Re: Kansas Board of Education's science standards continue to draw controversy, etc

From: Susan Brassfield (Susan-Brassfield@ou.edu)
Date: Tue Mar 21 2000 - 10:51:29 EST

  • Next message: Huxter4441@aol.com: "Mike says ..."

    Stephen Jones quotes:
    >==========================================================
    >http://www.kcstar.com/item/pages/local.pat,local/37744fa1.314,.html The
    >Kansas
    >City Star ... Kansas Board of Education's science standards continue to draw
    >controversy By KATE BEEM The Kansas City Star Date: 03/14/00 ... TOPEKA -
    >- Almost a year after they first came before the Kansas Board of
    >Education, the
    >state's new science standards are still a hot-button topic. Five of the
    >eight speakers
    >in the open forum of the board's meeting Tuesday addressed the standards,
    >which
    >the board approved in August on a 6-4 vote. Four of those who spoke
    >criticized
    >the standards, which the state's testing program will be based on. ... But
    >even as
    >the board met, work was progressing at the University of Kansas on new
    >science
    >tests based upon the standards, which de-emphasize evolution and leave out
    >references to the big-bang theory and the age of the Earth. ... New
    >science and
    >social studies tests will be given to students in spring 2001. That does
    >not leave
    >much time to write the test, review the questions and field-test the exam in
    >classrooms in the fall. The KU center will ask teachers from a random
    >sample of
    >Kansas schools to help the center write the test questions. ... Students
    >in the
    >fourth, the seventh and the 10th grades will take the science exams. ...
    >about 30
    >teachers [were needed] to write questions and 30 to review them. Some
    >critics of
    >the standards have said that few Kansas science teachers will agree to be
    >involved
    >.... [It's still false to say the new standards "de-emphasize evolution".
    >The new
    >standards have a *lot* more about evolution than the old standards. That
    >Darwinists
    >continually misrepresent this simple point, despite it being pointed out
    >to them many
    >times that it is simply false, makes me cautious in accepting *anything*
    >they say
    >unless I can check it for myself.]

    of course, your "information" utterly misrepresents the situation. The
    "Fifth Draft" was written with input from all kinds of scientists and even
    the public. The version adopted by the Board deleted significant portions
    from that draft and was written in secret with help only from a creationist
    organization. It was not a *better* or more complete document.

    Susan

    >http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews.dbm?ID=199 "An overwhelming number
    >of Americans believe creationism should be taught equally in public
    >schools along
    >with evolution." - Zogby American Values Poll Released: March 09, 2000 New
    >Zogby "American Values Polls" reveals: Creationism & evolution should be
    >taught
    >equally ... An overwhelming number of Americans believe creationism should be
    >taught equally in public schools along with evolution, a new Zogby's
    >"American
    >Values Poll" reveals. The February survey of 1,028 adults throughout the
    >nation
    >showed that 63.7% of those surveyed agreed that creationism needs to be
    >part of
    >the regular public school curriculum, including 38.9% who strongly agreed.
    >The
    >survey showed that just three in 710 of the respondents (32.2%) disagreed
    >with the
    >notion of creationism being taught in public schools. Zogby's "American
    >Values"
    >Polls are conducted quarterly to probe more deeply into what values Americans
    >hold and what values will ultimately influence their behavior. This is the
    >second
    >poll in a continuing series. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3.2%. ...
    >[Despite
    >an overwhelming educational, legal and media advantage, Darwinists have
    >failed in
    >their 75-year attempt to convince the U.S. public that life originated
    >and developed without a Creator. It will be interesting if the new U.S.
    >President will give
    >effect to what opinion polls consistently reveal the majority want. At the
    >very least
    >the problems and philosophical assumptions of Darwinism should be taught.]
    >
    >http://www.space.com/opinion/gonzalez_000229.html ... Mar 14, 2000 space.com
    >... Alien Intelligence? Think Again By Guillermo Gonzalez .... Rare Earth
    >Punctures Alien Assumptions ... Opinions. For too long, the astronomy
    >establishment has spouted propaganda about extraterrestrial intelligence,
    >writes
    >astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez. But now, a real debate has begun. ... The
    >existence of extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) has been debated since
    >the ancient
    >Greeks. Views have never been unanimous, and the center of opinion has
    >periodically shifted between positive and negative. Over the last few
    >decades, both
    >intellectual and public opinion have been decisively in the pro-ETI camp.
