Obama Reopens Embryonic Stem Cell Funding

Maybe it can cure the brain-wasting diseases of those opposed to embryonic stem cell research.

Good for Obama for bringing the US back to the 21st century with this one.

There is still a lot of messed up thinking about the issue of embryonic stem cell research. I was reading the comments on a yahoo news article and there was some crazy there. About 75% was pro-embryonic stem cell research, 15% opposed, and 10% waffling. One waffling response got me annoyed. The basic gist was telling people to "just admit that these are complex issues and there are good reasons for being on one side or the other. It is not just bible-thumping vs. bible-bashing."

I beg to differ. What, pray tell, are the good reasons for being against embryonic stem cells? Huh?

There are no good non uber-conservative theotard reasons for being fundamentally against embryonic stem cell research in the form being debated right now in the US. On balance: Clumps of cells with nothing resembling sentient thought + just going to be thrown in the biohazard waste bin anyway vs. very promising research into curing all manners of diseases and crippling injuries. Tell me again the non-dipshit reasons for being against this research?

I hate to be dismissive about this yahoo commentor. He probably doesn't even know he's being a dipshit. He's probably thinking that he's going to be the prudent ideological moderate, building bridges and fostering consensus, etc. He is not, and he is wrong.

This commentor has likely bought into the idea that virtue always chooses the mean (it does not - just sometimes, and not this time), that religion gains automatic respect, that language is more important than content, and other seemingly wise and tolerant anti-intellectual horseturd.

Pharmboy got snipped - live!

Abel Pharmboy at Terra Sig went under the knife and liveblogged his vasectomy. Personally, I felt he didn't get into enough detail as far as his thoughts and fears during the operation, but given that the whole procedure takes ~20 minutes and that he's, you know, getting his general wang area hacked into, I can kind of forgive him.

The best comment on the post belongs to theo: "but do you mean to tell me i only had to ejaculate 20-30 times after the procedure to flush all the lives ones out?!!?!?! they told me i had to wait 6 mos. i coulda taken care of it in an afternoon if i'd known."

Q-Ray Ionized Nut Kick

Here's a happy story for those of you who like to see woo peddlers get kicked in the proverbial nuts: Q-Ray makers ordered to pay $16M in refunds to consumers (For those of you unfamiliar with the product, the damn thing is a just a metal bracelet with a gap and two little knobby things on each end.)

A US court has upheld a 2006 ruling that says the makers of the Q-Ray "Ionized" Bracelet (of latenight infomercial fame) have to surrender $16 million in profits, to be paid out to duped consumers for false advertising, as well as refunding up to $87 million to elligible customers seeking refunds. The best thing about the ruling was this statement from judge Frank Easterbrook:

Defendants might as well have said: Beneficent creatures from the 17th dimension use this bracelet as a beacon to locate people who need pain relief and whisk them off to their home world every night to provide help in ways unknown to our science.

How awesome is that comment?

From the beginning of the company in 1996 until the original 2006 court decision, Q-Ray has used terms like "ionized," "natural pain relief," "enhancing the flow of bio-energy" via "Q-Rays," and featured testimonials of how the product has enhanced the lives of their owners. Since that decision, the company has toned-down the claims a bit. On the US website, you'll no longer see any claims about it doing anything. On the Canadian website, though, you'll still see claims about "Balancing your bio-energy" and even the statement

Like acupuncture, yoga and tai-chi, the Q-Ray Bracelet is based on traditional Oriental medicine. The exclusive process that goes into every Q-Ray is designed to balance the negative and positive energy forces in your body to achieve a state of “Chi,” where you will feel and perform at your best.

Just in case you were wondering, according to CBC's Marketplace program, based on electron microscopy, in no way can the bracelet be considered "ionized." It's just a plain metal bracelet.

