“An interest in protecting these babies”

Original story is at CNN

Basically, the state governments have ordered that newborns be tested for certain genetic diseases. Their DNA is stored “indefinitely” in many states. The reasons given are so that the tests can be repeated later on (presumably as more accurate diagnostics become available), and to identify remains.

Art Caplan, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, says he understands why states don’t first ask permission to screen babies for genetic diseases. “It’s paternalistic, but the state has an overriding interest in protecting these babies,” he says.

However, he added that storage of DNA for long periods of time is a different matter.

“I don’t see any reason to do that kind of storage,” Caplan says. “If it’s anonymous, then I don’t care. I don’t have an issue with that. But if you keep names attached to those samples, that makes me nervous.”

The state. Has an “overriding interest”. Right. “Overriding” as in “it overrides the parents’ interest” to protect their child, potentially FROM the state?

Not to worry, though. ‘Cause someone from the government says that you can trust the government to handle this responsibly. Brad Therrell: “If my children’s DNA were in one of these state labs, I wouldn’t be worried a bit.” (So either he doesn’t have kids, or their DNA is excluded?) Article: “The specimens don’t always stay in the state labs. They’re often given to outside researchers — sometimes with the baby’s name attached.”

Apparently the screening is paid for by insurance companies, who then get told the results of any positive test.

I realize that CNN thrives on stirring up controversy… but it’s interesting. The state is so determined to “protect” children from potentially having a genetic disease – no, they’re interested in screening for those. The state is so determined to “protect” children by having another way to identify them in case of tragedy – so long as the tragedy is AFTER they’re born.

The genetic testing “started in the 1960s”. Now “states mandate that newborns be tested for anywhere between 28 and 54 different conditions, and the DNA samples are stored in state labs for anywhere from three months to indefinitely, depending on the state.” List by state, apparently in New Mexico it’s only 3 months, at least now.

Yes, I see the use in having large data sets on the frequency of specific genetic markers. Yes, I see the use in retaining the original DNA to repeat tests, either to test the stored DNA or to validate a new test method. The concern here is the government decree that this information will be collected, without the parents even knowing about it in most cases, and without any mechanism in place for that information to be removed from the database.

Another big argument in favor of avoiding health insurance, and hospitals. Why give “them” any more access to my kids than I can help?

“Overriding interest”… not.

Today I…

Prepared a lecture on molecular (solution) UV/Vis and fluorescence spectroscopy. Mostly recycled from last year, but with a new explanation of the equations.

Gave the lecture.

Helped students burn gum wrappers and dissolve the ash in concentrated acid.

Tried to figure out why the department’s atomic absorption instrument thinks that the aluminum HCL is actually vanadium. Failed.

Told the students they could analyze their samples next week.

Sent off graduate and undergrad transcripts to the portfolio service, and requested my PhD advisor add a letter of recommendation.

Finally ate lunch. Dinner? Whatever.

Prepared for the optional evening help session.

Wrote this.

Happy 43rd!

My parents got married 43 years ago as of today – wishing I could be there to celebrate with them! Still praying I find someone to last as long with 🙂

(Also, just found out that they and my sister are coming up to visit in a couple weeks, very excited about that! TN’s a nicer place to visit than Michigan, although I’m definitely biased on that. Local suggestions welcome, if anyone reads this but them…)

“Josh is – a geeky chemist.”

According to the eHarmony commercial just now.  And they managed to find him someone nice.

Maybe I should give it another chance…

Thank you for making my point for me

I don’t usually do political/current events posts because there’s not usually much point, but CNN’s coverage of (an extreme) Muslim response to the Pope’s speech in which he described Islam as a religion “spread by the sword” is too amusing to pass up:

The pope on Sunday said he was “deeply sorry” about the angry reaction to his speech last week in which he cited the words of a Byzantine emperor who characterized some of the teachings of Islam’s Prophet Muhammad as “evil and inhuman” and referred to spreading Islam “by the sword.”

This is from the story about the “al Qaeda-linked extremist group” that “warned Pope Benedict XVI on Monday that he and the West were ‘doomed,’ as protesters raged across the Muslim world to demand more of an apology”.

So in other words, the Pope quotes someone else (presumably with ample first-hand experience with the ways in which Islam was spread at the time) as saying that Islam is spread “by the sword”.

In an amazing effort to prove the late emperor correct,

• “The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups that includes al Qaeda in Iraq, issued a statement on a Web forum vowing to continue its holy war against the West,” reportedly saying that “We will break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose head tax, then the only thing acceptable is a conversion (to Islam) or (killed by) the sword.”
• “People [in Indian-controlled Kashmir] burned tires and shouted ‘Down with the pope.'”
• In Iraq, “angry demonstrators burned an effigy of the pope in Basra.”
• “Muslims threw firebombs at seven churches in the West Bank and Gaza Strip over the weekend.”

(All this from the same article.)

The Pope’s response was, amazingly enough, to back pedal and say that “the remarks came from a text that didn’t reflect his own opinion.”

Do people even listen to themselves? If someone gave a speech in which they quoted someone else as saying that people who adhere to a certain set of beliefs have a tendency to bully people, does it really make sense to object by… bullying people? And does it really make sense for the person who gave the speech with the quote to claim, after seeing the bullying, that he doesn’t agree that this tendency exists?

First “Dr”

Got my first mail addressed to “Dr.” today — well, first not counting junk magazines that assume I’m “Dr.” because they heard I exist. (Actually it’s very nice of them to do that; good way to weed them out automatically.)

