killing ourselves

It's official.  I'm fat.  The adipocytes of my greater omentum have gorged themselves on homecooking until their cytoplasms are bulging with ugly yellow liquid. 

Time to take up running again
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Your kid has the sniffles, and you want the doctor to prescribe WHAT for it?

Go to the bottom and read about why you are a moron.

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Been running too much these days, although it is definitely the wrong kind of running.  Microbiology is turning out to become a very fun, engrossing subject.  Physiology is trying it's best to ruin my career, with its systems, and mechanisms and regulations.  I'm discovering that I haven't put nearly enough time into it, so, here goes.

Let's just hope that I do better this week at fitting my devotional time in.

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Been reading a fascinating book on E. coli.  It's sort've this historical account of the part e. coli has played in sceintific discoveries througout the years.  Through E. coli, we've discovered everything from gene structure and locations, to bacterial communal cell life (they group hug), to bacterial resistance mechanisms. 

We all know that anitbiotics are overprescribed.   But I love the way he puts it:

These disturbing discoveries [of bacteria's rapid ability to gain resistance] did nothing to halt the rise of antibiotics.  Today the world consumes more than ten thousand tons of antibiotics a year.  Some of these drugs save lives, but a lot of them are wasted.  Two-thirds of all the prescriptions that doctors hand out for antibiotics are useless.  Antibiotics can't kill viruses, for instance.  Many farmers today practically fron their animals with antibiotics because the drugs somehow make the animals grow bigger.  But the cost of the antibiotics is greater than the profit from the extra meat...

In August 1990, a nineteen-month-old girl was admitted...doctors discovered that E.coli had infected her blood, possibly through an ulcer in her intestines.  Test on the bacteria revealed that they were already resistant to two common antibiotics, ampicillin and cephalsporin.  Her doctor's gave her other antibiotics, each more potent than the last....After five months, and ten different antibiotics, the child died.     

- microcosm by Carl Zimmer. (pg 99-101, copyright 2008)

more info on drug resistance. click here.