    >Unfortunately, the debate has taken place on a very slanted playing field,
    >at least in
    >the United States. Among astronomers, the pro-ETI forces have gained the
    >power
    >to effectively squash dissenting opinion in recent years. This power is
    >exemplified
    >by the "gatekeepers" at popular and even some refereed science journals,
    >and by
    >the successful public relations of the SETI institute (see, for example,
    >the movie
    >Contact). While I was a "believer" in ETI most of my life, I changed my mind
    >about 10 years ago, after I thought carefully about the astronomical and
    >geophysical requirements for advanced life in the universe. I found that ETI
    >proponents were ignoring basic constraints such as high levels of
    >radiation in many
    >regions of the universe. These proponents use the Drake Equation (invented by
    >astronomer Frank Drake) to estimate the number of civilizations in the
    >galaxy. But
    >the equation is laden with optimistic assumptions and virtually useless.
    >... Perhaps
    >the single most influential criticism of the pro-ETI position in the U.S.
    >was just
    >published in book form -- Rare Earth. It is by two of my colleagues at the
    >University of Washington, Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee; we met often during
    >the last couple of years while the book was being put together to discuss
    >astronomical constraints on advanced life. The book's thesis is that
    >advanced life
    >may be extremely rare due to: 1) the many potential hazards in the
    >universe and 2)
    >the stringent requirements for its existence. The book's growing success
    >shows
    >that a significant fraction of the public wants a real debate on the
    >subject, not one-
    >sided propaganda from the astronomy establishment. ... [This shift from
    >believing
    >that life was abundant and intelligent life plentiful in the universe, to
    >believing that
    >life may be rare and intelligent life outside of Earth non-existent, is
    >remarkable. If
    >life and intelligent life were plentiful it would be regarded as a
    >confirmation of
    >materialism and a problem for Intelligent Design and particularly
    >Christianity.
    >Since aliens have taken the place of God in public mythology, if the idea
    >starts to
    >sink in that we really might be alone it may have almost as profound an
    >effect as a
    >discovery by SETI that we weren't!]
    >
    >http://www.nytimes.com/library/national/science/health/031400hth-behavior-evolu
    >tion.html
    >The New York Times March 14, 2000 Human Nature: Born or Made? ... By
    >ERICA GOODE When two scientists proposed in a recent book that rape was best
    >viewed as a sexual act with its roots in evolution, it set off a squall of
    >protest from
    >feminists and social scientists... Even last week the controversy
    >continued, with the
    >book's authors engaging in a rancorous exchange over a critical review in the
    >scientific journal Nature. But the case put forward by Dr. Randy Thornhill
    >and Dr.
    >Craig Palmer in "A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual
    >Coercion," ...was not, as some assumed, a fringe theory developed by a
    >pair of
    >renegade researchers. Rather, the arguments made by Dr. Thornhill and Dr.
    >Palmer
    >fit into a larger theoretical framework, the work of a group of scientists
    >who have
    >ushered Darwin into new and provocative areas, including sexual attraction
    >between men and women, parenting, jealousy and violence. ... The genes for
    >these
    >complex mental mechanisms, the argument goes, were passed on through the
    >generations because they adaptive, enhancing survival or reproductive
    >success, and
    >eventually, they spread widely and became standard equipment. But in the year
    >2000, such mechanisms may or may not be adaptive, and may or may not
    >represent
    >aspects of behavior that society wants to encourage. ...even if rape was
    >adaptive in
    >the distant past, a notion even many of Dr. Thornhill and Dr. Palmer's
    >like-minded
    >colleagues think dubious, that would not mean that it is excusable or
    >should not be
    >heavily punished. .. Evolutionary psychologists have not always carried on
    >their
    >campaign quietly. They have issued a noisy assault on the way the social
    >sciences
    >have done business for the last 50 years, asserting that social scientists
    >have a
    >collective phobia about possible biological influences on behavior and an
    >obsession
    >with more "politically correct" environmental explanations. Some
    >researchers have
    >thrust their work into the spotlight by pursuing topics that seem
    >guaranteed to
    >push people's emotional buttons, rape being only the latest example. In the
    >process, the scientists have gained a reputation for a self-confidence
    >bordering on
    >arrogance ... biology, applied to human behavior, also has a disturbing
    >history of
    >misuse. .."social Darwinism," a 19th-century theory that borrowed catch
    >words of
    >evolutionary thinking and twisted them into a justification for class
    >differences: the
    >struggle for wealth and power, social Darwinists argued, was a battle for
    >"survival
    >of the fittest," ... Darwin's theory, stretched and distorted in various
    >ways, was also
    >called upon by the Nazis as a rationale for genocide, and has been a
    >staple of
    >forced sterilization campaigns and racist propaganda. ... Dr. Stephen Jay
    >Gould...in
    >particular, has continued to find fault with the work of scientists,
    >including
    >evolutionary psychologists, who seek to explain traits as "adaptations."
