Reflectorites
Here are excerpts from Yahoo! for the period 9-26 May 2000, with my
comments in square brackets.
Steve
=====================================================
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000518/sc/britain_charles_2.html
Yahoo! ... May 18 ... Scientists Defend Research Against Charles Tirade ...
LONDON (Reuters) - Tampering with nature is an affront to God, says
Britain's Prince Charles. Rubbish, say scientists who argue they are saving
humanity by helping to feed the world more efficiently. But few would
argue with the timing of his latest "green salvo," launched during a BBC
lecture ... The heir to the throne fanned the flames over biotechnology with
an impassioned defense of nature on a day British farmers discovered they
had been unknowingly growing genetically modified crops after buying
contaminated oilseed from Canada. Charles, surrounded by green gurus,
warns of the "disastrous consequences" of cloning and GM food. Tabloid
newspapers rail against "Frankenstein Food." .... Plant scientist Chris
Leaver dismissed the future king's comments, saying: "He has selective
religious beliefs to suit his own lifestyle and should be careful of preaching
to others." ... he bluntly told Charles to listen to the scientists trying to find
ways of feeding six billion people on the planet today and another three
billion by the year 2050. Leading geneticist Sir Walter Bodmer launched a
passionate defense of GM food technology. "The potential it offers for
solving the problems that face the so-called Third World is enormous," he
wrote in the same paper. Across the scientific spectrum, the message was
the same. ... Steve Jones, professor of genetics ... said Charles was a
woolly thinker. "He is mixing up theology and science. The best thing he
should do is go back to school...I have no time for understanding people
who prefer ignorance to knowledge," .... Prince Charles is a fiercely
committed environmentalist. And he adds to the potentially explosive green
cocktail an ever widening interest in the spiritual thinking of many differing
religions. Those passionately held views were spelled out Wednesday in a
BBC lecture that stirred up a fierce ecological debate. "Nature has come to
be regarded as a system that can be engineered for our own
convenience...and in which anything that happens can be fixed by
technology and human ingenuity," Charles complained. "If literally nothing
is held sacred any more...what is there to prevent us treating our entire
world as some great laboratory of life with potentially disastrous
consequences?" When he eventually takes over as King and Supreme
Governor of the Anglican Church of England, Charles sees himself as
"Defender of Faith" in a country that is a multicultural mix. And his plea for
spirituality in a consumer-driven society did not fall entirely on deaf ears.
"Thank Heavens for Prince Charles," said Professor Jonathan Sacks, Chief
Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of the Commonwealth. "Once
again he has introduced a note of sanity into our scientific future. He has
made us stop, think and question where we are going." See also:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000517/sc/britain_charles_1.html
Yahoo! ... May 17 ... Britain's Prince Charles Warns Modern Science
LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Prince Charles on Wednesday will warn
that the world faces environmental disaster unless it starts accepting that
tampering with nature is an affront to God. The heir-to-the-throne ... will
use a lecture broadcast on BBC radio to make a wider attack on some
methods employed by modern science. "We need to rediscover a reverence
for the natural world, irrespective of its usefulness to ourselves, to become
more aware of the relationship between God, man and creation," he will
say. "If literally nothing is held sacred anymore, what is there to prevent us
treating our entire world as some 'great laboratory of life' with potentially
disastrous long-term consequences? ... "Only by rediscovering the essential
unity and order of the living and spiritual world and by bridging the gap
between cynical secularism and the timelessness of traditional religion will
we avoid the disintegration of our environment." ... However, the
zoologist, Professor Richard Dawkins, said the emphasis of the prince's
attack was wrong. "I have great sympathy with Prince Charles's mission
and his desire to foster stewardship of the planet," he said. "But to attack
science in so doing is the wrong way to go about it. Science should be
harnessed as his ally both in method and in way of thinking." ... [I am
amused by my namesake's hypocritical complaint that Charles "...is mixing
up theology and science'! What does Jones think he and his Darwinist
