Thursday 13 October 2011

The 'embarrasing' science of Olympic drug testing in the UK

GlaxoSmithKline have won the contract to help perform drug testing at next summers 2012 Olympic games with King's College London's Drug Control Centre. There is a report on the BBC news from the 10th of October which is still being repeated. It is, quite frankly, embarrassing.

It shows a lab similar to the one that will be used for the actual testing. The news team focused on the robots and show an automated pipetting robot that could be used to make sure atheletes don't cheat. Watch the video carefully and at 1 min 39 sec the robot does its thing, 96 pipet tips come down into the 96 well plate and liquid comes flooding out all over the deck of the robot.

Doh!


I am sure Professor David Cowan, King's College London's Drug Control Centre Director would prefer Gold rather than a wooden spoon!

Perhaps he should employ Gabriel See, the 11 year old who was one of the team that built a liquid handling robot out of lego. His worked about as well as the GSK one.

Sorry for those of you outside of the UK you might not be able to watch this.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.