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Jim Wallis

@jimwallis.bsky.social

Biologist…. I make vaccines.

271 Followers  |  46 Following  |  86 Posts  |  Joined: 27.09.2023  |  2.5915

Latest posts by jimwallis.bsky.social on Bluesky

Can we just spike the world’s water supply with Prozac?

01.01.2024 15:41 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Most of my discoveries are during a hot shower. 🤷‍♀️

28.12.2023 17:12 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Wow! What a great teaching aid!

28.12.2023 16:59 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

And up

27.12.2023 04:03 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 0    📌 0

Rabbit?

27.12.2023 04:02 — 👍 2    🔁 1    💬 1    📌 0

The news section of the Journal is much more agnostic than the op-ed. It’s hilarious when they take apparently opposing positions!

25.12.2023 06:11 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

No one really knows.

25.12.2023 05:52 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

🌻❤️

17.12.2023 04:26 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

😆❤️

12.12.2023 00:06 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

❤️

12.12.2023 00:04 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

“Single use”. Yikes.

11.12.2023 07:21 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

🙄🤪🤷‍♀️

11.12.2023 02:55 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Thanks! So now that I’ve been here a month, how do I demote that post! 😆

10.12.2023 06:33 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

I think Godzilla is supposed to be allegorical, anyway. More like a warning than existential. 😉

10.12.2023 06:32 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

It’s just like the stupid superhero situation. You give all of these powers to a character, and then the film is completely uninteresting unless there is an equally powerful adversary. Meanwhile, the entire thing becomes increasingly unrelatable.

10.12.2023 02:21 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Night flying is the best!

10.12.2023 02:18 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Had a few minutes on a 737 simulator years ago. Easy peasy. All airplanes fly the same - you just have to flare a little higher for the big ones. ;)

10.12.2023 02:17 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Always room for improvement.

10.12.2023 01:44 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

❤️❤️❤️

09.12.2023 07:06 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

8/8. I hate to sound like an anti-government yahoo, but I’m really offended by the way resources get sucked away from work that is genuinely intended to make the world a better place because some bureaucrat needs a job.

(Thanks for putting up with the rant!)

09.12.2023 07:02 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

7/x. They said no.

Did the agent become more dangerous since then? No. Did our understanding of the agent change? No. It simply became more dangerous because the government decided to make it that way to justify regulating it.

09.12.2023 07:00 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

6/x. In other words, we are less safe.

As a post script: I did a little work (pre-select agent) with botulinum toxin. Just to be on the safe side, I checked in with Environmental Health and Safety to see if there were any special precautions suggested or required….

09.12.2023 06:57 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

5/x. The net effect of these rules was to cause many (in the hundreds) labs to dispose of their agents rather than comply with the new burdensome regulations. Undoubtedly this translated to the lose of invaluable strains, as well as labs which no longer work with them.

09.12.2023 06:54 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

4/x. The real motivation behind these rules is to prevent the conversion of these agents into weapons. But making a biological weapon is not facile. It takes technical skill. So why wouldn’t such a person also have the skill to do a basic isolation?

09.12.2023 06:52 — 👍 0    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

3/x. Having said that, the regulations surrounding microorganisms including many or most select agents are completely absurd. Let’s just take, I don’t know, practically the worst one: C. botulinum. Why in the world would anyone care if that was released? It’s already in my back yard anyway!

09.12.2023 06:45 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 2    📌 0

2/x. When I was in grad school a while back I did a little work with radionuclides. I started a little informal monitoring program and realized the lab next door (in chem annex!) was pretty widely contaminated!

09.12.2023 06:43 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

1/x When I reply in a thread here, does everyone up the thread see it? Jonathan?

There is some truth to what you both say: I can agree that labs are not always as careful as they could be. I think things are getting better - sorry to say that some of that is due to increased regulation…

09.12.2023 06:38 — 👍 2    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

Sounds like a keeper!

08.12.2023 05:16 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

This is crazy.

08.12.2023 05:14 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 0    📌 0

Love it! ❤️

08.12.2023 05:05 — 👍 1    🔁 0    💬 1    📌 0

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