Author: Lori Jia
Can a tumor become a new form of life?
This is the freaky but serious question that arises from a new study in the journal Cell. Scientists from London and Chicago have studied a peculiar cancer that afflicts dogs, known as canine transmissible venereal tumor (CTVT) or Sticker’s sarcoma. It is a cancer of immune cells called histiocytes, and dogs typically develop grapefruit-sized tumors that disappear after a few months.
Last night, as my family settled into a three-hour drive home, I began scanning the AM radio dial. The tuner stopped at on a well-produced segment in which the announcer was talking about recent evolution of pigmentation genes and lactose-digestion genes in humans. This is a surprise, I thought, and I settled in for a listen. It took about twenty seconds for me to realize that this was the work of creationists. I spent the next fifteen minutes listening to the piece with jaw aslack, making sure I didn’t get so distracted I missed my exit. There is something so absorbing about the elaborate rhetorical gymnastics that creationists engage in order to square their views with new scientific evidence.
I’m heading out of blog contact for a couple days, so allow me to share one of my favorite posts, from last January–on wasps that perform brain surgery.
I collect tales of parasites the way some people collect Star Trek plates. And having filled an entire book with them, I thought I had pretty much collected the whole set. But until now I had somehow missed the gruesome glory that is a wasp named Ampulex compressa.
This morning the Kansas State Board of Education is all shook up.
Last year the board voted 6-4 for much-criticised, creationism-friendly science education standards. Yesterday the primaries for the board elections took place, and on balance, the science-standards bloc lost two seats to Republic opponents. So it looks as if the balance is going to shift to 4-6, and the standards are going to go down.
The vote is all the more notable for the fact that the primaries saw a big media campaign carried out by the Discovery Institute, the main organization pushing intelligent design (a k a “the progeny of creationism”).
Continue reading “In Search of the Elusive Intelligent Design Laboratory”
Once again, I hear the siren song of Toxoplasma, the parasite that dwells in the brains of 50 million Americans.
Toxoplasma gondii is an extraordinary creature, whose exploits I’ve chronicled in previous posts , an article in the New York Times and my book Parasite Rex. This single-celled organism has a life cycle that takes it from cats to other mammals and birds and back to cats again. Studies have shown that the parasite can alter the behavior of rats, robbing them of their normal fear of cats–and presumably making it easier for the parasites to get into their next host.
Continue reading “A Nation of Neurotics? Blame the Puppet Masters?”