Judge says USDA illegally OK'd biotech crops in Hawaiian fieldsWASHINGTON — Environmental groups on Tuesday called for a moratorium on open-air tests of crops genetically engineered to produce medicines and vaccines, citing a federal court's ruling that the Agriculture Department repeatedly broke the law by allowing companies to plant such crops on hundreds of acres in Hawaii.
In a toughly worded decision released last week, a judge with the U.S. District Court in Hawaii concluded that the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Servi... (more)
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Concerns About Chimera Research While not completely opposed to the research, some experts and interested members of the public raise concerns about techniques and possible outcomes if initial problems are ignored. Their major concerns are the following:
* Could chimeras have human brains? If a chimera's brain is comprised of mostly human neurons with an appropriate structure, experts are questioning whether a human brain—and mind—could develop within an animal or huma ... (more)
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Debate rages over animal-human chimerasShould medical researchers be allowed to create human-animal hybrids to investigate disease? No, says an ethics think tank that advises the Scottish Parliament. Yes, says Ian Wilmut of the University of Edinburgh, creator of Dolly the cloned sheep.
In its 8 August report, the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics advocates banning embryos containing human and animal genetic material and cloned embryos created by combining human cells with cow or rabbit oocytes, something Wilmut want... (more)
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Death of Y may spawn new human speciesThe pending demise of the Y chromosome could give rise to a whole new species of human, a professor of comparative genomics says.
Scientists have been speculating about the demise of the Y chromosome for some years now but Professor Jenny Graves of the Australian National University in Canberra has come up with a bold new twist on the theory.
Graves, who has been working on sex chromosomes in marsupials, will present her theory at the 11th International Congress of ... (more)
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Ethical row over world's first 'made to order' embryosThe world's first human embryo bank has been launched offering 'bespoke babies' for infertile couples.
For around £5,000 couples can buy ready-made embryos matched to their specific requirements - even down to choosing what eye and hair colour they would like their child to have.
In each case the embryos are made from eggs and sperm from two donors who have never even met. The moment of conception occurs in the laboratory and is determined by the genetic combi... (more)
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Made-to-Order Babies for Sale at Texas IVF FacilityThe day many ethicists have long feared and predicted has arrived as a US “embryo bank” has begun to create and sell embryos with specific genetic characteristics, matching them to clients’ preferences.
Many ethicists have long complained that the use of IVF technology with preimplantation genetic diagnosis, combined with recent breakthroughs in understanding of human genetics, will lead to a nightmare “Brave New World” in which babies are made to or... (more)
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Women Paid to Carry Baby to 12 Weeks before “Harvesting” for Beauty TreatmentsThe ancient quest of fashionable women to stave off the effects of age has always left them open to the claims of swindlers. The latest edition of the snake oil chronicles, according to the UK’s Daily Mail, has a more “scientific” cachet and involves injecting stem cells gleaned from aborted babies as well as umbilical cord blood directly into the skin.
Scores of British women are opting for a procedure that stem cell experts are condemning as charlatanry. A pri... (more)
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Technology: Today's brave new world or logic's foe? In 1932, English author Aldous Huxley wrote the novel Brave New World, a tale of an individual's struggle to fit into a world where people lived by mindless entertainment, pill popping and blind faith in the government.
Huxley's utopia was cold, foreign and while a satire, it's a prediction of our future that's closer to us than we acknowledge.
Technology has brought new possibilities. We can cure and prevent diseases. We can receive information, music, videos, pic... (more)
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Population control not good use of Buffett's cashGiving money to charity is great.
It would be nice if people everywhere gave more money to charity. Warren Buffett's promise to contribute to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, however, is not a gift to charity so much as it is a donation to promote a liberal population control agenda.
In Vanessa Notman's column, "Buffett spends his cash right — donating billions to charity," (SN 7/10), she states that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation's values are "commen... (more)
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Kirk seeks 'superman' technology watchdog to rein in scientistsSCIENTISTS of the future will have to be controlled by an ethics watchdog to prevent a nightmare vision of nanotechnology becoming reality, according to a Church of Scotland expert.
Dr Donald Bruce, the director of the Kirk's society, religion and technology project, said "it was only a matter of time" before action had to be taken.
The potential of this new science to create artificially "enhanced humans" who are supposed to be smarter, stronger and have other capa... (more)
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Tests show clinic drenched in bloodA Wichita, Kan., building that formerly was used as the headquarters for an abortion business had blood covering its walls "from floor to ceiling," according to a witness.
The building, purchased recently by Operation Rescue, was the home for Central Women's Services before the business fell behind on its rental payments and Operation Rescue purchased the site.
After the purchase, Operation Rescue invited reporters and others to visit the site, pointing out the ro... (more)
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People still too human for Stephen Hawking"Did you have fun with your robot buddy?"
