Professors who call themselves profs should face disciplinary action.

I've been to 100s of scientific conferences. I've never seen a technical talk get cheers, much less a standing ovation, but this result on pancreatic cancer really deserves it

Imagine designing a cancer ward from first principles. You know the Warburg Effect. You know cancer cells are obligate glucose metabolisers with compromised mitochondria. You know ketones bypass the broken machinery entirely and feed healthy cells without feeding tumours. You know elevated insulin signals cellular growth, including tumour growth. You know chronic hyperglycaemia creates the permissive environment for metastasis. You know all of this because it is in the published literature. From those first principles, the dietary protocol writes itself: Eliminate refined carbohydrates. Restrict glucose. Keep insulin low. Provide adequate protein without excess glutamine. Use ketogenic ratios where tolerated. Fast overnight at minimum. Now walk into an NHS oncology ward at seven thirty in the morning. White toast. Orange juice. Jam sachets. A bowl of porridge with a small pot of honey on the side. Approximately 120 grams of glucose delivered to a patient whose immune system is already compromised and whose tumour is waiting for exactly this delivery. Then chemotherapy at ten. Then more toast at lunch. The chemotherapy is evidence-based. The toast has not been evaluated. Nobody has asked why the chemotherapy and the toast are in the same protocol. They arrived separately and were never introduced.

The problem with this kind of rhetoric is that it throws around big numbers and assumes no one will look deeper. “400 studies” on ivermectin and cancer becomes zero randomized trials in humans showing better outcomes the moment you actually check PubMed.

In the early 1940s, there was intense debate about the “true nature” of bacteriophages, the little viruses that infect bacteria. Some biologists argued that they were bacterial enzymes, whereas others believed they were their own viral entities. In 1940, Ernst Ruska (the same person who invented the electron microscope in 1931), published an article in German showing the first images of a bacteriophage. Ruska’s original electron microscope magnified objects only about 400x, much less than light microscopes available at that time. But by 1940, advances by University of Toronto scientists pushed that magnification up to 7,000x, or about 3x higher than light microscopes were then capable of. Using one of these newer electron microscopes, Ruska captured his photos of bacteriophages. Unfortunately, the images were not so great. It was difficult to tell, for example, whether these were well-defined particles or just random debris from the bacterial cell. (Ruska’s image is the first one below.) In 1942, two Americans — the brilliant Salvador Luria and Thomas Anderson, both at Columbia University — finally settled the debate. Using a RCA Electron Microscope (of which only 2,000 units were ever made, each costing about $200,000) the two men acquired much better images of bacteriophages nestled upon a single E. Coli cell. (Their image is the second one below). With this image, they could clearly see individual phages and their little tails. They saw, too, that these phages were of an “extremely constant and characteristic aspect,” meaning they could not just be random cell debris or enzymes (since the phages had two parts; heads and tails). Their experiment worked like this: The duo dropped some phages on a tiny collodion film (made of cellulose, and thin enough not to distort the electron beams too much), put them into the machine, and then used a vacuum pump to suck air out of the column. (Without the vacuum, electrons would bounce off air particles and scatter.) Next, they aligned the focus using a fluorescent screen on the front console. This fluorescent plate would convert the invisible electron image into visible light so the operator could see and tune the image live. Finally, taking a micrograph involved opening a shutter for a second or two, then closing it and resetting the system for another shot. There was a long glass plate, at the bottom of the column, that caught the electrons which scattered off the phages. Each glass plate carried multiple small frames, so a session could produce several images before the plate had to be removed and developed in a darkroom. It’s wild to me that these images were taken in the early 1940s; or that engineers were able to build these half-ton, ten-foot-tall machines that could blast biological samples and resolve their structures at such high resolutions. Brilliant.

Lab members watching the PI give a talk on zoom

She stands on RayGun's shoulders.

Thank you Dr Melanie McConnell for teaching us a dynamic new way to connect here at #NZSO2024!