What could be more natural than wanting a healthy beautiful baby? Has there ever been a time in history when parents, even in the midst of disasters and despair, did not wish to be delivered of a healthy child? And who wouldn’t want to have a son or daughter who was as smart as Einstein, as athletic as Michael Jordan, and as attractive as¦. well, name the person whose looks you find most appealing? What could be more natural? But this deep-seated drive when linked to the onrushing train of genetic medicine is creating a trend that will shape – both literally and figuratively – the future of our species. You haven’t heard of this? It is not surprising. The linkage and its implications have almost no place at the table of the public conversation. Here are just a few examples of what I mean: Quietly in a laboratory in Vancouver, Robert Holt, head of sequencing for the University of British Columbia’s Genome Science Centre, is working to create the first made to order life form -what is being called ‘synthetic life’- a microbe.1 Dr. Holt is part of a project […]
WASHINGTON — The FBI secretly sought information last year on 3,501 U.S. citizens and legal residents from their banks and credit card, telephone and Internet companies without a court’s approval, the Justice Department said Friday. It was the first time the Bush administration has publicly disclosed how often it uses the administrative subpoena known as a national security letter, which allows the executive branch of government to obtain records about people in terrorism and espionage investigations without court approval. Friday’s disclosure was mandated as part of the renewal of the Patriot Act, the administration’s sweeping anti-terror law. The FBI delivered a total of 9,254 NSLs relating to 3,501 people in 2005, according to a report submitted late Friday to Democratic and Republican leaders in the House and Senate. In some cases, the bureau demanded information about one person from several companies. The department also reported it received a secret court’s approval for 155 warrants to examine business records last year, under a Patriot Act provision that includes library records. However, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said the department has never used the provision to ask for library records. The number was a significant jump over […]
Hundreds of US soldiers wounded in Iraq have been hounded by bill collectors for military debts after coming home, US television reported. In one case the Army demanded a soldier repay a 2,700 dollar enlistment bonus because he only served two years of a three year tour — even though it was a mortar blast in Iraq that cut short his service, according to the ABC News report. In another case, the army mistakenly continued paying a combat bonus to a soldier while he recuperated from a roadside bomb that nearly severed his leg — then sought to get 2,000 dollars of it back. ‘By law, he’s not entitled to the money, so he must pay it back,’ Colonel Richard Shrank, the head of the US Army Finance Command, was quoted as saying. The cases were unveiled in a report by the Government Accountability Office, which oversees public spending for Congress, according to ABC. The GAO report is to be released Thursday. The report ‘found hundreds of wounded soldiers were turned over to collection agencies for military debts incurred though no fault of their own,’ ABC said.
Radiation from mobile phone phones affects the way the brain works, Australian researchers have found. Scientists from Swinburne University of Technology’s Brain Sciences Institute in Melbourne found people’s response times slowed during a 30-minute mobile phone call but their memory appeared to improve. The researchers conducted a series of psychological tests on 120 volunteers as they were exposed to mobile phone emissions for half an hour. Another set of tests was conducted on volunteers who were not exposed to mobile phone radiation but thought they were. The results, published in April’s edition of the journal Neuropsychologia, showed a small but discernable change in brain function among those who were exposed to the electromagnetic fields that mobile phones generate. ‘The study showed evidence of slower response times for participants undertaking simple reactions and more complex reactions, such as choosing a response when there is more than one alternative,’ lead researcher Con Stough said. ‘This could equate to driving a car and being distracted by another car pulling out in front of you. The drivers reaction time to chose between braking, turning or sounding the horn, could be affected, albeit slightly. ‘The study also found […]
Promoting male circumcision and fidelity to one partner seems to be more effective at curbing the spread of HIV than promoting abstinence and condom use, USAID researcher and technical adviser Daniel Halperin said last week, the Chicago Tribune reports. As Halperin and other researchers analyze 20 years of studies on HIV/AIDS throughout Africa, they have tried to ‘put aside intuitions, emotions, ideologies and look at the evidence in as coldhearted a way as we can,’ Halperin said. During a speech at a meeting of the Southern African HIV Clinicians Society in Johannesburg, South Africa, Halperin said he and his colleagues discovered that regular sex partners rarely use condoms, and abstinence merely delays HIV infection among young people by one or two years. For example, condom use in Ghana and Senegal seems to have helped in the reduction of the spread of the HIV, which in those countries is particularly prevalent among commercial sex workers and their partners. However, condom use in South Africa and Botswana has had little effect in reducing those countries’ HIV epidemics — which have reached the general population — because regular sex partners rarely use condoms consistently. In comparison, faithfulness to one partner has worked at […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
