Comparing medical systems

It's been a few weeks now that I've been embedded in a research hospital in Japan for the bayblab. I've gotten to know some of the doctors here quite well, and we've shared notes about how our medical systems operate. I've found out some interesting tidbits, like the near monopoly of apple products here in the hospital, the difficulties of only having MD/PhD doing health science because of clinical duties etc. But one of the more interesting topics was health care coverage.

In Canada there is much debate about whether or not we should allow a two tier system. Currently any trip to the hospital is free, but there is no way to pay to get private surgery done earlier. Some people argue it would lessen the burden on our system and reduce waiting times. The Japanese health care system is interesting. Here you do have to pay if you have a job but it is subsidized depending on how much money you make, and will be covered if you need an extended stay like say in case of cancer. Childcare is the same, you pay depending on your salary, which for a doctor here would set you back approximately 500$/month.

Upon comparing notes I happened to ask whether medical marijuana was legal, as it is for us. I was a bit setback by the reaction I got. Not only is it not legal, but possession is a huge offense here. In fact the doctors here had no idea it had any medical properties and considered cannabis to be a very potent and toxic drug. I really wonder how such a view became so prevalent. Coming from a country where 17% of the population smokes regularly, and almost 2/3 have used it at some point in their life, I know fully well it is anything but dangerous. I applaud the efforts of patients in the United States who fight so hard despite their illness, to make sure they can get the medicine they need without being labeled a criminal... For more on this subject check out our latest podcast!

Enlarging condom is a big hit

Ok I'm sorry I couldn't help it, it's too funny. Apparently this company called Futura has a new condom which has a gel at the tip with medical ingredients that helps dilate blood vessels. Apparently they conducted a clinical trial (I wish I could find it), where they saw statistically significant increase in the size of the knob and the duration of intercourse. And apparently after some market research they think that demand might be enormous. No shit, they should probably mail it around to every email account.

"Up to 80 percent of existing condom users would be interested in trying the product and, more importantly, 49 percent of non-condom users would be interested in using it as it will help them maintain an erection,"

It plays perfectly into male insecurities. Maybe this can even prevent some wars. I'll ship a box to Bush myself.

Which reminds me: Do you know why Bush crossed the road? His dick was stuck in the chicken and he had no exit strategy.

Scientists, please visit your local Chapters

I want to give a shout out to the folks at biologist helping bookstores, who browse the science sections of local bookstores and move creationist books to the religion section, and astrology to the science fiction section. I applaud you!

If only for entertainment purposes, check out Behe's last book, "the edge of evolution", or better yet, just read dawkin's review. oh snap:

"I had expected to be as irritated by Michael Behe's second book as by his first. I had not expected to feel sorry for him. The first — "Darwin's Black Box" (1996), which purported to make the scientific case for "intelligent design" — was enlivened by a spark of conviction, however misguided. The second is the book of a man who has given up. Trapped along a false path of his own rather unintelligent design, Behe has left himself no escape. Poster boy of creationists everywhere, he has cut himself adrift from the world of real science. And real science, in the shape of his own department of biological sciences at Lehigh University, has publicly disowned him, via a remarkable disclaimer on its Web site: "While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally and should not be regarded as scientific.""

The state of eugenics in the 21st century

On a recent post I criticized Dr. Alexis Carrell, Nobel laureate, for having supported eugenic theories. Bayman quickly pointed out that his views were shared by many at the time. In fact he's not even the only Nobel laureate to come out in support of eugenics, Dr. William Shockley (picture), inventor of the transistor was a staunch supporter. The difference is that Shockley was gravely criticized for his views that became more and more extreme with age. I'd be willing to speculate, that the support for eugenics changed dramatically between the lifetime of those two figures because of the Second World War. The gut reaction I have when I think of eugenics, is a strong sense of disgust, perhaps because of all the abuses that the nazi were responsible for. But is eugenics dead in our society? First let us define it: according to wikipedia

" Eugenics is a social philosophy which advocates the improvement of human hereditary traits through various forms of intervention.^[1] The goals of various groups advocating eugenics have been to create healthier, more intelligent people, to save society's resources, and lessen human suffering."

