Reflectorites
Below are web article links, headlines and paragraphs for the period 22-24
February, with my comments in square brackets.
Steve
==================================================================================
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=r3QmDStX&atmo=lllllljx&pg=/et/00/2/24/ecnflu24.html
Electronic Telegraph 24.02.00 ... Flute sounds an echo of the caveman By Roger
Highfield THE sound of a flute made by a Neanderthal 50,000 years ago has been
heard once again. The sonorous trip into the prehistoric era began with the
discovery of several broken instruments in Slovenia, thought to be among the
world's oldest. They were carved from the leg bones of bears and unearthed
alongside Neanderthal tools and an ancient fireplace. The flute fragments were
recovered from the dig in 1995. Dr Jelle Atema, of Boston University, has
reconstructed the flute using a 50,000-year-old bear femur, to "provide an insight
into what our ancestors may have listened to". He told the association that the
range of the flute would have been less than an octave and showed that the pitch
could be changed by blowing harder. ... [Personally I am dubious that this flute
was a made by a Neandertal. It is known that Homo sapiens made bone flutes in
Africa where Neandertals could not have been present, but it is not known that
Neandertals made bone flutes where Homo sapiens could not have been present.
The flute was found in a layer "which is over a metre thick"
(http://www.zrcsazu.si/www/iza/piscal.html), which means that the same cave
could have been used alternately (or even simultaneously) by both Homo sapiens
and Neandertals, over a period of thousands of years. That it was Mousterian is no
guarantee that it was Neandertal, because as Leakey points out: "in the Middle
East...Neanderthals and modern humans essentially coexisted in the region for as
long as 60,000 years...the only form of tool technology we see is ...Mousterian",
which indicates that "anatomically modern human populations in the Middle East
appear to have manufactured Mousterian-like technology" (Leakey R.E., "The
Origin of Humankind," 1995, p.95).]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=r3QmDStX&atmo=lllllljx&pg=/et/00/2/24/ecndol24.html
Electronic Telegraph 24.02.00 ... One step nearer to cloning a human being By
Mark Court Carbon-copy canines not just a pet fancy Factory will make human
protein from GM ewe milk THE Scottish company that created Dolly the Sheep,
the world's first cloned sheep, is close to producing the world's first cloned pig, a
breakthrough that moves scientists a step closer to making an exact genetic copy
of a human being. ... PPL Therapeutics, a biotechnology company based near
Edinburgh, has successfully created three cloned piglets which are growing
healthily in a surrogate sow's womb. The sow is being looked after at a secret
location in the United States, because of the controversy surrounding genetic
engineering and research on animals. ... They will have to wait until the piglets are
born to be able to analyse their DNA and be absolutely certain. ... Researchers
have struggled for years to clone pigs, but the challenge has proved much more
difficult than cloning sheep or mice. But PPL and other companies have persevered
because pigs have many biological similarities to humans. PPL, through its wholly
owned American subsidiary, has cloned the piglets as part of its effort to transplant
pig organs into humans, a controversial concept called xenotransplantation. Within
the next decade, hearts, lungs and kidneys from modified pigs could be used
routinely as replacements for defective human organs. But for a pig organ to
survive properly in a human, it would have to be genetically modified. The first
step is to be able to clone pigs. ... altering a pig's DNA by switching off a gene
might prevent the rejection of pig organs from the human body. ... The ability to
clone a pig, which is much more complicated than a sheep for reasons that are not
fully understood, also takes scientists a step nearer to cloning a human. One
scientist commented: "Theoretically, we are closer to cloning a person, but the
bigger the animal the harder they are to clone. We are still a very long way from
cloning a whole person." ... [I can understand why they might want to clone pig
organs so they can be transplanted into humans without rejection, but I don't
understand why they would even want to clone a human being.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=r3QmDStX&atmo=lllllljx&pg=/et/00/2/24/ecnmous24.html
Electronic Telegraph 24.02.00 ... Scientists create Down's syndrome in mice By
Jacqui Thornton and Roger Highfield SCIENTISTS have genetically engineered a
mouse with Down's syndrome. The development may lead to doctors being able to
repair some of the syndrome's effects in humans. The genetic disorder, where an
extra chromosome is present, occurs in one in 700 human births and is the most
common cause of mental handicap. More than a dozen mice were bred with three
copies of chromosome 21, instead of the usual two, in their cells, in an attempt to
reveal how the condition affects the brain. ... repair may be made possible by
identifying the genes that make the biggest contribution to the disorder. One
approach would be to use gene therapy to counter the effects of these genes.
