Excuse me Bryan - it's late at night and I'm NOT an ignoramus. I'm glad he's
pursuing his interest. It's just NOT something you want to be doing in the kitchen,
bedroom, or basement without some safeguards, that's all. At my last job, we had
just started "mentoring" a high school student (junior or senior) in microbiology.
She was coming in twice a week to observe and learn. It was a great opportunity
that I wish I had had when I had been in high school. The very first thing our lab
required was her to attend safety training. She couldn't even come into the lab
before attending this due to liability issues (we were a private regional reference
laboratory). We were giving her the overview we would give any med tech student;
the difference was that a med tech student had four years of college courses under
his/her belt first. She was very interested, but was, after only a couple of weeks,
finding it very overwhelming without the proper foundation.
It's not about "protecting some knowledge base" or losing my power, or being a
voodoo priest (really, where in the hell did you come up with that nonsense). It's
about being careful, that's all. One bacterium floating around by itself is one
thing, but if it lands and grows into a colony of millions of them, and then it
happens to be a colony of something like Staph. aureus, then you might have a
problem dealing with it in your kitchen/basement/bedroom laboratory.
Sheesh!
Judy Dilworth, M.T. (ASCP)
Microbiology in hiatus
Bryan wrote:
> This thread borders on the unbelievable...........