Surely one cannot find opposition to the goals, but rather to the methods. The methods have much to do with controlling reproduction. Controlling reproduction, is not a new thing, the egyptians supposedly already had an herbal equivalent to the pill, but new technologies have recently brought an unprecedented degree of control, with pills, condoms, IUD, prenatal diagnosis. In fact human sexual reproduction is inherently eugenic. We have the ability to see beyond the mate to base our reproductive decisions. We now know that diseases have large genetic components, and we can choose to not reproduce based on the familial history, or even change mates accordingly. Where it gets uneasy is when the state comes in and imposes rules on your reproduction. The "one baby" policy of China for example is modern eugenics. And don't be fooled, other countries have reproductive policies, they are just not as visible as China's. Every country has a vested interest in maintaining an active working population while balancing it with ressources. Some eugenic policies may promote child birth, and catholics for example were very active in my home province of Quebec, promoting reproduction and denouncing birth control. They went so far as to tell my grandfather his duty as a good catholic was to make sure not to waste a drop of semen, giving rise to families that could easily constitute an entire hockey team. And why not? It was a very successful meme for catholicism, since all those children were raised catholic, thus helping in perpetuating the meme. The rest of Canada is not without its own dirty history either, in Alberta until 1945, the Alberta Eugenics board was sterilizing people under a certain IQ cutoff because they were mentally deficient, and most of them were immigrants that had a poor understanding of the English language.

Liberal reprogeneticist (modern day eugenics) argue that non-mandatory eugenics has a place in the management of the human race. That prenatal screening for hereditary diseases and the so called "designer babies" are good for humans as a whole as long as it is elective. Being myself atheist and pro-choice, I find it hard to detect any scientific opposition to such practises. Obviously "dysgenics", or the progressive dumbing down of humans is a ridiculous assertion. But the screening for crippling diseases doesn't seem to have many drawbacks, other than reducing genetic diversity. You never know when a "disease" might be the next cure to save humanity, like sickle cell anemia and malaria. But like James Watson put it "if we don't play god, who will?".

Lyric of the Week

I don't wanna hear the noises on TV
I don't want the salesmen coming after me
I don't wanna live in my father's house no more

I don't want it faster, I don't want it free
I don't wanna show you what they done to me
I don't wanna live in my father's house no more

Sounds better with the music so make sure you're savvy to the Neon Bible, preferably on vinyl.

Canadian Politician Stands Up for The Little Guy

Sorry to make political commentary, but this is so ridiculous to me. Maybe someone with political savvy can explain it to me. Seems official opposition leader Stephane Dion is now a salesman for Chrysler (yes the US automaker), and he finds it a travesty that Canada buys a lot of cheap, crappy cars (think Kia) from South Korean companies, whereas South Korea barely buys any expensive, crappy cars from Chrysler (think PT Cruiser), who happen to have factories in Canada. Naturally we need to tweak the trade rules to rectify this situation.

As a Canadian, I don't care
a) how many second-rate cars Chrysler or any other US auto-maker sells to foreign countries or
b) who South Korea buys automobiles from.

Of course the argument will be made that Dion is fighting for Canadian jobs provided by Chrysler's factories. I say why Chrysler? There's lots of ways to create jobs, especially in a so-called knowledge-based economy. Why not provide an environment where the thousands of brilliant engineers and PhDs that our universities churn out every year can apply their skills to develop new industries that serve the interests of Canadian needs, values and culture? We are a prosperous and highly-education nation - why are our politicians always pimping us out as servants to the first heavily-polluting American corporation to cough up a Loonie?

