Walking the DOGE? They may leave a mess for you: a government purse with no watchdogs and lack of medical research.

Back in February I wrote this post and have updated it today as we start the Fall term and I just taught the first class of Science of Vision to a collection of our young future bioscience colleagues. Both undergraduate and graduate students. In February, you were told that government workers are criminals and frauds, and that biomedical scientists like me are ripping us off. Despite that rhetoric, after 6 months there has not been any evidence presented at all to show where the fraud is or what the fraud is. Why? Because its really hard to cheat with government funds without getting caught and stopped. At least it used to be before all the Inspector Generals of the US Government were closed down. Now the US House is considering slashing the NIH budget by 40%. As I am a scientist, I am writing this to tell you all about the science of how federal research grants work in the United States, and why activities like potential new medical treatment development will simply stop if we chop away the indirect cost components of grants and slash the NIH budget. Here explained with examples:

Human Guinea Pigs, the people paid to safety test potential new drugs are not really volunteers without pressure.

The first testing of a drug to be approved in Canada, or in the US by the FDA, or for the EU's drug agency, requires giving the drug at various doses to healthy persons. We often are taught that these are very much volunteers, who participate for only good reasons. 

If there are bad side effects or even dangerous consequences to new drugs, then these factors must be known or clinical trials on sick persons might cause great harm. Yet, we seem to experience the removal of some drugs from the market long after their approved use causes some severe adverse effects. The adverse effects signal tends to take a couple of years or more before it becomes apparent that the drug should never have been approved because of its severe side effects. How can this be missed in Phase-I? This is how.

Solar Eclipse Safely, from a Vision Scientist.

 Now we are post-eclipse. If you or anyone you know is noticing a new difficulty reading with their central vision today (Wednesday, two days after the eclipse), and they spent some time watching the solar eclipse without solar safety glasses, then it's time to visit an optometrist or ophthalmologist for a retinal exam. 

You can learn about how and why the light from the Sun can burn or damage the very important photoreceptor cells in your retina here where I was interviewed by Rachelle Graham of CBS News Detroit. 

What does a Sun burned retina look like? 

The picture below is from an article you can read from The Foundation, American Society of Retinal Specialists on eclipse damage to retinas.

As you can see (left) , the top panel is a view of the patient's retina as observed directly from looking into the front of the eye. The lower panel is a an OCT image that shows the layers of the neural retina in cross section. OCT stands for Optical Coherence Tomography, and it is a way to use back-scattered light to see the layers of the retina. Obviously a very useful imaging system for your eye doctor. The green line on the top panel shows the location of the OCT scan. 

I have added the red arrow, pointing to the OCT image cross-section at the fovea from this patient with a fovea burn. This area is the part of the retina that you are reading this with now, your central, high-detailed, vision. That white stalk of burn damage should not be there. A normal undamaged human fovea does not have that burn feature, as seen in this normal retinal OCT scan below.

 OCT image of a normal fovea from "The ABCs of OCT" in the Review of Optometry.

So I hope that you were able to watch the Solar Eclipse of April 8th 2024 in a safe manner. My best advice for your vision health at any time is get an eye check-up at least every two years when younger and over 30 years of age it is best to get an eye exam once per year. If you have diabetes or heart disease then you want an eye exam every year regardless of your age. The reality is that most damage to your retina occurs without any sensation or pain, so many conditions affecting your retinas will be detected by your eye exam and catching retinal conditions early is important for possible treatment. Once photoreceptor cells have died, there is nothing currently that modern medicine can do to fix that.

Ken Mitton

How to Watch the Solar Eclipse Safely, from a Vision Scientist.

I wrote about this during the last eclipse in 2017, now its time to update for this April 2024. How can you watch the solar eclipse without harming your eyes? What is so scary about a solar eclipse? Are there some special rays of light that only occur during the eclipse that make the Sun dangerous to our retinas? Actually, the answer to the last question is, no. So why is it dangerous to look at the eclipse with the naked eye? Read on for the answers.

The Science Rant's Most Read Post of the last 12 months is from 2018: Hockey Pucks and Locks for Classroom Doors

 

By far, the most-read post in The Science Rant over the last several months into 2024, and over the entire existence of this blog, continues to be from 2018:

"Run, Hide, Fight: Is Your Kid's University Campus Unprepared for a Campus Shooter?"

This was a post I wrote during the moment when my university, Oakland University, decided to address the installation of door locks that could be activated from inside the classroom by professors and students during an active shooter situation. This post continues to be the most read over the last year and the last few months and I think interest renews every time we have another shooting on an American campus. 

While there are no guarantees for absolute safety when a killer has a gun, the inability to lock doors was sadly brought to the public's attention last year at Michigan State University. At that moment anyone who might have thought that students and faculty at Oakland University lobbying publically for interior classroom door locks was excessive learned that OU made a wise decision in 2018. The administration listened to its community and they made one essential step for trying to protect our community. 

The sad situation is that while most grade schools and high schools in this country have interior lockable classroom doors and active shooter practice drills for all staff and students, that is not the case when your children arrive at most colleges. 

So ask your college-attending kids this week if the doors of all their classrooms are lockable from the inside.

You can check out the popular 2018 post here and read about the famous Hockey Puck campaign of 2018: Run Hide Fight

COVID-19 Vaccine has performed well against recent variants so far this season.

 The CDC reports that the current updated COVID-19 vaccine has performed well against strains of the virus so far this Fall and Winter (2023/2024). That includes the JN.1 variant.

CDC Vaccine Performance Update