I was going to write a grumpy comment thtat there’s no way Shania Twain was the original singer in the last panel (given that the strip is re0running originals from my adolescence).
That was assuming I knew all about Twain’s U.S. career. It turns out her native Canadian career started in the early ’80s, and I wondered if the strip originally referred to her given name Eilleen Twain:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ShaniaTwain#Earlyyears
Not too comfortable with the zero-sum game. The question was “Is it [the disease] bad”. The answer to that is not : “We outnumber all those others.” That implies research dollars should only go to the greatest common denominator.
I’ve read this comic off and on all my life, but somehow I missed that Michael and Deanna were schoolyard sweethearts!