A Series of Tubes

I noticed more traffic heading towards the tree sit postings than my others so I figured I might as well give an update. I got an email last night that said:

“In response to an increasing number of inquiries about the Science Hill tree-sit, EVC Kliger has offered to meet with affected students, staff and faculty tomorrow morning, Tuesday, November 20 from 9:00 to 10:00 am.”

Well I didn’t check my email until this morning at around 10am so I completely missed it. Kliger has two positions on campus. He is the Executive Vice Chancellor (EVC) and also a professor working on biomedical research. I doubt his views on the tree sit would be positive. I would have liked to see how that meeting went.

Part of what I have seen is the targeting of the sciences from the arts and humanities. There is this sense from the tree sitters that the new biomedical research will bring nanotechnology, biotech, weapons research, animal testing and that all of these things are bad. Let me address these various concerns.

Lets start with Kliger’s research. He works on trying to understand Rhodopsin which are the proteins that allows you to see and protein folding. Is it nanotechnology? Sure. Rhodopsin can be measured in nanometers which means it is nanotechnology (the definition is so broad that most things are nanotechnology). Is it biotech? yep. Weapons research? Well if you read one of his papers you find: “This research was supported by Grants EY00983) from the National Institutes of Health (to D.S.K.) and from the Allene Reus Memorial Trust and the Ellisan Medical Foundation (to T.P.S.)”. I didn’t read all his papers but I have a good feeling that a majority of his funding comes from the National Institute of Health (NIH) or similar government agencies. So I’m going with a no on the weapons research. Animal testing? Almost certainly. It is near impossible to do research in things like molecular biology without doing animal testing.

Now is his research morally wrong? I don’t think so. Nanotechnology is not bad, it is research that is done on a small scale. Not liking nanotechnology is similar to not liking a yard stick. If you don’t like it is is because you don’t know what it is. Biotechnology is also not bad. Biotech helps us understand how the body works. It also help us to treat and cure diseases. When Michael J Fox makes ads to support stem cell research he is supporting biotechnology. It is the dopamine injections or implantable stimulators in the regions of the brain that release dopamine that currently keep Michael J Fox alive. Biomedical researchers are not pill pushing pharmaceutical representatives. They tend to be people that want to better understand how our bodies work and how to improve everyones health. Weapons research is bad. There are people that take money from the department of defense and their research, with DoD money, does tremendous good. DARPA funds research on alternative energy and it is DARPA that funded DARPANET which paved the way for the Internet. Obviously making bombs is bad, but that is not what is happening on campus or what would happen in the biotech building.

Last is animal rights. There could probably be a whole other post just on this. I think I’ll just point you to this website for now: http://www.fbresearch.org/

As far as research funding goes this has to be addressed at the national level. Grant writing agencies are federal. There are some state level grants, but the big ones are federal. UCSC does not grant research money to favor the sciences, the federal government does. The federal government sends more money to the NSF, DoD, DoE, NIH, and others which find their way into science research.

I would actually like to hear what the tree sitters think of the new Social sciences building. “Completion of the three-building complex, located north of Cowell College at the northwest corner of Hagar and McLaughlin Drives, is expected later this fall. The Humanities and Social Sciences Facility will include a single-story 300-seat lecture hall; the six-story Humanities 1 Building, with classrooms, faculty, and TA offices, Division of Humanities and humanities department offices; and the four-story Humanities 2 Building, with Education Department classrooms and offices (the social sciences part of the project), other general assignment classrooms, and Humanities Division areas including language labs, and computer labs.”

It is a bit disheartening to see protest signs from the tree sitters that say no compromise such as the one shown at the top of the post.