    >In fact, he
    >argues, many traits are not the products of natural selection, favored
    >because they
    >enhance reproduction or survival, but are simply random byproducts of other
    >evolutionary developments. ... Some evolutionary biologists have also
    >historically
    >opposed applying Darwinian principles to humans...because they think the
    >task is
    >simply too complicated....to tease out the legacy of evolution from the
    >effects of
    >thousands of years of human culture presents almost insurmountable obstacles,
    >particularly given the limits on the kinds of experiments that can be done
    >with
    >people.... Still, some evolutionary psychologists feel their arguments for
    >biology
    >must overcome substantial resistance. "There is a flagrant double standard
    >that's
    >applied to the evidence," said Dr. Buss, whose latest book, "The Dangerous
    >Passion" (Free Press, 2000) deals with jealousy, and who has recently
    >proposed
    >that human beings may have a specialized mental module for murder. "If
    >it's an
    >evolutionary hypothesis, you have to document mountains of evidence before
    >anyone will take it seriously, and even then it will be dismissed," Dr.
    >Buss said....
    >[More on this "A Natural History of Rape" debate. Thornhill and Palmer
    >seem to
    >want to have it both ways, claiming that rape is built-into our selfish
    >genes, yet
    >"that would not mean that it is excusable or should not be heavily
    >punished". Buss'
    >claim about there being a "specialized mental module for murder" maybe the
    >reductio ad absurdum of this genre. The great thing about this debate is
    >that the
    >general public will start to realise some of the less palatable aspects of
    >Darwinist
    >thinking. Even if other Darwinists oppose evolutionary psychology, the
    >public may
    >at least realise how arbitrary are Darwinist claims about what is, and is
    >not, the
    >result of natural selection.]
    >
    >http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000313/sc/tech_threat_2.html Yahoo! ...
    >March 13 .. New Technologies Imperil Humanity - U.S. Scientist SAN
    >FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The co-founder of one of Silicon Valley's top
    >technology
    >companies believes scientific advances may be ushering humanity into a
    >nightmare
    >world where supersmart machines force mankind into extinction....Sun
    >Microsystems Inc. .... chief scientist Bill Joy urges technologists to
    >reconsider the
    >ethics of the drive toward constant scientific innovation. "We are being
    >propelled
    >into this new century with no plan, no control, no brakes," Joy writes.
    >"The last
    >chance to assert control -- the fail-safe point -- is rapidly
    >approaching." Joy's article
    >comes as a rare cry of caution in an industry that thrives on relentless
    >and often
    >unplanned advances and is now riding the boom of a "new economy" expansion
    >attributed to technological progress. The warning is all the more disturbing
    >because of the author's own impressive tech credentials. A leading computer
    >researcher who developed an early version of the Unix operating system,
    >Joy has
    >more recently pioneered software technologies like Java and was
    >co-chairman of a
    >presidential commission on the future of information technology. Joy's
    >fears focus
    >on three areas of technology undergoing incredibly rapid change. ... The
    >first,
    >robotics, involves the development of "thinking" computers ... setting the
    >groundwork for a "robot species" of intelligent robots that create evolved
    >copies
    >of themselves. The second, genetics, deals with scientific breakthroughs in
    >manipulating the very structure of biological life. While Joy says this
    >has led to
    >benefits such as pest-resistant crops, it also has set the stage for new,
    >man-made
    >plagues that could literally wipe out the natural world. The third,
    >nanotechnology,
    >involves the creation of objects on an atom-by-atom basis, which before
    >long could
    >be harnessed to create smart machines that are microscopically small. All
    >three of
    >these technologies share one characteristic absent in earlier dangerous human
    >inventions such as the atomic bomb: they could replicate themselves,
    >creating a
    >cascade effect that could sweep through the physical word in much the same
    >way a
    >virus spreads through the computer world. "It is no exaggeration to say we
    >are on
    >the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil," Joy writes. "An evil
    >whose
    >possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction
    >bequeathed to nation states on to surprising and terrible empowerment of
    >extreme
    >individuals." ... [Bill Joy is one of the computer industry's great
    >visionaries, and
    >what he says should be taken seriously. Maybe, to paraphrase MIT's Joseph
    >Weizenbaum (the creator of ELIZA), "not everything in science that can be
    >done,
    >*should* be done.]
