Always strive to learn something useful. --Sophocles

Sorry, Kyleri, but the weird old felon in the White House said so!

He signed an executive order in his first day or so back to polluting that rather important office that said that everyone in the country must identify by their gender at conception. The problem is, at that moment we're either female or genderless. Seems that whoever the clever boffin is that wrote that isn't too up on biology, genetics, or reproduction. Which is not in the least bit surprising.

This is a classic from Mitch Benn, whom I loved listening to on BBC Radio 4's The Now Show.

This is pure awesome! I'm personally interested as I have a condition called epiretinal membrane that, if it gets seriously worse, will mean that I will no longer be able to see straight lines. Don't tell me that won't screw me up as a photographer! And I have no idea how that will affect my ability to read, and photography, reading, and watching movies are some of my major joys in life.

ANYWAY, this article from the BBC talks about a new gene therapy that just began human trials that, if successful, will STOP age-related macular degeneration (AMD). AMD is a genetic condition that will ultimately result in blindness, this treatment involves injecting a virus into the back of the eye which (I guess) re-writes the bad gene and prevents it from doing its dirty deed. They're testing it on people already suffering from AMD, I guess so they can quantitatively see that it works by seeing that their vision doesn't get worse.

The article goes on to talk about two other causes of blindness that can be treated: something called choroideremia, a genetic problem which affects young men and eventually causes total blindness. They now have a genetic treatment for it. And a stem cell treatment for people where they can directly implant patches of stem cells in the eye and have restored vision in two people.

In my case, there is a treatment for epiretinal membrane, but it is extremely high risk: they literally scrape the unwanted membrane off the retina. Obviously the risk of physically damaging the retina is considerable, so it's not a recommended procedure, and I'm not remotely near that level. I'm about as early in the disease's progression as possible: they've detected it, I'm being monitored, and I'm not seeing any distortion of straight lines right now, so it'll be some time (we hope!) before it becomes a problem.

As if I don't have enough medical shit in my life to deal with! :-)

SQUEEE!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/sfb

SO looking forward to listening to this! Scotland's Funny Bits is a podcast with the funniest bits from a Radio Scotland show called MacAulay & Co. I wish I could get the whole show, maybe there's a stream of it somewhere...