User:Ginger Maine Coon

The Beginning - A little about me
Happy to join the Wikipedia community and look forward to making my contributions. I hold a Ph.D. in Biochemistry and spend my working life in the biotech industry. My interests and focus remain on science in general, medicine and public health in particular. Adding knowledge and information to promote the awareness of science and reason will be my goal, and oh yes, to have some fun along the way.

Current Interests
I am fascinated with nanotechnology, particularly the use of nanoparticles in the delivery of medicine. The field is in its infancy (despite Abraxane, the first medicine using the nanotechnology was approved by FDA), and is still a long way to go. But I believe nanomedicine will change the face of medicine in my life time - let say it is not that far away!

Subjects that make me sit up and pay attention (more than usual)
Here is the list, not in any particular order. It will grow longer as I am getting older and grumpier.
 * Intelligent Design: Not the opinion or the belief itself. People are entitled to their opinion or belief.  Just the ID proponent's dishonest attempt to disguise their religious belief as science.  Examples: Trying to teach ID in science class while it should be in religion class (actually I am not even sure it should be taught under Religion class but that is my own opinion).  Writing books which pretend to have a serious scientific discussion to poke holes in things not (yet!) (fully) explained by current science, uses it to discredit the science instead of proposing valid alternative explanation or theory.  And no, God of the gaps is not a valid alternative because it is not evidence based.  Trying to classify the books promoting ID under science category (paleontology, or genetics, or molecular biology, etc.) where it certainly doesn’t belong.  To counter that waste a lot of energy of the scientific community where their resource should be better spent on real science.  Let alone the resource of the justice system and the school broad. (See Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District.)  But you can’t ignore them otherwise they will misled the public and the people is unaware of it.
 * Anti-vaccine movement: You smell a red herring when you read the modern anti-vaccine proponent's assertion that the drastic decrease in infection and mortality rate of infectious disease in the recent decades is due to better sanitation (true), better nutrition (true), but NOT vaccination (wrong). Their anti-science argument morphs through the years and now focuses on ‘safety’ of the vaccine.  They cunningly exploit the fear in people, especially parents of young children. Simply put, 'fear' sells.  Thiomersal, vaccine overload, the list goes on and on while the outbreaks of infectious diseases (mumps, measles, whooping cough) unseen for decades happen in multiple countries, some of them due to weaken 'herd immunity'.  How many people, especially young children have to get sick or even die before this madness stop?
 * HIV/AIDS denialism: Thankfully AIDS denialism has largely subsided, except in pockets in Africa, but not before hundreds and thousands of people were unnecessarily infected or dead. Former South African president Thabo Mbeki accused the West and white people of conspiracy that HIV caused AIDS and all they wanted was to sell the poor African expensive but harmful drug, just for profit.  On the other hand, he believed a different brunch of West and white people, Peter Duesberg and David Rasnick, who denied HIV caused AIDS and wanted to sell the African vitamin, for profit.  This obvious conflict always puzzles me but I have given up trying to understand it.
 * Pseudoscience: Where should I begin?  Michael Specter's 2009 book ‘Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives’ is a good start.