to damaged brain cells. Omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil could help brain cells repair and stabilize, the researchers speculate. 

Dr. Janet Wozniak of Harvard Medical School said the findings might reasonably cause psychiatrists to recommend fish oil to some patients because there are known benefits and little risk. 

This is not the first study that found a correlation between omega 3 fatty acids, mental illness and crime. 

In 2003 a study from South Africa saw the Clinical potential of omega-3 fatty acids in the treatment of schizophrenia.

The Australian press did a round-up of studies being conducted around the world studying the effects of omega-3 fatty acids on the brain in its article, Crime, punishment and a junk-food diet.  Can violent behavior be attributable at least in part to nutritional deficiencies?

The British prison trial at Aylesbury jail showed that when young men there were fed multivitamins, minerals and essential fatty acids, the number of violent offences committed in the prison fell by 37 per cent.

In 2006, the New York Times asked whether Eating Salmon Will Lower the Murder Rate?

In 2001, Dr. Joseph Hibbeln, a senior clinical investigator at the National Institutes of Health, published a study, provocatively titled "Seafood Consumption and Homicide Mortality," that found a correlation between a higher intake of omega-3 fatty acids (most often obtained from fish) and lower murder rates.
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Consider, for example, a study conducted by researchers in Finland. They tested prisoners convicted of violent crimes and found that they had lower levels of omega-3 fatty acids than ordinary, healthy subjects. Why? Omega-3's foster the growth of neurons in the brain's frontal cortex, the bit of gray matter that controls impulsive behavior. Having enough of these fatty acids may keep violent impulses in check.

I admit to being a bit of nut on the benefits of coffee, bear, chocolate, Vitamin D and Omega 3.    Here are a few on Omega -3

Fish Oil and Breast Cancer
Fish Oil after Heart Attacks
Fish Oil to Lose Weight Faster
Fish Oil to Help Asthma
More Salmon, Less Murder
Splendid Omega

A hustle of brownies

A supremacy of dinosaurs

A dignity of dragons

A fondle of unicorns

A shroud of ghouls

A hustle of brownies

A lawn of gnomes

A clangor of robots

A harem of sexbots

A culture of viruses

If you love new words as much as I, you'll enjoy the Stoakes-Whibley Natural Index of Supernatural  Collective Nouns over at the book of joe.

Critical thinking

Beyond Critical Thinking

For many students today, being smart means being critical....That very skill may diminish their capacity to find or create meaning and direction in the books they read and the world in which they live.
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our students may become too good at showing how things don't make sense. That very skill may diminish their capacity to find or create meaning and direction in the books they read and the world in which they live
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In training our students in the techniques of critical thinking, we may be giving them reasons to remain guarded—which can translate into reasons not to learn. The confident refusal to be affected by those with whom we disagree seems to have infected much of our cultural life: from politics to the press, from siloed academic programs (no matter how multidisciplinary) to warring public intellectuals. As humanities teachers, however, we must find ways for our students to open themselves to the emotional and cognitive power of history and literature that might initially rub them the wrong way, or just seem foreign. Critical thinking is sterile without the capacity for empathy and comprehension that stretches the self.

One of the crucial tasks of the humanities should be to help students cultivate the willingness and ability to learn from material they might otherwise reject or ignore.

via Joe Carter at First Thoughts

Why elitists are doomed to fail

Henry Oliner writes in the American Thinker.

Sowell further explains that the most educated among us know only the smallest fraction of what is to be known. That these highly educated people may know so much more than any one of us does not mean that they know a fraction as much as do all of us.
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When prices are determined by central planning or anointed experts, shortages and gluts appear. The failed economies of the old Soviet Union and other systems determined by elite central planning evidences the flaw of thinking that elites know more than the combined individuals that comprise a healthy market.

The Wisdom of Crowds beats the elites any day.

Invisible question marks

Taylor Mali, the WASP full-time poet who emerged from Poetry Slam  with  Typography from Ronnie Bruce on Vimeo.

The implosion of global warming science and the silence of the American media. UPDATED

While the British papers are chock full of stories about the implosion of global warming science and its grand narrative, there is almost nothing in the mainstream press except for the news Osama Bid Ladin has joined Al Gore in the ranks of the global warmists.  Global warming science implodes overseas: American media silent.

This is a great story. It has everything a media outlet could desire; scandal, conflict of interest (IPCC head Pauchuri runs companies that benefited from climate scare stories), government cover ups - why then, has this unraveling of the basis of climate science that posited catastrophic man made warming not been making any news at all in the United States?
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As global warming the political movement is losing its scientific justification, the American people - who will be asked to foot the bill to the tune of trillions of dollars if Obama goes ahead with his "green" plans - are grossly uninformed about the state of the debate.

