This is an ugly story: Children are being enslaved as brick makers in China. From the London Times report: More than 1,000 children may have been kidnapped and sold into slave labour in a brutal human trafficking ring that has shocked and outraged China. The children, some as young as 8, worked in . . . . Continue Reading »
Governor Mitt Romney, who is running for the Republican presidential nomination, has a piece in today’s NRO promoting “alternatives” to embryonic stem cell research. Skipping over his partisan arguments, here is the crux of his column:I studied the issue for many months, and . . . . Continue Reading »
New York Times columnist David Brooks weighs in on human genetic engineering with some pithy points and a disturbing passivity. (No link available.) First, the pithy points:[A]Harris poll suggested that more than 40 percent of Americans would use genetic engineering to upgrade their children . . . . Continue Reading »
We have yet to ensure equal rights for humans, some demand “rights” for animals, and now we have a group dedicated to ensuring equal rights for robots—when they exist, that is. What rights would those be? After all, robots would not be alive:Existence, Independence, and the Pursuit . . . . Continue Reading »
This story is really a tragic tale of how rejecting human exceptionalism leads to the deaths of those deemed inferior—in this case girls—mostly in Asia. According to the United Nations, 60 million female fetuses or baby girls are “missing”—meaning they were killed via . . . . Continue Reading »
Well, lo and behold: Just as a study was released showing that neural stem cells may be efficacious in treating Parkinson’s, another report shows that a drug used for high blood pressure may also provide relief. From the Scientific American story:A team at Northwestern University’s . . . . Continue Reading »
I hope this is as big a deal as it seems. Adult neural stem cells taken from cadaver fetuses—remember adult stem cells is a popular term—have dramatically reduced the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. From . . . . Continue Reading »
I grow weary: Science journalists should report science matters accurately, without spin and the usual hype seen in the ESCR/human cloning debates. Alas, we don’t see much of that in this report, byline Dave Mosher of LiveScience. The story is about Ian Wilmut, the veterinarian who supervised . . . . Continue Reading »
Dr. Ramesh Kumar Sharma, a British Columbian physician, pled guilty to attempting to assisted the suicide of a 92-year-old nursing home resident. The woman survived. Although he was not jailed, has been stripped of his license to practice medicine and subjected to other restrictions during his . . . . Continue Reading »
According to this report, scientists have stored data in living neurons for the first time, opening the potentiality for “cyborg computer chips.” From the story:Many believe that complex patterns of neuronal firing are templates for memory, which the brain uses when storing information. . . . . Continue Reading »
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