2. Nursing moms need to empty their breasts every 3-4 hours (on average) when babies are under 6 months. Going 9 hours means missing 2 or 3 nursing/pumping sessions.

She's not going 9 hours. She's going 4 hours, which is in your given range. Her test-taking was split over two days due to *other* accomodations that the board has *already made for her.*

So on top of that 4-hour accomodation, she is asking for an additional hour in the middle, which would split her test-taking time into four 2-3 hour sessions, instead of the one 9-hour session that all the other test-takers get.

I guess the followup question here is, do you want this woman as your doctor? How is she going to handle working as an intern when they have to work 30-hour shifts?

As a final followup, the paper reported the other day that she's postponing her test until after her baby has stopped nursing so frequently.

Everything... gives you cancer! Everything!

And at that level of consumption, there was a significant increase in cancer, and it only showed up in older rats.

Well that makes perfect sense, since cancer in general shows up in older organisms. If the cancer showed up in *younger* rats then you'd have something to worry about.

Admittedly, the following could be a prime example of 'a little knowledge is a dangerous thing' so please feel free to correct me/blow me out of the water if you see fit. I took one molecular/cellular biology class in my entire life. But of the few things I managed to learn, this was one of the most interesting (and my professor cheerily explained all of this just before sending us home for Thanksgiving break):

Pretty much everyone will develop cancer of *something*, if they live long enough. Cancer is unregulated cell growth. Cell growth is regulated by one three-molecule portion in a DNA chain. If that molecule is missing or altered, the "stop" button ceases to work and you get unregulated cell growth.

The thing is, given the amount of DNA replication a person undergoes in a lifetime (which is to say, at least one full replication per cell per day) there will be a transcription error at some point as the DNA is being copied. It happens. It happens regularly, probably every day, but since the results aren't always fatal or even noticeable, it's not that big a deal. It becomes a big deal when the one transcription error happens to be over the portion of the chain that shuts off cell growth.

What's my point? Nothing really, except to say that even if we eradicate all carcinogens, people will still get cancer because sometimes *it just happens*, merely due to the fact that people live a very long time.

A few years ago I went to an exotic store that was exhibiting paintings by elephants, and I have to admit, the wonderful image in my head of elephants tenderly pushing brushes around was superimposing itself on the paintings themselves. But you know what? They were really great paintings!

That's pretty interesting, actually. Would you feel the same about those paintings if you knew that the elephants had paintbrushes tied to their tails and were hit with brooms when they stopped "painting" (because of course they're elephants and would probably rather be eating leaves or bark, and splashing themselves water)?

Likewise, would you feel the same about these Marla paintings if you knew that they were the product of an obsessive stage-father who himself is a commercially unsuccessful painter attempting to live out his own dreams through a tiny little kid? Or worse, to pass off his dreams as the product of a tiny little kid?

The source of the art is of vast importance, I think. Art produced a) voluntarily and b) from someone who has a genuine vision -- good or bad, I'm not saying artists should be conduits of sunshine and light, I mean hell Van Gogh was a pretty messed-up dude -- is, or ought to be, of greater value than art produced through hectoring/threats/fraud.