In today's Remainders: new beginnings. Tim Bray, co-founder of XML, starts a new job at Google (and has his sights set on Apple); several Windows Phone 7 team members are leaving...to develop apps for Windows Phone 7; and more. More »
It's not a new idea to stick little gel pads onto mice and keyboards to cope with the strain of browsing the Internet all day long, but the PADandCLICK system for mice caught our eye because it actually looks comfortable. More »
by Eric Dondero
Rhode Island is having a big debate right now over toughening the States' seat belt law. Same old story. The Feds are dangling dollars over the heads of Little Rhody legislators if they'd only enact a Primary law enforcement bill. This means cops could stop a non-wearer for no other reason than for violation of the seat belt law.
Of course, it's the Democrats who are proposing the legislation. The bill has been initiated by Rep. Douglas Gablinske.
But surprisingly Gablinske has been receiving a great deal of criticism, from various constituencies.
One of his biggest critics has been his own friend, columnist Jim Baron of Woonsocket. Baron makes a uniquely 10th Amendment argument on the issue.
From The Woonsocket Call, "We don't need a mandatory Seat Belt law" March 14:
Where are the Tenth Amendment people on this? There is a growing movement of folks out there, they seem to be one of the many tributaries to the larger Tea Party movement, who want to re-assert the force and effect of the Tenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which says that any powers not directly granted to the federal government by the constitution, or denied to the states by the constitution are reserved to the states or to the people and the feds should keep their cotton-picking hands off it. (The constitution doesn’t have the cotton-picking part; I added that.)
Well, nowhere in the enumerated powers granted to the federal government does it say anything about seat belt laws. And the Congress knows that because it didn’t pass a seat belt law. No, instead it circumvented the constitution by misusing the public purse to bribe the states to do its bidding by offering them money. Sometimes, Congress does it the other way around, by misusing the public purse to extort states to do its bidding by threatening to withhold funds if they don’t.
The Tea Party movement has cleverly steered clear of social issues. But this is one area that could be considered a social matter - 10th Amendment and Federal Bribery of State Governments - that's a natural for Tea Party involvement.
Microsoft's already done a lot right with Windows Phone 7, and it's not even out until late this year. But after today's announcements, there's one lingering question: How can Windows Phone 7 possibly catch up, in terms of apps? More »
how can i gat a complete ciruit diagram for a automatic transfer switch (ats)-
specially the part that stats the engine shut it down.
Just Released Video... Fireworks fly in the EU...
European Parliament proceedings. The PVV (Party for Freedom), representatives from the Netherlands ask for a general accounting of travel expenses and other questionable expenditures in the budget. They are joined in by members of other parties from other nations seeking more transparency and openess in accounting.
At 3:25 in, the debate becomes heated. A Socialist member yells out that the PVV-ers are "Fascist," for suggesting such an inquiry. The PVV members respond in an animated fashion; a common Dutch hand expression for "screw you."
The female PVV member is Laurence Stassen. She is a former TV news reporter.
There are three PVV members serving in the Euro Parliament out of a total of 761. They are the third largest Dutch delegation.
You can watch a video of Laurence Stassen here. For more info Dutch Party for Freedom (PVV)
Hat tip Astute Bloggers
In tomorrow’s New York Times I write about the afterlife of the greatest medical disaster in history. Thalidomide, a drug women took for morning sickness in the late 1950s, caused thousands of devastating birth defects, such as the failure of limbs to develop. Even after the drug was banned, scientists had no idea how it interfered with growing arms and legs. In fact, fifty years later, they’re only just starting to figure it out.
This was a particularly interesting story to write coming after a piece I wrote for the Times last year about normal limb development. Now thalidomide is revealing a new player in the limb development game, a protein that no one knew about when I wrote my 2009 article. In science, very often the only way to understand how something works is to see what happens when it goes wrong.
PS: On Google Books, you can see a 1962 issue of Life with some stunning pictures from the Thalidomide years.
[Image: Science Museum (Thalidomide is currently legal for sale for leprosy and other diseases)]
There are many good people in Silicon Valley genetics doing great work. They don’t deserve to be dragged through the mud on your manic sleigh ride across the Internet. Linda: please shut up.