    >
    >http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000311/sc/environment_gorillas_2.html
    >Yahoo! ... March 11 ... Poachers Decimate Gorilla Population in East Congo By
    >Todd Pitman BUKAVU, Congo (Reuters) - Poaching has decimated the
    >population of endangered gorillas in the war-ravaged east of the Democratic
    >Republic of the Congo, officials said on Saturday. Only 70 eastern lowland
    >gorillas
    >remain in the highlands of Kahuzi-Biega National Park, just outside the
    >lakeside
    >border town of Bukavu, compared with a population of 258 several years ago.
    >Most of the gorillas have been killed in the last year by poachers,
    >militiamen and
    >villagers in search of food.... Villagers living around the park have
    >chopped down
    >trees for charcoal and firewood and hunt animals, including antelope and
    >chimpanzees, for "bushmeat." "People here have no money, but in the park they
    >can find what they need," one park official said. "They can find bushmeat,
    >gold,
    >diamonds, ivory. It's become a business, and we can't control it." ...
    >corruption and
    >unfulfilled promises on the part of local rebel authorities have
    >compounded the
    >problem. ... [At least one of Darwin's predictions is coming true (see
    >tagline).]
    >
    >http://www.cnn.com/2000/NATURE/03/10/environment.mines.reut/ ... CNN ...
    >Acid-eating bug may be to blame for mine pollution March 10, 2000 ...
    >WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- A newly discovered microbe that eats iron and
    >thrives in acid may be one of the main culprits causing pollution from
    >metal ore
    >mining, researchers said on Thursday. The microbe, dubbed Ferroplasma
    >acidarmanus, seems to be able to make polluting sulfuric acid out of the
    >sulfides
    >found in metal ores ... It is a member of an ancient class of one-celled
    >organisms
    >called archaeons, ... The discovery may help explain why sulfur becomes
    >part of
    >nasty compounds so quickly around mines. It is also of interest to biologists
    >because the microbe has no cell wall, defying the idea that microorganisms
    >tough
    >enough to live in harsh environments do it with the help of thick
    >barriers. ... "It
    >oxidizes irons and forms slimes and grows on pyrite sediments." ... Also at:
    >http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000309/sc/environment_mines_1.html
    >[Sounds like an interesting `bug'. If this has been converting sulphides
    >to sulphuric
    >acid for billions of years, one wonders that there are any sulphides left.
    >Maybe it is
    >a fairly recent adaptation?]
    >
    >http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000308/sc/science_brain_1.html ...
    >Yahoo! ...
    >March 8 ... Scientists Map Children's Brain Development LONDON (Reuters)
    >Scientists said Wednesday they had successfully mapped the development of the
    >brains of children between the ages of three and 15. ... the images
    >provided new
    >information about which areas of the brain were involved in learning at
    >different
    >ages. ... The scans of three and six-year-olds showed peak growth rates in
    >frontal
    >circuits of the brain that help to sustain a vigilant mental state and to
    >plan new
    >actions. The researchers also found that growth rates in an area of the
    >brain linked
    >to language were slow between the ages of three and six but speeded up
    >from six
    >to 15 years when fine tuning of language usually occurs. "The ability to
    >learn new
    >languages declines rapidly after the age of 12 years, as does the ability
    >to recover
    >language function if linguistic areas in one brain hemisphere are surgically
    >resected," the scientists added. ... [More evidence of Chomsky's claim
    >that the
    >acquisition of language is a unique `hard-wired' feature of the human brain.]
    >
    >http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000308/sc/science_profiling_1.html ...
    >Yahoo!
    >... March 8 ... UK Firm Applies for Patent on Gene Profile System By Patricia
    >Reaney LONDON (Reuters) - A British company has applied for a patent for a
    >gene-profiling system that can quickly reveal a person's genetic make-up and
    >susceptibility to disease. Genostic Pharma, based in Cambridge and Edinburgh,
    >claims the system could help doctors predict the course of an illness, the
    >best drugs
    >to treat it with the fewest side effects, and how a patient will respond.
