Let’s make up for yesterday’s egregious overtagging. Via Slashdot I see that some researchers at the MIT Media Lab have figured out a novel way to stop neurons from firing. The secret lies with a light-sensitive chloride channel — shine yellow light on the neurons and chloride ions flood into the cell, eliminating the potential across its membrane and making it impossible for it to fire. They know the gene for this chloride gate, too — it comes from a particular bacterium.
The subhead? “Work could lead to non-surgical treatment for epilepsy, Parkinson’s”. Christ. This conclusion is apparently based on the following quote from someone at the Media Lab:
“In the future, controlling the activity patterns of neurons may enable very specific treatments for neurological and psychiatric diseases, with few or no side effects”
Well, yes. A correlary: in the future, eliminating physical infirmity could allow more people to lead full, active lives, with few or no side effects.
The new MIT research could lead to the development of optical brain prosthetics to control neurons, eliminating the need for irreversible surgery.
Despite cool CGI sequences like the intro to Fight Club, our brains aren’t actually filled with flashing pulses of light. If you intend to stick yellow lightbulbs in there, you’re going to need some kind of surgery.
But all of this is beside the point, because humans don’t have the chloride channel in question. The Media Lab people are talking about making transgenic mice that would, and that’s cool. But if adding new genes to human brains were easy (or safe), there’d be more direct ways to treat the sorts of neurological diseases that the article hints at, since many of them are associated with specific genetic defects.
None of this stupidity is the Media Lab’s fault, incidentally. Their neuroscience program is very new, and while this work seems cool and may provide a genuinely useful research tool, it’s probably not actually as cutting-edge as the article would like us to believe. But when you’re writing grant applications you have to come up with justifications for the innovatively terrible things you plan to do to mice. “Curing all sorts of diseases (someday)” is a popular choice. It’s just like when I was on the debate team in high school: the downside to the team’s other plan is always that it will cause the planet to erupt in global thermonuclear war. Should we extend Most Favored Nation status to China? Well, the downside is an inevitable nuclear holocaust. On the other hand, if we fail to grant MFN we’ll still all be reduced to atomic ash. Here, I have some out-of-context quotes from a Newsweek editorial to prove it.
And so it is with science journalism: every reported advance will cure disease, provide infinite clean energy, or revolutionize the way we work, eat and play. It’s pretty frustrating — there’s a surplus of science PhDs out there, right? Would it really be so hard to find one who also knows AP style? Is it really so impossible to write a story with a hook other than “technology is magic”!?
‘”Is it really so impossible to write a story with a hook other than “technology is magic”!?‘
Well, no… but who would bother to read it?
Sadly I think Jeff’s right. If only because I’m bitter that BU’s science journalism program wasn’t interested in talking to me because I have a degree in science, not journalism.