Learning from the past

As I read the excellent And the Band Played On - Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic by Randy Shilts, I'm getting increasingly frustrated at the people of yesteryear - but not that far ago - who refused to budge from the status quo. More specifically, I'm frustrated at the account of how the people in charge of blood banks in 1983 by and large did not test donated blood for immune abnormalities or markers of Hepatitis B infection, and in fact seemed (at least by this account) to be downright resistant and firmly opposed to taking on these basic practices.
These tests were available at the time, and one particular blood bank did use them to screen donors' blood and reject blood that contained HepB core antibodies or skewed CD4 to CD8 T cell ratios (a sign of some stages of HIV infection), but by and large most blood banks refused to test blood, which has led to a significant number of people being infected with HIV (or HepB, or probably quite a number of other viruses as well) from blood transfusions. As someone who reads this 31 years later, where donated blood (at least in Canada) is tested and prospective donors are screened through a risk-reduction questionnaire, it's incredibly frustrating to read about people actively rejecting what's considered standard, basic practice today.
What probably - certainly - didn't help was that, as And the Band Played On repeatedly emphasized, mainstream media ignored the AIDS epidemic when it mostly affected marginalized populations. Without media coverage, the majority of the population didn't know what was going on, and without that knowledge public pressure couldn't be put on institutions and governments to take substantial action to curb the epidemic.

Now, hindsight is 20/20, and the best that I/we can do is learn from past mistakes - whether ours or others' - and move forward with those lessons in mind. For me, this has raised many questions: what health, human issues are going on in the world that the media's currently ignoring? What issues could be greatly improved with the appropriate actions from industries or public institutions? And perhaps most importantly, how?

5 unexpected skills you learn by working in science

(And by science I really mean a wet lab of some sort; my experience revolves around biochemistry/molecular biology/immunology labs, but there's probably a lot of overlap with other disciplines)

1. Your coordination improves drastically

Before I worked in labs, I was a little clumsy - nothing dramatic, just the occasional lack of hand-eye coordination that happens when you don't need to be dextrous in your everyday life. Now? I have no problem at all opening flasks, bottles, and other containers with my left hand while aspirating a precise amount of cell suspension with a pipette gun in my right. I can pipette things into PCR tubes - and those tiny tubes for RT-PCR - with no problem; and after that, threading a needle is almost a piece of cake. Almost.

2. Presentation skills blossom into existence

After lab meetings, work-in-progress seminars, journal clubs, credited seminars, lab demos and other random presentations, I may still be nervous before I speak to a crowd, but you would never guess it. With the exception of that one seminar back in undergrad where my brain went #YOLO and made me completely forget all the nice segues I'd prepared for my slides. 

3. Concision concision concision

There's just something about having only one page to describe your five-year project for grant applications that forces you to condense ideas until the resultant internal pressure and heat make them melt. Talk about a way to try (too hard) to make a joke AND to show off how much I've forgotten or misunderstood about physical chemistry! In any case, this post is definitely not an example of this, but writing a complex subject up without the luxury of playing with font sizes, margins or line spacings is a challenge, and you eventually have to learn how to cut to the chase.

4. You learn a new language (almost)

Have you ever read a scientific paper? It's not standard English, it's an entirely different written dialect. The first few times I read papers it took me a ludicrously long time to understand what was being communicated, not only because I'd be reading about material that was new to me, but also because of the particular idiosyncrasies of the language as used in that particular context. Here's a fun experiment you can do: talk to a scientist about the latest project for which they've written up a grant, and you'll witness them code-switch between conversational English and scientific English when they start quoting what they've written.

5. You become a better procrastinator

I should be working on something else right now, but I decided to take 25 minutes and type and barely edit this (shitty) post instead. Hey, I am totally currently working on my composition skills right now! And getting into the habit of sitting down and typing at a computer while thinking about my past experiences will totally be useful later on, when I write my thesis, right? Plus, there's nothing like procrastinating on exams or assignments by going to the lab, starting an experiment and pretending that that productivity compensates for your lack of productivity in other areas on your life.