Scientific Link of Sugar and Diabetes

Sugar Causes Diabetes!

1) The more sugar you eat, the more likely you are to develop diabetes.
2) Calories from sugar are worse for your health than those from other sources.
3) There is no difference between high fructose corn syrup and cane sugar, for causing diabetes.

Scientific Unintended Consequences

As a scientist, there are lots of cool things we can do in the laboratory to prevent or cure disease. Some of these things when practice in the real world can come back and bite us in the ass. I am not saying that we should not therefore procedure with the real world experiment but that we should think about their ramifications and make contingency plans.



Just because we can ....

Health Care of the Future

There are numerous ethical issues dealt with in this article. For example, if you are Steve-Jobs-rich, you can afford it. Insurance will not pay for it. Note: Steve Jobs died anyway. The patient in this article is still alive.

Whole genome sequencing - Identifying mis-expressed genes as targets for therapy

A New Sars-like virus

To date there is a high death rate among patients, 50% (6/12).
It is unlikely to be easily transmitted from person to person.
Symptoms: Serious respiratory infection, fever, cough.
Most infections have come from the middle east.

Patient dies in UK

Of Mice and Men

When it comes to disease, mice are not like man. 150 drug trials and 17 billion dollars later, we now know why.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/12/science/testing-of-some-deadly-diseases-on-mice-mislead-report-says.html

Frank Bruni on Immigration

"Their countries of origin tend to be different from those of the illicit arrivals in my grandfather’s day. Their skin might be darker. But they’re really his kin. My kin. And to see them as some new breed of takers or moochers is to deny history and indulge in a cynical generalization, tinged with an insidious racism, whose targets simply change over time."


Frank Bruni -The New York Times on Immigration