The Q-Ray Bracelet: $65-$300 Piece of Scrap
(From randi.org)

Now, the cost of Q-Ray bracelets ranges from $65 to $300, with an average one around $200. How many idiots (or frantically desperate people) are there in the world that they could sell (87000000/200 =) 435000 of the stupid things? It's depressing, really. The sad thing about the ruling is that the duped consumers get their money back - no doubt to spend on some other quackery. So many better things can be done with the $16 million profits and up to $87 million in refunds. Like giving it to me ;-)

They'll have to make the illness immune to common spells such as "Cure Disease"

For all you nerds out there, a pair of disease researchers are seriously looking into using massively multiplayer online gaming environments to study the spread and control of epidemic diseases. The researchers are already talking with Blizzard to use their World of Warcraft environment to run the tests. They plan to unleash carefully designed diseases into the world to infect player characters and let them interact realistically with each other to simulate a real life disease.

People had been thinking about using World of Warcraft or other online communities like Second Life for disease research since the infamous high-level Warcraft disease that got out of hand, temporarily wreaking havoc on several servers. These researchers look to go ahead with the promise of that unplanned outbreak with research of their own.

Freebirth Nonsense

I saw an msnbc story the other day on a growing trend called Freebirthing. Freebirthing is where a soon to be mother chooses to give birth by herself at home, without drugs, doctors, or midwives. If it sounds dangerous and insane, well, that's because it is.

Freebirth proponents in the article insist that having a baby is as intimate an experience as having sex, thus should not be witnessed by anyone except the parents. They claim the current culture of requiring medical assistance is a product of fearmongering by the medical establishment.

The article does interview concerned doctors and other parents who think the freebirthers are nuts. Dr. Crippen from British National Health Service says “giving birth is the most dangerous thing that most woman will do during their life.”

What do the freebirthers think?

"It didn’t make sense to me that something that ensures the continuation of the race would be a dangerous and scary event.”

“We’ve been giving birth for thousands of years and we’re still in this world. If it was that dangerous we wouldn’t be here.”

Morons. You're expelling a living organism with a head the size of a cantaloupe out a small opening in your body; of course it's dangerous and scary! And it doesn't need to be safe to continue the species; all the species needs is more births than deaths, so as long as lots of women are having babies, it doesn't matter to the species if many women and babies die. According to the Wikipedia article, a good estimate of the rate of maternal deaths during childbirth without medical help is 1.5%. With modern medical help, the rate is 0.03%. I don't know about you, but giving birth without medical help looks like a damn foolish idea just from the mother's perspective. I haven't even bothered looking at what happens to the babies. The above mentioned Dr. Crippen wants all freebirth babies with problems to sue their mothers when they grow up.

The piece ends with Mary Siever, an Albertan, saying:

“I can’t claim to know why they feel this way, but my belief is that the majority of them — doctors and health authorities — truly do not think women are intellectually capable of making their own decisions when it comes to birth.”

I'm going to go out on a limb here and speak for the health authorities:

Mary, we don't think women aren't intellectually capable, we think that you aren't intellectually capable.

First off, many, many doctors these days are women - self-sufficient and fully feminist at that - and if this was just an oppression of women thing it would have been eliminated by now. Second, and much more importantly, women can make all the intellectual decisions about their births they want, but you can't just decide not to have complications. You'll get complications whether you want to or not.

You say, "I'll decide to have a nice home freebirth with no help and no complications, and everything will be great." That's nice. Then when the baby starts coming out the wrong way, or you find you can't dilate enough and what looked to be a 8 hour delivery starts to stretch to 20 hours, what then?

Hop-Head or Dying Patient?

From msnbc: Dying woman rebuffed on medical marijuana - California appeals court rules against mother suffering brain tumor.

This is really a case I don't get. This woman is dying slowly of a brain tumour. She has a family that she still needs to look after, and her doctor says that medicinal marijuana is far and away the best treatment for her because it not only eases the pain but also boosts her otherwise nonexistant appetite, thus helping to keep her healthy. Unless the doctor is known to be crooked and bending the truth, that's a pretty darn good reason to let her use the stuff.

The judiciary, however, feels she can't break federal anti-drug laws. She will keep on using marijuana anyway.

This brings up the question: What makes some drugs okay and others not okay? Americans are among the most medicated people on the planet. They have drugs for everything down there, and everybody is taking something for some real or perceived ailment. This is a woman with a very real problem and a very real drug-based solution, yet the feds are giving her a hard time simply because the prescribed drug is "evil"? Doesn't make sense to me.