Canadians to Create “Fresh” Human Embryos for Research PurposesThe Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) has announced that it will allow the creation of living human embryos specifically for research purposes.
Although pro-life advocates working to kill the Liberal government’s 2002 Assisted Reproduction Act predicted that embryonic stem cell research with "fresh embryos" would be the next move--although the bill purported to protect against this type of research--they were roundly criticized as “alarmist” during t... (more)
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Science & Technology: the clone arrangersWe are approaching the year 10AD. On July 5, 2006, 10 years will have passed since the birth of Dolly the sheep, the world's first cloned animal. Dolly, like so many celebs before her, died too young. But her creators at Edinburgh's Roslin Institute promised she would not die in vain. She was a martyr to modern medicine, the forebearer for a new breed from which we could "pharm" drugs for cancer, haemophilia and cystic fibrosis.
In 10 years, we were told, our farmyards would be fu... (more)
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Sex-selection abortions still legal in ChinaAbortions based on gender selection will remain legal in China after lawmakers could not agree on a planned law to criminalise the practice, state press reported on Monday.
The planned amendment to the criminal law would have allowed jail sentences of up to three years for people involved in abortions based on the sex of the foetus, the China Daily reported.
However, "big differences" remain over the amendment, the newspaper cited Zhou Kunren, a senior official with... (more)
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Scientists playing God? We should rejoice‘What a piece of work is a man!” as Hamlet says. “How noble in reason! How infinite in faculty! . . . In apprehension how like a god!” Usually I think rather less enthusiastically than that about humankind, but sometimes I am reminded of the nobility of man and of woman and it is often by scientists.
Last week British scientists announced a revolutionary screening process for inherited diseases in embryos. It will be quicker and more accurate than the exist... (more)
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Government's Big Lie: The "Crisis" of Babies With Undiagnosed Mental Illness To the federal government, many newborns, toddlers and preschoolers are undiagnosed mental cases with dire need of "treatment" (read: drugs).
Following the appalling trend of labeling school children with an ever-expanding list of mental disorders and medicating them with the cocaine-class of drugs like Adderall and Ritalin, government is promoting universal mental health screening and treatment " beginning with babies.
The Federal Mental Health Action Agenda, the ... (more)
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The Trouble With TranshumanismTranshumanism is an emerging social movement that promotes the technological enhancement of human capacities toward the end of creating a utopian era in which "post humans" will enjoy absolute morphological freedom and live for thousands of years.
Most people have never heard of transhumanism, but the movement is quickly gaining respectability. It has already been featured prominently in media reports, including as cover stories in Wired and the New Scientist and is a frequent top... (more)
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'Heaven': Will the future be better than we can imagine?Heaven or Hell? In the first of a three part series CNN hears how some scientists believe the future will be better than our wildest dreams.
We are on the cusp of the next great evolutionary leap forward. Humanity is currently riding an upward curve of technological innovation --- across computers, nanotechnology, robotics, biotech and genetics. A curve rising according to its own principles with its own logical ascent that is becoming ever steeper and steeper as one advance bring... (more)
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New test for genetic disorders raises designer baby concernsScientists in the UK have developed a new, more accurate procedure to test for serious genetic disorders in embryos.
Thousands of couples at risk of giving birth to seriously ill children will benefit from the technology, which prevents parents passing on inherited diseases.
The new method allows doctors to identify embryos carrying genetic conditions more quickly but it has reignited the debate over designer babies.
For 10 years scientists have been ... (more)
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Scientists Mix Human and Animal Cells, Hybrid Causes Ethical ConcernsWashington, DC (LifeNews.com) -- Scientists are mixing human and animal cells in bizarre research that goes to the heart of bioethics and concerns over how far researchers are willing to go to conduct experiments. Yale University scientists, funded by the United States government, are inserting millions of human brain cells into the heads of monkeys afflicted with Parkinson's disease.
They say the experiments will help them better understand the disease and possible provide a cure... (more)
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Human Cells + Animal Cells = ?On the sun-splashed Caribbean island of St. Kitts, Yale University researchers are injecting millions of human brain cells into the heads of monkeys afflicted with Parkinson's disease.
