Medicine & Health and Brain & Behavior Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large versions of the Medicine & Health and Brain & Behavior channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week!

This week's Medicine & Health photo was kindly submitted by one of our own bloggers, the Neurophilospher.

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Medicine & Health. Surgical saws at the Wellcome Trust's Medicine Man Exhibit. From Flickr, by mcost

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Brain & Behavior. From Flickr, by DerrickT

Reader comments of the week:

On the Medicine & Health channel, revere takes on Big Pharma in Drug giant GlaxoSmithKline to its scientists: fuck off. The pharamaceutical company recently laid off 40 percent of research scientists under its employ, despite claims that it is extensive research and development costs which drive high prices to consumers.

Revere blames GlaxoSmithKline's management for the decision to cut costs in this supposedly crucial area, but reader traumatized speculates there might be another reason:

Wait, this is mismanagement or just a manifestation of the drying up of the drug discovery pipeline?

Traumatized linked to this article as evidence.

In RNA gene separates human brains from chimpanzees, Ed Yong of Not Exactly Rocket Science describes the discovery of a molecule involved in human brain development which differs greatly between humans and other related species. Surprisingly, the molecule is not a protein but a fragment of RNA translated from a region of non-coding DNA. This has vast implications for our understanding of non-coding DNA, which makes up the majority of the human genome.

Reader Ira wonders how others will interpret the finding:

Oh dear, I see some nutty ID guys having a field day with this... I can almost imagine the headlines... "All along, god was in the junk details too!". heh...

Well, with such great useful junk details, I'd welcome junk god to make more scientific junk discoveries any day. just have him in a lab coat like everyone, we don't want contaminations in the lab :)

Some other Medicine & Health posts we thought were cool this week were:

Why good medicine requires materialism

They have a pill for that

Zoos to Use Blood Sucking Bugs as Syringes

The Next Big Gardasil Controversy

Give to the Red Cross

And from the Brain & Behavior channel:

What is the Internet doing to our brains?

The Psychology of Evil

Soap Operas and Fertility

Anatomy of a false memory

Road Rage Correlates with Number of Bumper Stickers

Look for highlights from other channels coming up!

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