Life at work.

I've figured out the reason why I don't like Ottawa so much. It's because I have no friends here! Most of the time, when you start a new job, you quickly develop some co-worker friends. However, in this place, I've managed to pretty much antagonize most of my fellow co-op students that I work with. I simply can not get along with them.

Just today, I got into an argument, seemingly out of nowhere at lunch. The conversation was flowing through theories of how the world would end, when I suggested that Human beings would not evolve due to our health care systems. I said that the increased infant survival rate translates to many more people surviving with genetic defects and diseases, which they then pass on to their children. I gave the example of the bubble boy in France who got a new immune system through the wonders of gene therapy. One of the girls I work with just shot back that that was impossible since Gene Therapy doesn't work. What? We went back and forth like that for a little while, I could just not believe how closed minded she was. She was hung up on the idea that gene therapy involved inserting DNA into the genome. She just wasn't open to the idea that introducing any genetic material (regardless of what kind, vector or purpose) to achieve a local or systemic effect is considered to be gene therapy. And to go further over the top, she argues that she's more qualified than me because of some course she took at McMaster.

I figured this argument was purely semantic because it all rested on our definitions of Gene Therapy. I decided not to break it to her that I already have my degree (unlike her) and beyond that, I have some basic regulatory training in Biologics. In the end, I told her to go to the BGTD's (Biologic and Genetic Therapies Directorate of Health Canada) to look up the definition, and then watched her backpedal. Stupid bitch. I'm still worked up, and I need to vent. I hate these other students.