Derek Lowe's commentary on drug discovery and the pharma industry. An editorially independent blog from the publishers of Science Translational Medicine. All content is Derek’s own, and he does not in any way speak for his employer.
Medicinal chemists are extremely familiar with G-protein coupled receptors (GPCRs), and it’s a safe bet that any pretty much any neurotransmitter (for example) that can be named by the general public is a GPCR ligand, too. Serotonin, dopamine, histamine – all the classics are there, and that’s reflected in the number of marketed d… Read More
If you’re looking for some ammunition in a creationist argument, evolutionary biologist John Avise of UC-Irvine has provided plenty in a new PNAS article entitled “Footprints of Nonsentient Design Inside the Human Genome”. He goes over a number of not-too-intelligent-looking kinks in our genes. This same point has occurred to many… Read More
Razib over at Gene Expression dropped me a note about a petition titled “Conservatives Against Intelligent Design”. I know that many of my readers don’t necessarily share my political views (and this blog isn’t explicitly political in nature, anyway). But anyone who’d like to help point out that many people who lean ri… Read More
Over at Pharyngula, I find that there’s a bill in the Wisconsin state legislature which would ban the teaching of Intelligent Design in science courses. Since I’ve commented on this issue several times, I thought it would be instructive for me to say what I think about this proposal. It’s an awful idea. Just awful. Read More
I was driving last night and listening to NPR, when they broadcast a commentary by Joe Loconte of the Heritage Foundation. This was bemoaning the Dover decision tossing Intelligent Design out of the local Pennsylvania school curriculum, and I’m afraid I ended up adding some loud and vulgar commentary of my own while hearing it. Read More
The last time I touched on Intelligent Design around here, things were pretty lively, and I promised not to return to the topic until the Kitzmiller decision came down. Well, here it is (PDF). Good luck getting that link to load today, though. I think that this one from the York Dispatch is working better. Read More
[Update: reading this post, I can see that I was in a pretty testy mood when I wrote it last night. Intelligent Design does that to me. So if you’re not in the mood to be ranted at, come on back tomorrow and I’ll see what I can do for you. . .] Further update: Read More
Friday was the end of arguments in the Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial on the teaching of “intelligent design” in the local 9th-grade biology class. We won’t see a decision in the case for a while (perhaps by the end of the year), and no one knows how broadly the judge in the… Read More
Note for new readers: I don’t talk much about politics on this site, since there are more than enough blogs to cover every political position imaginable. But once in a while we veer off course. . . The uproar over President Bush’s support for “Intelligent Design” seems to have died down a bit. (You can… Read More
I haven’t commented on the controversy about including “Intelligent Design” in school curricula, but I don’t want that to be interpreted as any kind of approval. On the contrary – until it offers some testable predictions, which would seem an unlikely thing to hope for, I don’t see how ID even rises to the level… Read More
