Geoff's blog

I just watched the movie The Prestige last night and I really enjoyed it. Why am I posting a movie review in a science blog? The answer is: Nikola Tesla. Although Tesla is a minor character in the film, I was fascinated by some of the aspects of his life that are portrayed in the film. I had no idea he and Thomas Edison were such bitter rivals. In fact I realized I knew very little about Tesla other than big lightning displays. A brief search on Wikipedia revealed the marvelous life of Nikola Tesla. I mean he invented radio, alternating current (which powers all of our cities, homes and businesses), thought he communicated with aliens and he marketed a "death ray" to various military organizations.

I'm sure many of you have already heard the hype and controversy about DCA being the new cure for cancer, but I've been reading more about the ensuing reaction and I felt like it was worth a mention here. The paper that ignited the controversy is a seemingly innocuous paper in the January issue of Cancer Cell. Basically, DCA inhibits mitochondrial pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase (PDK) and induces apoptosis in cancer cells and not normal cells (in culture and animals). I am currently working on metabolism in the early stages of breast cancer so this paper caught my attention. I didn't think much about the paper until I saw the amount of press this study has now received, especially by the blog world. A lot of media reports and blogs reported that because this chemical is off-patent it had been kept secret, because drug companies wouldn't make any money. This reaction even spurred an opinion piece by Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, on the American Cancer Society Blog. His blog entry as well as this blog post do a nice job summing up some of the recent debate surrounding DCA. Give them a read if you want to get up to speed on the whole controversy.

In an effort to promote content creation on JeffsBench, I have decided to try my hand at keeping a blog. I don't consider myself much of a writer, but I figure it will be good for me to actually write about many of the things I think about everyday. Now whether or not anybody wants to read any of it is a completely different matter. My intention is to write about a large range of topics, although I intend for them to be at least somewhat related to science.