(John Mackey is the CEO of Whole Foods who created a federal regulations scandal by posting comments on the Internet)
For example:
Gene Ager (alias for Linda Avey) wrote:
It’s fine to hear your opinion of whether you’d choose to be tested but it’s just your view. I have no doubt that you and the people who share your perspective will some day greatly benefit from the more open-minded individuals who step forward and participate in these early days of genomic discovery. So, with all due respect, keep your head buried in the sand while the rest of us (yeah, mostly in the US) blaze new trails. Thank you, Glenn!
and
The Life and Times of Lilly Mendel (Linda Avey’s blog)
So if Andrew Pollack decides to take a swipe at this fledgling industry, he won’t be the first, or the last. It’s an easy bandwagon to jump on, along with the other nay-sayers, but there’s a growing wave of data-empowered people who won’t bat an eye, and who may just help lead us into a new age of personalized health that Andrew himself may find quite beneficial. Now that’s something to write about.
and a Google image search is a bonza of embarrassing photos:
Response of brown tree snakes (Boiga irregularis) to human blood
“Ten specimens of Boiga irregularis were presented with clean or bloody tampons. The latter were used by women during menses. Trial duration was 60 sec, intertrial interval was 24 hr, and the dependent variable was rate of tongue flicking (a measure of chemosensory investigation). Bloody tampons elicited significantly more tongue flicking than did control tampons. An additional snake is shown attacking and ingesting a soiled tampon, confirming that chemosensory interest was associated with predatory behavior.”
Bonus figure legend from the main text of the paper (we decided to spare you the actual figure):
“FIG. 1. (A) A brown tree snake investigates a soiled tampon suspended into its cage.
(B) Seconds later the snake bites the tampon. (C) About 2 min following the bite, the
snake is shown with only the string remaining unswallowed. This snake then struck and
swallowed a second soiled tampon.”
Thanks to Aaron for today’s ROFL!
Photo: flickr/jurvetson
Related content:
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Cooperation and individuality among man-eating lions.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: Friday the 13th special: Blood and tissue spatter associated with chainsaw dismemberment.
Discoblog: NCBI ROFL: fun with animals.
This.
Is.
AWESOME!!!
That is a model of the USS Enterprise-D from Star Trek: The Next Generation, created using an ion beam that guides vaporized chemicals and deposits them into a given shape. The amazing thing is that this model of the Big Little-E is only 8.8 microns (millionths of a meter) long! For comparison, a human hair is about 50-100 microns across. This image is magnified 5000 times.
I wonder if it comes with a tiny Wil Wheaton, too?
Tip o’ the VISOR to Digg.
Greeting all,
I know, when power angle is less than 90 degree, the system is stable. When it is more thant 90 degree it is not stable
the power flow formula is as below
P = Vs x Vr x Sin0 / X
Suppose, if we have a sytem with power angle of 30 de
Hello,
I'm into the analysis of welding joints & need to prepare a documents of welding symbols, need to do strength analysis, and so on..
I require AWS codes to do so.
Can anyone provide me a link to download AWS codes??
Thanks
Pramod
Sushi chefs in Japan are keeping a close eye on Doha, Qatar this week as delegates at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES) debate the future of their beloved bluefin tuna. The fish, a delicacy in Japan that can sell for more than $100,000 apiece, is being overfished, and convention delegates aim to prevent the tuna from becoming extinct altogether. The proposal on the table: A complete ban on international trade of the fish to allow stocks to regenerate.
The bluefin tuna ban was proposed by Monaco, and the vote will probably come up next week. Japan has already dispatched a delegation to Doha with the message that Japan won’t comply with a total ban, and would instead prefer a fishing quota. But quotas have failed to help the depleted bluefin tuna stocks thus far. Japan last year pledged to help meet an accord to slash the total catch in the eastern Atlantic and Mediterranean by 40 percent, although environmental groups charge that such quotas are routinely exceeded [AFP].
The European Union and the United States have come out in support of a total ban, since decades of overfishing has caused the number of bluefin in the Atlantic and Mediterranean to crash by more than two-thirds. Japan, meanwhile, hopes to fend off the ban by enlisting the support of developing nations in Africa and Latin America. Tokyo said that even if a ban is implemented, it could use a treaty technicality to opt out of the agreement by expressing “reservations,” and would then continue to import from other countries.
