Category Archives: Politics

scientists bring dead stem cells to life

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 stem cell diagram

I’m pretty firmly closety about most of my viewpoints on genetic ethics, because it saves me all kinds of heated arguments with people who are wildly passionate about the topic, but significantly stupider than I am, but it’s time to open that door a wee crack, methinks.

The Observer has reported that British scientists have succeeded in bringing dead stem cells back to life, appropriate for development into stem cell therapies.

Scientists working at a British laboratory have achieved one of the most controversial breakthroughs ever made in the field of stem cell science by taking cells from dead embryos and turning them into living tissue.

The technique could soon be used to create treatments for patients suffering from diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, the researchers say. The breakthrough has been hailed by many scientists and ethical experts because it could circumvent opposition to stem cell experiments.

‘This should get round opposition to stem cell science because live embryos will no longer need to be used in all experiments,’ said Professor Miodrag Stojkovic, the researcher who carried out the experiments at the Centre for Stem Cell Biology at Newcastle University last year…

Scientifically, this is a huge step. Ethically it looks like one, but it may actually be nothing more than playing the shell game with life and death.

My biggest problem with all therapies that use human tissue is that the profit motive in the States, among many other markets, provides positive incentive for what you might call “tissue development” (pregnancy/embroyo culture) as well as “donation,” (abortion/diversion of cultures) not to mention obfuscation on the part of agencies accepting such donations.

What the hell am I talking about?

As long as there’s a market for stem cells, there’s a potential profit motive for abortion or fertilizing eggs and then preventing them from growing into babies, simple as that. In some countries the sale of tissue or rebate of medical services to the individual might be an option. In some countries the doctor might just say “we’ll take it away” and turn it right over to a capitalist corporation in return for money, product, or services including lobbying.

We have seen this with the market in cadaver tissue; we’re all a little more skeptical and nervous about signing that “organ donation” card, rightly or wrongly. Nobody wants to be reincarnated as Paris Hilton’s new ass in twenty years.

As long as the tissue is worth something on the open market, medical decisions will be coloured by this, either on the part of the individual patient or on the part of the organizations providing services either to the patient or the doctor. And I just don’t think this is morally justifiable.

This, however, I can almost get behind. There’s no profit motive set against any kind of life in this situation.

Or is there?

neural stem cellsThe availability of dead cells, of course, depends upon the production of living embroyos just the same as the availability of live ones does. Now if using dead cells is legal and live ones illegal, the cash incentive effect comes to bear on the maintenance of those embroyos’ health; inversely.

I acknowledge that using the cells of a dead embroyo is a vast ethical improvement over using the cells of a live one, but now that it may be economically feasable to culture and then allow to die a large number of embroyos, is the potential for harm not that much greater, because it is going to become that much more widespread, with an apparent ethical Get Out of Jail Free card?

‘In theory if an embryo is obtained ethically and a stem cell can be derived after that embryo has died naturally, then that will remove all ethical objections as there is no destruction of a living organism,’ said Josephine Quintavalle, of Comment on Reproductive Ethics, a Catholic campaign group. ‘We do not have objections to the use of donated tissue and organs in other areas of medicine…’

George Daley, of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, said the paper’s approach raised scientific concerns. ‘If there was something wrong with the embryo that made it arrest, isn’t there something wrong with these cells? We don’t know.’

However, Stojkovic‘s work was given strong backing by Donald Landry, at the Columbia University Medical Center in New York, who called the work an important addition to the field. ‘Regardless of how you feel about personhood for embryos, if the embryo is dead, then the issue of personhood is resolved,’ Landry said.

‘This then reduces the ethics of human embryonic stem cell generation to the ethics of, say, organ donation. So now you’re really saying, “Can we take live cells from dead embryos the way we take live organs from dead patients?“‘

I just don’t think the people getting paid for the organ transplants should be connected with the people running the hospice; is that too much to ask?

coolest movie trailer ever: 300

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Stumbled across this on Daily Kos, a site that I go to maybe once a year; at least I picked the right day to go. Check out this incredible trailer from the new film based on the Frank Miller graphic novel. Rimjob, the blogger who did this writeup, knows his military history as well as his Star Trek; the Spartan/Klingon parallels were in Gene Roddenberry‘s mind when he was writing the original, and have only grown stronger since then.

No points for guessing who the Romulans were based on.

I must say, there’s just something amusing about writing “That Rimjob really knows his Spartans.” And vice versa, no doubt. By all means, go read the whole entry.

I’ve always been fascinated by historic last stands against insurmountable odds. The defense of Wake Island in World War II is an amazing history to read about. I’ve always seen events like this as living proof that a small band of people can, by force of will & a little luck, stand up to anyone or anything.

The trailer for the film version of Frank Miller‘s “300” has just been released. The movie & graphic novel deal with the Battle of Thermopylae in 480 BC, where a few thousand greeks (led by King Leonidas & his 300 Spartans) fought an army of invading Persians that numbered in the hundreds of thousands, if not millions. The trailer looks good, although they have the Spartan King Leonidas talking about “a new age of freedom”. Spartan society is probably the closest Humans have come to being like Klingons…

Well, he’s put his finger on it there. Persians are what they were called before they were called Iranians, and there’s no question the marketing people will be peeing themselves in spasmodic glee at how well the current international situation reflects the slant in this film.

