I believe science has suffered from considerable attacks from Hollywood these recent years. Films like Frankenstein and Outbreak have always manage to paint the regular scientist as a madman who will eventually will sacrifice everything just to make his science work, risking both himself and the rest of the world. Well, I admit there were times when I would have sacrificed a lot to get my pHd but I never did any of those crazy things. Interestingly, back in the days things were different. In a paper, by a physician named Friedrich Meyer-Betz, the scientist injected himself with haematoporphyrin and irradiated himself with a light source to demonstrate the effect of photodynamic therapy by this known photosensitizer. Needless-to-say, he suffered from a ´swelling and a burning sensation´even outside the irradiation site (i.e. in the sun). Personally, I think he was suffering from a serious case of the ´I have full faith in my science´sickness. However, the fields of science and ethics collided when the Human Genome Project was introduced. With the help of the media, the NIH under the guidance of Francis Collins and Craig Venter (with the help of rich people) turned the gene hunt into a race. That was enough to get the interest from the public and all in the sudden ethical issues surrounding patents and the data usage became the hottest topic. I never got any of that especially because I didnt really care about genes at the time and patents are the worst thing ever invented in science-another matter that I am not going to talk about here.
Animal right activists are another nightmare for science. Not that those people are interfering with my science (they are too busy destroying ships and racing across the world, polluting both the sea and air to protest some whale hunting thing and yeah dont get me started with Pamela Anderson, we are not talking about artificial boob jobs…or are the back to normal? Who knows?) however, to acquire a license for animal testings has become frustratingly impossible/hard for most chemistry based science groups. One has to count for any animal killed (what its name was, how did it live and how did it die, why did it die etc) and there is a quota for each license. Of course I am not suggesting that we should kill all rats/mice/zebrafish just for the fun, however my cousin killed at least 2 rabbits, 3 cats and at least a parrot (she claims it was an accident, that it flew into the toilet seat, went unconscious and drown) and she was never fined. So if these animal right activists are ready to fight against a novel cause like getting better drugs then I believe they should ban kids under the age of 14 to get pets.
Another big argument is the stem cell research area in the US, where the senate disapprove a law that would basically allow researchers to get stem cells from a fetus (I am on a thin ice here, not really sure if thats right or not…anyway). Here, religious views play a large role in the discussions and myself could never mix religion with science-I am not that old yet.
In other news, applications are going ahead as scheduled with none of the supervisors ready with their reference letters…as scheduled.
Song: Bloc Party-Trojan Horse
