Another false excuse to hate Christians, exemplified perfectly by the comments in this thread. Get facts straight first. And to those trolls who just posted downright hateful replies about Christianity... hate speech goes both ways my friends. Look out for the LAWS YOU MADE.
Actually, boycotts are TREMENDOUSLY effective, but that's hardly in the spirit of the games is it? Heck, there was an Olympics in Nazi Germany... not a very good one, but ONE nonetheless.
On my Italian side, I have a cousin (not really, but second and third cousins are still cousins in my family) who shot another cousin in an argument over borrowing a car. He didn't die and they managed to keep the police out of it, but still, not funny. Gang and mafia style life is praised far too much by Hollywood. It is NOT cool. Glorifying murderers doesn't help anyone. I love my heritage, but I would love it more if it were a tad less ... shady.
"What a bunch of teenaged pervs. They'll never get a girlfriend." --says Joe Cool as he returns to oogling his Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition while his wife's back is turned.
One more thing, SARS was NO JOKE. I don't know a single virologist (and I know a bunch) who thinks it wasn't serious. Should it have hit a hundred years ago, it would have killed hundreds of millions.
So a year ago a group of Chinese scientists came to talk at our Microbiology Department seminar. Basically, they told us that there are still LOADS of data on the SARS outbreak and the infection itself in university and lab records in Chinese research hospitals. The problem? The gov't has cut all funding of SARS research due to the fact that it was "beaten." When one of our profs said "So the attitude of the gov't is 'Don't worry about it till it starts killing again?'" they just shrugged and didn't argue...
To note is that the scientists that came to speak were accompanied by a rather large entourage of serious gov't-looking types that we were all guessing were there to keep the presenters from saying too much... spilling some secrets or something. It was one of the most uninformative seminars I've ever been to and if there were two words I would use to describe the presenters, they would be "scared" and "desperate." They were scared to say the wrong thing, and they were desperate to find someone to analyze the load of data they collected and based their careers on for those years.
Still, Canada has some data I imagine they are pursuing openly to keep this outbreak from repeating itself.
The good news? This demonstrated that the major powers of the world have strong, effective methods for squashing deadly epidemics before they become pandemics.
I also recently met the man that took part in reviving the 1918 flu, which killed MILLIONS. The research was fascinating!! He argued that should that strain arise again (which it has in partiality), it would seem just like a particularly rough flu season, but not much more. We have very strong ways of treating and controlling these sort of things now.
One more thing, bird flu: Don't worry about it. There are about 25 mutations needed to make it a strong human-human virus, few of which are advantageous to the virus on their own. This makes the chances of it bothering us too much very slim. Should it break out, take a brief at home vacation, but otherwise, don't be thinking "end of the world."
and more anti-Christian fodder, honestly because these dudes are not creative enough about evolution.
Kirk Cameron is an actor btw, not a scientist, he doesn't know crap about the subject and neither does his associate it appears. They should not have taken this approach.
Does it make sense that a banana would be that shape just because those that would eat it prefer that shape and "accessibility?" You're damn right it does. EIA. and BTW, I'm an Evangelical Christian. Did God Create it? YES. Did it evolve? YES. Was that intentional? Who cares. At least we can use the data to understand the world we live in.
... I suck at posting on this site... no "EDIT POST" button.
@Scotch again: This might give very good information and research fodder to scientists like yours truly (yay), but it would make a lousy cancer treatment drug. The drug appears to be untargetted (if that is a word) so it will also hit the cancer cells. The whole point of chemo-therapy is to convince the cells to kill themselves and/or the body to kill them. Taking this drug during Chemo might just protect the cancerous cells from apoptosis... and in the words of Egon, "That would be bad."
BTW, congratulations on surviving cancer (in a sad/blunt few words). God Bless the rest of your health.
@Scotchdrinker: The effect will be temporary. It is not a gene therapy and every drug has a half-life. Also, drug treatments of cells only last until your body filters out the drug. I would think of this drug like an antibiotic; you have to take it every so often during exposure to get the job done. That fits with the nature of this drug and its function at least as I understand it. I cannot imagine even in theory, a drug that could do what this article states without being a temporary fix.
BTW, that's a good thing, as you say. I think there is no question here that if the drug were permanent, that'd be BAD.
Going forward...
Enable, don't disable, Carl.
Enable, don't disable.
PSH! I say, PSH!
To note is that the scientists that came to speak were accompanied by a rather large entourage of serious gov't-looking types that we were all guessing were there to keep the presenters from saying too much... spilling some secrets or something. It was one of the most uninformative seminars I've ever been to and if there were two words I would use to describe the presenters, they would be "scared" and "desperate." They were scared to say the wrong thing, and they were desperate to find someone to analyze the load of data they collected and based their careers on for those years.
Still, Canada has some data I imagine they are pursuing openly to keep this outbreak from repeating itself.
The good news? This demonstrated that the major powers of the world have strong, effective methods for squashing deadly epidemics before they become pandemics.
I also recently met the man that took part in reviving the 1918 flu, which killed MILLIONS. The research was fascinating!! He argued that should that strain arise again (which it has in partiality), it would seem just like a particularly rough flu season, but not much more. We have very strong ways of treating and controlling these sort of things now.
One more thing, bird flu: Don't worry about it. There are about 25 mutations needed to make it a strong human-human virus, few of which are advantageous to the virus on their own. This makes the chances of it bothering us too much very slim. Should it break out, take a brief at home vacation, but otherwise, don't be thinking "end of the world."
And Tom, it's not too late to flee the country. hehe
and more anti-Christian fodder, honestly because these dudes are not creative enough about evolution.
Kirk Cameron is an actor btw, not a scientist, he doesn't know crap about the subject and neither does his associate it appears. They should not have taken this approach.
Does it make sense that a banana would be that shape just because those that would eat it prefer that shape and "accessibility?" You're damn right it does. EIA.
and BTW, I'm an Evangelical Christian.
Did God Create it? YES.
Did it evolve? YES.
Was that intentional? Who cares. At least we can use the data to understand the world we live in.
@Scotch again:
This might give very good information and research fodder to scientists like yours truly (yay), but it would make a lousy cancer treatment drug. The drug appears to be untargetted (if that is a word) so it will also hit the cancer cells. The whole point of chemo-therapy is to convince the cells to kill themselves and/or the body to kill them. Taking this drug during Chemo might just protect the cancerous cells from apoptosis... and in the words of Egon, "That would be bad."
BTW, congratulations on surviving cancer (in a sad/blunt few words). God Bless the rest of your health.
The effect will be temporary. It is not a gene therapy and every drug has a half-life. Also, drug treatments of cells only last until your body filters out the drug. I would think of this drug like an antibiotic; you have to take it every so often during exposure to get the job done. That fits with the nature of this drug and its function at least as I understand it. I cannot imagine even in theory, a drug that could do what this article states without being a temporary fix.
BTW, that's a good thing, as you say. I think there is no question here that if the drug were permanent, that'd be BAD.