Perhaps you’ll recall Michael Medved‘s attempt to claim that the Lord of the Rings films were about the terrorist threat against America, and perhaps you will recall as well the new asshole that Viggo Mortensen (cum laude B.A. in Government, St.Lawrence University) ripped him for that. Tolkien himself nearly rose from the grave at that apostasy.

In any case, it will be interesting to see how the Iranians/Persians are demonized, how the Spartans are Americanized (dare I cross my fingers for NOT?), and how the images are used as cheap emotional triggers by all the many squirming sides to this debate.

Until the users start using, we can simply enjoy the trailer itself. One last thing. I note with admiration that it contains the single most definitive ingredient to an awesome YouTube: a soundtrack by Nine Inch Nails.

Rock on.

Americans complain the open market is costing them a fortune!

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Fighting Terrorism since 1492 

They’d rather let their crops rot on the trees than respond to the market forces and increase their wages. There is no labour shortage in the US fruit picking labour market; there is a gap between the asking price for labour and the price the farmers are willing to pay.

It is much the same in Canada, although instead of Mexicans we have migrant Quebecois. They smoke almost as much pot, but they complain about the climate less, as you would, too, if you were from James Bay or some godforsaken spot.

In the Fraser Valley, just outside of Vancouver, there haveChe is watching been several convictions over the past decade for slavery, as well as numerous housing infractions (it is Canada; insulation and roofs are advisable and may be compulsory, imagine that!), assault (beating) charges, one murder that I can recall, as well as several cases of holding workers’ children or elderly parents captive until their work contract was up. Passports? Oh yeah, they keep the passports, too, which is one reason they’re not getting so many immigrants who want to work in this industry; the word has gone around India, and now the farmers are whining loudly about uppity brown people.

Which brings us back to the Americans:

“It’s a laborer’s market right now. My pickers all look at me and say, ‘How much are you going to pay?‘ ” he said. “They all have cell phones, and all they have to do is call up the road and see if anybody else is paying a little more.”

Farmers in that situation are left to decide whether it’s even worth picking the fruit, or just letting it rot, said Dan Fazio, director of employer services for the Washington state Farm Bureau.

“I can fill 10,000 jobs at $15 an hour right now,” he Norma Rae has your answer!said. “And we knew this was going to happen. We’ve been warning people for years.”

Farmers across the West for years have complained about a labor shortage to harvest their fruits, vegetables and other crops. Critics have always discounted those claims, saying farmers who pay higher wages have plenty of help.

“At some point, it’s like the boy who cried wolf,” said David Groves, spokesman for the Washington State Labor Council. “It’s just that, at different points in time, we’ve heard this, and we’ve seen evidence that there’s not a labor shortage. There’s just an unwillingness to pay decent wages.”

TWAT update: Bush wins on torture; the compromise that isn’t

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Coalition of the Willing...to Power 

From the Project for the Old American Century:

It is being called a “compromise,” but that seems to be in name only. The “rebellion” by key Senate Republicans against Bush’s wishes for constitutional right to torture, hold prisoners without charges or access to courts, approve military tribunals and the use of “secret” and hearsay evidence, has essentially survived intact.


The only compromise seems to be that it is being called one. It gives McCain, Warner, and Graham a nice political out, and casts a light of “reasonableness” for Bush. Beyond that it is a disaster – and it is likely to become law.

The “compromise” bills moved forward on September 22, 2006 are all titled the “Military Commissions Act of 2006″…

The proposed legislation pretty much gives the White House what they wanted in terms of “interrogation” issues, legality of detainee status, abridging the Geneva Conventions, utilizing coerced testimony and secret evidence, and placing all of this outside the bounds of review by the Supreme Court (see Sec. 3 Subchapter IV).

According to analysts, for example Adam Liptak in the NY Times:

“It would impose new legal standards that it forbids the courts to enforce.

It would guarantee terrorist masterminds charged with war crimes an array of procedural protections. But it would bar hundreds of minor figures and people who say they are innocent bystanders from access to the courts to challenge their potentially lifelong detentions.”

Caroline Fredrickson of the ACLU is quoted in a press release as stating:

“This is a compromise of America’s commitment to the rule of law. The proposal would make the core protections of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions irrelevant and unenforceable. It deliberately provides a ‘get out of jail free card’ to the administration’s top torture officials, and backdates that card nine years. These are tactics expected of repressive regimes, not the American government.

“Also under the proposal, the president would have the authority to declare what is – and what is not – a grave breach of the War Crimes Act, making the president his own judge and jury. This provision would give him unilateral authority to declare certain torture and abuse legal and sound. In a telling move, during a call with reporters today, National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley would not even answer a question about whether waterboarding would be permitted under the agreement.

“The agreement would also violate time-honored American due process standards by permitting the use of evidence coerced through cruel and abusive treatment. We urge lawmakers to stand firm in their commitment to American values and reject this charade of a compromise.”