    >... The
    >system is based on a database of 2,500 genes, out of the 100,000 or more that
    >make up the human genome, which the company believes are the key to
    >understanding diseases. ... Genetic profiling is a controversial area of
    >science.
    >Advocates claim it will revolutionize medicine and improve the diagnosis and
    >treatment of diseases. Critics fear it is a Pandora's box that will be
    >used by
    >insurance companies and employers to discriminate against people
    >susceptible to
    >certain diseases such as cancer. ... [One wonders how useful this genetic
    >profiling
    >would really be to employers? If firms reject an employee on the basis of
    >his/her
    >genetic profile, they would be sitting ducks for a discrimination claim.
    >My guess is
    >that employers would rather not know and simply work from a past history of
    >illness (even that is discriminatory in Australia.]
    >
    >http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/features/2000/0308/fea4.htm The Irish Times
    >... March 8, 2000 The selfish meme ... Have scientists discovered the DNA of
    >culture? Mic Moroney thinks not but it's a very catchy notion It started as a
    >throwaway notion in 1976, has spread steadily like a cult, and now looks
    >set now
    >to virally implant itself, permanently, into the language. Enter the meme, a
    >metaphoric spin-off from the genetic explosion: the fundamental
    >self-replicating
    >unit of culture, or even thought. ... the very idea of a meme has proved
    >to be a
    >successful bug, having spawned a growing academic field of "memetics"
    >which its
    >exponents, and impressionable journalists, now describe as a "science".
    >... Apart
    >from precursor concepts such as "mnemones", the "meme" originally occurred to
    >evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins in the final pages of his influential
    >bestseller, The Selfish Gene (1976). ... It's a catchy notion - the very
    >idea of an
    >idea, wrapped up in a neat word adapted from "gene" and linguistic terms
    >such as
    >"phoneme" (a perceptually distinct unit of sound). And in an increasingly
    >freemarket world, it's but a short step to see a Darwinian struggle going on
    >between chunks of information within a global habitat of human minds - what
    >meme-heads call the "ideosphere". ... And just as mutually compatible genes
    >ganged together symbiotically to form higher organisms, so memeticists argue,
    >successful memes hooked up with other memes to form meme complexes, or
    >"memeplexes": big selfcontained accretions of ideologies which may provide
    >fringe
    >benefits to human communities - or indeed damage ... Ultimately, such
    >memeplexes exist only to ensure their own propagation. ... Memeticists
    >tend to be
    >hard-wired with neo-Darwinist memes ... As you go deeper and more gullibly
    >into
    >memetics, a whole ontological paradigm emerges in which ideas are seen as
    >living
    >organisms, which like viruses, "infect" and "parasitise" us, causing real
    >physical
    >changes in the wiring of our brains. ... Never mind that memes have no
    >identifiable
    >substrata or structure, or indeed that memes are not perfect replicators
    >(people,
    >say, tend to pass on the gist, rather than the literal text, of a story).
    >Despite the
    >dubious analogy with the gene, academia is buying memetics big-time.
    >Memetics is
    >now infiltrating cultural studies, media and communication theory, ethology
    >(animal behaviour) and speculative fields such as evolutionary psychology,
    >which
    >worries about the origins of language, and indeed moral and altruistic
    >behaviour. ...
    >The wonderful circularity of memetics has seen it take over from semiotics
    >as the
    >central, delirious cul-de-sac of post-modern discourse. ... Just as we
    >have always
    >made anxious metaphors of ourselves and society from our dominant
    >technologies,
    >the meme meme, so to speak, ties in with the revival of social Darwinism
    >in visions
    >of capitalism; the infective metaphor of computer viruses; even the viral
    >apocalypse of AIDS. ... Oxford University Press seems to have bought into
    >it too.
    >Among its recent "popular science" publications was The Meme Machine by Dr
    >Susan Blackmore, a Zen practitioner and senior lecturer in Psychology at
    >Bristol
    >University ... To be horridly rational about it, memetics is all
    >pseudo-scientific
    >palaver, an analogy stretched too far, a metaphor gone badly to seed - but
    >it's
    >catchy and fun, and it's certainly not going to go away. Despite memetic
    >fundamentalism, the "meme" word is a very elegant piece of intellectual
    >shorthand;
    >a rich lexicographical, and metaphorical tool - especially in an age in
    >which, as
    >never before, ideas often "take on a life of their own". ... [A good
    >debunking of
    >memes. Memes are a suicidal strategy for Darwinists, because Darwinism
    >itself is a
    >good candidate for a memeplexes: a "big self-contained accretion... of
    >ideologies
    >which exist only to ensure their own propagation"!]
