2008 NIH funding in danger

from a recent email from ASBMB:

'Alert: The President has threatened to veto the modest increases in NIH funding proposed by Congress.

What We Need From You: Your calls or e-mails to the White House urging the President not to veto the 2008 Labor/HHS/Education appropriations bill.

Background: The FY2008 Labor/HHS/Education Appropriations bill (which allocates funding for the NIH and other federal agencies) has been approved by both houses of Congress and sent to the President for his signature.

The bill allocates $30 billion for NIH, a 3.1% increase over FY 2007, the first increase since 2003 that keeps the agency's budget even with inflation. The President has threatened to veto the bill because (among other reasons) the total spending in the bill is about $10 billion above his budget request.

It is unclear at this point whether there will be enough votes to override a veto in the House or the Senate. Therefore it is crucial that we do our best to discourage the President from casting a veto in the first place. It is critical that we protect the modest increase for NIH in the L/HHS bill because there could be no NIH increase at all this year if the bill is vetoed.

Action: Please contact the White House and urge the President to support biomedical research and sign the 2008 Labor/HHS/Education Appropriations bill.

Please contact the White House at:

Email: comments@whitehouse.gov

Phone: 202-456-1111

Contact us if you have questions:

Peter Farnham, CAE ASBMB Public Affairs Officer pfarnham@asbmb.org 301/634-7384

Angela Hvitved, Ph.D. ASBMB Science Policy Fellow ahvitved@asbmb.org 301/634-7364

Powered by ScribeFire, crossposted at the.other.gfb.log.

just when you thought it was safe to -omic

there is an interesting set of articles surrounding the individual
genome sequencing of craig.venter and jim.watson!

i really can't decide if this is extreme
open-sourcing; or, just a sophisticated way of mooning
the universe...

either way, it borders on the ... (dare i type it?!?) .. c-omic-al ...

genes and diets and fat, oh my!

at the same time that Consumer Reports rates Dr. Barbara Rolls' (a fellow faculty member here at Penn State) book "The Volumetrics Eating Plan" the top-rated diet plan. the NYTimes (Genes Take Charge, and Diets Fall by the Wayside - New York Times ) suggests:

... that once a person got fat, the body would adjust, making it hopeless to lose weight and keep it off.

meaning that genes are more important that ANY diet in determining a persons body weight and/or level of obesity.

oh my! what to believe... ?!?

as anyone in my genetics course could tell you, neither argument is really correct. a person's body weight is a function of both genes AND environment (including nutrition, dietary choices and habits). there is NO single diet for every combination of genes (or person); no panacea.

though, it is fairly clear that for most of us: less is more.

oh yeah; try walking around the block now and again.

Powered by ScribeFire.

genomes as commodities

"Nature" has been publishing comments from scientists regarding their "question of the year". what would you do if the price of sequencing fell to $1000? this will, more than likely, occur in the near future.
this reminds me of an old presidential debate, where ross.perot asked which you would rather manufacture -- 'computer chips or potato chips'...

the answer, of course, is ... it depends. both computer chips and potato chips have become commodities of a sort. neither is particularly profitable (that is, each has a low per-unit profit and you need to sell lots to make lots of profit). though, at least some folks are making money by selling $10/lb potato chips!

so;
what would i do?

nothing.
in a few years, the kilo-buck sequence (sorry, dr.o'brien) will only be a buck.
in a few more years our computers will be able to process the huge amount of data we are discussing. by that time, after all our genomes have been sequenced and terrabases of sequence extracted, we will finally realize what we knew way back when.

that Genotype does not exist independently of Environment and that Phenotype is an emergent property of a system -- not a sequence.

pete, and re-pete

that's a cheep (sic) reference to an old joke from elementary school.. this is a triplicate post from my other.blogs just to see how they look.

i had a tendency to place my 'professional' readings in other places... but, this seems like to be as good a place as any -- and i can post from anywhere...

check out in search of memory by eric.kandel. aside from the fact that i always enjoyed his seminars when i postdoc'd at columbia, this book reminds me of an old favorite, the understanding of the brain by sir.john.c.eccles! [ok, ok, i know it dates me.. read on]

i definitely read richard.dawkins,
how a scientist changed the way we think; which was a treat -- but, i refuse to read the language of god by francis.collins. [on principle... even if he did show up on the.colbert.report].

i also re-read 2 books over the past couple of weeks... first off was the island of the colorblind by oliver.sacks -- author of an anthropologist on mars -- i suppose i like his work because he illustrates the remarkable adaptiveness of human biology and the human spirit.

speaking of the human spirit, i also picked up my old dogeared copy of b.f.skinner's walden two. i've probably read this book 20 times (pretty scary, eh?) and it always causes me to check out the twin oaks community in virginia ... just to make sure it's still there...