Reflectorites
Here are belated excerpts from web articles for the period 17 - 25 August
2000. My comments in square brackets.
Steve
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_894000/894481.stm ... 25
August, 2000 ... Clues to origins of life Life may have started in undersea
vents ... Scientists claim to have recreated one of the vital steps in the
origin of life on Earth. Their experiments show that a chemical vital to all
living creatures can be synthesised from organic and metallic compounds.
Researchers ... "cooked" iron sulphide at very high temperatures and
pressures. Pyruvic acid was formed - a key chemical which living
organisms use to extract energy from food. The scientists believe that their
experiments create similar conditions to those in hydrothermal vents, a type
of geyser found on the ocean floor. Temperatures in vents can reach 500 C
These underwater "chimneys" spew out a cocktail of basic chemicals at
scorching temperatures and under very high pressures. Many scientists now
believe that the most important ingredients in the formation of all life on
Earth are found around these vents. The new research ... strengthens this
view. The team, led by Dr George Cody, placed samples of iron sulphide
inside 24-carat gold capsules. These tubes were then placed inside what the
researchers call "the bomb", a device encased in protective steel plates
salvaged from a scrapped battleship. ... After subjecting the capsules to
temperatures of 250 C and pressures up to 2,000 times greater than the
atmosphere, the researchers found pyruvic acid had formed. The
experiments suggest that this process also occurs in a natural setting on the
ocean floor. In hydrothermal vents, where oxygen-poor fluids percolate
through a crust containing iron sulphide, "significant concentrations" of
pyruvic acid would occur. Dr Cody believes that the creation of this acid
was a critical step in the development of life. NASA are taking an interest
in this type of research. They believe that it gives them more accurate
information on where in the Universe the right conditions exist to create
life. Commenting on the work, Dr Gunter Wachtershauser, a leading
researcher in this field ... [said] the new research was another piece of the
jigsaw. "It means you don't need an ocean to create life," he said. "All you
need is a little water vapour and a lot of volcanic activity." [If it only takes
"a little water vapour and a lot of volcanic activity" why is it so hard? The
first problem, the `hardware' is getting *all* these "vital steps" to happen
together, and what success OoL researchers have is due to unrealistic
assumptions, e.g. 24-carat (i.e. pure) gold occurring in nature and 500 C
temperatures destroying nucleic acids and proteins. Assembling the
`hardware' together is hard enough, but the second problem is even harder,
- writing the `software' (i.e. the *information*), which Kuppers has
identified as "*the* fundamental concept in the physicochemical theory of
the origin of life" (Kuppers B-O., "Information and the Origin of Life,"
1990, p.170. Emphasis Kupper's]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_894000/894481.stm ... 25
August, 2000 ... Clues to origins of life Life may have started in undersea
vents ... Scientists claim to have recreated one of the vital steps in the
origin of life on Earth. Their experiments show that a chemical vital to all
living creatures can be synthesised from organic and metallic compounds.
Researchers ... "cooked" iron sulphide at very high temperatures and
pressures. Pyruvic acid was formed - a key chemical which living
organisms use to extract energy from food. The scientists believe that their
experiments create similar conditions to those in hydrothermal vents, a type
of geyser found on the ocean floor. Temperatures in vents can reach 500 C
These underwater "chimneys" spew out a cocktail of basic chemicals at
scorching temperatures and under very high pressures. Many scientists now
believe that the most important ingredients in the formation of all life on
Earth are found around these vents. The new research ... strengthens this
view. The team, led by Dr George Cody, placed samples of iron sulphide
inside 24-carat gold capsules. These tubes were then placed inside what the
researchers call "the bomb", a device encased in protective steel plates
salvaged from a scrapped battleship. ... After subjecting the capsules to
temperatures of 250 C and pressures up to 2,000 times greater than the
atmosphere, the researchers found pyruvic acid had formed. The
experiments suggest that this process also occurs in a natural setting on the
ocean floor. In hydrothermal vents, where oxygen-poor fluids percolate
through a crust containing iron sulphide, "significant concentrations" of
pyruvic acid would occur. Dr Cody believes that the creation of this acid
was a critical step in the development of life. NASA are taking an interest
in this type of research. They believe that it gives them more accurate
information on where in the Universe the right conditions exist to create
life. Commenting on the work, Dr Gunter Wachtershauser, a leading
researcher in this field ... [said] the new research was another piece of the
jigsaw. "It means you don't need an ocean to create life," he said. "All you
need is a little water vapour and a lot of volcanic activity." [If it only takes
"a little water vapour and a lot of volcanic activity" why is it so hard? The
first problem, the `hardware' is getting *all* these "vital steps" to happen
together, and what success OoL researchers have is due to unrealistic
assumptions, e.g. 24-carat (i.e. pure) gold occurring in nature and 500 C
temperatures destroying nucleic acids and proteins. Assembling the
`hardware' together is hard enough, but the second problem is even harder,
-the `software' (i.e. the *information*), which Kuppers has identified as
"*the* fundamental concept in the physicochemical theory of the origin of
life" (Kuppers B-O., "Information and the Origin of Life," 1990, p.170.
