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*** Alito for SCOTUS it is. A mixed bag for me, though a solid win for conservatives:

Unlike Roberts, he has opined from the bench on both abortion rights, church-state separation and gender discrimination to the pleasure of conservatives and displeasure of liberals.

While he has been dubbed "Scalito" by some lawyers for a supposed affinity to conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and his Italian-American heritage, most observers believe that greatly oversimplifies his record.

Alito is considered far less provocative a figure than Scalia both in personality and judicial temperament. His opinions and dissents tend to be dryly analytical rather than slashing.

And yes, he's eminently qualified.

*** Dean Esmay on WMD historical revisionism:

Having been part of those debates when they were happening, I am utterly appalled at people I used to think of as intelligent and well-informed who keep repeating falsehood after falsehood after falsehood about it. And I am utterly exhausted with having to, at least once a month or so, go back and rehash the same arguments because some people are not simply honest enough, diligent enough, or caring enough to go back and look at the historical record and just be honest about it.

*** What's a a tadpole?

A tadpole (technically known as a protein-DNA chimera) is a hybrid of two molecules. Its head is a protein designed to bind to one specific type of molecule. Its tail is a strip of DNA that serves as a chemical bar code. Despite its name, the tadpole isn't alive. It's a chemical sticky. Mix some tadpoles into a blood sample and their heads will stick to, say, the specific kind of protein that breaks loose into your blood as a prostate tumor develops—months before your doctor would notice anything funny down there. In the past, biologists would have struggled to find and count the protein heads. But the tadpoles' DNA tails stand out like price tags. "No other biological molecule can be quantified as easily, or with as much sensitivity, as DNA," Ian Burbulis, the biker biologist, explained to me.
...
To test your blood for cancer, a medical lab would mix the tadpoles with a single drop of your blood. A minute or two later the tester would wash away any tadpoles that hadn't bound to a target. To measure the remaining tadpoles—the ones that have latched onto cancer indicators, the tester would place the tadpole-bearing blood sample into a PCR (polymerase chain reaction) machine, a sort of incubator that replicates short DNA strands.

This is the genius part. Even if there were only a dozen tadpoles in your blood sample, the PCR would multiply their tails until there were enough (say a thousand or so) to be detected by standard lab gear. By dividing what he or she had just multiplied, the tester would know roughly how many tadpole tails—and hence how many cancer-indicating molecules—were in your blood sample. The whole process takes an afternoon at most. MSI refused to let me quote a number until rigorous trials are done, but I'd wager that tadpoles could be at least 10 times more sensitive than current lab tests at spotting cancer.

Very cool. If it seems like the pace of medical technological development is accelerating, you're right, it is.

Posted by Bill at October 31, 2005 08:55 AM | TrackBack (3)

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Posted by: tester at October 16, 2006 10:27 AM

Posted by: cancer prostate expectancy at April 13, 2007 10:12 PM

Posted by: cancer prostate expectancy at April 13, 2007 10:12 PM