--Homer Simpson to Lisa Simpson, on Stephen Hawking's departure
"How can the human race survive the next hundred years?" Stephen Hawking wants to know. So much so that he posted the question on line, in quest of enlightenment from the Netizen masses and their collective wisdom.
At the heart of Hawking's quest is a profound pessimism, and a trem... (more)
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Abortionists investigated for possible baby murderThe dead body of a baby who probably was born alive and then killed is just "business as usual" for the nation's abortion industry, a spokesperson for the Florida Right to Life effort told WorldNetDaily.
"This is the result of legalized abortion in our nation. There are very few protections for the mother, and basically no protections for the unborn children," Linda Bell said.
She was talking about an investigation being done now by the Miami-Dade County medical exa... (more)
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Transhumanism: The quest for proactive evolutionTranshumanism has changed considerably since the word was first coined by British scientist Julian Huxley in 1957. Huxley, an ardent humanitarian, described the concept as a methodology by which eugenics and social conditioning could improve the human race. His heirs today are considerably more ambitious.
In broad terms, transhumanism advocates replacing the human race with an artificial life form using artificial intelligence (AI), cybernetics, genetic engineering, advanced pharm... (more)
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'Failures' targeted at birthChildren at risk of turning to violence or criminality are to be identified at birth and assigned "supernannies" to steer them away from a life of lawbreaking.
Midwives, doctors and nurses are to be asked to identify "chaotic" families whose babies are in danger of growing up to be delinquents, drug addicts and violent criminals.
In a bid to end the cycle of social exclusion, the Government's early warning system will give problem families professional help as soon ... (more)
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'Prevail': Will the future be more human than technological?(CNN) -- Heaven or Hell? Or perhaps something else altogether? In the final of a three-part series CNN hears how some scientists believe the future will be neither heaven nor hell. But that humanity's path instead lies somewhere in between --- a scenario author and journalist Joel Garreau has dubbed 'Prevail'.
For decades following the end of WWII popular culture --- and serious academic research -- was full of predictions of nuclear war. With the two superpowers staring each othe... (more)
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Autism rates surge, say UK researchersA recent study by UK researchers reveals that autism may affect one in every 100 children in Britain, a substantial increase over previous numbers.
Researchers from Guy's and St. Thomas' Hospital in London examined 57,000 nine- and 10-year-olds in 2001, and found that 116 out of every 10,000 children were affected by autistic disorders ranging from "classic" childhood autism to milder conditions, such as Asperger's syndrome.
The researchers' findings show a marked i... (more)
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U.S. government wants to begin using prisoners for medical experimentsA new report by the Institute of Medicine recommends easing current restrictions on the use of prisoners in medical experiments to allow inmates to "benefit" from clinical trials.
Critics of the plan cite past abuses of prisoners by pharmaceutical companies and medical researchers as reasons to keep rigid restrictions on medical experimentation in place. About 300 former inmates have sued Penn drug researcher Albert Kligman for allegedly experimenting on them in 1964 with infectio... (more)
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New hope for infertile menSeven baby mice were born under the ground-breaking process
A potential cure for male infertility has been discovered by scientists. In a major breakthrough, researchers have for the first time succeeded in using artificially-grown sperm to fertilise eggs.
The technique could lead to a cure for some types of infertility - by allowing men to 'grow' their own sperm.
However, critics say the technique, which is the brainchild of a Newcastle Univer... (more)
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10 million females illegally aborted in IndiaBy conservative estimates, sex-selective abortion in India accounts for the termination of about 10 million females over the past 20 years.
"This is the world's biggest genocide ever," Chetan Sharma, a campaigner against female feticide, told the Daily Mail of London.
Chetan is founder of the Delhi-based group Datamation.
India's 2001 census shows a drop in the number of girls 6-years-old and under per 1,000 boys, to 927, compared to 962 in 198... (more)
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'Heaven or Hell': Will the future be worse than our nightmares?Heaven or Hell? In the second of a three-part series CNN hears how some scientists believe the future will be worse than our darkest nightmares.
At the height of the dotcom boom, just as the world was entering into a giddy techno-frenzy, Bill Joy wrote a 24-page article in Wired --- the magazine that best exemplified the positive, forward-looking zeitgeist --- entitled "Why The Future Doesn't Need Us".
It was a stark warning to all their readers: the technology they... (more)
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Frozen Brains Awaiting Resurrection Day in StorageALABUSHEVO, Moscow Region — Lidia Fedorenko loved life. There were her friends, family and, of course, all the former math students she had taught over the decades.
So when the 79-year-old St. Petersburg native suffered a stroke in September, dying a week later, her grandson, Daniil Fedorenko, knew what to do: freeze her brain.
“She wanted to extend her life by another 200 to 300 years,” Fedorenko said.
Today, Lidia Ivanovna’s ... (more)
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