cronies have been doing all this time with their incessant pontifications on
God? And it is a bit rich Dawkins saying that "Science should be harnessed
as his ally...". This is from a Professor for the Public Understanding of
Science who has stated that those who don't believe in evolution are
"insane" or "wicked" and who has described religion as a "virus of the
mind"! And as for being "a woolly thinker", the materialists like Jones and
Dawkins don't seem to be able to make the simple logical distinction
between a criticism of the attitude and methods of some scientists and an
attack on science itself! Presumably this is because to materialists, there
*is* no such distinction. It is pleasing to see the dominant materialistic-
naturalistic mindset of most scientists being questioned by other voices,
especially one with such access to the media and eventually government as
Prince Charles! These other voices will probably be allies when the ID
movement's Wedge strategy of separating materialistic-naturalistic
philosophy from science becomes more widely known.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000517/sc/health_conflicts_2.html
Yahoo! ... May 17 ... Industry Influence May Taint Drug Studies-Journal
... BOSTON (Reuters) - Drug companies that pay for research and clinical
tests of new medicines have been suppressing or manipulating the results, a
report in Thursday's New England Journal of Medicine said. The
prestigious, peer-reviewed Journal also warned the likelihood that drug test
results will be manipulated or suppressed is even greater when for-profit
companies set up specifically to test drugs conduct the trials. The findings
appear in an article, "Uneasy Alliance -- Clinical Investigators and the
Pharmaceutical Industry," .... In the depression study, so many authors had
potential conflicts of interest, the Journal decided for space reasons not to
publish the complete list...a sharply worded editorial where Dr. Marcia
Angell raises the question "Is Academic Medicine For Sale?" appears one
week after the Journal's publisher, the Massachusetts Medical Society,
announced it would replace her as editor with a prominent asthma
researcher who has strong ties to the drug industry. ... the industry is
wielding more power in conducting large-scale drug tests ... when drug
companies control the purse strings, they "may design studies likely to
favor their product..." ... academic-industry drug trials have been tainted by
the profit incentive," ... "There is now considerable evidence that
researchers with ties to drug companies are indeed more likely to report
results that are favorable to the products of those companies," .... Last
week, the Massachusetts Medical Society, which owns the Journal, named
asthma researcher Dr. Jeffrey M. Drazen as the new editor, replacing
Angell.... Drazen ... who has received grants or consultation fees from nine
pharmaceutical companies, defended alliances between researchers and
drug companies ... [The obvious question then is "what about HIV-AIDS"?
One doesn't have to be a conspiracy theorist to suspect that a multi-billion
dollar drug industry which almost totally funds HIV-AIDS research is
likely to exert an influence on researchers to come up with results that
support those treatments which maximise corporate profits (e.g. expensive
multiple drug cocktails).]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000512/sc/aids_drugs_3.html Yahoo!
... May 12 ... Experts Say AIDS Drug Deal Still Needs Work ... LONDON
(Reuters) - A surprise announcement that major drug firms will slash prices
to tackle the world's AIDS epidemic is a vital first step to saving millions of
lives but leaves many questions open... Two years after being castigated at
the last international AIDS meeting for not doing enough to curb AIDS in
the developing world, five of the biggest drug companies promised
Thursday to cut prices in a deal brokered by the United Nations. But there
are still few details of those cuts, of how much money may now be made
available by international donors, or of how the drugs will be administered
in chaotic health systems. ... Although the drugs are expected to be sold at
a fraction of their original cost, they may still be too expensive for sub-
Saharan Africa ... See also:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000511/sc/aids_usa_1.html Yahoo! ...
May 11 ... Annan Praises U.S. Pledge on AIDS Help for Africa UNITED
NATIONS (Reuters) - Secretary-General Kofi Annan praised ... President
Clinton's signing of an executive order that will help make cheaper AIDS
drugs available to millions of patients in sub-Saharan Africa. ... Clinton
promised that U.S. officials would not stand in the way of countries
seeking to obtain less costly AIDS medication for their poorest citizens ...
