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Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

Immanuel Kant

It’s been a much busier week, I’m in labs everyday for the most part and have attended numerous seminars and lectures, most of which have been interesting.

One thing that struck me in the Process and Practice of Science discussion I went to, aside from the fact it was three hours long, was the claim by an old professor that modern (post 1970) research was relatively cost ineffective in increasing the average life expectancy of a human.  Now whilst the average life expectancy may not soared dramatically since the 1960s (source needed), benefits such as cancer drugs, new flu vaccines and cystic fibrosis treatments have surely had some impact?

I don’t know why it riled me so much, maybe I felt offended that the statement suggested that people aren’t worth saving, that investment into new experimental, dangerous, therapies that may ultimately work is misguided and that money can be spent on other things.  One such thing cited was public health; whilst I can see the significance of the suggestion I would wonder what more the government/NHS etc could do for public health with such an expanded budget.  However I can see why it may be seen as beneficial to put the health of the nation as a priority over the health of the individual; new drugs are expensive and require extensive trialling to be sure they are safe.  As a result of this they are extremely costly to the NHS and its understandable why they may be denied if not enough people would see benefit from them to be “cost effective”.  Yet it just doesn’t seem fair.

In other news we had a safety talk.  It was an hour long and I would like that hour of my life back.  I  can’t say that anything in my lab is going to spontaneously combust (although I can’t rule it out!) but I now know what to do if it does.  Blah.  I need to go through the health and safety forms and risk assessments for my project; that’s going to be fun:

• Risk – snails are gross: measure to avoid this – don’t pick them up.
• Risk – snails can have parasites (trematodes apparently!): measure to avoid this – don’t pick them up.

I wonder what else there could possibly be that makes snails unsafe?

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