How to slow down scientific progress

This gem was found by Kevin Z over at the other 95%, who was made famous by our last podcast... He links to an essay in Current Biology which unfortunately I can't seem to access:

The quote is actually from Leo Szilard, the famous Manhattan project physicist. When asked by a wealthy entrepreneur who believes that science has progressed too quickly, what should be done to retard this progress, Szilard replied:

"You could set up a foundation with an annual endowment of thirty million dollars. Research workers in need of funds could apply for grants, if they could make a convincing case. Have ten committees, each composed of twelve scientists, appointed to pass on these applications. Take the most active scientists out of the laboratory and make them members of these committees. …First of all, the best scientists would be removed from their laboratories and kept busy on committees passing on applications for funds. Secondly the scientific workers in need of funds would concentrate on problems which were considered promising and were pretty certain to lead to publishable results. …By going after the obvious, pretty soon science would dry out. Science would become something like a parlor game. …There would be fashions. Those who followed the fashions would get grants. Those who wouldn't would not."

Having sat on a few university committees myself , I know fairly well how time consuming and mind-numbing they can be, sucking the creativity out of you like a hobo with a bottle of mouthwash, leaving you lying naked on the floor shivering with a complete loss of bowel control as you are asked to vote on the tabulation of the minutes...

Redbull-vodka: deadly myth?

As you can see there is no shortage of drinks in vending machines in Japan, but the one thing you cannot find here is energy drinks. Sure they have about 20 varieties of canned cold coffee (which is great), a sports drink called "sweat", a drink called Meg-milk which doesn't even contain milk, or meg for that matter, but the one thing you wont find is a redbull. Where am I supposed to get my energy?

Caffeine:
If you look at the ingredients in redbull you'll find it's mostly a glorified coffee. It has sugar, and caffeine, but with only 80mg, it pales in comparison to a starbucks grande coffee which has 372mg. You can find caffeine in just about any drink, and don't be fooled, theine, guaranine, and matteine are just caffeine by another name, referring to the source (over 60 plants), rather than the chemical. You can compare here different varieties of soft drinks and energy drinks for their caffeine content.

Vitamins:
Other than caffeine, redbull has a few vitamin Bs (B3, B5, B6, B12), I suppose deficiencies in these vitamins can lead to fatigue, but such deficiencies are extremely rare in our western societies since they are very abundant (or supplemented) in most foods, especially dairies.

Inositol:
It also contains inositol, for your PIP signaling needs. Inositol is very useful for drug dealers that use it to cut cocaine and crytal meth, since it has the same appearance, same melting point and no taste or smell. Inositol may also be effective against bulimia, bipolar disorders, panic attacks, obsessive compulsive behaviour and even polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). Yet there is little evidence to support any energy-boosting properties. Inositol can counter-act the serotonin effects of lithium in rat models, so it may even be doing the exact oppposite.

Taurines:
Taurine (1000mg) and its precursor, glucuronolactone are supposed to be the main active ingredients. Taurine is actually an amino acid, and part of the cysteine metabolism. It is present in every living organism, but was originally isolated in ox bile, hence the name. You may also find taurine and creatinine in body building supplements, and both are about as ineffective at reducing muscle fatigue. To be fair it may increase muscular ouput, if it is in limiting quantities .Another place where you might find it is in contact lens solution, where it supposedly inhibits protein denaturation and prevents them from sticking to the lens. Most animals can metabolize their own taurine, although there is a rare condition in humans where they cannot produce taurine nor cysteine, which explains why it is added to infant formula as a precaution. Cats also lack this enzyme and will develop blindness (central retinal degeneration) if it is not supplemented in their diet. Taurine may also reduce blood pressure and be helpful in combating the manic portion of bipolar disorders, both of which argue against energy boosting properties.

Conclusion: So what does science have to say about Reb bull?

Intake of Energy Drinks in Association With Alcoholic Beverages in a Cohort of Students of the School of Medicine of the University of Messina.
"Our data indicate that association of ED (energy drinks) + alcohol is very popular among students. This behavior can be dangerous. In fact, the combination of ED + alcoholic drinks can reduce adversive symptoms of alcohol intoxication including the depressant effects. As consequence, users of ED + alcoholic beverages might not feel the signs of alcohol intoxication, thus increasing the probability of accidents and/or favoring the possibility of development of alcohol dependence."

Talk about overstating results, puleaaase, all they found was that 56.9% of students used rebull, and of those 48.4% often mix it with alcohol. There is no indication that they drink more or are less likely to drive. In my experience the only difference is that I am less sleepy. Is this the only adverse effect of mixing those two?

