Interesting: using flu vaccine to target tumors.

Very interesting.

A number of years back, there was a great deal of excitement about using viruses to target cancer. A number of viruses explode the cells that they’ve infected in order to spread to new ones. Engineering those viruses so that they could only grow in cancer cells would seem to provide a way of selectively killing these cells. And some preliminary tests were promising, showing massive tumors nearly disappearing.

But the results were inconsistent, and there were complications. The immune system would respond to the virus, limiting our ability to use it more than once. And some of the tumor killing seemed to be the result of the immune system, rather than the virus.

Now, some researchers have focused on the immune response, inducing it at the site of the tumor. And they do so by remarkably simple method: injecting the tumor with the flu vaccine. As a bonus, the mice it was tested on were successfully immunized, too.

Continue reading Interesting: using flu vaccine to target tumors.

More on the Peter Gleick Fakegate Memo.

This is pretty good stuff of Megan McArdle, re Peter Gleick’s own-goal sabotage of climate change advocates by disseminating/allegedly creating a fake Heartland memo on its global warming strategies (not to mention his confessed identity theft):

When skeptics complain that global warming activists are apparently willing to go to any lengths–including lying–to advance their worldview, I’d say one of the movement’s top priorities should be not proving them right.

…but it must be said: Gleick really doesn’t deserve much benefit of the doubt at this point with regard to his probable authorship of the original, blatantly fake, Heartland memo.  There is a credible case to be made at this point that Gleick stole the original documents, then created the memo himself; and, given that he’s a self-confessed liar, it’s going to take more than I’m not lying about this for Gleick to get out of it. Continue reading More on the Peter Gleick Fakegate Memo.

Yeah, kind of politics-heavy today.

That’s how it goes; take a few days off, more or less, and the stuff piles up. Meanwhile, drink your coffee:

Coffee ‘may reverse Alzheimer’s’

Drinking five cups of coffee a day could reverse memory problems seen in Alzheimer’s disease, US scientists say.

The Florida research, carried out on mice, also suggested caffeine hampered the production of the protein plaques which are the hallmark of the disease.

Is it true?

Do you really care?

Moe Lane

PS: You really do have to wonder about the karmic burden that mice must be bearing.