Reverse Engineering Grandpa

Stem cells are rarely the subject of cartoons, but one popped last week from Bizarro.

The cartoon appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle and elsewhere, including the Bizarro web site. The image was of a petri dish in a lab with tiny maternal speck giving parental advice to an even tinier speck: "You can be anything you want to be when you grow up." Artist Dan Piraro said the cartoon was his favorite of the week because of its “strangeness.”

Piraro wrote on his blog,

“To use a term common in the vernacular of geneticists, it’s creepy cool.”

The cartoon did not differentiate between embryonic and adult cells, much less reprogrammed adult cells. Using reprogrammed cells in the cartoon would have been even creepier and cooler, giving new meaning to the 1947 song, “I Am My Own Grandpa.”(See here and here.)

(A nod to "Bob" for calling our attention to the cartoon.)

Little Noticed Stem Cell News

In the wake of the president's job speech last week, up popped this comment from writer Matthew Yglesias , author of "Heads in the Sands."

"I can’t help but think that the American economy has performed sluggishly ever since George W. Bush gave a speech to Congress successfully calling for a ban on human-animal hybrids. Clearly we need to deregulate this vital sector and win the future with chimera stimulus."

A tip of the hat to Pete Shanks at the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley for flagging the item, which is, we think, tongue in cheek.