In China, there are 29 goats running around on a farm with human cells coursing through their organs, a result of scientists dropping human blood cells into goat embryos.
The mixing of humans and animals in the name of medicine has been going on for decades. People are walking aroun... (more)
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Sterilization of Czech Gypsies Persists: Eugenics Policy Dates back to Soviet EraPRAGUE (Newsdesk.org) -- Gypsy women who say they were sterilized against their will by Czech doctors were heartened last December when a government investigator released a study that largely vindicated their claims.
Six months later, however, advocates for Gypsies -- known more formally as Roma -- say the practice is continuing, and are dismayed by what they consider only token steps by Czech officials to stop it.
"There's been basically dead silence at the level o... (more)
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Butterfly effect: New species hatches in labThe creation of a new species, something that scientific orthodoxy says should take thousands of years of genetic isolation has been achieved in the lab in just three months.
Scientists think they have recreated the process that produced a stunning South American butterfly called Heliconius heurippa virtually overnight. And they suggest that similar rapid species creation could help to explain puzzling groups of closely related species such as Darwin's finches and cichlid fish. Th... (more)
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Psychiatry and disease mongering: Road Rage Disorder is latest spontaneously "discovered" diseaseDisease mongering has reached a new level of ridiculousness with the widely-reported announcement that millions of American now have undiagnosed Road Rage Disorder, also sometimes called Intermittent Explosive Disorder (IED). Desperate to scrounge up new diseases that can be treated with high-profit prescription drugs, Big Pharma and its disease-pushing sidekick, psychiatry, is now pulling diseases out of thin air, making them up as it goes along, and hoping enough impressionable consumers (and ... (more)
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A Dose Of Genius: 'Smart Pills' Are on The Rise. But Is Taking Them Wise?Studying with diligent friends is fine, says Heidi Lessing, a University of Delaware sophomore.
But after a couple of hours, it's time for a break, a little gossip: "I want to talk about somebody walking by in the library."
One of those friends, however, is working too hard for dish -- way too hard.
Instead of joining in the gossip, "She says, 'Be quiet,' " Lessing says, astonishment still registering in her voice.
Her friend's attentio... (more)
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Call for no-consent euthanasia: ''Doyal is advocating the very worst form of medical paternalism whereby doctors can end the lives of patients after making a judgment that their lives are of no value and claim that they are simply acting in their patients' best interests''One of the country's leading experts on medical ethics today calls for doctors to be able to end the lives of some terminally ill patients "swiftly, humanely and without guilt" - even if they have not given consent.
Len Doyal, emeritus professor of medical ethics at Queen Mary, University of London, takes the euthanasia debate into new and highly contentious territory. He says doctors should recognise that they are already killing patients when they remove feeding tubes from those... (more)
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UPGRADING TO HUMAN 2.0The powers of mutants in the recent film X-Men 3: The Last Stand may be fanciful, but not ridiculous, at least to a growing number of believers in Homo Sapiens 2.0. A recent seminar at Stanford University Law School attracted about 150 participants from Europe, Asia, New Zealand and the US who discussed enhancing human intellects and bodies. Topics ranged from improving athletes performance to uploading personalities onto a computer. It was all part of the visionary panorama of an influential mo... (more)
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Prozac cleared for children aged eight despite fears of suicide riskChildren as young as eight can be given the antidepressant Prozac, the European Medicines Agency (EMEA) has ruled.
The EMEA said that the drug was safe for young people to take, despite concerns that it can trigger suicidal feelings in patients.
However, the regulator's ruling said Prozac should only be given to children with moderate to severe depression who have not responded to several sessions of psychological therapy. The drug should also be given in small dos... (more)
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Harvard Sets out to Clone Human Beings for ResearchResearchers at Harvard University announced today that they have begun efforts to clone human embryos, Bloomberg reported.
The goal of the research is to produce a line of stem cells genetically matched to a living person by first creating a cloned embryo using the person’s genetic material, and then killing the embryo to extract the cellular material. If researchers succeed in cloning embryos, they will allow the tiny human beings to grow for a few days before destroying th... (more)
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Of Mice and Men: What it Means to be HumanWhether it’s sheep with human organs or mice with partially human brains, the creation of human and animal hybrids is the cutting edge of biotechnology.
