Quack
Genetics
April 2003
I've been in an obnoxious, irritable mood lately. When I get that way, I like to find things that a whole bunch of people are excited about and attack it. Genetics research is an easy target. For the most part, current genetics research is helping us make large strides into learning the pathophysiology of many diseases. Still, that's basic science to me, and for the most part we are a long way from that level of understanding and therapies. For example, at the 2002 Society for Neuroscience conference, a researcher presented work in which he put a lentivirus (read: HIV) loaded with DNA set to make dopamine into the brains of Parkinsonian mice (which have too little dopamine in certain parts of their brains). Amazingly enough he showed that the virus increased dopamine production in those areas. The downside? More than normal amounts of dopamine was also produced in other places as well, including an area where too much dopamine makes you psychotic. Ooops! I really think genetics is currently basic science only and should not be getting very much funding earmarked for clinical research (with the exception of projects like the one I described.)
Note the banner on the pedestal. It stems from my frustration at the very subtle suppression of alternative, non-bleeding-heart ideas at UCSF. Maybe it's the war. Or maybe it's all those Berkeley grads. Obnoxious of me, huh? I am the devil.