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Verbatim — life in the big city, online matchmaking, folk medicine and more

UCLA staff and faculty members are quoted every day in the national media on a wide range of topical subjects. Here is a recent selection.

 

"Increasingly, Angelenos are rediscovering the lost vitality of their fabled streets — not to ape New York, but to maximize the possibilities of living in a unique pool of human diversity."

 

— Eric Avila, UCLA associate professor of history and Chicano studies, in an April 6 New York Times op-ed about Los Angeles' massive demographic growth over the past century and the need for new mass transit, zoning and development policies.

  

"Just because there is limited clinical evidence of benefits in humans doesn't mean it wouldn't be valid, just that no one has done the work yet. Personally, I would probably try it, although I would ask to see validation of safety testing for heavy metals first."

 

— Dr. Mary Hardy, associate physician diplomate at the Simms/Mann–UCLA Center for Integrative Oncology and UCLA's Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center, in an April 7 Los Angeles Times article about the potential health benefits of shilajit, an ancient folk medicine from Central Asia and northern India.

  

"Most of the people in the medical marijuana business are in the marijuana business. The physicians [who prescribe marijuana] are mostly not practicing medicine. They're selling recommendations."

  

— Mark Kleiman, professor of public policy at UCLA's Luskin School of Public Affairs, in an April 6 U.S. News & World Report article about the debate over marijuana dispensaries.

 

"Some will argue that we shouldn’t engage with the Syrian government or its backers. But further isolation tells the Assad government and its social constituencies that their only options are victory through mass violence or annihilation."

 

— Asli Bali, acting professor at the UCLA School of Law, in an April 11 New York Times op-ed she co-authored about the recent U.S.–led proposal to provide $100 million in support for rebel fighters in Syria and the potential for international intervention in that country.

 

"Some of the galaxies that we are studying were formed some 10 billion years ago - only a few billion years after the Big Bang. We are looking back in time to the era of the formation of some of the very first galaxies, which are small and very faint."

 

Ian S. McLean, a professor of physics and astronomy and director of UCLA's Infrared Laboratory for Astrophysics, in an April 12 Asian News International article about the development by UCLA astronomers and colleagues of a new telescopic instrument that gathers light in infrared wavelengths, allowing scientists to study some of the universe's earliest galaxies.

 

"They say, 'We will find your soulmate for you.' That's a pretty drastic claim as opposed to what they're really doing, which is, 'We've screened out the freaks.' That could be their tagline -- eHarmony: No freaks here."

 

— Dr. Benjamin Karney, professor of psychology and co-director of the Relationship Institute at UCLA, in an April 16 LA Weekly article suggesting that the "matching algorithms" used by many online dating sites are not scientifically valid.

 

 "We believe that this study lays the groundwork for the potential use of this type of an approach in combating HIV infection in infected individuals, in hopes of eradicating the virus from the body."

 

— Dr. Scott Kitchen, adjunct assistant professor of hematology–oncology at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and a member of the UCLA AIDS Institute, in an April 16 Huffington Post article about a study in which a team of UCLA researchers genetically engineered human stem cells to attack HIV-infected cells in a living organism.