Live Long and Prosper
The gene controlling the life span of fruit flies and nematodes has at last been found, reports a study recently published in the journal Science. Researchers at the University of Connecticut Health Center discovered that manipulation of one gene—named "I'm Not Dead Yet," a line borrowed from a Monty Python movie—extends the average life span of fruit flies from thirty-seven to seventy days.

Dr. Stephen Helfand, senior author of the study, assures us that the same gene exists in humans. He went on to say that not only do the genetically modified fruit flies enjoy longer life spans, but they also seem to maintain a high quality of life: "By the time that 80 to 90 percent of the normal flies are dead, these mutants are still doing just fine."

There is hope that this technology will double or even triple the life spans of many different types of household pests, including but not limited to: cockroaches, spiders, silverfish, and that unemployed family member who refuses to move out of the basement.

Inappropriate Relic
A prominent New York doctor stands accused of loaning samples of the late Cardinal Terence Cooke's blood to patients who considered it a holy relic. The charges surfaced in a wrongful-termination lawsuit filed against Dr. Thomas Fahey by his former assistant. Holly McMunn claims that Fahey told her to give a slide containing the deceased Cardinal's blood to particular patients. "I was very uncomfortable with the fact that I had to be the one delegated to deal with it," she told the New York Daily News. "I just don't feel that handing out a body part is appropriate for someone of my level." She is suing the doctor and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center because, she claims, Fahey fired her when she was diagnosed with breast cancer, which he said would keep her out of work too much.

Regarding the blood samples, McMunn gave the newspaper a copy of a 1994 letter to Fahey from the aunt of one of his patients: "I am eternally grateful to you for allowing my niece . . . to be given the Cardinal Cooke relic . . . We both feel the relic has given her an inner strength to accept what the future has in store for her."

In the early 1980s Fahey led the team that oversaw Cooke's treatment for leukemia at Sloan-Kettering. Hospital spokesperson Christine Hickey characterized McMunn as "a disgruntled former employee" and defended the doctor by saying: "The matters in question are personal to the relationship between Cardinal Cooke and Dr. Fahey and his religious beliefs."

But New York Archdiocese spokesperson, Joseph Zwilling, said that as far as the Archdiocese knew, the Cardinal did not sign a release authorizing Fahey to loan samples of his blood. "As far as we can determine, Cardinal Cooke did not know this was going to happen." Zwilling also noted that because the Cardinal has not yet been designated a saint it would be inappropriate to call the blood a relic.

Sloan-Kettering refused to comment on the appropriateness of a doctor passing around a patient's blood, regardless of how holy it may or may not be.