Cancer research under the microscope

Cancer studies 'wasted millions'

Millions of pounds of charity donations and taxpayers' money have been wasted on worthless cancer studies, the BBC has learned...t found some scientists have failed to carry out simple and inexpensive checks to ensure they are working with the right forms of human tumour cells. One of the latest examples of scientific research to be affected by this problem is a study of oesophageal cancer. Researcher Dr Chris Tselepis worked with an international team which has found that TE7, an experimental culture of cancer cells used in labs for the past 20 years, was the wrong cancer...

The problem is compounded by the fact that studies based on erroneous research data will be printed in reputable scientific journals and become part of the accepted literature, thus misleading future researchers.

Mini-Matadors

Child Matadors Draw Olés in Mexico’s Bullrings - New York Times

It is difficult to know exactly how many child matadors are fighting across the country, and no Mexican law limits their age. Regional and national bullfighting groups consider the bullfighters’ experience when matching them with the bulls, with the youngest and least experienced starting with year-old bulls.

Radiating death

Money For Nothing

Imagine there's a country in the Middle East (let's call it country "I") that is immediately next door to another country that we could, for the sake of argument, refer to as country "P".

Imagine that for "security reasons", cancer doctors in country P cannot easily travel abroad for the training and networking that would keep their skills up to date; and that country I does not allow country P to import equipment that would provide radiation treatment to children with cancer, likewise for "security reasons".

So country P has to send its cancer patients to neighboring countries to receive advanced medical treatment. Country P pays for about five-sixths of its seriously-ill patients to be treated in country P's neighbors, Eg and Jo. Country P pays country I to provide medical treatment to the remaining one-sixth, even though the travel restrictions that country I imposes on the residents of country P means that they are sometimes reduced to carrying their desperately ill children to hospital on their backs, cross country.

Imagine that country I pockets the money that country P pays it for cancer treatment, but when country P's child cancer patients arrive for treatment in country I, country I's doctors treat them cursorily with obsolete medical equipment that they no longer use to treat country I's own children with cancer.

Of course, the children from country P die.

When confronted, the doctors from country I blame the children's parents, saying that country P is a country of "fourth-rate" doctors and its parents shouldn't expect their children to receive first-rate medical care.

And then read Toxic Treatment and discover that it's not your imagination at all, but there really is a country I that takes money from a country P, and in return provides substandard treatment to children with cancer. And the children with cancer are real too. Two of them are Farah Jamal Harma (aged 10), and Hayah Azam Abu-Qabatya (12), and they're dead.

But remember: if doctors in Israel deliberately create a separate medical channel for Palestinians, which systematically gives them inferior treatment for life-threatening illnesses, you mustn't call this kind of system "apartheid", because that's "anti-semitic".

If the towelheads don't get you the poofs, dykes and commies will.

Fatherless families, a dangerous Bill and a dilemma for David Cameron: Mad Mel

For years we have watched helplessly the undermining of the traditional family, which has been relentlessly attacked by an alliance of feminists, gay rights activists, divorce lawyers and cultural Marxists who grasped that this was the surest way to destroy Western society.

The Family as Probiotic Advert



So THAT'S what a happy family looks like!

Miss Landmine

MISS LANDMINE

THE MISS LANDMINE MANIFESTO (in no particular order)

• Female pride and empowerment.
• Disabled pride and empowerment.
• Global and local landmine awareness and information.
• Challenge inferiority and/or guilt complexes that hinder creativity.
• Question established concepts of physical perfection.
• Challenge old and ingrown concepts of cultural cooperation.
• Celebrate true beauty.
• Replace the passive term 'Victim' with the active term 'Survivor'

And have a good time for all involved while doing so!

Wayback when

I've been digging around some of the very few of my early posts at Sparkpod (now defunct) which have been salvaged at Wayback Machine. Nothing before April 2004 survives and all the 2003 archives are lost forever. Here's one post that caught my eye:

Some gems from the Plain English Commission, not as grand as it sounds by the way and an absolutely awful looking site.

