As if getting that song stuck in my head wasn't bad enough...

[trinityvixen]

Is today really the day to just piss me off left and right? Must be a Thursday...

Item the first that pisses me off: the reportage in this NYT article about the skin cell-to-stem cell process

If you want to send a monkey with only limited mastery of typing skills to do your science reporting for you, couldn't you send ME? I could fake it really good. Basically, the hoopla over this technique is being splashed on the front page and getting everyone excited--especially those opposed to stem cell research--and there are so many drawbacks and plain gaps in the information that are just brushed over so we can celebrate "WOO! WE FIGURED OUT THE STEM CELL ETHICAL PROBLEM!" Fuck you, there wasn't a problem--for the people using stem cells in research. And fuck you morer, no you haven't!

Short list of what's wrong with this "miracle solution":
1) Transfection is, at least for now, hardly ever a perfect process. Inserting genes, even when you target them to specific locations, is chancey. And the success rates vary wildly.
2) The paper admits that the mouse cells--NOTE THAT THIS HASN'T BEEN TRIED ON HUMAN CELLS--come from inbred mice. Anyone want to try to find analogous volunteers in our own species? Good luck. Also: ew.
3) 20% of the mice treated died of cancer. Great.

That last one is a doooooozy. So, basically, we're starting one MAJOR step back from starting to build tissues using stem cells and then this step, if it can be made, might also cause a disease we can't cure in 1/5 of the cases (if the numbers translate between species). Instead of starting with cells that we know actually are stem cells and working out fifteen million complications between having cells and creating new tissue, we're going to throw in thirty billion more complications just to arrive at where we could have started? NO THANK YOU.

Look, there are good things here, I don't deny it. Discovering that only four genes could initiate a phenotypic switch from skin to stem cell is major news. This could teach us so much about pleuropotency, you have no idea. But I don't enjoy the blanket encouragement that passes for reporting in The New York Times' "Science" section. Because all it did was jump up and down and screech about how this might solve the stem cell problem and devoted half the article to that and a few paragraphs to the real drawbacks and hurdles this technique creates as a potential therapeutic avenue. If you're going to report on science, report on the goddamn science. Save the ethical questions for that guy. The one with the column. You know the one I mean.

Oh, and pissy thing #2: Paris Hilton is already out of jail.

Supposedly, TMZ says, this length of stay--5 days--is normal for people with her conviction. I'd like to see some stats on that, personally. I wonder if that applies to people sentenced to 45 days or to the 23 days she was eventually given--would she have had to stay a full week, say, if she'd kept the 45-day sentence?

The police, of course, stress that she's not "out"--she's just been "reassigned" to house arrest. While I approve of keeping Paris Hilton on a permanent lo-jack thing (and equipping the rest of humanity with trackers so that we might avoid her for all time), who are you kidding? House arrest? Where she could, easily, grab more drugs and drinks and keep herself medicated (since she was apparently released "for medical reasons"--i.e. sobriety)? Right. Justice. Let's hope she has to like do thirty billion hours of community service or something. Oh, that's right, she does that just by "bringing joy into our mundane lives" with her ugly-ass, skank-bitch face.

That's not very feminist of me, perhaps, but I'd as soon apply the skank label to any guy who rose to fame for being rich and having sex on camera. A lack of reporting on that front shows the bias of the media, methinks. Whatever. Women don't want Paris in our clubhouse any way.

Comments

I was waiting for someone to bring up the Paris thing

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

I caught some of the live interview CNN was showing when word got out. You could tell the guy talking to reporters knew this was all pure bull. This was esp true when he said that her sentence was increased due to her being downgraded to house arrest.

Now, devil's advocate on the medical bit..... I'm willing to bet that what happened was an acute anxiety attack which began to loop on itself. If that was the case, then the argument to move her out of jail would have been an easy one for her lawyers to make (esp with the kind of money backing it all up). If this is indeed the case, then Paris may develop enough of a jail phobia as to really straighten up when threatened with it in the future.

But in short, she's getting off easy cause she has money. Not much you can say other than that............... ok there's always the "she promised to screw every police officer on demand" comment, but I was trying to stay away from that.

Re: I was waiting for someone to bring up the Paris thing

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I can sympathize with the anxiety attack thing, but it's bullshit. She can get her goddamned meds in the pokey. And there, at least, they'll CONTROL how many she takes.

Re: I was waiting for someone to bring up the Paris thing

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

You must remember that for Paris meds equals coke, booze, X, whatever she consumes off of strange people. So deprived of those things, and lacking any mental fortitude, she broke. Don't get me wrong, I still say this is pure BS...... but it's the type of BS they got to work for the right price.

Re: I was waiting for someone to bring up the Paris thing

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

If she had any care for her health, she'd stay in there away from those things. Ah well, lawyers aren't paid to make the client well, only to keep them happy.