The U.S. announcement followed a campaign by AIDS activists who have
complained that the Clinton administration was working on behalf of U.S.
drug makers to bully developing countries into dropping their pursuit of
generic drugs. ... &
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000511/sc/aids_drugs_1.html Yahoo!
... May 11 ... AIDS Drug Makers Slash Prices for Third World ...
GENEVA (Reuters) - Five top drugs companies agreed Thursday to slash
the price of HIV and AIDS treatments for developing countries in a
breakthrough U.N. deal that could save millions of lives in Africa. ... For
the drugs firms, the deal is a shrewd marketing move. It may relieve some
of the public pressure from AIDS activists in the West who have
campaigned for drugs against the pandemic in the developing world, angry
at policies that priced medicines beyond the reach of the poor. "This will go
down very nicely as positive public relations for all companies involved," ...
the move was unlikely to have a commercial impact. AIDS is now the
leading killer in sub-Saharan Africa, where 23.3 million people have HIV,
the virus that causes it. ... U.S. pharmaceutical companies had argued that
countries' efforts to license local manufacturers to make generic copies of
AIDS drugs violated the firms' patent protection and compromised future
research. U.S. officials had threatened trade sanctions against countries that
pursued such licenses for patented drugs. ... [So it is no coincidence that
after years of stalling the drug companies are now going to make their
products cheaper, just as South Africa starts its inquiry into HIV-AIDS? If
the drug companies really thought their drugs saved lives, how could they
sit back while reaping huge profits in Western countries, keeping their
prices too high for African countries to afford, all the while knowing that
tens of millions of human lives were being lost unnecessarily? Especially
since making them cheaper "was unlikely to have a commercial impact"!
Either they don't believe their drugs work, or they are moral monsters. And
what about the morality of the US government even *considering*
threatening trade sanctions against African countries which tried to make
generic versions of the drugs they could not afford in a desperate attempt
to save their people's lives?]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000525/sc/earth_iceage_1.html ...
Yahoo! ... May 25 ... Surviving During Earth's Ice Age LONDON
(Reuters) - Canadian and American scientists think they may have found
the answer to how life survived on Earth about 600 million years ago when
the planet resembled a giant snowball. They used calculations and climate
models to show there may have been areas of open water that allowed
early creatures to live while the rest of the planet was in a deep freeze...
about 600-800 million years ago, the Earth was covered by ice and then a
sudden warming period thawed the deep freeze and led to an important
period of evolution. ...But they were puzzled by how life could have
survived and then thrived under such harsh conditions. Peltier and
colleagues ... believe the harsh climates could have given the creatures an
evolutionary push. "The extreme climates may even have exerted pressure
on the multi-celled animals to evolve and adapt, possibly leading to the
rapid development of new forms of animals and their movement into new,
unpopulated habitats when the Earth exited the snowball state," said
Peltier. The researchers used computer simulations of what are thought to
have been the climate characteristics at the time and took into account less
sunlight and the varied concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide. [This
simulation might be of some value in explaining how some of the Earth's
surface was not covered by ice, and may even be a partial explanation of
the Cambrian Explosion. But merely saying that "harsh climates could have
given the creatures an evolutionary push" is IMHO just hand-waving.
There are similar harsh climates on Earth with empty environmental niches
like the Poles right now and they are not causing "the rapid development of
new forms of animals".]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000514/sc/environment_madagascar_2
.html
Yahoo! ... May 14 ... Madagascar's Jewels of Nature Under Threat ...
