O Canada!

Not to get too political, but now that the whole health care debate has calmed a bit, I'd like to share a few thoughts on the matter. A quick disclaimer; I am only a casual observer of health care policy, and not in any way an expert on this subject.

Let's start from the semi-beginning (I'm not going to start from the very beginning because that would make this a very long story). President Obama was elected on a particular platform. As I remember it, that platform leaned heavily on job creation and universal health care. And I vividly remember crowds at campaign speeches erupting into applause when universal health care was mentioned. I was one of the applauders, after all.

Fast forward to the debate over the health care overhaul bill. Political figures and other conservative leaning folk began a campaign to essentially confuse the public into turning against the bill. I can envision several reasons for this smear campaign, and I have to say that not all of them are sinister. After all, conservatives are called conservatives for a reason, and they generally want to see government out of people's affairs. So some of the people who were against the bill were against it because of their own beliefs of how the federal government should operate. I have no problems with this. We live in a democracy, after all. However, there was a strong, not-so-sublte, and well funded push from health insurance lobby to kill the health care bill. And this push relied quite a bit on lies. Examples include death panels, dismantling of Medicare and Medicaid, and the U.S. transformation into Canada.

And now everyone is confused and screaming at each other at town hall meetings and making Nazi references. The democrats hoped that the whole ordeal would calm down once the bill was passed into law and everyday people started seeing the benefits of it. It sort of did. Except that there are still pundits, politicians, talk show hosts, and reporters talking about how a majority of Americans, according to the polls, don't want the current health reform system. But what you have to keep in mind is that the question being asked in these polls is, "do you support the current health care overhaul law?" Pollees who answer no to this question not only include those who are against big government and who oppose universal health care (and probably didn't vote for Obama), but also those who wanted all-out universal health care and think that the current bill doesn't go far enough. And it's this latter group that I have a message for.

It's important to remember what, exactly, universal health care really boils down to. You give money, usually in the form of a tax, to the government. The government, in turn, insures your health care. During the health care debate, this is what was referred to as 'single payer.' Everybody has to pay the tax, healthy or sick, to keep the tax rate low. Thus the healthy subsidize the sick.

Now here's how the current system works. Everyone buys health insurance and pays a premium to the insurance company. This can be equated to the tax described above. Then the company insures your health care, just as they've always done. Except that, in the past, not everyone has health insurance. Seemingly healthy people opt out, driving up the amount that the insurance company has to dole out, because the ratio of sick to healthy in their risk pool goes up. To counteract this, the insurance company increases premiums and starts implementing devious policies like 'pre-existing conditions' and 'lifetime limits.' So what 'Obamacare' has done is made those devious policies illegal. And then to keep premiums from skyrocketing, you have to make sure that the risk pool has plenty of healthy who can subsidize the sick. This is what the individual mandate does.

If you're not seeing the parallels here, I'll go ahead and spell it out. The current health care bill is nothing more than privatized universal health care. Everyone pays the tax, but it goes to the insurance company rather than the government. And after all of this rambling, I've finally come to the moral of the story. If, like me, you were really hoping that we would see the birth of universal health care in the United States, just remember this: privatized universal health care is better than no universal health care at all.

Would You Like E. coli in Your Coffee, Ma'am?

A few notes on what NOT to do in a research laboratory:

First off, I should give a little background. One of the several lab spaces that a colleague and I have been charged with overseeing and using for our research has traditionally been a sort of community lab. There seem to be a couple of faculty members who utilize the lab for actual research, and students come and go, sometimes appearing to do lab work and sometimes just using a computer that lives on a desk in the corner of the lab. But there is at least one faculty member that seems to view the lab as an oversized break room for their personal use. So based on my observations of this faculty member, I have compiled a list of grievances that will serve as a lesson on improper laboratory behavior.

1) Do not brew coffee on the lab bench. I happen to know that there is research being conducted in that lab on contaminated dirt samples. goat blood, and insecticides. Leaving a coffee pot on the lab bench gives ample opportunity for nasty critters to make their way into the carafe, giving you an extra lump or two of who-knows-what in the coffee that you brew in it.

2) Do not keep a plastic tub stocked with snacks on the lab bench. The reasoning is essentially the same as (1). I have to admit that the plastic tub is an attempt at keeping chemicals, bacteria, and whatever else out of your snack stockpile, but a vain attempt in the end.