Meanwhile, at the world’s largest fishing market in Tokyo’s Tsukiji district, bluefish tuna fishermen began collecting signatures to oppose the ban. They said measures to prevent overfishing of the tuna should be implemented instead [The Asahi Shimbun]. Traders also fear a steep price hike for the bluefin, known as “kuro maguro” or black tuna in Japan. A piece of “otoro” or fatty underbelly now costs 2,000 yen (22 dollars) at high-end Tokyo restaurants [AFP].
The other bitter battle being played out at the CITES meeting is Zambia’s and Tanzania’s proposal for a one-time sale of ivory, so that they may clean out their stockpiles of ivory–collected, they say, from elephants who died natural deaths. So far, the proposal has been resisted by countries like Kenya that argue that such sales give cover to poachers who engage in “ivory-laundering,” and would increase poaching in the region.
Zambia and Tanzania both insist that they will funnel the $18.5 million they expect to earn from the sale into conservation efforts, but that claim has been met with skepticism. A recent report in the journal Science revealed a sharp increase in poaching in recent years–with much of the ivory trafficking running through Zambia and Tanzania.
Kenya and its allies have proposed supporting a bluefin tuna ban in exchange for greater protection for the elephants. However, this horse trading is viewed as controversial: Conservationists argue that every proposal should rise or fall on the basic of scientific evidence detailing the possible extinction of individual species, not as part of a political deal [The New York Times].
Related Content:
80beats: Scientists Say Ban Atlantic Bluefin Tuna Trade–and Sushi Chefs Shudder
80beats: Human Appetite for Sharks Pushes Many Toward Extinction
80beats: Are Fish Farms the Answer to World Hunger or a Blight on the Oceans?
80beats: Documentary on Endangered Bluefin Tuna Reels in Sushi Joints & Celebrities
80beats: Elephant-Lovers Worry About Controversial Ivory Auctions in Africa
80beats: Would Importing Ivory to China Fuel the Black Market?
Image: Wikimedia
As I promised a little while back, the European Space Agency has released new extremely high-res pictures of Phobos, one of the moons of Mars! Check this out:
Yegads. Click to embiggen, and see this in all its glory. This image, taken by the Mars Express spacecraft, has a resolution of 4.4 meters per pixel, meaning objects about the size of a two-car garage can be seen on the surface of Phobos. For comparison, this lumpy, battered moon (named for the Greek word for fear, a companion to Mars) is 27×22x19 kilometers (16×13x11 miles), so even though it’s on the tiny side, this is still a fantastic map of the surface.
And an important one as well: next year, Russia will be launching a probe called Phobos-Grunt (Phobos soil) that will attempt to land on the moon, collect a sample of its surface, and send it back to Earth! These images of Phobos will help the Russians figure out the best place to land.
On the ESA page linked above, you’ll also find a cool 3D anaglyph of Phobos, and if you want to stay up to date on all this, check out the Mars Express blog, too.
Image credit: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
The European Space Agency has released the latest pictures of the Martian moon Phobos, taken by the European Mars Express (MEX) probe during its recent flybys. On one flyby, MEX skimmed just 42 miles above the surface of Phobos, which is the closest any manmade object has ever gotten to the little Martian moon.
The image above is from a flyby that brought MEX within 63 miles of the surface; its High Resolution Stereo Camera took photographs that have a resolution of 14 feet per pixel. The images are being scrutinized by the Russian space agency as it tries to settle on a landing site for its ambitious Phobos-Grunt mission next year–the two potential landing sites are marked by red dots in the picture above. The Phobos-Grunt mission aims to collect a soil sample from Phobos, and then to return the sample to Earth for analysis.
Phobos is an odd little moon: it’s a potato-shaped rock measuring only 12 miles by 17 miles. Scientists believe the moon is relatively porous, but say its origin is still open to debate. Researchers suspect the moon is simply a collection of planetary rubble that coalesced around the Red Planet sometime after its formation. Another explanation is that it is a captured asteroid [BBC News]. Scientists believe that Phobos is being slowly pulled towards Mars, and tidal forces are expected to tear it apart one day.