Another approach would focus on making good the shortfall in the cells that form
various structures in the bodies of Down's syndrome patients. ... there was great
interest in using "stem cells", parent cells of all types in the body, to grow nerve
and other cells to repair a body. This, at a conceptual level, could offer other ways
to "tone down" the problems caused by the syndrome. He said: "Since this mouse
can accurately predict what will happen in Down's syndrome, we can use that in a
very powerful way to make conclusions about what is going wrong in
development." ... [Another `worthy cause' demand for stem cells!]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000113078204876&rtmo=r3QmDStX&atmo=lllllljx&pg=/et/00/2/24/ecfcos24.html
Electronic Telegraph 24.02.00 ... Listening for the cries of the cosmos The history
of the cosmos is written in the tiny warps in space brought about by gravity waves.
Peter Evans reports on the international effort to trace them ... a huge new
observatory called Ligo that may soon open up with unprecedented clarity some of
the most extraordinary phenomena in the cosmos. ... The $350 million complex
houses two 4 km tunnels, meeting in an L shape and containing a futuristic
arrangement of advanced optics and lasers. From the overpass you can scarcely see
the end of each arm. Yet this colossal machine is designed to measure impossibly
small events - the tiny warps in space brought about by gravity waves. ... If Ligo
(Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) actually succeeds in
detecting some of these elusive waves, it will do so because it is sensitive enough
to capture ripples on the scale of billionths of a billionth of a metre. That is, about
a million times smaller than the diameter of an atom. ... [Such precision is
incredible. I find it interesting they have not yet detected gravity waves, since we
are told that it is unscientific to posit an undetectable Designer.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000223/sc/health_sexchange_1.html ...
Yahoo! ... February 23 ... Sex-Change Victim Recalls Life As a Girl By Natalie
James TORONTO (Reuters) - Brenda Reimer was an awkward child, who did not
engage in girlish activities and was mercilessly teased by schoolmates for her
gunslinger stride and lack of interest in boys. Doctors told her that her discomfort
was due to a passing phase of "tomboyishness." What they didn't tell her was that
she had in fact been born "Bruce" and had been subjected to gender reassignment
surgery at 18 months, 10 months after doctors botched a circumcision and
destroyed most of his penis. Instead of raising their child as a boy, Bruce's young
parents took the advice of a famous American medical psychologist, John Money
of Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore, who said that Bruce could be a
happy "Brenda" with the proper treatment and hormones. But the experiment did
not go as planned, plunging Bruce into a life of angry depression and isolation
before surgery in his mid-teens transformed him back into a man. Bruce is now 34
and is known as David...He tells his tale in a book, "As Nature Made Him," ...
Based on this case -- known as the "twins case" because he was born with an
identical twin brother who was raised a boy -- sex reassignments became, and
remain, a widely accepted medical practice for newborns with injured or irregular
genitalia. Although Reimer grew up miserably aware that something was wrong,
the John/Joan case, as it was known in the medical books, was hailed by Dr.
