Cassini-Huygens has provided some reassuring proof the we can still 'get it right.' Now I just have to convince myself that these wonderful photographs are not just close-ups of my old LP collection.

Someone left the comment that I was a 'betterer,' which is why I can't always just relax and take in the view.

Everything has to be made better by The Betterer.

However, there are some things that cannot be made better.

Had the most interesting email exchange over the last week with a Swedish neurology professor. The gentleman contacted my publicist and requested some early articles that I had written while at Bastyr College, as he had been asked to write an evaluation of the Blood Type Diet for a Swedish medical journal. He suggested that he had been chosen as he had 'taught classes in alternative medicine.'

When the email was forwarded to me, I noticed that he had a website. Featured were a few articles on homeopathy and acupuncture, seemingly quite negative, which to me called his alternative medicine-teaching career into question.

Over the last five years I have noticed an increasing infiltration of quackbuster-types into positions involving alternative medicine. From these internal positions, medical students and the public interested in alternative medicines can be taught that they are dangerous or ineffective. A good example of this is the hyperbolically titled ‘The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine,' which in fact is staffed by renowned opponents of alternative medicine, and which does not feature a single researcher or practitioner of any alternative medicine on its editorial board. This last year, at a local hospital, the first thing the new ‘Department of Alternative Medicine' did was to sponsor a lecture of the dangers of herbal medicine.

Although the homepage was in Swedish, an obvious link to a page about the Blood Type Diet was available, so I investigated. Since I don't read Swedish, it was not completely decipherable, but the gist was evident. Every negative article on the internet on the diet was featured, though virtually all of these are ad hominem attacks (an ad hominem rejects an idea on the basis of some irrelevant fact about the author of or the person presenting the claim or argument.) An example of ad hominem attacks against the Blood Type Diet are the 'reviews' of the diet by vegan authors, such as Klaper and McMahon who are simply against the notion of anybody eating meat, regardless of how you came to that conclusion.

Had I recommended that each blood type adopt a different version of veganism, I'd certainly be a darling of the vegan world.

Curiously, on the professor's webpage I was described as the Editor of the Journal of Neuropathic Medicine which, while I am interested in nutritional approaches to neuropathy, was not the journal I edited.

I answered back with a link to the article he requested and pointed out the nature of the material he was including in his article. As a series of emails unfolded between us it became evident that the gentleman had long ago made up his mind. Eventually the exchange came down to semantics, centering on the syntax of whether his ‘opinion' on the Blood Type Diet was all that relevant. Obviously not happy about having a ‘opinion,' his last note tried to make that appear that opinions are a bad thing, which, at least to me, they are not.

As long as they remain ‘opinions.'

And yet, other things can be made better.

I have been slowing reconstituting my research lab, moving it out of mothballs at the clinic and into an area behind the garage at home. It will be great to have the ability to work on projects right here versus having to motor over to the office. It's nice to see the ‘old friends' one more time! The back-breakingly heavy star of the lab: an Integrated Separation System electrophoresis unit, long-ago birthday present from Martha. Incubators, centrifuges, Treff tubes, micro liter pipettes –hello again!

I'm especially interested in looking at a class of mucopolysaccharides in Fucus vesiculosus called ‘fucoidins' which have very fascinating anti-microbial and metabolic effects. Interestingly, (perhaps in true type A fashion) I'll be restarting my research at exactly the place where I left it.

However, it will also be a good time to test a variety of new food substances as well. When the time comes for that, I'll put up a submission form so readers can make suggestions.