Most studies seem to imply that it's better to feel drunk and suffer the side effects of alcohol. How bizarre, why would this turn me away from the mix? It seems all good to me:

"the ingestion of alcohol plus energy drink significantly reduced subjects' perception of headache, weakness, dry mouth, and impairment of motor coordination. However, the ingestion of the energy drink did not significantly reduce the deficits caused by alcohol on objective motor coordination and visual reaction time."

And it also helps against drowziness while driving (hopefully not drunk), stimulates cognitive performance and mood, may help for exams, although it doesn't help with memory or performance. There is even some potential in taurine derivatives to help combat alcoholism. So I find very little evidence to support the urban legend that alcohol + redbull is dangerous, or why it is banned in many countries.

Fish Feeding Frenzies

I looking for fish feeding times as I'm going to fly fish tomorrow at Aberdeen lake in the Okanagan. Years ago I remember, major and minor fish feeding times were reported just after the weather on the radio news. I have been trying to find a good free fish feeding times table. Finally found a web based fish feeding times table for all timezones in Canada. I was really surprised at how difficult it was to find, so hard it made me think if these feeding times were just a bunch of crap. Turns out it's all based on a single book written in 1942, called "moon up ~ moon down", that introduced the Solunar Theory.

To substantiate the theory in relation to angling, John Alden Knight attempted a systematic inquiry to acquire complete details surrounding the capture of record catches.
He examined approximately 200 of these catches. Over 90 percent were made during the dark of the moon (new moon) when the effects of the periods appear to be greatest, and more importantly they were made during the actual times of the Solunar Periods.
Initially, only the behavior of fish was considered. During 1935 to 1939 Knight made extensive studies of game birds and animals. As had been suspected, these also responded to the prompting stimulus of the periods.

There is also an account of oysters synchronizing feeding with the moon. Sketchy. But then again, I haven't found anything refuting it anywhere and check out this glowing review of the book on amazon.

Technicolor lab coat

From the makers of the artsy/science websites Lablit (specializing in science fiction) and Scicult (a scientific art gallery) comes this new "pimp my lab coat competition. Perhaps we should start making some custom bayblab labcoats, and maybe enter the competition? found on the Guardian:

"Why are lab coats so unsexy? And why are they white? …
These are the questions now being posed by cell biologist Dr Jenny Rohn [MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology at UCL], and Wynn Abbott, a biochemistry graduate turned director of science-art agency SciCult.
The pair have turned to the fashion world for an answer, and are running a competition for a design, that makes a lab coat sexy.
“There is absolutely no reason why lab coats have to be shapeless, sexless and colourless,” says Rohn. “Why not black and fitted? White is a disastrous colour for lab work. Every little spill shows. Surely we can do better.” … Judges from the fashion industry, the worlds of science and the media will pick the winner this autumn. Rohn and Abbott are encouraging fashion students as well as established designers to enter."

This reminds me of Dr. Alexis Carrell, nobel prize laureate and the father of cell biology:
" A specialist in the articial propagation of living tissues, Professor Carrell insisted that his lab technicians at the Institute wear black robes and hoods and bow whenever in the presence [of] his favorite icon, a glass-enclosed chicken heart, which Carrel had preserved in vitro for 33 years."

However Dr. Carell was also a pompous asshole who supported eugenic theories:
" Dr. Alexis Carrell, who proposed in his 1935 best-seller, Man, the Unknown, that small euthanasia stations be equipped with suitable gases to "humanely and economically" dispose of the mentally ill and cimrinal class, described as "useless and harmful beings." "

For more on the whole Carell / cell biology history, check out this awesome Radiolab podcast...

The Japanese Science Dance

Bayblab podcast Episode11-part1of2

On this episode we talk about recent findings regarding p53 in aging which drastically change the balance between cancer and senescence, we talk about the implication of the reversibility of Rett syndrome and finally Bayman reports on the 3rd international conference on synthetic biology. With special musical guest Kevin Z.