Refusing a subordinate’s request for a pay rise, Alexander Haig, former US Secretary of State said... Because of the fluctuational pre-disposition of your position’s productive capacity as juxtaposed to government standards, it would be momentarily injudicious to advocate an increment.

The London Borough of Hammersmith & Fulham rejected the everyday word in its district plan in favour of jargon…Line 5. Delete ‘Bottlenecks’, insert ‘Localized Capacity Deficiencies’.

In a political speech, Gordon Brown, the chancellor of the exchequer, said...Ideas which stress the growing importance of international co-operation and new theories of economic sovereignty across a wide range of areas: macro-economics, trade, the environment, the growth of post neo-classical endogenous growth theory and the symbiotic relationships between growth and investment in people and infrastructure, a new understanding of how labour markets really work and the rich and controversial debate over the meaning and importance of competitiveness at the level of individuals, the firm or the nation and the role of government in fashioning modern industrial policies which focus on maintaining competitiveness.

Diamond geezer

Jews sans frontieres

Lev Leviev is one of Israel’s richest men. He built his enormous fortune trading in diamonds with Apartheid-era South Africa. His company now buys diamonds from the repressive Angolan government. Leviev uses profits from diamond sales to fuel the conflict in Palestine and Israel by funding the construction of suburban developments for Israeli settlers on occupied Palestinian land in the West Bank, undermining the prospects for Middle East peace, and threatening farmers' ability to survive and remain in their homes.

Leviev’s diamonds are “conflict diamonds” in a broad sense of the term, funding repression in Angola and violations of international law in Palestine.

And he's just opened a nice shop in Madison Avenue.

Turning nasty

Rod Liddle - Times Online

Spoke to a man who went hare coursing the other day. “We have to be careful though,” he whispered, “on account of police informers.” Not careful enough, matey, I thought to myself, surreptitiously writing down his car registration number. He then explained, with great exasperation, how at the end of every course they had to shoot all the hares, otherwise the whole enterprise would be deemed illegal. “There’s just no alternative, that’s what the law says we have to do,” he said. “Well, you could just not go hare coursing in the first place, which is what the law really intends,” I said. He looked very puzzled, as if this thought – of properly abiding by the law – had never even occurred to him.

In The Spectator, meanwhile, one of Britain’s most celebrated fox-stranglers, the former Daily Telegraph editor Charles Moore, worries that the police might soon “turn nasty” with regard to the hundreds of braying pink-jacketed aristowannabes who continue to flout the ban. By “turn nasty” he means uphold the law of the land. Charles and his ilk are at other times fervent admirers of law and order. I wonder how he would feel if he were to be burgled or mugged and the police resisted the temptation to “turn nasty” bypursuing the perpetrator, but turned a blind eye instead?

Who's more likely to kill you, a bearded man in a cave or your local hospital?

Clot patients 'die unnecessarily'

Nearly 11,000 hospital patients may have died unnecessarily of blood clots due to a failure to implement treatment guidelines, say MPs.

And Brown's priority is to check our rucksacks at railway stations. Jeez!

Lord So-High-Up-His-Own-Arse-It-Hurts

More support for my belief that most blogging is bollocks:

I'm assuming that the post, at Nourishing Obscurity, and the comment below are serious and this isn't some sort of  joke:

Where does that leave me personally, vis a vis homosexuality? In the late 70s I was actually in the gay scene, went to the parties although I'm straight myself and generally got along with the community fine. It was a passing phase and family then called.

Where does that leave homosexuals themselves? For a start, they're not going to take any notice of me other than to vilify me but for what it's worth, may I give an analogy.

I need a cool room to live in and can't even stand a beach on a hot day. There are other people like me but not many. It's a great problem over here where people switch the heating up full bore in flats in winter and that precludes me visiting the majority of people.

However, I'm certainly not going onto the streets to fight for Cool Rights or to get government to legislate against anyone who tries to stop me turning the heating down. They're the majority so that's the way it goes. The few who are like me can visit me and me them.

I'm not going into schools to tell children that Cool Rooms in winter are just as good as Warm just to make myself feel better about it. It has nothing to do with Tutu like "tolerance". It's an aberration and I just live with it.

