Breast cancer? That'll be $99.99 please

Myriad Genetics, Salt Lake City, have recently won a European patent relating to a specific mutation of the BRCA2 gene. This mutation significantly increases the risk of breast cancer and is found in about 1 in 100 Ashkenazi Jews.

Good news, one might think. Maybe not great for women of that particular lineage but at least they can make sure they get checked on a regular basis. And therein lies the rub.

If they declare their heritage the doctor must then pay a licence fee to Myriad Genetics.

At best this is sheer profiteering. At worst it is going to kill people. Women will be reluctant to tell their doctor the whole truth and worse, doctors will be reluctant to ask for it.

So far this appears to be the worst case of its kind. Sadly, I suspect there is worse to come. Imagine a world where doctors have to pay corporations every time they diagnose a hereditary disease. What's next, corporate sponsorship? "I'm sorry Mr. Smith, you have Microsoft leukemia."

Frightening.

We interrupt this advertisement for some scheduled programming

A week or so back channel 9 started showing Spielberg's "Taken". As a long-time sci-fi geek I dutifully tuned in to see what it was like. Unfortunately I had to tune out again about 20 minutes later when the third set of advertisements interrupted what was looking like a promising show.

Please, please, please would advertisers and TV stations please realise that more is not necessarily better. It is a very short term view. I don't mind the odd ad break but when you manage to squeeze four of them into one short "Simpsons" episode I think that's pushing things a little to far. This sort of approach is only driving away intelligent viewers. It's no wonder they have to resort to trash like "Big Brother", "Survivor" and "Who wants to marry my goat?"

I think I'll just stick with the DVDs (currently watching Carnivàle and can highly recommend it).

No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die

I am 77% Evil Genius.

I am pure evil. I lie awake at night devising schemes of world domination, and I will not rest until all living souls bend to my will.

Take the
Evil Genius Test
@ FualiDotCom

£1m / hr

In 24 hours following the launch of the new Harry Potter book (that's "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince" for any remote cave-dwellers that have just popped into town to use the local internet café) JK Rowling raked in £24 million. WH Smith were selling 13 copies every second.

Although I bought a copy yesterday afternoon I have yet to read it (actually, at the moment I'm engrossed in Robert Girardi's "A Vaudeville of Devils", a collection of short stories around a central theme of morality).

As our hero is now mid-teens I would expect him to be fighting you-know-who by prolonged periods of lying in bed. Supplement this with some forceful sulking, a spot of skiving off potions to hang round on street corners, and an ASBO for frigtening pensioners and the forces of evil should be well and truly terrified into submission.

In reality I suspect it will be less obnoxious teenager and more mildy-distracted-yet-still-focused-enough-to-triumph-over-adversity "young adult". Oh well, it seems to get kids reading and the Pope disapproves. What more could you ask for?

Mind-numb

A small hiatus in posts recently. I put this down to the fact that work has become so unutterably tedious that large sections in the right hemisphere of my brain have shut down in order to cope with it. Work on the blog novel has also come to a grindng halt after only 2 posts.

Hopefully a days skiing on Saturday will clear out some of the cobwebs. Either that or I need to get blind drunk, a sort of Ctrl-Alt-Del for the brain.