Futures in biotech: podcast from the TWiT Netcast Network

Futures in biotech is the most advanced biotech podcast I’ve met till now, although it is far from being perfect. It is the podcast of the professional and alphageek TWiT Netcast Network. The hosts of the show are Marc Pelletier, who in his civil life is a Biomedical Research Scientist at Yale School of Medicine (not to be confused with Stanford cardiac surgeon and stem cell reseacher Marc Pelletier) and the funny Leo Laporte. The following embedded part is Futures in Biotech 6: Dr. Linda Griffith of M.I.T. on Tissue Engineering. See also the Griffith Lab.

Why aging is an unnatural process? An argument from Atul Gawande

There is a formulation of the argument on why aging should be considered as an unnatural process by Atul Gawande in the current The Way We Age Now report in The New Yorker:
“..scientists do not believe that our life spans are actually programmed into us. After all, for most of our hundred-thousand-year existence—all but the past couple of hundred years—the average life span of human beings has been thirty years or less. (Research suggests that subjects of the Roman Empire had an average life expectancy of twenty-eight years.) Today, the average life span in developed countries is almost eighty years. If human life spans depend on our genetics, then medicine has got the upper hand. We are, in a way, freaks living well beyond our appointed time. So when we study aging what we are trying to understand is not so much a natural process as an unnatural one.”

Update: Derya Unutmaz’s critic of this argument on FightAging! and more: “This is gross misconception. The reason why the average life span was so low was because most of the deaths occurred during childhood and through infections during adulthood. If one corrects for the infection survival and looks at life expectancy at older age, there has only been about 6-8 years increase in overall life extension in the last 100 years. Thus, the data strongly argues for biological program of aging, and that at current time we are not yet freaks living much beyond our appointed time, just that many more of us reaching the near maximal set program.”

Rebuilding mentality at Tulane University, New Orleans

When Hurricane Katrina came in, many researchers left Tulane University. Many efforts have been made since then to reestablish the strong academic research community. These are exactly the times, when new people with new drives enter.

The following sentences are from the letter of Laura S. Levy Professor of Microbiology and Immunology and Associate Senior Vice President for Research at Tulane University published In Science 20 April 2007 issue with the title A Thank You from Tulane University

“It has been 19 months since Hurricane Katrina slammed into the Louisiana coastline, causing widespread destruction and prolonged flooding in New Orleans. Gulf Coast institutions continue to deal with the aftermath of the hurricane, but great progress has been made in reestablishing a vibrant competitive research community. At Tulane University, we have experienced a level of rebound and renewal beyond our expectations. I write to express gratitude to the academic community for the strong support that we received both during and after the storm.”

Picture: My shot of the Mississippi River from the height of Jackson Square.