Madagascar (Reuters) - Two lemurs sit huddled together against the rain in
the upper branches of a Ramy tree, the white-bearded male calling out to
other members of their group. Sixty-five feet below on the forest floor, a
ring-tailed mongoose scampers across a narrow path and a snake slithers
into dense bushes where a Calumma chameleon, found nowhere else on
earth, clings to a trembling leaf. ... Naturalists describe Madagascar as a
"Garden of Eden," a place of astounding beauty which, over a period of
150 million years, evolved a unique array of animal and plant species. But
humans, who arrived about 2,000 years ago, have over the last century
destroyed much of that natural wealth. ... It is an environmental disaster
repeated in countries across the world but is particularly galling in
Madagascar because more than 80 percent of its tens of thousands of
animal and plant species are unique to the island. "These are found
nowhere else. When a species disappears from here, it disappears forever.
.... Madagascar ... broke off and floated away from the huge continent
known as Gondwanaland some 150 million years ago. Completely isolated
from the rest of the world and uninhabited by humans, its unique
environment allowed the evolution of strange and wonderful animals ...
Among its unique animals still surviving are 35 species of lemur, dozens of
species of vividly colored frogs and chameleons, and the small but powerful
fosa, the lemurs' only predator and pound-for-pound one of the world's
most efficient killers. Many species, however, have already been lost. They
include as many as 17 lemur species -some of them as large as gorillas -- as
well as giant tortoises and the so-called elephant bird which was related to
the ostrich and, standing 10 feet tall, weighed up to a ton. ... It is not just
animals that are being lost. Madagascar has more than 10,000 species of
plants and trees, about 80 percent of them local and many used in
traditional medicine. As the West looks more closely at herbal medicines
for possible cures for everything from cancer to allergies, experts say
Madagascar is an invaluable medicine chest. ... [What a tragedy! But it is
worth noting that with 150 myrs of isolation, no new higher taxa appear to
have evolved, just more variations on a limited number of themes, i.e.
microevolution (so-called).]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000517/sc/science_dinosaur_3.html
Yahoo! ... May 17 ... Chicago Museum Unveils Landmark Dinosaur ...
CHICAGO (Reuters) - Dinosaur fever struck Chicago on Wednesday as
the Field Museum unveiled the most complete Tyrannosaurus rex fossil
ever found -- a 41 foot-long monster that lumbered the Great Plains 67
million years ago. ... named "Sue" emerged in a swirl of smoke, music and
spotlights ... [It] had provided some scientific surprises about the ferocious
species during the nearly three years it was reassembled bone-by-bone. ...
One was the presence of a wishbone, the first ever found in a T-rex and
additional proof for those who believe dinosaurs are related to birds. The
wishbone is a structure unique to fowl. In addition the fossil is the first of a
T-Rex ever found with an ear drum bone called a stapes - also found in
birds - that helps transmit sound to the inner ear ... Sue probably walked at
a relatively slow gait - about 6 mph -- with a top speed of perhaps 15 mph
... but one what would have been swifter than other species roaming the
land. The animal also and had a keen sense of smell, thanks to huge
olfactory lobes, leading experts to believe it may have moved through life
"nose first," but shedding no light on whether it was a predator of a
scavenger. Of the 20 or so other T-Rex skeletons that have been put
together around the world, this one is about 90 percent complete... Initial
indications led experts to believe the T-Rex was a female ... Now that it has
been assembled, however, paleontologists are not certain of the sex. They
believe, however, that the creature weighed about seven tons. .... [Since
birds arose in the Jurassic, about 70 million years before T-Rex, it is hard
to see what value finding Sue's wishbone and stapes is to understanding the
origin of birds. I suspect this is just more evolutionist propaganda.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000515/sc/ants_inbreeding_1.html
Yahoo! ... May 15 ... Inbreeding May Help Pesky Ants WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - A species of ant that usually limits its population by waging war
has made itself into a major pest in the United States using an unusual