What makes me so mad is that taxpayers as usual are footing the bill for scientists who should be investigated for fraud and, if convicted, jailed.    Take, for example, Michael Mann, whose famous hockey stick graph showing runaway global warming, that was later discredited because the data was made up.  TARP, the American Recovery Program awarded him $2.4 million.  The Wall St Journal called it  A case study in one job 'saved'

This scientific scandal is far worse than ENRON ever was.  Via James Delingpole, I read Phillip Stott, a British academic, who is foaming with righteous indignation, on the life and imminent death of the AGW scam.

As an independent academic, it has been fascinating to witness the classical collapse of a Grand Narrative, in which social and philosophical theories are being played out before our gaze. It is like watching the Berlin Wall [pictured] being torn down, concrete slab by concrete slab, brick by brick, with cracks appearing and widening daily on every face - political, economic, and scientific.
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And what can one say about ‘the science’? ‘The ‘science’ is already paying dearly for its abuse of freedom of information, for unacceptable cronyism, for unwonted arrogance, and for the disgraceful misuse of data at every level, from temperature measurements to glaciers to the Amazon rain forest. What is worse, the usurping of the scientific method, and of justified scientific scepticism, by political policies and political propaganda could well damage science sensu lato - never mind just climate science - in the public eye for decades

The UN climate panel, the IPCC lied to us about shrinking glaciers, increasing hurricanes, and rising seas and danger to the Amazon rainforest . What are they going to say to the children they terrified with tales of the Amazonian rainforest disappearing by the time they grew up?  The UN climate panel shamed by bogus rainforest claim reports the London Times.  Their claim that global warming would wipe out 40% of the Amazonian rainforest was based on an unsubstantiated claim by green campaigners with little or no scientific expertise.    Shamed indeed.

The Wheels Come Off for the IPCC  The IPCC has officially retracted claims that the Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035.The IPCC scientist admits Glaciergate was about influencing governments .  He knew the evidence was extremely suspect but wanted to put political pressure on governments to take action

The head of the UN Climate change panel, Rajenda Pachauri, facing calls to resign, has refused.  He got grants through bogus claims.  Some of the grants were worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, the Times of London reports.

The good news is  All the glaciers that aren't shrinking  The Himalayan glaciers are growing, not shrinking.  Alaska's Hubbard Glacier is growing.  Norwegian glaciers are growing as are glaciers in France, Switzerland, Canada, Mt. St Helens, New Zealand, Russia, Iceland and Argentina.

Roger Simon calls it the politicization of science.  And he's absolutely right.  This is what happens when people don't care about the truth.    Thank God for the Internet.

UPDATE. Russell Mead captures it all in one sentence.

The global warming meltdown confirms all the populist suspicions out there about an arrogantly clueless establishment invoking faked ’science’ to impose cockamamie social mandates on the long-suffering American people, backed by a mainstream media that is totally in the tank.

Last two weeks

These last two weeks have been a doozy.  First off, I succumbed to an old addiction.  The campaign of Scott Brown was just too delicious for this reformed political junkie and I fell off the wagon.  In my lifetime I've been involved in twenty, maybe more, campaigns and I've never seen one as well run and well-executed as Scott Brown's.   

One example is how well the campaign was prepared to deal with a close election. A whole cadre of volunteer attorneys from Massachusetts and around the country who flew in on their own dimes were employed on election day as polling observers in the major cities to make sure that every vote was counted and counted only once.  I spent 13 hours at a polling place in Boston in a cold and drafty gymnasium to watch everything that was going on.  I was told that I was the first observer they had ever seen.  Beating a political machine takes organization and planning and Brown had both. 

Hundreds of thousands of people in Massachusetts thought they could never make their voices heard in such a one-party state.  Furious at the condescension and sense of entitlement of politicians in both Massachusetts and Washington, discouraged voters were galvanized and electrified by Scott Brown's inspiration and common sense and turned out in droves.  The Scott heard round the world, indeed. 

A day to relish all the reports of his amazing victory and then I was off to Washington on a bus from my parish  for the March for Life.  Before my reconversion back to the Catholic Church after 40 years, I had heard little about the March because no mainstream media ever reported on it.  I was astonished at the size of the crowd -300-400 thousand on a cold winter day,  the overwhelming majority young, under 30.

The cluelessness of the mainstream media was evidenced by CNN Rick Sanchez's report who asked "Which side is represented the most? Do we know?" and the Newsweek reporter, Krista Gesaman who asked "Where are the young women?"  My friend Gil Bailie did yeoman's work in reporting on the march as opposed to what he calls the Lame Street Media.  Embedded there is a 7 minute video on the Media Malpractice at the March for Life that is well worth watching if only to hear from the young, vibrant women themselves.

Back home, early Saturday morning,  I came down with the flu the next day.  I thought it would be over in a day or two because I had my flu shot though I didn't get the swine flu shot, then in short supply and available for only the most vulnerable groups.    Now, of course, there's an over supply and you get the vaccine at any drug store.  I didn't and the flu I had was the swine flu and it kept me in bed, miserable, exhausted and achey for a week.

I've lots of posts to catch up, some of which  may be a bit dated, but I had to write them anyway.