Parents 1, Scientists 0

An article in the newest issue of Nature shows that a gaggle of ill-informed, whiny parents can trump any number of scientists who know what they're talking about: Autism study panned by critics (Nature 453, 259 (2008)).

Here's the gist of the article: Many people believe that trace mercury from vaccinations is the reason for their children's autism. The problem with that? It's a theory that's been scientifically discredited. Nonetheless, many parents still believe it to be true, trusting their own beliefs over numerous scientific studies to the contrary. The result of this paradigm: a new clinical study has received preliminary permission to proceed, despite the fact that many experts in the field believe "the trial will put children at risk for what is certain to be no medical gain." Parents 1, Scientists 0.

The proposed study intends to introduce chelating agents into affected children as a way to scavenge and remove trace mercury from the body. The method is already used to treat people with substantial heavy metal poisoning, but has noted side effects in that the chelating agents can also remove essential metals (calcium, zinc, etc.) from the body. This treatment has been documented to lead to cardiac arrest in humans, cognitive problems in rats, and other serious ill-effects.

Is this clinical trial, then, justifiable when scientific evidence shows that mercury in vaccines isn't responsible for childhood autism and that chelating agent therapy has potentially serious negative side effects? The trial is currently seeking ethics approval...let's hope that the committee sides with informed scientists opposing the study and not parents trusting their intuition and nothing else.

Boyz 2 pipettemen

An article in Nature Magazine (Nature 454, 149 (2008)) - whose oh-so-clever(?) title is above - recently piqued my curiosity. In an effort to sell more pipettes and automated machinery to the MTV/TRL generation, biotech company Eppendorf decided to hire a creative consulting firm to spice up their image.

The result? Well, I'll let you read the first bit of the Nature article to find out...I could never do it equal justice:

In a dreary, lonely lab a young female postdoc puts down her pipette to massage her aching latexed hands. Sounds like the perfect set-up for a hot new music video. Well at least it does to Tyler Kay, creative director at Compare Networks Production Group (CNPG) in San Francisco, California. A recent release from CNPG features a group of five winsome young men singing the praises of a new automated pipetting system called epMotion, made by international biotech company Eppendorf.

As the lab heroine is whisked to a beach under the Golden Gate Bridge, the band members gyrate around her and her glasses are shed along with her inhibitions, just before the chorus. “Girl you need epMotion” (whispered: “yeah girl it’s time to automate.”)

I already bought tickets to their concert tour with Hannah Montana. And for all you fanboys/girls out there, here's the band's publicity image (also included in the Nature article) which you can now plaster to your high school bedroom ceiling. I think the photo's caption speaks for itself:

Later in the same article, an interview with Tyler Kay (the creative director behind all this) is quite revealing:

Kay, a self-taught film-maker with Biocompare since near its inception, wrote the song with a list of product features and intense background research. “I had to listen to a whole lot of boy-band songs,” says Kay. “I started to gain an appreciation for it. Those guys really know how to crank out the hits on a few chords."

Indeed.

Apparently, the YouTube clip has gotten quite a bit of hits...let's see if we can push it over the edge: