I recently attended the International Developmental Biological Congress in sunny Edinburgh, Scotland. Here is my diary.

Day One

Saturday, 8:15 AM: Arrive Edinburgh hotel, early. Wait for room in hotel bar.   Soccer, a hateful game, blares at 8:30 in the morning. Bourbon appropriate?

 Saturday, 5:15 PM: Take walking tour of city. Discover no one in Scotland speaks English.

Day Two

Sunday, 1:00 PM: Pick up press credentials. Because I am freelance, I must confect association with the New York Times. Easy because no other sane journalists here.

Thirteen percent of pregnant women in the United States have no health insurance.

The president, when not worrying about the gun nuts, wants to cover them.

One would think these facts alone might encourage some sanity,­even unity, ­in the ever-childish debate about healthcare reform. It’s a natural for the family values cult. Ditto for the meshugga anti-abortion crowd. Why, you can even imagine those terrible death panelists advocating for mommy Obammy care­, even if what they really want is to ensure a steady stream of future Soylent Green.

With Big Pharma allegedly “cooperating” with President Obama’s health care reforms, and Congress wanting to limit drug advertising, might it pay to refresh our memories about how we got here in the first place?

It's time for a quiz.  

The first to get all answers correct - via posted response - will receive a free copy of my book, Generation Rx, and a free sample of Adderall (*).

Last week, scientists announced the interim results of one of modern physiology’s most closely watched experiments: the effects of caloric restriction on the lifespan of non-human primates.

The report was maddeningly mixed.

Caloric restriction seemed to reduce the incidence of several diseases, but when it came to mortality—a somewhat important factor when it comes  to longevity— the data were  statistically not significant. We still do not know if caloric restriction works in primates, which, of course, we are.

The president wants to transform healthcare with new laws and new technology, but once upon a time, a moral bond ruled between patient and physician.

Recently, I experienced something so rare in American medicine that it often catches people up short when I relate the story. A doctor actually apologized to me. Not only that, but he admitted that he caused harm, hurt feelings and inconvenience.

Research links smog to devastating effects not just on lungs but on hearts, brains and fetal development.

By Greg Critser
June 23, 2009

Not long ago, Jesus Araujo, a cardiology researcher at UCLA, parked a cage full of transgenic mice alongside the 110 Freeway. As a control, he placed another group in a less-polluted space on the Westside. Araujo was interested in learning more about how smog affects the heart and whether bad air could help explain the persistence of heart disease after 25 years of cholesterol management, statins and endless lifestyle advice.

Recently I had the opportunity to ask Paul Ewald, one of the nation's leading evolutionary biologists, about a subject near and dear to his heart: the evolution of a bug, specifically swine flu. As usual, Ewald, a professor of biology at the University of Louisville, was lucid, cogent and memorable.

In his 2002 book, Plague Time: The New Germ Theory of Disease, Ewald set the bio-med community on its head by arguing that most chronic disease is caused by sub-acute levels of pathogenic origin, rather than genes.

This week, researchers and scientists at UCLA are doing something unusual: They are organizing a demonstration against the violent tactics of certain animal rights groups.

This week, people in labs across the country are saying: It's about time.

-- It's about time that people came out of their labs and off the bench and took a public stand, rather than relying upon trade groups and animal providers to make the case for them

-- It's about time that science generated its own leaders to pro-actively make the case for animal testing, rather than rely on the usual ( and rather suspect) cast of pharmaceutical companies and toxicology labs

Nicholas Wade has an outstanding piece in today's Times Science section about the "hope" for Resverotrol and other sirtuin-activating compounds that may activate the lifespan extending pathway controlled by caloric restriction, although, like several stories on the subject lately, it left me wondering about a few things. Comment and answers appreciated, they are:

1. The reason for these stories--a Cell Metabolism article that appeared July 3 was actually quite negative about resverotrol's lifespan-extending effects. The Cell piece was about an experiment on normal, rather than high fat fed mice, raising the questions that resverotrol's previous success with high fat mice actually had more to do with energy partitioning than with the stress resistance touted by Sinclair and Guerente.


Southern Illinois University School of Medicine

How a 20-gram rodent conquered the world of science

The following is the beginning of my new article in the December Harper's, which is generating a lot of response already. I was asked onto the Colbert Report ( which I declined, much to the chagrin of certain younger members of the family), and I have been called "some sort of PETA" type, (which I am not). To read the whole thing you will have to get the magazine, on newsstands now. It is worth it because you can also see the eery art by Adam Stennett they used with it.