I still get on famously with Warm Roomers and we can meet in cafes and have a laugh [as long as I can be near the door]. In conversation, where do I get off if I try to push the idea that Cool Rooms are just as good as Warm in winter - of course they're not but for me they're a necessity. That's all.

Now my mate and his girlfriend who can't stand being in a Cool Room - what if they start mocking and calling me Iceberger or something rude like 'shrivel-d--k'? Well, they cease to be friends.

What if a gang of thugs beat me up for being a 'filfthy Iceberger'? That's a police matter and I'll prosecute. What if kids in school have been learning that Icebergers are sickos? Yep - that literature needs changing. But not to the point of telling them that Cool Roomers are normal.

In other words, there are certain realities and we live with them. There are some things which are wrong and we change them. But we don't tell lies about it as a reaction against years of anguish.

And more support for my belief that most comments are shite:

Welshcakes Limoncello says ...Well, I don't really know what to say but I'll have a go: I don't have enough biological knowledge to be able to comment on choice/disorder. But wasn't it at some point convenient for the survival of the species for there to be some non-reproducing males and females? I do take your linguistic point about "along with / irrespective of" but I can't see where that leaves the Church. I'm not sure anyone is 100% hetero or homosexual. In some cases it surely depends on circumstances and whom you meet? I think it comes down to "living as a minority" again: ie, you have rights to express your sexuality as you wish, provided it harms no one else but you do not have a right to impose that lifestyle on others. Your "cold" analogy is excellent. But I'm still uneasy with what I find myself saying here..

Too much time on your hands can be a terrible thing (mostly for other poor fuckers). Oooh, I bet the MSM are crapping themselves!

You wouldn't let it lie...

Weblog Awards, Web Gerrymandering, and a bloke called Neil Clark (who?)  - The Wardman Wire

A Mr “Neil Clark” has won the best UK weblog award. I’m hearing from bloggers for whom I have some respect (but don’t necessarily agree with) that he was running a pretty questionable campaign to win the 2007 award.

Jeez. Considering most people think Neil Clark is a cunt, and that the weblog award was meaningless (well, at least to those that even new what it was) there seems to be rather a lot of fuss being made about his win. I've consistently said, for years, that ALL weblog awards are bollocks. This Wizbang one is particularly meaningless. The nomination process is opaque and the voting system is risible. Added to that is the tiny number of voters who actually take part in the Best UK Blog category and you have an utterly irrelevant award. But it's no more meaningless this year because Clark won it than it was when Belmont Club, Norman Geras or EUReferendum won it in the past. To talk of Gerrymandering (sic) and a 'questionable campaign' is to elevate this nonsense to the level of a presidential election.

It's just a bit of fun. I followed it, rather hoping that the football girl would win rather than Iain Dale but in the end Clark won and I was the first to congratulate him. So what? I'm a fascist now?  Grow up!

If Mr Clarke wants to feel chuffed about his win and believes that it indicates some sort of grand victory for the British working classes who are we to spoil his moment of joy? More to the point who fucking cares? Oh, and why suddenly is Oliver (write the feem toon, sing the feem toon) Kamm being elevated to the position of victim because Clark once made a pathetic attempt to sue him?

There are more important things happening in the world than this poxy web competition. For fuck's sake, move on!

Let's big-up my job

Police chief makes terror warning

Scotland will face another terrorist attack within the next few years, according to the new chief of the country's largest police force. Stephen House, 49, has taken over from Sir Willie Rae as chief constable of Strathclyde Police. Mr House said another terror attack was inevitable in Scotland and this would be taken into account in his new role. Mr House also commended the force's officers for the way they handled the Glasgow Airport attack.

Here's my prediction for what will happen in Scotland during this police chief's tenure. Considerably more people will be stabbed, shot and beaten to death in Glasgow alone than will die as a result of terrorist attacks in Scotland. So I suggest you get on with the job that is staring you in the face Mr House - combating serious crime inflicted on Scots by Scots in Scotland.