strategy -- inbreeding ... They found colonies of inbred ants were so prolific
that they are the No. 1 bug pests in parts of California, while the more
genetically diverse colonies in Argentina are so low-profile they are hard to
find. ... Tsutsui and biology professor Ted Case described a giant
"supercolony" of closely related ants living in a swath of territory from San
Diego to Ukiah, 100 miles (60 km) north of San Francisco. ... "When we
did our field work in Argentina, it was surprisingly difficult to find
Argentine ants, compared to our experience in California," ... "They are a
relatively inconspicuous feature, both in the urban and in the natural
environment." Tsutsui's team looked at the DNA of both the U.S. and
Argentine ants and found the South American strains were much more
genetically diverse. The U.S. ants looked very inbred -- the hallmark of a
population that has grown from a very few members in what is known as a
bottleneck. ... the inbred ants may all recognize one another as relatives,
and may fight and compete less. In Argentina, colonies wage war on one
another. ... [An interesting example of the Founder Effect? But why hasn't
natural selection favoured this cooperative strategy in ants before now,
back in Argentina? Maybe the logical move would be to import more
Argentine ants from Argentina and dilute this inbred species?]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000509/sc/health_superbug_1.html
Yahoo! ... May 9 ... Scientists Map Genes of 'Superbug' Bacterium
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Researchers said on Tuesday they had finished
a crucial first step in mapping all the genes of one of the most notorious
drug-resistant "superbugs" -- Enterococcus faecium. The bacterium is one
of several that have evolved strains that resist all but the strongest
antibiotics. ... This new capability to rapidly decode the DNA of microbes
can be used to provide the scientific community with a huge amount of
fundamental data about life and the microbial world," ... The work was
done very quickly, even by the latest standards. The 2.8 million "base pairs"
-- the nucleotides that pair up to make the twisted ladder of DNA's double
helix -were sequenced using one day's production capacity at the JGI's
Sequencing Facility. ... humans have 3 billion base pairs and it took several
months for scientists to complete the shotgun sequencing of one human
being. "I've been saying that we could sequence a bacterium in a day," ... "I
believe this kind of fast response capability could prove to be very useful to
researchers in medical, national security and agricultural contexts." Once
each gene is mapped, researchers can look for weaknesses in its defenses to
exploit. "This research breakthrough paves the way for preventive
vaccines, in addition to better diagnostic tests and treatments," ....
Enterococci were now the second most common pathogen found in
hospital acquired infections ... A new strain, resistant to the last-ditch
antibiotic vancomycin as well as to more common antibiotics, has emerged.
... [This is good news but unfortunately mapping a genome does not itself
tell how it works. That even a `primitive' bacterium has a 2.8 megabase
genome sounds like yet another problem for naturalism. Darwinists
originally hoped that the cell would turn out to be a simple jelly-like blob of
protoplasm. Now even the simplest one-celled organisms are found to have
a fully automatic, self-maintaining, self-refuelling, self-propelling, self-
reproducing, operating system that far exceeds that of a supercomputer in
sophistication!]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000526/sc/health_nipah_1.html ...
Yahoo! ... May 26 ... Nipah Virus a Rare New Genus - Study
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Nipah virus that killed 106 people in
Malaysia and Singapore and caused livestock breeders to slaughter more
than 1 million pigs in 1999 is a member of a new genus of viruses ... it was
related to a mysterious virus, since named Hendra virus, that sickened
horses and killed two people in Australia in 1994.... "We suggest that these
two viruses are representative of a new genus within the family
Paramyxoviridae" .... [The origin of a new genus or one that was already
existing but undetected until it jumped the species barrier?]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000516/sc/health_anger_1.html
Yahoo! ... May 16 ... Anger An Early Predictor of Heart Problems-US
Study CHICAGO (Reuters) - Anger and hostility as character traits may
start damaging the arteries of even young adults, a study said on Tuesday.
