Seek to Misconstrue + a
Failure: The Blog 
February 2012
- Unfinished, But Inhabited
- The Success of Failure, via CNN
- Einstein Actually Had Excellent Grades
- The Physics of Discarded Paper
- The Power of Failing
January 2012
- Offensive Advertising, Increased Sales?
- I Sold Out For Millions, Then Worked At McDonald's
- Steve Jobs on Failure
- The Famous Western Failure
- Thank Goodness for Drug Addicts
December 2011
- It's a Wonderful Failure
- Stadium Destroyed, Reborn
- Failure to Trust the Astronauts
- Failure and the Baggy Pants Tradition
- Failure at The Happiest Place on Earth
- Saving What Was Lost
- FailureBank: A Social Learning Utility
November 2011
- A Thanksgiving Failure
- Harriet Tubman's Clever Lie
- The Failures of Lemieux
- Failed to Return a Text
- Admitting Failure
- A Leaders Job: Support Failure
October 2011
Using AIDS to Fight Cancer
A stunning new research project is making strides in the war on cancer. Their technique? Inject patients with blood reprogrammed by a special form of HIV.
The details are complex, but the results are amazing. From a press release:
The protocol…involves removing patients’ cells and modifying them in Penn’s vaccine production facility.
The findings…are the first demonstration of the use of gene transfer therapy to create “serial killer” T cells aimed at cancerous tumors.
“Within three weeks, the tumors had been blown away, in a way that was much more violent than we ever expected,” said senior author Carl June, MD, director of Translational Research and a professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine in the Abramson Cancer Center, who led the work. “It worked much better than we thought it would.”
The comic strip XKCD explains the science:
In essence, Failure is the secret to success. This entire treatment only came about because of the intensive study of HIV/AIDS, and in fact uses a form of that virus as the main weapon in the war on leukemia. Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire, and sometimes it turns out that victory arises out of tragedy. This breakthrough may prove that HIV actually has a value: for fighting cancer. Now, if we can only figure out how to use cancer to stop HIV.