Emphasis Kupper's]
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_891000/891580.stm BBC
... 22 August, 2000 ... Calls to crack chimp genome Chimps are 99 percent
genetically identical to humans US scientists are calling for an international
effort to decode the genome of the chimpanzee. They believe the project
could explain why humans, and not chimps, succumb to diseases like AIDS
and malaria. But some researchers are sceptical about the plans. They fear
much of the genetic data would be meaningless or confusing. The drive to
sequence the genome of great apes is being spearheaded by Ajit Varki, ...
"The chimpanzee and the bonobo share nearly 99 percent of human
genomic sequences," he told the journal Genome Research. "Knowing the
complete genome of at least one of these species will give us a window into
genes that contribute to 'human-ness'."... The main imperative for a primate
genome project is to find out why humans develop certain diseases that
other primates are immune to. Chimps are immune to the HIV virus
Learning about the genetic differences between chimps and humans could
help in the search for new treatments for human diseases as diverse as Aids,
Alzheimer's, malaria and cancer. Diseases that kill humans in large numbers
usually have little impact on the lives of great apes. Most strikingly, chimps
infected with the HIV virus do not get AIDS. And, despite sharing a gene
that predisposes humans to getting Alzheimer's disease, chimps do not
develop the condition. Professor Morris Goodman ... is one of the
supporters of the project. "There's a big effort now to persuade the groups
that are concerned with large-scale genome sequencing that they should
undertake a primate genome project," .... Genetic cousins Knowing the
genetic make-up of the chimp might shed light on human characteristics
such as our big brains and complex social behaviour. And a primate
genome project could also aid conservation efforts, by raising public
awareness of the close genetic relationship between humans and other
primates. But Professor Grahame Bulfield ..., questioned the value of
sequencing the genome of primates. "The mere fact that there are only one
or two percent genetic differences between chimps and human beings still
means that they are going to differ in many thousands of DNA sequences,"
.... "Working out which ones are responsible for the differences between
chimps and humans and, of those, which are important in the diseases that
differ between chimps and humans is a very difficult problem." Meanwhile,
scientists in Japan have already begun decoding the genomes of great apes
in a separate venture. ... [It is interesting that some geneticists now saying
that they can't understand the human genome without a chimp's genome.
This may indicate that genomes may not be self explanatory? It is also
interesting, and perhaps significant that apes don't get AIDS and
Alzheimer's.]
http://www.usatoday.com/life/dcovtue.htm ... USA TODAY ... 08/29/00
... Hello? Is anybody out there? ... ORINDA, Calif. - The recent news that
two high-tech titans have donated $12.5 million to energize the hunt for
extraterrestrial intelligence invites cynicism. To the world at large,
Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen and former chief technology officer
Nathan Myhrvold might appear to be two men gripped by midlife crises of
the billionaire kind. In that light, donations of $11.5 million and $1 million
respectively to SETI, the 30year-old Mountain View, Calif.-based Search
for Extra- Terrestrial Intelligence Institute, seem par for this rarefied
course. ... the (Paul) Allen Telescope Array ... just east of San Francisco ...
looks like a bunch of backyard TV dishes. But ... The dishes actually
represent a quantum leap in the specialized realm of radio astronomy, and
in particular for the oft-underfunded SETI project. .... Its astronomers are
searching for a narrow-band signal that remains at a fixed point on the
radio telescope dial. The fixed nature of the noise implies it was transmitted
from a foreign source, unlike other radio noise, such as that made by
pulsars and quasars, which wander over the radio spectrum. ... Exponential
leaps in the digital realm, specifically computing power, benefit projects
like SETI, which at its heart requires a colossal amount of data crunching.
... "I wanted to be a physicist," says Papadopoulos, who became an
engineer and is chief technology officer at Sun Microsystems. Both the
peers SETI attracted and the questions it asks lured him to the project;
now he's on the board. "The search for extraterrestrial life is as deeply
philosophical as our continued exploration of the atom or DNA," he says.
Finding someone else out there "won't cure our problems, but I think it
would sure change our way of thinking." .... "Finding another advanced
society that's managed to stick around would be good news," .... Myhrvold
bemoans the fact that the U.S. government has gone on "a jihad against all
SETI-like projects." "An unfortunate combination of a sci-fi culture and
UFO fanatics makes it easy to laugh stuff like SETI off," he says. "But it's
highly scientific. We are carefully scanning the sky for whatever we may
find." ... The Allen Array would operate 365 days a year in SETI's service.