The moon has drawn more attention lately, because it’s increasingly seen as a steppingstone for Mars-bound astronauts. Last month, NASA shifted its focus from sending humans back to the moon to a “flexible path” that includes the moons of Mars as potential destinations. The idea is that low-gravity locales such as Phobos (and Mars’ other moon, Deimos) should be easier to get to because they’re more accommodating for landing and ascent [MSNBC].
Related Content:
80beats: Photo Gallery: The Best Views From Spirit’s 6 Years of Mars Roving
80beats: Dis-Spirit-ed: NASA Concedes Defeat Over Stuck Mars Rover
80beats: New Images Reveal Traces of Ancient (and Life-Friendly?) Martian Lakes
DISCOVER: Russia’s Dark Horse Plan to Get to Mars describes the Phobos-Grunt mission
Image: ESA/DLR/FU Berlin (G. Neukum)
When small earthquakes rumbled beneath northern Texas in 2008 and again in 2009, scientists were puzzled. While they expect to see seismic activity in active zones like Haiti, Chile, and Turkey, where disasters have already struck this year, the area around Fort Worth, Texas sees only rare and tiny seismic activity. Now, some Texas seismologists are arguing that techniques used in conjunction with natural gas exploration provide a plausible explanation for what’s going on.
North Texas sits atop the Barnett Shale, one of the several giant layers of shale in the United States believed to hold a truly massive amount of natural gas. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that 200 trillion cubic feet of natural gas may reside in shales nationwide [USA Today]. The reason these giant deposits have remained largely untapped, however, is that shale isn’t particularly porous, and so extracting it requires drillers to fracture the rock in multiple places.
However, according to seismologist Brian Stump, it’s not the actual fracturing that may be to blame in this earthquake case. Rather, he points to “injection wells,” which are a way to get rid of the waste water that this gas exploration creates. Each natural gas well produces millions of gallons of wastewater that can be contaminated with salt, chemicals and crude oil. Injection wells dispose of the waste by forcing it deep into the ground under high pressure [Houston Chronicle]. Stump’s team used records of 11 of the tiny earthquakes (which at a magnitude of about 3.0 were too small to cause damage on ground level) to narrow the search for the quakes’ source. Those records pointed them to an area near the Dallas-Fort Worth airport where an injection well sits.
Because that well is close to an old fault, Stump’s team says the heat or pressure that the massive discharge of waste water creates is a plausible explanation for Texas’ quakes. However, they are careful to note that this is simply a plausible answer, and that the link hasn’t been proven. Understandably, Chesapeake Energy, which owns the well, was quick to reiterate that latter point, though the company closed the well last year as a precaution. “A direct, causal relationship between saltwater disposal wells and seismic activity in the DFW area has not been scientifically proven,” spokesman Brian Murnahan wrote in a statement. He declined to elaborate [Houston Chronicle].
Related Content:
Discoblog: Chile Quake Shifted Earth’s Axis, Shortened the Length of a Day
80beats: Why Chile’s Massive Earthquake Could Have Been Much Worse
80beats: Where in the World Will the Next Big Earthquake Strike?
80beats: Satellite Images Show the Extent of Haiti’s Devastation
80beats: The Earth *Really* Moved: Chilean Quake Shifted a City 10 Feet to the West
80beats: Geothermal Energy Project May Have Caused an Earthquake
Image: Energy Information Administration (map of major shale gas deposits)
David Brin is a Sentient Developments guest blogger.
I've been recording and posting some brief (for me) monologues on YouTube, starting with
Space Exploration Part 1 - Planning our next steps in beyond Earth ... followed by
Space Exploration Part 2 - Mining the sky: Are there economic incentives out there? ... and then
Space Exploration Part 3: The Big Picture, Where is the excitement? And what about warp drive? Finally, and just posted, there is
Space Exploration Part 4: Ambitious technologies for space: Space tethers, solar sails and space elevators.
More space-related postings will go up soon, plus some fun rants about SETI, andon the (crazy) notion of "cycles" of falling civilizations.