The 10-year study of 374 both black and white adults aged 18 to 30 at the
start found that those who displayed high levels of anger and hostility were
more likely to develop artery calcification, a hardening of the arteries that
may not produce recognizable symptoms but can lead to heart disease ... In
past studies, mostly of older white males, an angry or hostile personality
has been shown to increase the risk of high blood pressure, coronary artery
disease, and death. .... The report also showed that those that displayed an
attitude of "cynical distrust," described as a less severe form of hostility,
also had more coronary calcium than those who scored lower on the
hostility scale, although to a lesser degree than those scoring higher on the
scale. [Maybe following the Maker's Instruction Manual is best after all? :-
)]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000512/sc/gender_reassignment_1.ht
ml
Yahoo! ... May 12 ... Research Confirms Nature Makes the Man
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Two studies ... confirm that nature makes the
man, and that sex-reassignment surgery for boys born with deformed sex
organs is misguided and possibly cruel. The studies of 25 genetically male
children raised as girls because of genital deformities showed all of them
retained strong male characteristics, despite hormone and other treatments.
Most reassigned themselves to be males when they got older .... "These
studies suggest that male gender identity is directly related to normal male
patterns of male hormone exposure in utero (in the womb)," ... "These
children demonstrate that normal male gender identity can develop not only
in the absence of the penis, but even after the removal of testicles or
castration at birth, and unequivocal rearing as female," ... "Rather than the
environment forming these children's gender identity, their identity and
gender role seem to have developed despite a total environment telling
them they were female." The issue has been prominent lately with the
publication of a book, "As Nature Made Him," by journalist John
Colapinto, which chronicles the case of Bruce Thiessen. Thiessen had his
genitals mutilated during a botched circumcision and his parents were
convinced to raise him as a girl. The experiment failed, as Thiessen rebelled
against becoming "Brenda." ..."These studies indicate that with time and
age, children may well know what their gender is, regardless of any and all
information and child-rearing to the contrary," Reiner said. "They seem to
be quite capable of telling us who they are, and we can observe how they
act and function even before they can tell us." [Another blow to those
social engineers and feminist extremists who think that human maleness
and femaleness are just shallow-rooted learned responses which can easily
be re-oriented by `politically correct' educational and political campaigns.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000522/sc/science_syria_1.html
Yahoo! .... May 22 .... U.S.-Syrian Team Find Ancient City in Syria
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The discovery of an ancient city in Syria indicates
civilization as marked by urbanization was more widespread and earlier
than thought, archeologists said on Monday. "We need to reconsider our
ideas about the beginnings of civilization, pushing the time further back," ...
"This would mean that the development of kingdoms or early states
occurred before writing was invented and before the appearance of several
other criteria we think of as marking civilization," ... The early city, which
researchers call Tell Hamoukar, was first occupied between 4000 and 3700
B.C. and covered parts of about 500 acres (200 hectares). From 3700 to
3500 B.C. it was a wellorganized town enclosed by a wall. ... The time
periods involved challenge the traditional view that urban civilization first
blossomed in the Sumerian city-states, such as Uruk, in modern day
southern Iraq, and then spread through the ancient Near East during the
Late Uruk period, from 3500 to 3100 B.C. .... Instead the Syrian discovery
suggests civilization was emerging in both southern Mesopotamia and
Syria earlier, the researchers said. Archeologists said they found evidence
of large-scale food-making, including large ovens capable of bread-baking,
large cooking pots, pottery and traces of wheat, barley, oats and animal
bones. They also found seals that apparently were used to mark items for
ownership, including some with elaborate animal designs that might have
been held by the people with the most authority. ... [More confirmation of
the Biblical picture of an ancient world far earlier than historians under the
influence of evolutionary theory had suspected?]
======================================================
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"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense
is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the
supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of
some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant
promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific
community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior
commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and
institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation
of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our
*a priori* adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of
investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no
matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated.
Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot
in the door." (Lewontin R., "Billions and Billions of Demons," Review of
"The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark," by Carl
Sagan, New York Review, January 9, 1997. Emphasis in original.
http://www.nybooks.com/nyrev/WWWarchdisplay.cgi?19970109028R@p6)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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