Politics and Medicine Weekly Channel Highlights

In this post: the large version of the Politics and Medicine & Health channel photos, comments from readers, and the best posts of the week.

Politics. From Flickr, by woodleywonderworks

Medicine & Health. From Flickr, by Noël Zia Lee

Reader comments of the week:

In I'll see you at the debates, bitches..., Bora of A Blog Around the Clock posts Paris Hilton's now-famous response to a John McCain campaign video that compares Barack Obama—negatively—to celebrities like Hilton and Britney Spears. "Who is hotter," Bora asks, "Paris Hilton or Barack Obama?"

Reader J-Dog admitted that he thinks Obama's got some competition:

Well, as a Hetero male, I got to say Paris...

I have never really "followed" Paris, but I have to say the video was Hawt, and made much more sense than every video I have ever seen of Johnny McSame.

So, in voting for Pres, I have to say Barack, then Paris, then McCain.

Over on the Medicine & Health channel, Zoillogix brings us Glow in the Dark Mollusk Predicts Human Illness. A husband and wife team in England have discovered a way to use a bioluminescent mollusk called a piddock to assess the health of their subjects. A protein in the piddocks called Pholasin glows when it contacts free radicals, which are released by the body's white blood cells as they prepare to fight illness. When Pholasin is mixed with a subject's blood, the strength of the glow can indicate what kind of condition they're in, which could be helpful for athletes and others.

Reader HolfordWatch wonders why mollusks are necessary for this task:

Somewhere, there are self-styled 'nutrition therapists' who are Sad and Regretful that you can not implant a piddock as a sort of onboard oxidative stress detector that will signal you when you need to take more vitamin C or antioxidants. The motto being - don't obtain from a well-balanced diet what you can purchase in the expensive form of pills without trials...

Some other Politics posts we thought were cool this week were:

Theocracy in action---HHS proposes to limit birth control

Inigo Montoya, Call Your Office

How much should the president know about the Internet?

Gay Scientists Identify Christian Gene

Was the Anthrax Attack Really a Mixture of Two Strains?

And from the Medicine & Health channel:

Stem cells created from ALS patient and used to make neurons

Anthrax and credibility

Lunch with Heather Perry

Drug improves endurance without need for exercise

Thanks Carl, you've ruined it for me forever

Look for highlights from other channels coming up!