Yes dear readers - your very absent blogger has returned. So what have I done since I last posted? Got married, promptly ran away to a faraway land, started a new work contract and moved house. Not much really. I have been reading - lots of science guff but also a few books as well.
The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot
Moral corruption, theft of bodily tissues and the multi-million dollar business that is of the world that is HeLa. HeLa cells are quite frankly God's gift to this world - they have enabled a very large amount of life saving science to proceed eg Polio vaccine, cancer research etc. None of it would have happened if Henrietta Lacks had not contracted the HPV virus which caused cervical cancer. The tumour grew wildly and spread throughout her body eventually killing her. The short and the long of it was that the doctor who first cultivated the cells took them from her pathology without patient permission or any sort of informed consent. He then proceeded to send the cells around the world for a fee. Did I mention this occurred at John Hopkins? It is a really, really interesting book about the life and death and immortal cells of Henrietta Lacks. Oh and the really slack, pass the buck culture that has occurred within the Science community at large and at John Hopkins and Invitrogen in particular.
PS thank you darling man for my bday present.
Patient Zero by Jonathan Maberry
Who doesnt love a bit of Zombie gore and biowarefare? I liked it - good for reading on a plane - which is what I did. It is all about our main character chasing, killing and generally blowing up the terrorists and their pet zombies. Not too hard out Im in a thinking mood kinda book - but we all need a blow em up book every now and then.
I like Tess Gerritsen. I like her slight fluff style of murder thriller novels. I liked this one too. It has nuns, blood and gore, and dirty secrets. Dr Isles and Detective Rizzoli on the case. Good for killing time.
Eww and I have been watching some movies and docos:
Compelling and disturbing is an accurate description of this documentary. It revolves around the San Francisco Bay Bridge and the people who are determined to jump off it. Literally the stood and filmed for a year people walking the bridge, some stopping, some jumping, some being hauled back over the bridge by worried citizens. They took note of the jumpers and then went and interviewed the relatives and friends of the jumpers. In one case it was a guy who stopped a female jumper, in another it was one of the jumpers who decided half way down he didn't want to die and changed his position on the way down, so instead of dying he just shattered most of the bones in his body. It was really weird watching these people walk across the bridge trying to pick the one who was going to jump - odd. It also worried me that they were waiting for these people to jump to film it and not doing anything to stop them - icky ethical issues. If you get the chance watch it.
Im a microbiologist - I inherently wanted to watch it. A space shuttle crashes bringing a type of alien virus with it and it spreads through blood or body fluid contact (loved the vomiting into coffee pots at a CDC conference). Enter Nicole Kidman, psychologist and her son (who by rare coincidence has had a type of chicken pox from which he almost died and so is now immune to the scary virus). The virus enters the human host and become symbiotic once the human enters REM sleep, they then start talking and feeling as one and talk about being harmonious because there is no Other - so no fighting or wars just everyone working together minus the emotions. The fight is to keep Nicole awake and her boy from his infected father. Fluff movie but I liked it.
That's all.
S.