And the New York Times is advancing the argument (“It's Science, Not a Freak Show,” May 11, 2005) that a growing public concern about the ethics of the scientific creation of genetic “chimeras” should be tempered. The Times, unfortunately, fails to recognize a fundamental question about the nature of ... (more)
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No 10 scientist urges brain pills for allSMART drugs to make people think faster, improve their memory and reduce tiredness will be commonplace within 20 years, according to the government’s chief scientific adviser.
Sir David King told ministers at a presentation in Downing Street that a new generation of “recreational psychoactive substances” could be given to healthy people to enhance their lives.
He said that brain enhancing chemicals could also “revolutionise” treatment f... (more)
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Be careful with this brave new worldPictured: Ian Wilmut at the Rosling Institute with Holly, a sheep cloned from the same cell as Polly
First, there was Dolly - the first mammal to be cloned from an adult cell. For six years, she was a star munching happily in her stall, growing ever fatter and making headlines across the world.
And then, a year later, came a clone called Polly.
Poor Polly was an also-ran in terms of media coverage. But, in many ways, her birth in 1997 thrilled ... (more)
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God’s genetically modified imageA priest, a rabbi, and an Islamic scholar walk into a room full of scientists …
Sound like a modern twist to a politically incorrect joke? Actually it happened in 1999 in Rockville, Md., and serves as an ideal metaphor for the growing cooperation between science and religion. The three religious leaders were among 11 experts called by the National Bioethics Advisory Commission to give religious perspectives on human stem cell research.
The witnesses agreed on... (more)
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Genetically Engineered Human Clones Receives BackingA proposal to create babies that are both cloned and genetically altered to prevent serious hereditary disease is outlined today by the leader of the team that created Dolly the sheep.
Ever since news that Dolly had been cloned from an adult cell made headlines around the world, Prof Ian Wilmut has repeatedly said he is "implacably opposed" to cloning a human being.
But in his forthcoming book After Dolly, serialised today in The Daily Telegraph, he argues that, whe... (more)
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Is there a human right to be superhuman?: Special powers aren't just for comic-book characters, some ethicists argueWhile America was rushing to see sharp metal blades jut from Wolverine’s fists during the opening of the third "X-Men" movie last weekend, an academic conference was being held at Stanford University to discuss what might happen if people with special powers really existed.
The coincidence was too remarkable to ignore.
In the movie, the plot is driven by the government’s attempt to “cure” the mutants so they’ll be “normal,” ... (more) This is the real agenda behind X-men. The movie is not about "racism" as so many claim, but is about brave new world style genetic enhancements and the "rights" of the genetically enhanced "alphas" vs the unenhanced "betas". Hollywood is selling genetic manipulation under the guise that it will give you superpowers. In reality it will be used to weed out us "useless eaters" for the creation of the "new man" in accordance with an age old masonic plan. This is a scam, don't fall for it. |
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Pesticide Industry Plotted Bush Human Testing Policy: Meeting with OMB Staff Laid Out Exemptions for Experiments on ChildrenWASHINGTON - May 30 - One month before the Bush administration proposed rules authorizing experiments on humans with pesticides and other chemicals, its key operatives met with pesticide industry lobbyists to map out its provisions, according to meeting notes posted today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). The industry requests for exemptions allowing some chemical testing on children and other provisions were incorporated into the human testing rule ultimately adopted ... (more)
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Teen Sex Rate Has QuadrupledThe number of teenage girls who are sexually active has quadrupled over the last 50 years, U.S. researchers have found.
The average age at which those girls lose their virginity has dropped by four years from 19 to 15.
A lessening of guilt about sex and an increasing acceptance of premarital sex, are both cited as reasons for the change.
Jean Twenge, associate professor in psychology at San Diego State University in California, who led the research, s... (more)
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Babies aborted for not being perfectThe ethical storm over abortions has been renewed as it emerged that terminations are being carried out for minor, treatable birth defects.
Late terminations have been performed in recent years because the babies had club feet, official figures show.
Other babies were destroyed because they had webbed fingers or extra digits.
Such defects can often be corrected with a simple operation or physiotherapy.
The revelation sparked fears that... (more)
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