3) Do not lock the door to a lab that a number of other researchers use, with a sign on the door reading 'student taking exam, do not enter.' This is not an appropriate use of the laboratory. It's not a classroom. And considering most researchers are very busy and have precious little time to accomplish their daily tasks in the lab, your sign is most certainly going to be ignored.

And that's all I've got so far. I may update this list based on issues I observe in the future, but for now, I think it gives a fairly clear picture of what not to do in a research lab.

More Endocrine-ness

A quick addition to my endocrine disruptor post:

Despite the fact that research on endocrine disruptors is in its early stages, the EPA's list of chemicals of concern for which chemical action plans have been recently developed includes eight compounds, four of which are known endocrine disruptors.

The full EPA list can be found here.

The four known endocrine disruptors that are included in the EPA report are bisphenol A (BPA), hexabromocyclododecane (HBCD), polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), and phthalates. It should be mentioned that the other four chemicals on the list are notably similar in chemical structure to the known endocrine disruptors, meaning that they could potentially have similar harmful effects that have not been studied or documented.

Disrupting the Endocrine-ness

Many of us are familiar with environmental pollutants such as carbon compounds that have been attributed to climate change and heavy metals like mercury and arsenic. But another interesting class of dangerous pollutants are the hormone-mimicking endocrine disruptors. These compounds likely cause detrimental health effects on wildlife, and also possibly on humans. One major concern is the potential for adverse reproductive and development effects after exposure to endocrine disruptors. Despite the known release of many types of endocrine disruptors into the environment, very little is known about the impact these compounds have, particularly with respect to human health.

And unless you're interested in the specifics of the various endocrine disruptors, you can stop reading here. The remainder of this post is mostly to gather my thoughts and for future reference.

One of the more commonly known endocrine disruptors is Dichloro-diphenyl-trichloroethane (DDT). Studies have indicated that DDT may be responsible for improper female reproductive organ development and decreased fertility in males.

Another thoroughly studied endocrine disruptor is the class of compounds called polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). These compounds, manufactured by our very own hometown hero, Monsanto, have been shown to cause several types of cancer. Notably, PCBs increase the risk of skin cancer after contact with the skin. Possible endocrine interference developmental effects include development of childhood obesity and diabetes.

Bisphenol A is a plasticizer that has been linked to a myriad of detrimental health effects. Most disturbingly is the prevalence of these endocrine disruptors in baby bottles.

Very similar in chemical structure to PCBs, Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs) are another type of endocrine disruptor that have neurotoxic effects very similar to those of PCBs, as well as other developmental disorders.

Phthalates are another type of endocrine disruptor that is used extensively as a plasticizer. Like bisphenol A, phthalates have been shown to cause many developmental defects and birth defects.

I basically compiled this list from the endocrine disruptors that are featured on the Wikipedia page. Cheap of me, I know, but I had to start somewhere. I should note that there are many other endocrine disruptors not included in this list, and that these compounds are not as thoroughly studied. Though this does not mean that they are any less dangerous. But like I said, the above list is mostly for my own personal reference.

There's Nothing Wrong With People Wanting to Experiment

Let's start with a fluorescent hydrazine derivative, which looks like this:
This fluorescent dye has had the hydrazine group added so that it will be reactive to ketones and aldehydes. When the fluorescent dye is exposed to an aldehyde or ketone, it undergoes a dehydration reaction, something along the lines of this:

Now, the reactive dye has specific optical properties. These properties include quantum yield, which is basically the amount of fluorescent emission produced per input light. This means that a certain concentration of dye will produce a predictable fluorescence intensity when excited with a known intensity of illumination light. Other optical properties of interest are the excitation and emission wavelengths. These are the wavelengths of light at which absorption by the dye is maximum and the fluorescent emission of the dye is maximum, respectively.

So here's what I'm wondering. If you react the fluorescent hydrazine with a ketone or aldehyde, do any of these properties change? When the two molecules are combined, does the quantum yield change, making the fluorescent emission more or less bright than it was initially? Will the emission wavelength change, causing a shift in the color of the fluorescence output?

I think both of these possibilities are quite likely, particularly the emission wavelength shift. The reason I believe this is likely is that the makeup of the fluorescent molecule has changed when it combines with the ketone or aldehyde, essentially creating a new molecule. So why wouldn't the optical properties be altered in some way? I've been scouring the internet to answer this question, but have found no definitive answers thus far. So I guess there's only one way to find out. Conduct the experiment myself. And that's what I think I'll do.