Nature interviews David Brin on scientists writing fiction.
I was also interviewed for the new documentary “The People vs. George Lucas.” I have no idea - yet - whether they used their footage of me appropriately. I attempted to be circumspect and speak well of Lucas -- where he deserved it. For example, I loved the “Young Indiana Jones Chronicles” and adored “The Empire Strikes Back.” So my disappointment in the films that followed came honestly... leading to my participation as editor and “prosecutor” in the book STAR WARS ON TRIAL. (by far the best and most fun way to explore these issues!)
Those guys at the SETI Institute sure have chutzpah! They plan to tun their first SETIcon August 13-15 at the Hyatt Regency, Santa Clara. “The Search for Life in the Universe in Science Fact and Science Fiction!” Thus perpetuating the myth that they love science fiction.... only don’t mention any possibility that the universe might -- just might -- be different, even slightly, than their standard model. Watch how quickly any alternate scenario is dismissed as “crazy science fiction stuff.” Anybody planning to attend? Oh, don’t get me wrong, it should be fun and interesting in its own right. The topic has fascinated my, all my life and I am glad the are pursuing the worthy search... (as opposed to some of their other, cultlike activities.) But if anyone is interested in some questions to raise....
Denialism includes “denial of progress.” One of the most insidious poisons going around, spread not only by the mad right but also by the lazier and more self-indulgent portions of the left, has been the notion that progress has failed. Even when wagging their fingers at us, in hope that we’ll become better people, Hollywood films like Avatar emphasize guilt and despair as motivators to become better people. Say what? Exactly how is that supposed to work? Instead of ... well, how about pride in what we’ve accomplished and encouragement that we can do more? Directors like James Cameron are sincere. They mean well. They really do want to propel us forward. They genuinely hope their guilt trips will make us better people... while showing in their films a belief that the goal is impossible to achieve! Which makes it all the more tragic that their messages kill the very ambitions they aim to stoke. The ambition to accomplish great things.
In fact, civilization is not vile and useless. Progress happens. It has never been happening faster. See just this one short summary for a partial list of reasons to feel restored faith in our can-do spirit. Of course, the list was compiled by some folks at Cato, who give all the credit to globalization and none to intelligent planning. But the facts still are what they are.
esson number one in human motivation, Jim. Guilt trips aren’t as effective as pep talks that positively reward and praise people for the great stuff they have already done, encouraging them to strive harder to move forward even faster. Go back to school. Re-take psych 1.
Murray Hill might be the perfect candidate for this political moment: young, bold, media-savvy, a Washington outsider eager to reshape the way things are done in the nation's capital. And if these are cynical times, well, then, it's safe to say Murray Hill is by far the most cynical...After the Supreme Court declared that corporations have the same rights as individuals when it comes to funding political campaigns, the self-described progressive firm took what it considers the next logical step: declaring for office....
=== SCIENCE ===
I provided two papers in the psychological research volume Pathological Altruism, edited by Barbara Oakley, Ariel Knafo, Guruprasad Madhavan and David Sloan Wilson (Oxford University Press). This volume takes on a once verboten topic -- can surficially beneficent or altruistic behavior sometimes be motivated by more unsavory drives like aggression, egotism or even rapacious self-interest? Can it even hurt the one who is being helped? My chapters are: "Self-Addiction and Self-Righteousness" and "A Contrarian Perspective on Altruism: The Dangers of First Contact". Those interested will have to wait at least half a year for Oxford to publish the volume. But make note, now. It will be worth the wait. (It also proves I am still doing science... albeit in the form of continuing guerilla raids outside my formal PhD!)
Not that I disagree... but the study was done by a liberal atheist. 😉 In fact, the lurid headline disguises an interestingly more complex article about whether higher general intelligence is associated with “evolutionarily novel” traits -- or much more recent adaptations -- like nocturnal activity (dependent upon artificial light), complex discourse.
The author argues that humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel. So more intelligent children may be more likely to grow up to be liberals. This jibes closely to my “horizons” model that saitiation trades off against the radius of inclusion, how widely you feel your sense of kinship extends, in space, time, and kind. The satiation tradeoff only works if a person has both certain personality traits (including satiability) and enoigh empathy-imagination.