This proposed legislation, if allowed to move forward, does not make us safer. What it does do is to overrule the Supreme Court decisions which have gone against the Bush administration in regards to the rights of detainees, the legality of Military Tribunals (renamed “Military Commissions” under this legislation), and allowing the use of testimony gained through torture and evidence which no one is allowed to see. It also would give the President the right under U.S. law to determine what the Geneva Convention means, and the authority to ignore it if he (she) so wishes.

It is alarming that the ruling of the commissions is placed beyond the review of the Supreme Court, and that the fitness of Commission Judges is also beyond challenge. The only oversight that I see in this legislation is a once yearly report to the various armed services committee.

The proposed legislation is also retroactive (as far as I can tell) as it removes any starting date from consideration. Previous versions had specified August 1, 2005. In this regard, it protects the administration, CIA, contractors, and others, from investigation or prosecution for war crimes. As far as I can tell from the legislation and various analyses, it is a buffer both internationally and domestically.

Of further note, it is not constrained to “alien enemy combatants,” but expands to anyone who is suspected of aiding and abetting suspected “terrorists,” or enemy combatants.

With the capitulation of McCain, Warner, and Graham, it seems highly likely that this bill will breeze through despite any resistance from the Democrats. So it is a (huge) win for the administration, a win for the political aspirations of McCain, Warner and Graham, and a huge loss for the citizens of the United States, and the international laws to which we have been a party for almost 60 years.

More details available on the site.

reports of Bin Laden’s death are “unconfirmed”

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So that leaves nine, right?

But we cannot prove they’re exaggerated, and, in fact, we do not wish to, as we here at the raincoaster blog long ago decided that he must be dead, because he was obviously career-dead, and didn’t nuthin’ come between Osama and his public. Just ask Matt LeBlanc what conclusions the world draws when a formerly prominent media person stays out of the frame for that long.

Screenshot of Bin Laden

Note, however, that “unconfirmed,” when it’s said by a government official, generally means, “I’m not sure if we’re supposed to admit that yet, so I’ll check the guy in charge of media on that and get back to you.”

from Le Monde. I’ll see if I can coax a translation out of someone better than me at French, but feel free to jump in any time.

L’information sur la mort de Oussama ben Laden “n’est en rien confirmée”, a indiqué samedi le président Jacques Chirac, qui s’est dit “surpris” de la publication dans la presse d’une note de la DGSE sur ce sujet.

“Je suis un peu surpris qu’une note confidentielle de la DGSE ait été publiée”, a indiqué Jacques Chirac lors d’une conférence de presse à l’issue du sommet France-Russie-Allemagne.

“Cette information n’est en rien confirmée”, a-t-il dit.

Une note de la DGSE, datée du 21 septembre et publiée samedi par l’Est Républicain, affirme que les services de renseignement saoudiens ont “acquis la conviction qu’Oussama ben Laden est mort” des suites d’une crise de typhoïde.

Cette information sur la mort de ben Laden, régulièrement annoncée par le passé et jamais prouvée jusqu’à présent, était cependant jugée peu fiable par des sources au Pakistan et en Europe suivant de près les activités d’Al-Qaïda, contactées samedi matin par l’AFP.

Bert!!! I can't believe it!!!

They found an American who can read Frenchish, apparently, over at MSNBC, so here’s what they report:

PARIS – The French defense ministry on Saturday called for an internal investigation of the leak of an intelligence document that raises the possibility that Osama bin Laden may have died of typhoid in Pakistan a month ago but said the report of the death remained unverified.

“The information defused this morning by the l’Est Republicain newspaper concerning the possible death of Osama bin Laden cannot be confirmed,” a Defense Ministry statement said.

The daily newspaper for the Lorraine region in eastern France printed what it described as a confidential document from the French foreign intelligence service DGSE citing an uncorroborated report from Saudi secret services that the leader of the al-Qaida terror network had died…

Document exists but cannot be confirmed
Defense Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau, clarifying the statement, said that the DGSE document exists but that its contents — that bin Laden is allegedly dead — cannot be confirmed.

The DGSE, or Direction Generale des Services Exterieurs, indicated that its information came from a single source.

“According to a reliable source, Saudi security services are now convinced that Osama bin Laden is dead,” said the intelligence report…

“The chief of al-Qaida was a victim of a severe typhoid crisis while in Pakistan on August 23, 2006,” the document says. His geographic isolation meant that medical assistance was impossible, the French report said, adding that his lower limbs were allegedly paralyzed. On Sept. 4, Saudi security services had their first information on bin Laden’s alleged death, the unconfirmed document reported.

In Pakistan, a senior official of that country’s top spy agency, the ISI or Directorate of Inter-Service Intelligence, said he had no information to confirm bin Laden’s whereabouts or that he might be dead. The official said he believed the report could be fabricated. The official was not authorized to speak publicly on the topic and spoke on condition of anonymity.

U.S. Embassy officials in Pakistan and Afghanistan also said they could not confirm the French report.

Now, this may be terribly cynical of me, but does anyone else think that Pakistan is asking for just enough time to move the body across the border to Afghanistan? It just looks better than harboring America‘s greatest enemy as they have been doing all along, and as the Bush government undoubtably knew.