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Doug,

I first met Oliver Smithies while I was in graduate school at NC State. He was invited by the graduate students to give a seminar and have an informal session where we could ask him about his long life’s work. He was extremely witty and thoroughly charming without a trace of arrogance one can come across in academia. I then had the good fortune to meet up with Oliver again when I was a postdoctoral fellow at UNC Chapel-Hill. Though he was not my advisor, he was always happy to sit down and discuss potential avenues to attack a particular research problem. I am filled with joy that this truly scholarly man was awarded the Nobel Prize as there is not a day that goes by in my current work that we are not discussing techniques that were the direct result of Oliver’s intellect and hard work.

BTB

That's an uplighting testimony. Thanks for sharing your knowledge of Dr. Smithies.

Dr. Smithies' work is being used to develop treatments for cystic fibrosis, hypertension, sickle cell disease and other deadly genetic illnesses. Certainly, using mice in this type of life-saving research is more than justified. PETA should focus on real animal cruelty (which does exist, as we saw in the Michael Vick case) and leave legitimate medical research alone.

Congratulations to Dr. Smithies and the UNC Med School. I hope their good work continues.

PETA should focus on real animal cruelty (which does exist, as we saw in the Michael Vick case) and leave legitimate medical research alone.* Just Saying

Maybe the Deer have fiqure out modern civilzation and finally attacking back in the name of Bambi!
Let's see PETA defend this vast human misunderstanding.

Deer attacks man in Madison Valley

The hunt is on for a feisty mule deer buck that charged and pummeled an elderly man near Cameron on Monday morning before it was distracted by the sight of its own reflection.

A Madison Valley game warden is looking for the four-point buck, which attacked Gene Novikoff at his home south of Cameron.

Novikoff had several previous run-ins with the buck this summer, he said Tuesday in a telephone interview, but this time the deer snuck up on him in the driveway.

"I tried to get inside the house, but he charged me before I could," he said. "I wrestled with him, which was a mistake -- I'm 80 years old, he's only about 2 or 3."

The buck knocked Novikoff over and pummeled him with its front hooves for more than five minutes. Novikoff suffered a broken rib, bruises and scratches on his torso, hands and head.

Novikoff feared the deer was going to kill him. He called for help, but his wife was inside the house and didn't hear him.

Eventually the deer noticed its own reflection in Novikoff's shiny SUV parked nearby and was intrigued.

That gave Novikoff enough time to open the garage door and get inside, he said.

"Thank God I had the car cleaned a couple of weeks ago," Novikoff said. "If he hadn't gotten interested in looking at himself, I don't think I would have made it."

At that point, Novikoff shot the deer six times with a .22-caliber rifle and it ran off.

He said the deer was still hanging around the car and that's why he had to shoot at it.

Novikoff's wife took him to the emergency room at the Madison Valley Hospital, where he was treated for lacerations and bruises.

Even before the attack, officials had decided the deer needed to be dealt with, said Marc Glines, Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife and Parks game warden.

The buck had grown so brazen it repeatedly chased anglers on the Madison River and once entered a man's garage.

It was likely raised as a pet by someone because the buck shows no fear of humans, Glines said.

Once a deer has become so habituated that it will aggressively go after people, it has to be killed, he said.

"FWP was worried that a fisherman would trip while getting away, or it would run into a child and someone would get hurt or killed," he said.

Novikoff's neighbor has twice doused the deer with pepper spray. But even that painful experience failed to spook the deer away for good.

Glines has since loaned a hunting rifle to Novikoff to use if the deer shows up again.

Meanwhile, Glines is also looking for the deer, which has proved elusive.

"That creature, as nutty as it is, it can sense when he's around," Novikoff said.

More Deer stories for PETA?

Georgia Man murder by deer took joy in animals he raised

After spending long, hard days hauling Dumpsters from construction sites with his son, 66-year-old John Henry Frix would retreat to what he called his sanctuary — an expansive farm up a dusty dirt road in Cherokee County where he raised llama, buffalo and other exotic animals.

It was there, amid the animals that Frix lovingly tended to, that authorities found the body of the Ball Ground man Sunday night, his chest and abdomen punctured by a red deer's antlers.

The deer — a European species that, at 400 pounds, is twice the size of the white-tailed variety native to the Southeast – had been aggressive lately, his family told sheriff's deputies. They chalked his behavior up to rut, the season when deer mate. During rut the normally docile creatures become aggressive, locking antlers and fighting with other deer.

Frix had gone out to tend to the deer about 7 p.m., sheriff's Sgt. Jay Baker said. When he didn't return, his relatives called authorities.

Deputies found him about an hour and a half later lying inside one of the pens, 100 yards from the home.

It appeared that Frix had tried to fight off the animal, authorities said. Next to him, a male red deer, the size of a small elk, was running around "acting very territorial," deputies noted.

Frix's son shot the deer several times with a semi-automatic pistol, but the shots failed to kill it. A sheriff's deputy killed the deer.

Family and friends said Frix raised the animals at the farm, off Yellow Creek Road, not to sell them but for the joy it brought the couple and their grandchildren. Each of the children had a horse there that they named.

A sign that hangs from the driveway on the Trail of Tears Trail, beyond which the farm sits, announces to visitors that they were entering Frix Farm: "Where The Buffalo Roam."

Neighbors knew Frix not for his animals, but for several businesses that he ran: grading and hauling, picking up Dumpsters, clearing land.

"Not too many people even knew he had those kinds of animals," said Mark Stancil, who owns Stancil's Store, about a 10-minute drive away.

Although deer kill about 150 people a year in the United States, most deaths occur when the animals collide with cars. However, deaths such as Frix's are not altogether unheard of.

"I've heard about [such deaths] in the news, but I don't know if we've ever had a man killed by a deer in Cherokee County," Baker, the sheriff's sergeant, said.

Most attacks take place during rut, when daylight hours shorten. The results of mating produce an offspring in spring months when food in the wild is plentiful and the warm temperature prevents hypothermia.

Because Monday was a government holiday, officials with the state Department of Natural Resources could not thoroughly check whether Frix had a license to run the farm. But a preliminary scan of three databases indicated that the farm was not properly licensed to keep red deer, said John Bowers with DNR's wildlife division.

Frix would have needed a wild animal permit if he were raising the exotic animals for an educational purpose, such as a zoo, or if he was breeding them to provide to, say, a circus, Bowers said. To raise them as pets is illegal under state law.

"Wild animals, by their very nature, are aggressive and unpredictable," Bowers said. "They aren't harmless pets; they can't really be domesticated."

Alan Jessie, owner of Cherokee Feed and Seed, said he'd miss his friend who stopped by at least once a week to pick up supplies.

"I can't believe he's gone," Jessie said. "He loved those animals."