=== MISC! ===
The worlds first commercial brain-machine interface.
See Mike Treder, of the Institute on Ethics in Technology, write about basics of health care.
Another for the predictions registry... e-readers like the Amazon Kindle. Now see this from EARTH (1989) “That's enough for now. More than enough. Go feed your pets. Get some exercise. I slipped some readings into your plaque. Go over them by next time. And don't be late.” Hm? Anybody know an earlier hit on this?
I wish I could find where I also predicted this! That nerves are only the flashiest active elements in the brain. The so-called “support” cells may be just as important, multiplying vastly the number of “active” elements and making the human brain that much harder to emulate!
And finally, some some political items I had lying around...
A TRICK TO DEFEAT THE FILIBUSTER
I've mentioned before that the New York Times ran an especially cogent article -- Mr. Smith Rewrites the Constitution, by Thomas Geoghegan -- about the absurd filibuster, its unjustified constitutional context, and possible ways around it. It’s one of the most enlightening legal articles I've read. I like especially Gohegan’s recommendation that Vice President Joe Biden simply rule from the bench that his own constitutional powers have been abridged.
On further consideration, in fact, the “Biden Option” could be even simpler than Gohegan suggests. Instead of the vice president using his presiding powers to rule against the cloture process, he can arrange for circumstances that simply bypass cloture, on a constitutional quirk. Here’s how. Simply coordinate enough Democratic Senators in order to arrange for a perfect match of the predictable, lockstep GOP nay vote. Say the result is a 41-41 tie, at which point Biden says:
"The vote for cloture being a tie, the US Constitution takes precedence over any mere Senate procedural rule. I shall now cast the tie-breaking vote. I vote 'Yes' for cloture. The motion carries, and debate on this bill shall close 30 hours hence." BANG!
The great thing about this approach is that it leaves Republicans with no wriggle room at all. Their sole option is to evade the tie, by changing some Republican votes from nay to yea! But the Democrats have far more inherent flexibility. Up to twenty extra Democratic senators may lurk in the cloakroom, ready to descend and vote either way -- to restore the tie or else using those GOP "yeas" to help add up toward a regular 60-vote cloture.
Sure it will be decried as trickery. So?
=== Miscellanea ==
The fundies have made it blatant and open: ”Science fiction is intimately associated with Darwinian evolution. Sagan and Asimov, for example, were prominent evolutionary scientists. Sci-fi arose in the late 19th and early 20th century as a product of an evolutionary worldview that denies the Almighty Creator. In fact, evolution IS the pre-eminent science fiction. Beware!”
See an interesting, if myopic, discussion of why economists failed to see the bubble crisis coming. And sure, none of them mention crackpot theories like my “Betrayal of the Smarter Sons.” I can’t blame them. That one was pretty bizarre, even if it contained some possible validity.
The honest truth is that I suspect other reasons. Oligarchy is an especially pernicious human trend that's rooted in our genes and also in capitalism's very roots. Marx was right that it is the ultimate, recurring threat. He was wrong to say that there aren't solutions that can keep capitalism vibrant, competitive and creative, for generations at a stretch. But those solutions tend to be "captured" by smart proto-oligarchs, much in the way that parasitic viruses and bacteria adapt to attack hosts in new ways.
Right now our immune system cannot adapt to oligarchy-driven distortions because our immune system (politics) has been suppressed by "culture war." Throw in some deliberate sabotage by certain hostile foreign elements and you have a theory that is more than adequate... if far too dramatic for anyone but a science fiction author to concoct or credit.
Too bad, since economic and political thinkers used to ponder a bigger picture. Krugman and Galbraith are peering at individual trees. They do not see the forest.
-- Is the Iraq War over? ---
enough for now....
