CRISPR Has Made Its Way Into Popular Culture. How Accurate Is The Portrayal Of The Gene-Editing Technique?
"Rampage" is the latest movie to feature CRISPR as a plot device. Stat takes a look at what it gets right and wrong. In other public health news: exercise, OB-GYNs, heart valves and memory loss.
Stat:
Could CRISPR Create Monster Animals? STAT Reviews 'Rampage'
We here at STAT cover CRISPR a lot. But it’s not every day we get to cover Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. The Rock and the genome-editing technology meet in a new movie, “Rampage,” coming out Friday. Through a freak accident, a gorilla, a wolf, and a crocodile ingest some CRISPR complexes. The animals — whose genomes become edited to make them stronger, bigger, faster, and more aggressive — soon wreak havoc on the city of Chicago. (Thielking and Joseph, 4/12)
The New York Times:
Why Exercise Alone May Not Be The Key To Weight Loss
If you give a mouse a running wheel, it will run. But it may not burn many additional calories, because it will also start to move differently when it is not on the wheel, according to an interesting new study of the behaviors and metabolisms of exercising mice. The study, published in Diabetes, involved animals, but it could have cautionary implications for people who start exercising in the hopes of losing weight. (Raynolds, 4/11)
NPR:
Does The U.S. Need More Male OB-GYNs?
As she leaves a 12-hour-day on the labor and delivery shift, Dr. Katie Merriam turns off her pager."I don't know what I'd do without it, you know? It's another limb. I always know where it is," she says and laughs. The third-year resident in obstetrics and gynecology at the Carolinas Medical Center hospital in Charlotte, N.C., works in a medical specialty dominated by women, treating women. Merriam says she feels a special connection to her patients. (Olgin, 4/12)
The Washington Post:
Heart Surgery: Sadie Rutenberg And The World's Smallest Mechanical Heart Valve
When Sadie Rutenberg was born, she had a gaping hole between the two sides of her heart, and her heart valves were malformed and leaking. In her first few months of life, she had already undergone two open-heart surgeries; but the damage was too extensive to repair, and the blond-haired, blue-eyed infant was failing to thrive. Her parents said there was no choice — they would have to take a risk, or their child might not survive. (Bever, 4/11)
Kaiser Health News:
What We Know And Don’t Know About Memory Loss After Surgery
Two years ago, Dr. Daniel Cole’s 85-year-old father had heart bypass surgery. He hasn’t been quite the same since. “He forgets things and will ask you the same thing several times,” said Cole, a professor of clinical anesthesiology at UCLA and a past president of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. “He never got back to his cognitive baseline,” Cole continued, noting that his father was sharp as a tack before the operation. “He’s more like 80 percent.” (Graham, 4/12)