Meta-analysis

One week caffeine is good for you, the next it isn't. One week smoking marijuana is worse than cigarettes, the next cigarettes are worse. Which is true? How is the general public supposed to sort out which medical claims are true, and which aren't when contradictory findings are blared across the front pages of the newspaper every week?

Part of the problem is meta-analysis, the analysis of combined results of previous studies. Meta-analysis can be a powerful tool as a researcher, particularly when sample sizes aren't large enough to reach statistically significant conclusions. Business Week has a nice article discussing meta-analyses (a meta-meta-analysis??) and some of the associated pitfalls with that approach, mainly the lack of raw data for analysis and the introduction of bias with study selection. From the article:

'"We know there is publication bias," says Frank E. Harrell Jr., chair of biostatistics at Vanderbilt University. It's much easier to get a study published that says, "something works!" than one saying, "Oops, the treatment had no effect." Using published data alone thus typically makes the final result more positive.'

The bottom line, really, is the need to look at the methodology (behind ANY study) before accepting a conclusion. "If people understand the process of science better, they'll be able to spot the gray reality behind the next black-and-white headline."

Music and speech

Very few people here in Japan speak English, other than a few imported words such as "biru" for beer. In fact Japanese people have an entire other alphabet only for foreign words, for a total of three "alphabets" that can be mingled in a sentence. yet they love to sing english songs at karaoke. Acording to this research, singing in another language may actually be the best way to learn a new language :

"Results confirmed the hypothesis showing a strong learning facilitation of song compared to speech. Most importantly, the present results show that learning a new language, especially in the first learning phase wherein one needs to segment new words, may largely benefit of the motivational and structuring properties of music in song."

To overcome the language barrier, I find myself trying to learn Japanese. Japanese unlike Chinese is not a tonal language, making this quite an easier process, since I don't think I have perfect pitch. In China the proportion of people with perfect pitch is staggeringly high, while in the united states it is a pitiful 1:10000. It is a perfect example of nurture over nature, since the perfect pitch is enhanced as a result of tonal language acquisition in the infant. Does this mean Chinese people are better at karaoke? Perhaps not, since recent studies have shown that singing proficiency is universal, with little variation. There may be two types of tone deafness, one that is cognitive, and what that is purely vocal (i.e. you are aware of it):

"In this condition, most of the occasional singers sang as accurately as the professional singers. Thus, singing appears to be a universal human trait. However, two of the occasional singers maintained a high rate of pitch errors at the slower tempo. This poor performance was not due to impaired pitch perception, thus suggesting the existence of a purely vocal form of tone deafness."

So excuse me while I sing some Japanese tunes that are stuck in my head. The good news is that earbuds on mp3 players, may not be as bad as previously thought, especially in a quiet environment such as a hospital...

Hwang's Parthanogenic Human ES cells

Not exactly breaking news, but it appears that the disgraced Korean stem cell researcher, Woo Suk Hwang, had created parthenotes and not cloned human ES cells. It would still have been some good work if they hadn't fabricated data such that it appeared they had cloned some ES cells.
If Hwang and his colleagues had been more careful in their analysis, Cibelli [Jose Cibelli of Michigan State University in East Lansing] says, they might still be famous instead of infamous: "It's unfortunate that they didn't see this themselves. It still was a great finding."

Quote of the Week

This week's quote is anti-chicken soup for the soul, a particularly devastating kick-in-the-balls and slap-in-the-face to the modern scientist. Naturally I have to share it:

"What could be cruder than a human being, who is limited to a narrow area of knowledge and practice and has the naivety of a child in most other areas? This is one of the elements that accounts for our clinical state of unconsciousness."

- John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization (1995 Massey Lectures)

Trying to think of a clever analogy to swarm behavior, but my narrow and naive mind fails me...