 Eureka! Science News | Banana beats anti-HIV drugs Independent This novel research from the University of Michigan Medical School found BanLec, "a jacalin-related lectin isolated from the fruit of bananas, ... Bananas enlisted to help stop spread of HIVMontreal Gazette Bananas 'may be key to fight Aids'The Press Association Chemical in Bananas Could Help Prevent the Spread of HIVIndyPosted (blog) AnnArbor.com -AIDSmeds.com HIV/AIDS Treatment News -Natural Products Industry Insider all 40 news articles » |
Hello, I was looking at CR4 forum: could you help me with this electrical question please:
On a HV network if I have a cable for which I know the sending and recieving MW/MVA and MVAr (say between two buses), how can I describe/define how 'loaded' the cable is if I compare it to a parall
Keith Grimaldi of Eurogene writes in response to a comment thread at Daniel MacArthur’s Genetic Future:
@AndrewYates
“Is there a law in the UK about providing medical advice without a medical license?”I don’t understand your (and Sherpas) issues with what is medicine and what is not. Is it actually against the law to give medical advice if you are not a medical doctor? Is it against the law to give it DTC widely and freely as many government sites do (NHS, CDC, NIH, etc)? What about the pharmacist who advises me on medicines? What about buying ranitidine DTC in the supermarket? Where does medicine begin and end? What are the terms that define what has to be limited to a medical doctor and transmitted by the doctor directly to the patient? It seems that a lot of what you and Steve talk about as “doing medicine” apply to a whole load of stuff that is routinely done by non-medics, with no particular problems.
What makes 23andme with their (non-invasive) test “doing medicine” compared to say the NCI Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool? Especially as we are often reminded that classic risk assessments are more accurate than genetic tests. If that is the case then why is it not a problem that there are so many sites offering risk assessments with these more accurate algorithms, why are they OK DTC but genetic testing is not? What is the fundamental difference?
As far as I can see none of the DTC companies are making diagnoses or actually advising treatment – that I would agree is generally the realm of the medical doctor, but not always, unless it’s against the law for my pharmacist to advise me to take a ‘flu medication).
The lines are blurry and the regulation is poor but it’s not clear why DTC is being singled out for your collective attacks. You may not like the marketing methods (I would say that you certainly don’t), you might not think them useful as tests, on these I can understand your reasons. I don’t understand your reasons for thinking that it’s an illegal activity and that only medical doctors should be allowed to do it.
“why DTC is being singled out for your collective attacks”
Because genomics belongs as common medical practice, and the way to achieve that is to shed the groupies and get serious about how to actually apply genomic medicine in actual practice.
“Is it actually against the law to give medical advice if you are not a medical doctor?”
Yes.
Think: law. Can you give legal advice if you are not a juris doctor? That depends on how you represent yourself and what kind of contracts you solicit for the advice you “give.”
“Is it against the law to give it DTC widely and freely as many government sites do (NHS, CDC, NIH, etc)?”
“What about the pharmacist who advises me on medicines?”
What a pharm tech can tell you over the counter is more aggressively regulated than anything in a medical office. Further, (and I’m going to get in trouble for this someday but) Pharmaceutical salespeople are specifically selected for their complicit ignorance so that they don’t accidentally disclose protected information about the drug. If you want to amuse yourself, pull out wikipedia in front of a drug rep and start telling them about their own drugs in front of a medical doctor.
“What makes 23andme with their (non-invasive) test “doing medicine” compared to say the NCI Breast Cancer Risk Assessment Tool?”
“Invasive” is a matter of relationship, not necessarily physical contact. “Information” itself cannot form a relationship with an individual to produce medical advice in the same way that the source code of software itself cannot to produce results. Note: “non-invasive” actually means “less invasive” with the implication being “less invasive than traditional surgery.”
Also: It’s not unlawful for an agency of law to publish medical science —even if edited for “layperson’s consumption.”
Commentary:
I am receptive to learn how 23andMe and Navigenics actually intended genetics for real application in medicine when they explicitly forbid that practice in their contract.
Yah, I got the memo: Everybody just chill, this is for the greater good.
Yah, well: I didn’t see any greater good. I just saw new people telling me what I should be “free” to think. I just saw celebrities gorging on cake while everyone else scrambled for bread. And I saw the same pharma psyops and the same condescending licensing games —just new people, and this time, they had the gall to tell me that “this is freedom.”
Now we all can see that the dream is dying, and we all can see you just wanted to buy horses and play tin soldiers. Hurry up and die so next generation can step on your corpse without tripping. Nice website.
