Saturday, June 11, 2016

FUN FACTS about the MOONSHOT

With Linda Dennis 
Park Place Market, 2010

It certainly is obvious that users of Facebook are searching for entertainment, not enlightenment.  Recently I posted a short essay to my blog ("Fun Facts about Biology") in which I suggested that I planned to accumulate a list of articles that are interesting from a scientific viewpoint  but lacked “specificity” regarding ovarian cancer and hence did not merit a blog of their own.  Almost immediately upon reposting to Facebook it accumulated 60 hits – and the number continues to rise.  Certainly the word “Fun” did the trick.  I may post something of the order of  “Fun observations of our dismal, expensive, tragic failure to cure cancer of the earlobe” and see if the Fun phenomenon reasserts itself.
On a more serious note, it appears that the Moonshot people are making progress.  A central repository for genomic data is coming into existence at the University of Chicago.  A vast and expensive array of computers will receive, categorize, organize – and share – DNA data bases from around the world.  This should allow quick and efficient access to vital data for researchers everywhere.
As noted recently, there is some discouragement about the practical value of cancer genomes and associated mutations:
However, more knowledge must surely help, at least a bit.





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