Yo mama so fat that she...

So fat that she saves thousands of lives! Isn't that a strange twist on the standard jokes?

According to a new study from Stanford surgery professor and co-author of the research, Michael Longaker, MD, at Stanford's School of Medicine, globs of human fat removed during liposuction conceal versatile cells that are more quickly and easily coaxed to become induced pluripotent stem cells, or iPS cells, than are the skin cells most often used by researchers. This is fantastic news 'cause there's no shortage of fat people in this country, nor people willing to pay for liposuction.

According to cardiologist Joseph Wu, MD, PhD, the paper's senior author, 30 to 40 percent of adults in this country are obese. And that means that the readily available liposuction leftovers are "liquid gold." Reprogramming adult cells to function like embryonic stem cells is one way researchers hope to create patient-specific cell lines to regenerate tissue or to study specific diseases in the laboratory. And after all the regulatory problems of the Reagan and Bush years, it'll be good to get back to work with stem cells, regardless of how we get them.


But for those of you that came just for the Fat Mama jokes, enjoy:

• Yo mama so fat you have to grease the door frame and hold a twinkie on the other side just to get her through
• Yo mama so fat people jog around her for exercise
• Yo mama so fat when she wears a yellow raincoat, people said "Taxi!"
• Yo mama so fat the highway patrol made her wear "Caution! Wide Turn"
• Yo mama so fat when her beeper goes off, people thought she was backing up
• Yo mama so fat she got to iron her pants on the driveway
• Yo mama so fat when she steps on a scale, it read "one at a time, please"
• Yo mama so fat when she gets on the scale it says we don't do livestock.
• Yo mama so fat she lay on the beach and people run around yelling Free Willy