Science post of the week: Haven’t done much in the lab to talk about; last week before I move down the hall for my postdoc. That means cleaning out my desk this afternoon. Joy. I did finish rewriting the camera control stuff, which was pretty straightforward except for one little fact that doesn’t seem to be mentioned anywhere in the manual: The Andor Newton camera has *two* A/D circuits, one of which is limited to reading out at 50 kHz (which takes about 10 seconds). The other runs at 50 kHz, 1 MHz and 2.5 MHz. Guess which one answers back if you don’t specify which one to use? 🙂 It was at least a week figuring out why my version was stuck at 50 kHz when the vendor-supplied software could go the full range.
Moral: If there’s a function provided to ask the hardware what it can do — use it. Even if you’re sure you already know the answer.

Rational disagreement

Are [Intelligent Design advocates] wrong about that? Probably. But to treat them like pariahs for wanting to examine the question? This is hardly rational.

On my home PC, 24 hours a day, I run Berkeley’s SETI@HOME, a distributed processing system that scans the skies looking through the random cosmological noise for anything that shows signs of being generated by sentient beings. To fulminate that looking for signs of intelligence behind a phenomenon is “unscientific” is to brand the entire SETI project “unscientific.”

To say that it is “unscientific” to look for signs of engineering is also to suggest that no scientist can look at Mt. Rushmore and tell you whether humans carved it or if it was simply the product of erosion. It is to suggest that if paleontologists uncover a 50,000 year old stone hearth with cooking utensils they cannot possibly tell you whether those were the product of natural forces or if people put them together.

All those geologists who claim they can tell the difference between an arrowhead and a funny-shaped rock must not be scientists either, eh?

http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1121930625.shtml

just what I didn’t want

Apparently, searching Google for “bird flu” turns up a number of interesting ads, including one for “Great deals on Bird Flu” at eBay.

This got me wondering… what would be the strangest search on Google that still gives an eBay ad for the search phrase? Not every combination does, of course.

Personal best (in about 3 minutes of trying before I ran out of ideas): “curious spoons” gives a single ad for Amazon: “Spoons for sale! Up to 68% off spoons.” (I guess 68% is as far as they can go without losing money, which says interesting things about the profit margins on spoons.)

So, a contest: The best search that turns up an eBay ad for something one *does not want* — must be an ad for that particular item, not something sold to prevent, cure, or get rid of it — gets a prize. Prize to be determined later, when enough entries are received. (Or the first entry, if as few people read this as I expect.) Feel free to suggest a prize along with your submission. 🙂

Still unemployed

… not that I’m looking … yet ….

But my sister *does* have a job now, starting some time this week. She’ll be a news clerk at the local paper (really local, not a Scripps-Howard), and it sounds like a very good place to work — nice boss, who also started as a news clerk, and won’t be too ogrish to work for. Which I guess means she’s not likely to start a Horrible-Job-Blog, which isn’t a bad thing. Only drawbacks identified so far is that it’s in the next town, which means a bit of a commute, and that she has to pass a drug test before starting. The second one shouldn’t be a problem, of course, unless she celebrates with poppyseed cake.

Of course, this means that, not only did she finish her thesis before I even started mine, she also beat me to the world of RealJobs.

Congratulations, Sarah, and may it be a great (first) job 🙂

Public Service Announcement (I)

In the interests of serving the public at large… well… and amusing myself… and to see if it boosts search engine results… quickie answers to common search requests that found a post here:

* Fresh juice might last a couple hours or a couple days. It probably depends on what you mean by “lasts”… the more delicate vitamins might start to break down within an hour of juicing. Other juices might be fine for a week or more. I vaguely remember a lab experiment some undergrads did when I taught one semester that tried to measure the amount of Vitamin C in orange juice over time; I don’t remember the results. (In general, if you want fresh stuff to last: Keep it covered (so oxygen can’t get in) and keep it in the dark (some vitamins are light sensitive).)
* You can’t download music here. Sorry.
* “Twisted Whiskers” cards/etc. are vaguely eerie; I don’t sell them, I don’t like them, you won’t find them here. Try Hallmark or someplace if you must get your distorted-animal fix right this instant. (Better the cards than bonsai kittens, I guess.)
* “Ineffective communication” is communication that somehow isn’t effective. Apparently this has been studied; try professional advice instead of mine.
* Wild ferrets are carnivorous, but they also may eat fruit, nuts, and vegetables. Or they may not; opinions differ. If you have a ferret, let me know what works.
* If you’re going to experiment on mold in fruit juice, make sure you design the experiment carefully, with proper controls, and that you pick the parameters (temperature, type of juice, type of mold, source of mold, amount of mold in the inoculation, whatever) carefully. If you come up with interesting results that the scientific journals don’t want, submit them here and I’ll publish them. I’ll even review them by peering at them first. “Yep, that’s data,” I’ll say. “And there’s a conclusion, and behold! a graph. Immediately accepted.”
* Finally, I have no help at all for the people looking for Kinkade pictures with fluorescent paint on them, juice from the eyes, corn ballers, or mono lab results. Just remember, Google doesn’t know everything, and some stuff you probably don’t want to find anyway.

In other, happier news, I’m no longer getting hundreds of requests a day from scripts trying to advertise porn websites in my logs. After a month or so of trying to deflect them (with diminishing success), suddenly all is quiet.

EDIT: More attempts, but all foiled by the marvelous new plugin Referer-Karma. Like Spam Karma (same author), but to allow/block referers using the same blacklists and checks. *Very* nice.