ANOTHER RANT, MAYBE ONE TOO MANY.

 

Linda with what may be a chestnut sprout

Probably Michigan

I have just finished reading a review article on the cancer stem cell (CSC) hypothesis, by Diehn et al, published as an Open Access Article by the NIH, in 2009.  I really believe that I got the overall drift of the subject, even though I draw a complete eye-blurring  blank on some of the techniques discussed.  I can’t say that I came away from the paper with joy and anticipation in my heart.  The “magic bullet” CSC is not.  I will not attempt to tell you anything much about what I have learned, partly because I might get it wrong, but mainly because it would bore you to death.  Instead, I report the following:

In geology we have something called the Geological Names Committee.  If you have mapped a stratigraphic unit, or a fault, or a batholith, before you can name it you are required to submit your name to this committee.  They will check to see if there is something else already called by that name, and that your name conforms to a fairly detailed set of naming rules, a set that has been in place since not long after Darwin.  This can be annoying, but it certainly saves the reader  a lot of head-scratching.  Now, as far as I can tell, there are no damned rules that govern the naming of things in biochemical-medical research.  They often name things with a few capital letters, such as BRCA.  They all know that stands for a gene and comes from Breast Cancer – but, of course, outsiders are mystified, at first.  (It took me a month to figure it out).  Also, I think, they use the same letters to refer go a gene AND the protein it codes for.  Why not use BRCA for the gene and brca for the corresponding protein.  Is that too much work?   And then there are funny little objects called things like Hedgehog, Dumbkopf, Hunchback, etc.  Biochemical humor, I guess.  There are of the order of 10⁵ genes and a comparable (or larger) number of other important things.  Wouldn’t it be efficient to use some system in naming them?  Come on , guys, have mercy on us.  Think of us as Dumbkopfs.

There are a heck of a lot of people working on cancer research. I used Google Scholar to find the Diehn article.  Google Scholar informed me that my search (cancer stem cell hypothesis) yielded 26,863 articles – and that’s just since 2009!  Has anybody read ‘em all?  I sincerely hope not.

More evidence:  The same review article, 4.3 pages long, cites 66 other related pubs.  If cancer researchers really read all this stuff,  either they don’t do much  actual research themselves, or they have one heck of an impoverished  home life. 

I am starting back to work at Fred Hutch next week (although if I keep on writing things like this they may fire me)!  My ribs are reasonably healed and I have learned to cope with my heart monitor.  Got lots of work to do before I win that Nobel.