You’re not dead until you’re warm and dead.
Mark Roth recounting a saying among doctors, during his talk on suspended animation
My name is Michael Furtak. I craft computer software for a living. On the weekends I have more time to shave.
Posted 2 years ago
I wish for everyone to help create a strong, sustainable movement to educate every child about food, inspire families to cook again and empower people everywhere to fight obesity.
Posted 2 years ago
After watching a TED talk during dinner, my wife and I were spurred to conversations of science and medicine. Along the way, Maggie brought up HeLa cells, which I had never heard of before.
I recommend reading the linked articles, but the quick explanation is that HeLa are a line of cancer cells cultured from a woman named Henrietta Lacks. Mrs. Lacks died in 1951 of cervical cancer, but during her examination and treatment, cells were cultured from her body without her knowledge.
Those cells were quite remarkable because of their durability and ability to divide an unlimited number of times, making them interesting and valuable for researchers around the world. Today there are many strains of HeLa cells, but all of them are descendant from the original removed tumor cells taken from Mrs Lacks.
The remarkable resilience and fast reproduction of the cells has also turned them into a kind of laboratory “weed”. It has been demonstrated that a substantial percentage of in vitro laboratory cell lines are contaminated with HeLa cells, and the results of many studies have been declared invalid because of HeLa contamination.
Update: Not long after writing this, I ran across another article.