    >
    >GENE THERAPY:
    >http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000315/sc/genetherapy_1.html
    >Yahoo! ... Wednesday March 15 ...Congress to Continue Probe of Gene Therapy
    >WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A Congressional committee said on Tuesday it would
    >continue a close examination of how the experimental field of gene therapy
    >has been
    >regulated, and warned the National Institutes of Health it might
    >interrogate individual
    >employees. ...
    >
    >http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000310/sc/health_genetherapy_5.html Yahoo!
    >... March 10 ... U.S. Experts Reject Halt to Gene Therapy By Maggie Fox,
    >Health
    >and Science Correspondent WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Scientists and other
    >experts who advise the federal government on gene therapy issues rejected
    >calls
    >for a moratorium on experiments on Friday, but also warned researchers and
    >patients against placing undue faith in the field. ... Experts in gene
    >therapy say they
    >have been unable to document any cure from the treatment -- which involves
    >infusing new genes into the body to treat disease. .. "It is important for
    >investigators and oversight bodies in gene transfer research to resist the
    >temptation
    >to exaggerate the potential for benefit and to overlook excessive risk out
    >of the
    >desire to help desperately ill patients, because at present the
    >possibility of benefit
    >from this novel technology is, on the whole, still too uncertain," ...
    >Several patients
    >taking part in gene therapy trials, or the parents of patients, pleaded
    >with the RAC
    >to press to keep experiments moving, saying that for many patients, gene
    >therapy
    >was the only hope. ...
    >
    >http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000309/sc/health_genetherapy_4.html Yahoo!
    >... March 9 ... Parents' Plea Illustrates Gene Therapy Dilemma By Maggie Fox,
    >Health and Science Correspondent BETHESDA, Maryland (Reuters) - A
    >desperate, emotional plea on Thursday from the parents of a brain-damaged
    >daughter who say gene therapy is her only hope illustrated the dilemmas
    >facing
    >government advisers. Lindsay Karlin, now 5, suffers from a genetic disorder
    >known as Canavan disease. She has been a patient in several experimental gene
    >therapy trials and her parents, Dr. Roger Karlin and his wife, Helene, of New
    >Fairfield, Connecticut, believe the experiments have helped her. ... To some
    >scientists, the obvious answer is for researchers to report everything
    >that goes
    >wrong, immediately, so it can be discussed and decided whether the gene
    >therapy
    >is to blame. But private corporations, who sponsor many of the trials,
    >fear that
    >releasing such information would not only confuse people, but would give away
    >valuable clues. "One phrase they used was that deaths of patients was a trade
    >secret ... proprietary information," ...
    >
    >http://www.cnn.com/2000/HEALTH/03/07/gene.therapy/index.html ... New plans
    >unveiled to protect gene therapy patients March 7, 2000 ... WASHINGTON
    >(CNN) -- ...The FDA is implementing a Gene Therapy Clinical Trial Monitoring
    >Plan and the NIH is sponsoring a series of Gene Transfer Symposia. Both
    >initiatives are designed to enhance current safety standards for patients
    >enrolled in
    >gene therapy trials. The safety of patients in clinical trials involving
    >gene therapy
    >has been under scrutiny after one patient died during a gene therapy trial
    >at the
    >University of Pennsylvania last year. The FDA's plan will require that
    >sponsors of
    >gene therapy trials routinely submit their monitoring plans to the agency.
    >... Critics
    >have said that there is not enough oversight in gene therapy trials and
    >are skeptical
    >that there are many more than the one known death which has been reported
    >as a
    >direct result of gene therapy. ...
    >==========================================================
    >
    >--------------------------------------------------------------------------
    >"At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the
    >civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the
    >savage races throughout the world. At the same time the
    >anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked,* will
    >no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies
    >will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised
    >state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a
    >baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."
    >(Darwin C.R, "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex,"
    >[1871], Modern Library, bound in one volume with, "The Origin of
    >Species", Random House: New York NY, nd., p.521)
    >Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
    >--------------------------------------------------------------------------

    ----------

    For if there is a sin against life, it consists not so much in despairing
    of life as in hoping for another and in eluding the implacable grandeur of
    this one.
    --Albert Camus

    http://www.telepath.com/susanb/



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