Money in 1972 as a medical triumph. It was seen as proof of the idea that a
person's sexual identity is ultimately determined by environment, leading doctors
around the world to perform thousands of sex reassignments on infants with
similarly injured or abnormal genitalia. ... Even as Reimer (as Brenda) plunged into
suicidal depression, the fabled version of her life was accepted by virtually
everyone, especially the feminist movement which saw it as proof of their
conviction that gender identity and sexual orientation are a result of rearing and
environment. ... After the botched circumcision destroyed most of his penis at
eight months old, Reimer's parents, a working class couple from Winnipeg, agreed
to submit their son to a radical sex-change procedure -- clinical castration, removal
of the remaining shred of penis and hormone therapy. ... The tragedy of David
Reimer, however, was considered a boon for science because David was born with
a twin brother, Brian, who -- with his genitals still intact -- would provide a perfect
matched control for their study. ... But Reimer knew he wasn't a girl. ... And
although doctors had removed Reimer's testicles, the then-Brenda began to show
the ominous signs of incipient manhood -- growing muscles on her shoulders, neck
and biceps and sometimes a strange, high-pitched break in her voice. Regardless of
these signs, Dr. Money pressed the family to continue with the experiment and
take it to its final phase: creating female genitalia. Only when Brenda's defiance
had turned to suicidal depression when she was 14 did her parents reveal the truth
-- that she was a boy. ... David said he harbored no resentment toward his parents,
who, barely out of their teens, were persuaded easily by the opinions of highly
educated doctors. ... The responsibility, he believes, rests squarely on the shoulders
of those doctors, especially Dr. Money, who had developed an international
reputation for the "twins case." Despite the apparent harm it was doing to the
Reimer family, Money appeared bent on seeing it through to the end. "I thought it
was very ignorant for them to think I was no longer a male because my penis was
burned off," Reimer said. "A woman who loses her breasts to cancer doesn't
(become) any less of a woman." ... [A horrific example of what happens when
scientists are captured by a theory which they want to believe and ignore the facts.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000223/sc/health_euthanasia_1.html ...
Yahoo! ... February 23 ... Complications Found With Doctor-Assisted Suicides
BOSTON (Reuters) - When a doctor hastens the death of a terminally ill patient,
the end is not always easy or peaceful, ...The scientists from the Netherlands,
where euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide have been legal for years, found
that such efforts frequently go awry. When patients tried to kill themselves using
drugs prescribed by a doctor, the medication did not work as expected in 16
percent of the cases. In addition, technical problems or unexpected side effects
occurred 7 percent of the time. Problems surfaced so often, doctors witnessing the
attempted suicide felt compelled to intervene and ensure death in 18 percent of the
cases ... Even when the doctor was directly performing euthanasia, the researchers
found, complications developed in 3 percent of the attempts. Patients either took
longer to die than expected or awoke from a drug-induced coma that was
supposed to be fatal in 6 percent of the cases. "This is information that will come
as a shock to the many members of the public -including legislators and even some
physicians -- who have never considered that the procedures involved in physician-
assisted suicide and euthanasia might sometimes add to the suffering they are
meant to alleviate," ... In another Journal study, which focused on the effects of the
Oregon law from the doctor's perspective, Dr. Linda Ganzini and her colleagues ...
found ... that many patients changed their mind about suicide after doctors tried to
intervene to make their final days more comfortable. ... [I wonder how many
paients would opt for palliative care if it was available and if they were told these
unpleasant facts about euthanasia?]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000223/sc/science_conservation_1.html ...
Yahoo! ... February 23 ... Scientists Set Priority Hotspots for Conservation By
Patricia Reaney LONDON (Reuters) - For twice the cost of a single Pathfinder
mission to Mars, many of the endangered plant and animal species on our planet
could be saved from extinction ... Instead of searching for new species in outer
space, they said we could save the ones we already have by concentrating on 25
biodiversity hotspots around the globe. The hotspots are areas with exceptional
concentrations of endemic species but with rapid loss of natural habitat. They
estimate that by investing $500 million a year over the next five years on the
hotspots many species at risk could be saved.. ... The hotspots, ranging from the
Andes to southwest Australia and Kenya to the Caucasus, contain the remaining
habitats of 133,149 plant species, or 44 percent of the worldwide total, and 9,645
vertebrate species, roughly 35 percent of the total. "With business as usual we shall
lose maybe half of all species within the lifetimes of many people," ... Not since the
demise of the dinosaurs have so many species been under threat. If whole species
are wiped out, Myers and his colleagues warned, it could take several million years
for replacements species to evolve. ... "To qualify as a hotspot, an area must
contain at least 0.5 percent or 1,500 of the world's 300,000 plant species as
endemics. In fact, 15 of the 25 hotspots contain at least 2,500 endemic plant
species, and 10 of them at least 5,000," .... [More on the sixth great extinction
under way right now.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000223/sc/health_preschoolers_1.html ...
