QDIS Blog

I heard on the Democracy Now podcast that it was reported that Evolutionary Biology is not on a list of approved majors to receive federal study grants for low income students. It is the second story from the end of that page.

This appears to be another attempt to politicize science again and attack accepted science that may not agree with the current administrations beliefs. While I tend to believe more in incompetence than in conspiracy, there has been a long trend of attacks on accepted science; global climate change is probably the most well known example.

Democracy Now mentions this was reported in the NY Times and so I tracked down the original article. The claim is that the omission was just an oversight and that it would be added back to the list, however as of this writing it still has not been added.

If you want to help me keep an eye on this and make sure it does get added back to the list, the list can be found online.

Technorati Tags: Democracy Now, evolutionary biology, NY Times

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News out of China shows that a bird flu vaccine in initial test shows it appears to be safe and effective.

Initial tests show China’s bird flu vaccine safe for humans - Yahoo! News:

This is good news but very preliminary. It was only 120 subjects and there were no serious adverse reactions and the vaccine did stimulate the production of antibodies. It is interesting to note the antibodies were produced in 78.3% of the people above the standard of 70% accepted for the regular flu vaccine .

It will be several more years before there is enough information to really tell if this works. at least for now, it seems possible as several companies are working in this area and are reporting positive results.

Technorati Tags: bird flu, avian flu, vaccine

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