[extropy-chat] [Biomed] Contagious Cancer

[Robert Bradbury]

On 8/18/06, Darthmencken at aol.com <Darthmencken at aol.com> wrote:
>     Says to me, better safeguards are needed, if such a robust cancer
> culture has invaded cell cultures everywhere!

I'm not so sure that Keith's statement is true as much today (after
they realized that HeLa cells could keep going and going and
going...).  It isn't unusual for underpaid graduate students (or
undergrads) who would be charged with maintaining the cell cultures to
be somewhat careless in their work.  In fact being very careful in
biology (or medical) research is one of the things that makes it
expensive because you have to dispose of working equipment, constantly
sterilize everything, etc.

The classic example goes back to the cell culture experiments that
produced the dogma that cells were immortal which was subsequently
disproven (with significant controversy) by Hayflick.

Cell culture is still to quite an extent a mixture of science and
technique and if you botch the technique you get messy results.

Robert