Yahoo! ... February 23 ... Study Says More U.S. Kids Given Psychotropic Drugs
CHICAGO (Reuters) - The number of preschoolers in the United States being
prescribed antidepressants and stimulants rose in the mid-1990s despite limited
knowledge about the effects of such drugs on young children. .... "Unresolved
questions involve the long-term safety of psychotropic medications, particularly in
light of earlier ages of initiation and longer durations of treatment," said the report
published in this week's Journal of the American Medical Association. ... The
University of Maryland study looked at 200,000 patients in three areas of the
country. It found that use of stimulants and antidepressants rose in all the areas
between 1991 and 1995. The reasons for prescribing such medications in young
children include pain relief, anxiety associated with medical, pre-surgery and dental
procedures, bed wetting and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder in aged 3 years
and older. ... In an editorial in the same issue commenting on the study, Joseph
Coyle of Harvard Medical School said, "Given that there is no empirical evidence
to support psychotropic drug treatment in very young children and that there are
valid concerns that such treatment could have deleterious effects on the developing
brain, the reasons for these troubling changes in practice need to be identified." ...
"These disturbing prescription practices suggest a growing crisis in mental health,"
he said. ... [In Australia, Mental Health disorders are now the largest Diagnostic
Related Group (DRG) category. More evidence of the devastating effect of
materialistic culture on the human spirit?]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000223/sc/health_malaria_2.html ... Yahoo!
... February 23 ... Scientists Identify Malaria Drug Resistance Gene By Patricia
Reaney LONDON (Reuters) - In a finding that could have important implications
for new antimalaria treatments, Australian researchers have shown how the
parasite that causes malaria manages to outwit even the most powerful drugs.
Malaria kills millions of people each year despite effective treatments by building
up a resistance to the drugs used to combat it. But scientists ... in Melbourne have
shown that a mutation in a gene called pfmdr1 is behind the drug resistance. ... "A
greater understanding of the mechanism used by the parasite to evade the lethal
effect of these antimalarial drugs means we can consider developing ways of
inhibiting this and increasing the efficacy of the current antimalarials."... Cowman
... said pfmdr1 is not the only gene involved in drug resistance but it is an
important one. ... [Great news if, armed with this knowledge, they can develop
better treatments.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000223/sc/science_neurons_1.html ... Yahoo!
... February 23 ... Scientists Get New Cells to Grow in Bird Brain
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Using some of the smallest of all bird brains,
scientists ... had coaxed brain cells to grow from elusive adult stem cells, so-called
master cells that are the focus of frenzied research. They said that by destroying
certain brain cells in zebra finches, they prompted the generation of new cells.
...they believed that neural stem cells must have been the source of the new
neurons. "This is, we believe, the first example where it has been demonstrated
that one can induce the birth of new neurons and that they actually contribute to a
complex behavior," ... "It is a step toward attempting the same in mammals." Adult
stem cells are a kind of nursery or progenitor cell that exist throughout the body.
... Scientists are trying to find ways to use either adult or embryonic stem cells, or
both, to regenerate various forms of tissue, including brain cells of patients with
disease such as Alzheimer's or Parkinson's. The cells ... can be taken from aborted
fetuses or from embryos left over from IVF (test-tube) fertilization efforts, but
these sources can be controversial... Until recently scientists believed brain cells
did not regenerate at all, but they now know new cells grow to a limited degree...
One theory holds that when certain neurons die, they somehow signal stem cells
and prompt the production of replacements. Macklis's team selectively killed one
kind of song-related neuron in their zebra finches. The birds, as predicted, partly
lost their songs. But three months later they were singing as normal. When the
researchers looked at their brains, they saw that the neurons had grown back...
They ... were doing more experiments to see just where the new cells came from.
