Hope for the Tree Man

Via Daring Fireball: the UK Telegraph reports some hope for the Indonesian tree man:

"The likelihood of having his deficiency is less than one in a million," Dr Gaspari told the Telegraph.
Dr Gaspari, who became involved in the case through a Discovery Channel documentary, believes that Dede's condition can be largely cleared up by a daily doses of a synthetic form of Vitamin A, which has been shown to arrest the growth of warts in severe cases of HPV.
"He won't have a perfectly normal body but the warts should reduce in size to the point where he could use his hands," Dr Gaspari said.
"Over the course of three to six months the warts should be come smaller and fewer in number. He will be living a more normal life."
The most resilient warts could then be frozen off and the growths on his hands and feet surgically removed.

Zombie Protest at City Hall

I was lucky to see the latest zombie protest at Boston City Hall on my way home from work last night. Personally, I'd think zombies would be happy to have snackable Ebola victims lurching about the city leaking sauce, but perhaps that's the point. I didn't want to stick around for the explanation via bullhorn, so I read it today in the BU Daily Free Press:

With Boston Police Department officers close behind, the horde of protesters began their menacing march at the corner of Albany and East Dedham Streets and snaked toward City Hall, moaning, "We have been infected by the BU biolab" and "The BU biolab has infected me with a terrible pathogen." During the march - the newest form of protest in a seemingly futile battle to stop construction of the biolab - the zombies stuffed anti-lab flyers under the doors of nearby businesses and into the palms of curious onlookers.
Local activists have protested the biolab, under construction at the BU Medical Campus in the South End, since the National Institutes of Health granted BU $128 million for the project in 2003. The site will house some of the world's deadliest pathogens, including anthrax and the Ebola virus.

Parasitic Twin Removed

Via Boston NOW: a team of thirty doctors at the Sparsh Hospital in Bangalore successfully removed a four-limbed parasitic twin from two-year-old Lakshmi Tatma. ABC News has more:

The surgery removed the extra body parts and unfused Lakshmi's spine from her twin's. To rebuild her pelvis, surgeons used tissue from the twin. And to save her kidney, doctors said, they had to remove it from the "parasitic abdomen" and move it into Lakshmi's own abdomen. She may still need more surgeries.