Swarm Behavior

I've previously posted on Starlings in large groups that look like schools. Again I'm going to highly recommend the last link in that post. In fact the Starlings are demonstrating swarm behavior. National Geographic has a new accessible article on Swarm Behavior.
That's how swarm intelligence works: simple creatures following simple rules, each one acting on local information. No ant sees the big picture. No ant tells any other ant what to do. Some ant species may go about this with more sophistication than others. (Temnothorax albipennis, for example, can rate the quality of a potential nest site using multiple criteria.) But the bottom line, says Iain Couzin, a biologist at Oxford and Princeton Universities, is that no leadership is required. "Even complex behavior may be coordinated by relatively simple interactions," he says.
In addition to other great example of swarm intelligence, the article also talks about some applications of this type of intelligence for human activities.
I've missed the boat a bit on this one as many other blogs have already linked to this article.

The Science of Cooking

In the lab, we're used to following recipes and measuring out reagents with microlitre precision. Yet these skills seem to rarely transfer well to the kitchen. This is doubly odd, considering the amount of science that can be found there. Many people probably know that baking powder is used, like yeast, as a leavening agent (baking powder is a mixture of sodium bicarbonate and an acid salt which react to create carbon dioxide when mixed with water). Fewer will be familiar with the Maillard reaction, the chemical process by which many foods brown when cooking.

Recently, some scientists (and chefs) have been making a push to bring more science into the kitchen, and the result is "molecular gastronomy". Chemist Hervé This (pictured) and physicist Nicholas Kurti coined the term in the late 80s/early 90s, and This is the first (and only) person to hold a Ph.D. in that discipline. His ongoing education is spent collecting, testing and explaining what he dubs 'cooking precisions', various "rules" of the kitchen ranging from recipe instructions (eg. when making a souffle, add the eggs 2 at a time), to anectodal methodology (eg. cut the head off a roast pig immediately when removed from the oven to ensure a more crispy skin), to the absurd (eg. women having their period cannot successfully make mayonnaise). An essay by This on the history and nature of molecular gastronomy can be read here [pdf]. (For the record, the first 2 'precisions' above hold true, but the third is false). Hervé This has also done extensive work with emulsions and foams, developing a system of equations for making them by reducing them to their basic components. It's in this way that he was able to make 24 litres of mayonnaise from a single egg yolk. His equations for foams have paved the way for innumerable inventive sauces and mousses including, but not limited to his famous chocolate chantilly.

A more ovbious example of his scientific leanings is his discovery of the perfect way to cook an egg. The traditional 10-minute boil for a hard-boiled egg, leaves the egg tough and rubbery. By considering the varying temperatures at which specific egg proteins denature and coagulate, This determined that 65 degrees Celsius produces an egg with a custardy white and a soft orange yolk. Just 2 degrees higher and the yolk begins to set, becoming malleable in the hand but still not the grainy-textured yolk of a 10-minute egg. And it's not the time of cooking that matters, it's the temperature. These eggs can be cooked at 65 degrees overnight with the same result. (For those worried about salmonella, it can't survive for more than a few minutes at 60 degrees) Ovalbumin, the most abundant egg white protein, coagulates at around 84oC which is why a boiled egg becomes rubbery. While his work of this nature isn't found in your traditional scientific journal, he does maintain a lab and some of his work can be found on Pubmed (I recommend the Nature Materials commentary if you have access for a good overview of This' work).

Molecular gastronomy is taking the world by storm, combining the study of food and cooking that Hervé This pioneered with the use of advanced technologies. Some of the top restaurants in the world specialize in this style, inventing new flavour combinations (white chocolate and caviar?) and methods of preparation. Chefs of this nature don't shy away from using chemical ingredients you would only find on a candy-bar wrapper, like polysorbate-60 as an emulsifier or chemical thickeners. This allows them to create interesting new textures without compromising the taste of the food, like creating a parsley sauce by thickening parsely juice rather than mixing chopped parsley with oil. Their method, they would argue, delivers a purer dish. Chemical ingredients aren't the only innovation. Dessicators and vaccuum sealers are the norm in these types of restaurants, with the anti-griddle being one particularly cool tool (pun intended) in use. This piece of gadgetry maintains a surface temperature of -34oC, instantly freezing most foods. Why serve something on an olive oil flavoured cracker, when you can serve it on a frozen disk of pure olive oil itself? And with these innovations, the line between kitchen and laboratory becomes more obscured.