... [Good news and bad news. If this proves successful it may alleviate Alzheimer's
and Parkinson's disease but it will then put more pressure on legislators to allow
human stem cell harvesting and even farming of embryos.]
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000223/sc/environment_warming_2.html ...
Yahoo! ... February 23 ... Global Warming Accelerating, U.S. Study Finds
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Global warming is not only real but it is accelerating,
U.S. government researchers say. In the past 25 years alone, average global
temperatures have started zooming up at a rate that works out to four degrees
Fahrenheit per century, the team at the National Climate Data Center...said. ...
...there was only a one-in-20 chance that the record high temperatures in 1997 and
1998 were simply unusual events ... They found that 1999 was the fifth warmest
year on record, even though it should have been a cool year... Most scientists now
agree that global warming has been caused by human activities, including the
burning of fossil fuels such as coal and gas. They say eventually temperatures at
the poles will cause icecaps to melt, raising overall ocean levels and flooding low-
lying areas. Global warming is also believed to have already caused disruptions in
weather. The effect will not simply be warmer temperatures, but will include more
severe winters in some places, stronger hurricanes, droughts and floods. ... [There
are other equally eminent scientists who say that global warming is a natural cycle
and human activity contributes little to it and also that melting icecaps could take
thousands of years.]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_650000/650095.stm BBC ... 22
February, 2000, ... Ape-man: Origin of sophistication Thomas Dowson traces the
South African paintings By BBC Science's Claire Imber Lascaux, Chauvet,
Altamira. These are just a few of the fabulous and enigmatic European cave
paintings discovered so far. Dated at over 25,000 years old, we have always
marvelled at them, but thought that they were made by primitive people. ...
Although the paintings are stunningly beautiful, they look like simple depictions of
animals. Perhaps they are a naive hunting magic, nothing more. But according to
two scientists working in South Africa, this view of the ancient painters is totally
wrong. They believe the paintings are evidence of a complex and modern society.
The researchers think they can prove that the cave painters were just like us. ...
David Lewis-Williams and Thomas Dowson made the link between ancient rock
paintings in Europe and more recent ones in the South African Cape. ... They
asked modern Namibian Ju'hoansi tribespeople to explain the 2,000-year-old Cape
paintings, and were amazed to hear how they represented complex cosmological
and shamanic beliefs. ... a US psychologist studying shamanism and hypnosis has
added his piece to the puzzle. ... He has found that all these people report the same
kinds of feeling and visual hallucinations, which mirror the experiences of those
involved in shamanic and other religions. He believes that this means our minds are
all the same, and we share the same experiences in altered states of consciousness.
... A neurologist in the UK, Dominic Ffytche, believes he has the final evidence to
tie all of this together. ... His patients also see the same shapes and patterns
reported by the Ju'hoansi, and indeed they are strikingly similar to the patterns
painted in Prehistoric Europe. We have discovered a neurological link to the past,
inside our own heads. ... It is clear that modern minds have been around for over
25,000 years, and with them humans have been able to think about all kinds of
things. Our modern minds are what allow us to imagine other worlds and to
communicate about abstract concepts. ... Our modern minds let us wonder about
who we are and where we came from, and indeed allow us to be scientists, priests
and shamen. ... [I agree with the conclusion, but I am not sure of the validity of the
methods. How do they know that the Ju'hoansi's interpretations are right? Also, I
am not sure that Dawkins & Co. would like the bracketing of "scientists" with
"priests and shamen"! :-)]
==================================================================================
--------------------------------------------------------------------
"Such a threshold model is in accord with Mayr's notion of the "genetic
revolution" occurring in small, isolated, and inbreeding populations; merely
the terms are different. But all such schemes suffer from the fundamental
weakness of evolutionary biology: they are extremely difficult to test and
therefore remain metaphors. We do not yet know enough about the
developmental biology of organisms to know whether such ideas are
consistent with the way in which development actually works." (Thomson
K.S., "The Meanings of Evolution," American Scientist, Vol. 70,
September-October 1982, pp.529-531, p.531)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
--------------------------------------------------------------------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Mon Mar 06 2000 - 07:22:43 EST