It seems like there could be a lucrative opportunity for HR people (or the techs who wrote the automated roundfile routines) to sell a list of all the stupid, irrelevent "mistakes" that are frustrating job applicants and clogging the HR system (yes, I understand HR is inundated with hundreds or thousands of applicants for each position and have to have a quick way to weed them -- but the problem is exacerbated when the system mandates that most applicants have to submit, say, a hundred resumes to get one pair of human-operated eyeballs to look at them).

And the human body works pretty well for concealing such things. Just pay the airfare (and a small bit for the family) of a (likely) terminally ill individual and VOILA -- intercontinental transmission. Bonus points if you can get them to stop off in Madagascar first.

How about companies who 'require' a specially skilled immigrant justify a waiver of immigration limits by posting the opening locally and demonstrating to Immigration Services why the domestic applicants are unfit.

As others have mentioned, with pores of this size (even with the defects or 'holes' in the membrane) the bigger problem is biofouling -- bacteria, organisms, proteins... any kind of macromolecular junk may quickly clog the pores. Nevertheless, this is exciting news; affordable desalination is sure to be a critical technology sooner than we like.

Though I broadly agree with your observation (cell division is one of the most highly regulated cellular processes, and prone to failure if anything is screwed up), it is worth noting that HeLa does seem to have a problem, or at least abnormality, with the spindle checkpoint (a critical mechanism in cell division) if it has many multiple chromosome copies.

You're exactly right, and this type of criticism does come up occasionally when using HeLa. This is a cell line that is prone to mutation that has been been cultured artificially for more than half a century: it has evolved to live in a dish. It's not comparable to taking primary cells from a fresh healthy (or cancerous) human cervix. Additionally, it's fairly certain that HeLa has differentiated into a wide number of distinct cell lines at this point, though we still generally refer to it as a monolithic cell line.

It does not invalidate studies using HeLa, but it kind of highlights that HeLa is more properly viewed as a model organism (i.e. an easily bred life form that can teach us about basic biological principles, and is also close enough to humans to be medically relevant). And this is how it is used -- biologists are not unaware of the caveats associated with these lines.

There's growing evidence that treating Alzheimer's early, before substantial amyloid plaques have formed, can quite significantly delay the onset of symptoms. You need early screening tools to implement this.