A scientist in Japan: partI

For those of you who may not know, I am now a foreign correspondent to the bayblab, posted in Japan. In the next couple of months I hope to fill you up on how science gets done here. Do not panic yet, we will still be broadcasting the podcast, as soon as we figure out how to record conference calls over IP...

My first week here as been pretty eventful so far. It started out with a conference/diplomatic mission. The purpose of the conference was to setup a bilateral collaboration between Japan and Canada in reproductive research. As you may be aware, Japan is facing some serious problems due to an aging population. It's not so much that people age, we all do, but fertility has reached new lows here, and now over 20% of the population are senior citizens. Japan is therefore very proactive in fertility research. Canada on the other hand also has low birth rates, but immigration more than covers that deficit. Still Canada is very interested in gender and fertility research, and is the only country to have a national insitute and program dedicated to this type of research. Yet Japan and Canada do not have any bilateral agreements when it comes to any life sciences. Most of the agreements and joint research programs to date have focused on aerospace and energy research. The Japanese are especially interested in methyl hydrates as an alternative to foreign oil, and have invested heavily in Canadian research in the arctic. They actually dwarfed our side of the bargain by putting in about 20 times our own funding of such research.

So our delegation included the science and technology councellor of the Canadian embassy in Tokyo, one of the directors of the CIHR program in Gender and Health studies, The COO of the OHRI (the home institution of the bayblab), and about a dozen of reproductive scientists including mostly basic research and epidemiology and representatives from various universities. The Japanese on the other hand were all either scientists or president/program director of local universities. Most of the research gets done by MDs, who are obviously very busy with clinical work. Regulations here are quite strict as to the use of human tissue, and only MDs can manipulate samples such as oocytes.
The irony is that ob/gyn are quite short staffed here despite the low birthrates. So this is where I come in, doing some of the preliminary work on a collaboration on the use of PPar gamma and alpha ligands as well as COX-2 inhibitors for ovarian cancer. They told me I need to teach them techniques, although I'm at a lost as to what exactly I'm supposed to teach them being myself a lowly PhD student. In fact no-one here thinks I'm serious when I tell them I'm not an MD, and they all call me Doctor. I can see it already, bringing me in the OR and asking me to teach them techniques. They better have malpractice insurance.

Now, all of this to introduce the topic of setting collaborations. My thoughts after the conference were that the science collaborations felt forced, not natural. Kinda like when we set my friend, lets hypothetically call him something that rhymes with "Guillaume", on a blind date in high school and he failed miserably in utter awkwardness, and although he still maintains he got to first base, it would be another decade before he got any further. But I digress. I feel that just like dates, collaborations are best set when drinking beer, perhaps after the conference, and only workout if you have things in common. I fear the politics and diplomacy mostly get in the way of that... I hope I'll be proven wrong. Nevertheless the "diplomats" felt pretty happy about it and patted each other in the back. Once the memorandum of understandings are signed and the picture taken, their work is done. The most meaningful exchange of ideas I've had here is ironically with my longtime Canadian collaborator Dr. Bruce Murphy, who is arguably one of the most distinguished reproductive scientist in Canada, and the only person I know who can tell dirty jokes in five languages. He showed some impressive work on adipokines.

Finally, I hope to share some of the wonders of Japan here on the bayblab such as the incredible butt washing dashboard (think star trek here) of my toilet bowl, the electronic key to open my apartment, the special pavement marks for blind people, the TV that sends you faxes and the incredible things you can find in vending machines... More on this later.

Oncolytic Salmonella: Dirty Poultry for Cancer Therapy?

Loeffler et al. report on the anti-tumor activity of an attenuated Salmonella bacterial strain engineered to express the mammalian immunostimulatory gene LIGHT, online this month in PNAS. How about a clinical trial on chickens with tumors? Or will Kentucky Fried Chicken give the Salmonella to their birds and market a new 6-piece anti-cancer meal? "Will that be a white or brown therapy today?". Just kidding. Oncolytic bacterial therapy for cancer is of course a very legitimate and promising area of therapeutic research. Clinical trials and manufacture of biological therapeutics are highly regulated and controlled to ensure human safety. Sorry KFC.