.... The result of both a SETI-dedicated telescope and upgradable
technology means significantly improved chances (if still remote) of picking
up E.T.'s dial tone. In the past five years, SETI has scrutinized radio
frequencies from 500 stars. In its first year, the Allen Array would target
100,000 stars, with a goal of 1 million a year. "With the Milky Way Galaxy
being home to around 400 billion stars, SETI really is a numbers game,"
Klerkx says. The issue boils down to finding innovative ways to listen to
and rule out potential stellar sites of extraterrestrial intelligence - as quickly
as possible. To digital pioneers, that's an irresistible challenge. "I see this
and think, 'That's a cool problem and I know how to solve it,'" says
Myhrvold, who helped make Microsoft a household name. "We use our
current high-tech gains to make someone's Web site go faster," Myhrvold
says. "So why not use it for science, and toward making what would be
one of the greatest discoveries in history?" ... [SETI is basically a search
for intelligent design, and the comment that "it's highly scientific" applies
equally to ID too!]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=003367357459661&rtmo=LlxSG3yd&atmo=LlxSG3yd&pg=/et/00/8/29/nabor29.html
Electronic Telegraph ... 29 August 2000 Babies may feel pain of abortion
... THOUSANDS of abortions may cause pain to the unborn child, say
doctors preparing to debate the contentious issue of "foetal awareness".
Prof Vivette Glover, of London, is calling for all terminations between 17
and 24 weeks to be performed under anaesthetic. Although 90 per cent of
terminations take place before 13 weeks, when most medical opinion
agrees that a foetus cannot feel pain, concern has resurfaced about those
carried out during the next 11 weeks. At present, some abortions during
the period of 13 to 24 weeks are carried out without anaesthesia. Prof
Glover ... who is to chair a conference on the issue ... said yesterday that
many questions remained about when the foetus became sentient. She said:
"It is incredibly unlikely that the foetus could feel anything before 13 weeks
because there is no linking to the brain at all. After 26 weeks it is quite
probable. "But between 17 and 26 it is increasingly possible that it starts to
feel something and that abortions done in that period ought to use
anaesthesia." Prof Glover acknowledged that by raising the matter she
could be providing ammunition for anti-abortionists. She said: "I am pro-
choice, but one should not muddle the two. One should think about how
one is doing it in the most pain-free way." According to one study, aborted
foetuses have been heard to cry from 21 weeks and some doctors believe
that distress can be felt as early as 13 weeks. Others question whether the
foetus can feel pain before 26 weeks. Under present law, abortion can be
carried out only until the 24th week of pregnancy unless there are
exceptional circumstances, such as a threat to the life of the mother. A
study by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists said that it
was not easy to define or evaluate foetal awareness, in particular awareness
of pain. It concluded that the foetus was not "aware" before 26 weeks. Dr
Gillian Penney ... said: "The foetus would not be capable of experiencing
what we would perceive as pain." The evidence that underpinned the Royal
College's conclusion focused on nerve connections between two crucial
areas of the developing brain, the cortex and the thalamus. Until they
develop after 26 weeks, sensations of pain cannot be experienced. Prof
Peter Hepper ... said there was not enough evidence to say that the foetus
experienced pain before 26 weeks. But he believed it was "better to be safe
than sorry". The Women and Children's Welfare Fund charity says that the
foetus is less well protected from pain in Britain than animals. There was
no legislation to protect the foetus, it said. But the Animal (Scientific
Procedures) Act of 1986 for "pre-born vertebrate animals" such as rats,
guinea pigs and hedgehogs, ensured that they were not subjected to undue
suffering. ... [It is ironic that there is more protection for foetal animals
than humans. The thought that all those millions of late term aborted
foetuses could feel themselves being dismembered is horrible. The call for
anaesthetic only highlights that the foetus is human.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=003367369810515&rtmo=lnvzPSnt&atmo=rrrrrrvs&pg=/et/00/8/24/ecnchim24.html
24.08.00 Electronic Telegraph ... Chimps develop appetite for the culinary
arts ... A GROUP of "gourmet chimpanzees" have learnt to prepare their
food to make it more appetising, scientists have discovered. Monkey
business: captive chimps have learned to make food taste better by grinding
it to a pulp, but still lack the cooking skills of humans While they may lack
the sophistication of human chefs ... the captive apes have been observed
routinely pulping and mashing their food to improve its flavour and
consistency. Dr Samuel Fernandez-Carriba ... said they were the first apes
to develop a taste for the culinary arts after learning to prepare food from a
chimp called Linda, whose teeth were removed by her previous owner. ...
she would rub apples on a sharp corner of her enclosure so that juice and
pulp ran down the wall, and then lick it off. But the technique was picked
up by six other chimps with healthy teeth who now eat apples, carrots,
lemons and oranges by rubbing, changing not only the texture but also the
flavour. Dr Fernandez-Carriba said chimps in the wild used simple tools to
obtain food, working with sticks to extract termites from holes or using
rocks to open nuts. But he added: "These are not cases of transforming
food in the human way. Transformation involves things like grinding and
heating." ... [Another example of how the highest achievements of chimps
fall far short of those of humans.]
