Is Illegal Kidney Trafficking Just the Beginning?

I first heard about the story of the man in New York who was brokering black market kidney transplants yesterday on NPR news.  Then I ran across it again this morning on Wired Science.  The guy got busted by the FBI trying to arrange an illegal kidney transplant.  After the sting, he told investigators that he had brokered several other such deals.  He claims that the transplant procedures took place in U.S. hospitals by experienced surgeons and that the Isreali donors were well compensated.  And that's all good; it would be some pretty frightening shit if the procedures were being done in a roadside motel or an old meat locker or something similarly disturbing.

It's important to note, though, that a kidney transplant is not as easy as changing the fuel filter on an old Chevy pickup.  In particular, immunological markers have to be matched effectively to reduce the risk of the patient having a major foreign body response to the organ.  And even then, the chances of complications after the procedure are not trivial.

But I can't help thinking that this case could be a sort of omen; how runaway medical care costs and high rates of uninsured Americans could be fostering a culture of illegal, black market medical practices.  Not only do people die while on a waiting list for donor organs, but they also die because they can't afford the transplants.  The man who was arrested in New Jersey for trafficking kidneys was charging $160,000.  Seems fairly steep, but would it have cost any less if the patient had gone through official channels to get the kidney?  And how long would they have had to wait on a list before receiving the needed organ?  According to one website, the average waiting time for a kidney is 3 to 5 years.  That's a long time to wait if you are dying a slow, painful death.  And the average transplant cost, according to one study, is just shy of $90,000.  Add to that the $135,000 that it will cost to be on kidney dialysis for the 3 years that you're waiting for a suitable donor organ and suddenly $160,000 for an illegal kidney starts to look like a pretty attractive option.

My guess is that there will be more cases like this in the future, especially if the new Affordable Care Act is repealed.  And you want to know what we can do to make sure that these types of instances don't become commonplace?  Support universal health care.

Giving 'Em The Good 'Ol One-Finger Salute

I've been seeing a few television advertisements, such as those from some sort of Clean Coal organization and Conoco-Phillips, making some odd claims lately.  The Conoco-Phillips commercials show actors posing as young, supposedly intelligent college students discussing how natural gas is "cleaner."  Uh...cleaner than what, exactly?  Cleaner than most other fossil fuel industries like coal and petroleum?  Alright, I can go along with that.  But the big push right now is in the renewable energy sector; solar, wind, and to a lesser degree, biofuels.  If these ass-clowns are trying to tell me that natural gas is "cleaner" than solar energy, they need to go take a walk.

But the Clean Coal commercials are what really raise my ire.  These advertisements make dire predictions about EPA regulations killing jobs and destroying our economy.  I've lately found myself raising my middle finger to salute these advertisements when they appear.  To say the least, I find them unfathomably disgusting.  Paul Krugman has a delightful summation of a study that looks at the quantitative economic impacts of pollution, with regard to health and productivity effects, for various industries.  The researchers then compared these values to the economic value that the industry contributes.  The study indicates that there are some industries that actually have an overall negative impact on the economy.  To take a quote from the abstract:

Solid waste combustion, sewage treatment, stone quarrying, marinas, and oil and coal-fired power plants have air pollution damages larger than their value added. The largest industrial contributor to external costs is coal-fired electric generation, whose damages range from 0.8 to 5.6 times value added.

So there you go.  Want to stop killing jobs and boost the economy?  Regulate the shit out of the coal industry.

By the way, this issue really sticks in my craw, so expect more on this in the coming days and weeks.

Drill, Baby, Drill!

But not for oil.  For life.

I just think this is too cool:  a group of geologists from the British Antarctic Survey are planning to drill down through 3,000 meters of Antarctic ice to reach a sub-glacial lake, called Lake Ellsworth, that remains unfrozen due to geothermal heating.  The researchers will be looking for signs of life in the waters deep below the surface, as well as taking other measurements to learn more about this strange place.

Thinking about it makes me shake my head in disbelief.  Sub-glacial lakes that could potentially harbor life?  This planet is so freakin' awesome!

Hello From My Comfy Pink Chair

Holy cow.  It's been a hectic couple of weeks.  I officially started working at Mizzou late last week.  I am now a staff researcher for the International Center for Nano/Micro Systems and Nanotechnology in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.  My official title is Research Scientist.  Over the last week I've been getting somewhat conflicting descriptions of my responsibilities, but I'm relying on my PI and my own ideas of how the project should proceed to hammer out a research plan.  Sticking to that plan will be another story.  But I suppose that's the nature of research.

In the meantime, I'm still working part-time at Lincoln University.  In fact, my start date at Mizzou pulled me away from setting up our new Raman spectroscopy system in our lab at LU.  I'm looking forward to getting back down there tomorrow and getting that instrument running.  We're still waiting to get a new refrigerator and some optomechanics supplies, and also have a big floor centrifuge moved downstairs.  But the lab is really coming together.  It's kind of a shame that, with my colleague and I dropping to part-time, the shiny new lab will be pretty badly underutilized.  Hopefully having the new lab running smoothly will help kick-start the sensors research program at LU and my supervisor can bring in some new lab rats to use the lab at something more closely resembling full capacity.  It's not as easy as it sounds, though, as the LU Department of Life and Physical Sciences does not have a graduate program, so he's unable to bring in graduate student researchers.  He mostly depends on post-docs like myself and undergrads to staff the lab.

One last thing:  I'm squatting in a nice roomy corner office for right now while the MU Bioengineering Department does some rearranging.  However, there is a possibility that I will be staying in this office permanently.  The office has a 3-sided desk and a receptionist counter, both of which are pink.  I also have a matching pink chair.  It is truly awesome and I really do hope that I get to stay in this office:

I mean, seriously, how can you not dig that color scheme?

Faster Than the Speed of Light is Pretty Fast - Relatively Speaking

As you've probably heard by now (or not, depending on whether you are a flaming nerd or not), a research group based primarily at CERN claims to have sent a neutrino, an elementary subatomic particle, zipping across Europe faster than the speed of light.  According to early reports, the neutrino reached its destination -  after traversing a 732 km distance - 60 nanoseconds faster than it should have had it been traveling its expected speed, which is a tiny fraction under the speed of light.  This is a big deal because according to Einstein's theory of special relativity, the speed of light is the ultimate speed limit for all physical matter.

But is it really THAT big a deal?  I say no, not particularly.

If you'd like to know why it's not really as tremendous a breakthrough as some would have you think, check out posts at Wired Science and The Evolving Scientist.  Here are a few quick thoughts about this study, as illustrated by posing questions to myself:

Does this disprove Einstein's theory of special relativity?  Of course not.  This is one small, albeit significant aspect, of this particular theory.  I should also point out that this is only one of Einstein's many contributions to our understanding of physics.

Are these results conclusive?  Not necessarily.  Other groups, such as the U.S.-based FermiLab, are already working on repeating the study to see if they can get the same results.  Additionally, the European group claims to have taken important sources of error into account when analyzing their data.  But that doesn't mean that they were able to consider every source of error, and so other physicists were immediately pointing out potential sources of error with this study.

If these results turn out to be conclusive, how important are they?  They're pretty important, but no more so than any other notable scientific discovery.  That's kind of the point.  Science is not static.  It moves forward.  Our knowledge is advanced with each new discovery, and new discoveries are happening every single day.  And that's why science is so cool.