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=003367369810515&rtmo=0ixKKKsq&atmo=gggggg3K&pg=/et/00/8/17/ecfclon17.html
17.08.00 Electronic Telegraph ... This is what the human cloning row is
about The Government have released a long awaited report on therapeutic
cloning, the most controversial issue in reproductive science. ... why
experts believe that the benefits outweigh the ethical concerns TO MANY
people, this hollow ball of cells is a "person", a "tiny human being" who
deserves the same rights as any other. To others, the ball deserves respect -
but not as much as patients suffering disease or the ravages of old age. This
is the human embryo at the heart of the row over whether scientists should
be able to use "therapeutic cloning" to fix a damaged body, the subject of a
long awaited announcement today by the Government. Such embryos, left
over from the creation of test-tube babies by in vitro fertilisation (IVF), are
already used in studies. Now scientists want to clone embryos and extend
the range of research they can conduct on them. To create the cloned
embryo, a patient's cell would be fused with a human egg. After six days,
the resulting embryo would be dismantled to yield special "stem" cells that
can be grown into any tissue needed to repair the patient. If it were placed
in the womb, the embryo could even develop into a baby but there are no
groups, scientific or religious, which support so called "reproductive
cloning", which is banned. ... There are two issues for the Government to
consider: whether to allow a wider range of research on stem cells taken
from human embryos created in IVF programmes (Dr Smith only works on
these embryos, which would otherwise be destroyed, with the owner's
consent); and whether embryos should be cloned for research on the use of
stem cells for therapies. The embryo in question is a far cry from the
popular image, where it is depicted as a comma, and certainly nothing like
a foetus, which only begins to develop after the embryo implants in a
woman's uterus. This embryo consists of about 100 cells. Just visible to the
naked eye, it is smaller than the full stop at the end of this sentence. It lacks
a brain, heart or any recognisable feature (hence previous attempts by
scientists to "rebrand" it as a pre-embryo). Some scientists argue that it
would be unethical, even cruel, to put the rights of this embryo above those
of a patient. And they believe that most people feel the same way .... Many
people take "potentiality" as their baseline for life: at the moment of
fertilisation a potential person is born. Yet the potential of an egg fertilised
in the lab is limited: it will not develop for more than a few days unless
placed in the womb. And the concept of potentiality is too broad to be
useful: all the cells in the body now have the potential to be unique
individuals ever since the cloning of Dolly the sheep showed that any cell
can be roped in to create a new individual. Fundamentalist opponents to
therapeutic cloning often say that an embryo is sacred and to use it is
tantamount to human sacrifice. Pragmatists point out that we live in an age
of abortion, "spare" IVF embryos are often destroyed, human life can be
taken with justification in circumstances such as war, and the public
regularly discusses capital punishment. ... [It is interesting how when it is
convenient DNA is `everything' but when it is inconvenient it isn't! It is
also interesting how the `slippery slope' works. Once scientists start
producing human embryos for IVF and the next step is using them for
growing stem cells. The next step after that will be "reproductive cloning".
The same "pragmatist" arguments could justify *anything*. Because
consistent materialists can have no real concept of the sacredness of human
life they will, if allowed to, reduce humanity to the lowest common
denominator that their "hollow and deceptive philosophy" (Col 2:8)
dictates. The prediction of Darwin's Christian mentor, Cambridge Professor
Adam Sedgwick (see tagline) is slowly and inexorably coming true.]
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"There is a moral or metaphysical part of nature as well as a physical. A
man who denies this is deep in the mire of folly. 'Tis the crown and glory of
organic science that it does through final cause, link material and moral;
and yet does not allow us to mingle them in our first conception of laws,
and our classification of such laws, whether we consider one side of nature
or the other. You have ignored this link; and, if I do not mistake your
meaning, you have done your best in one or two pregnant cases to break it.
Were it possible (which, thank God, it is not) to break it, humanity, in my
mind, would suffer a damage that might brutalize it, and sink the human
race into a lower grade of degradation than any into which it has fallen
since its written records tell us of its history." (Sedgwick A., letter to
Darwin C.R., November 1859, in Darwin F., ed., "The Life of Charles
Darwin," [1902], Senate: London, 1995, reprint, p.217)
Stephen E. Jones | sejones@iinet.net.au | http://www.iinet.net.au/~sejones
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