A new book claims that an anthropologist
deliberately
caused a measles epidemic among the Yanomami in
the 1960s, in order to test theories of eugenics.
A new book claims that an anthropologist
deliberately
caused a measles epidemic among the Yanomami in
the 1960s, in order to test theories of eugenics.
Once the epidemic was under way, according to the book, the research team "refused to provide any medical assistance to the sick and dying Yanomami, on explicit order from Neel. He insisted to his colleagues that they were only there to observe and record the epidemic, and that they must stick strictly to their roles as scientists, not provide medical help".
Neel himself will escape a trial for crimes against humanity--he died last February--but it will be interesting, to put it mildly, to see how his colleagues defend themselves at the next meeting of the American Anthropological Society.
One of the most controversial aspects of the research which allegedly culminated in the epidemic is that it was funded by the US atomic energy commission, which was anxious to discover what might happen to communities when large numbers were wiped out by nuclear war.
The AEC could have saved a lot of money, and a lot of lives, by investing in a few history books, and reading about the aftermath of the Black Death.
The surface of asteroid Eros is full of
boulders,
photographed in detail by the NEAR/Shoemaker spacecraft.
The craters and the boulders, says Veverka, indicate many violent collisions with the asteroid over time. But the gravity on Eros is so weak "that intuition and calculation tell you that most of the debris produced in a collision would have escaped -- but the surface is full of it."Veverka explains: "We have several possibilities. One is that we simply don't understand cratering events on small objects, and somehow the debris gets thrown out at very low speeds. Or the ejected material ends up in the same orbit as Eros, and over time the asteroid runs back into its own debris and gathers it up, which is equally bizarre. We simply don't understand this."
Booking travel online can be easy, or it can be a maze of
twisty passages, all different. Frommers.com
names
names of some of the worst airline and travel Web
sites, and identifies the company that created several of them.
A good writer can work with just about any material.
From the Arcata Eye
police
log:
5:24 p.m. An F Street fluorescent-irradiated temple of corporate abundance hosted a misfit without address, but unwillingly as her desire for succor amid the genetically souped-up foodlike material was abbreviated by a management complaint.
Why have the allegedly "liberal" media been so eager to
blame the Clinton administration for the leaking of nuclear
secrets to China, when the evidence clearly shows that
the
Chinese acquired the information during the 1980s,
probably as one result of a complicated and illegal deal to
get weapons to the Contras? Were they unable to read the
text of the Cox report, deceived by the layout, which was
chosen to make events between 1980 and 1992 appear to
have occurred during the Carter and Clinton administrations?
ignored amid the dark suspicions about the Clinton-Gore administration and the embarrassing collapse of the Lee case was another startling set of facts pointing in a very different direction: to illegal U.S.-Chinese intelligence collaboration implicating the Reagan-Bush administration.Little-noticed evidence from the Iran-contra files reveals that it was the Reagan-Bush administration that opened the door to sharing sensitive national security secrets with communist China in the 1980s.
Those involved included Reagan, Bush (pere), and that right-wing hero Oliver North. [via rc3.org Daily]
Avedon Carol has written a good summary of
why
censorware can't work, what it quietly blocks for political
reasons, and why you don't need it anyway.
Unenforceable decree of the month: the mayor
of the French resort town of Le Lavandou has
ordered
people not to die within the town boundaries--unless
they already own a burial vault.
Veterans for More
Effective Drug Strategies is a group of US military veterans
who want to end the War on Some Drugs, and who specifically
are concerned that our involvement in Colombia could escalate,
as happened in Vietnam. The group
favors the return of the drug problem to the domain of the medical profession. The 80-year old effort by law enforcement to resolve America's drug problem has failed and drug-related problems are growing steadily worse. Veterans for More Effective Drug Strategies formed as the US plans to expand our military involvement in the Colombian drug war.
The Equal Employment Opportunities Commission is
calling for laws against using
genetic
information in hiring decisions. The insurance lobby has,
so far, blocked the bill. In the meantime, people are losing jobs
and health insurance because tests show they might
develop certain diseases. Others are avoiding medical screening
because they fear losing their jobs.
Their fears are justified in an unregulated market, where medical data are often treated as a tradable commodity, bought and sold by medical centres and insurance companies. In the words of one executive at a medical data company: "There are more controls over the disclosure of your video rentals than your medical records."
A
working group of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science has concluded that
human
gene modification is not yet safe. The report
calls for standards and stringent safeguards, and addresses
medical, scientific, and ethical issues.
It also points out that we hear far more about successes than
failures in animal trials. The full report is available in PDF
format from the
AAAS.
In
the meantime, there's
GFP Bunny,
Eduardo Kac's "transgenic artwork," an albino rabbit that
glows green under fluorescent light.
Alba is a healthy and gentle mammal. Contrary to popular notions of the alleged monstrosity of genetically engineered organisms, her body shape and coloration are exactly of the same kind we ordinarily find in albino rabbits. Unaware that Alba is a glowing bunny, it is impossible for anyone to notice anything unusual about her. Therefore Alba undermines any ascription of alterity. It is precisely this productive ambiguity that sets her apart: being at once same and different.[Indirectly via Rebecca's pocket]
The Amazon.com page on
The
Anarchist's Cookbook includes an explanation by the author of
why he would like the book to be taken out of print. Being
computer-generated, it also recommends
three actual cookbooks, including Cooking with Pooh.
The war is over. Everyone who fought in it is dead.
The secessionists lost. But some people still
can't
accept that.
Roadside America has a remarkably cheerful overview
of the
Centralia
mine fire, which has been burning since 1962, and
slowly but thoroughly destroyed the town.
It's dusk, and we don't see any signs of the fire. Has it finally gone out?"Nah," says the old timer, "Fire moved up that way." He points over our shoulders, and, sure enough, lazy smoke curls out among the trees and a couple of doomed 2-story frame houses...
[Centralia: 7 mi. W of I-81, north of Ashland, east of Mount Carmel. Rt. 61/54 -- if you follow the "bypass" or detour signs, you're probably heading away from Centralia. Note: Though the residents are cordial and friendly, Centralia is not an official tourist attraction. The gases are considered dangerous, so proceed at your own risk.]
A new
malaria
vaccine that targets the parasite after it enters human
cells is beginning clinical trials in the Gambia.
The vaccine has proven successful
in British volunteers who were deliberately infected with malaria.
It will take five to ten years for the vaccine to be widely
available, if it passes these tests.
Paging the Human Subjects Committee!
Apparently, there are researchers out there who
think it's fine to
lurk
in online discussions and support groups,
record and analyze the conversations,
and even talk about nonexistent problems to see how the
other participants react. It's not entirely clear which side
of the line between public and private chat rooms fall on,
but anyone who defends their actions on the grounds that
"seeking consent can actually
cause participants to clam up, making observations of natural
settings more difficult" should realize they're doing something wrong.
From the scientific viewpoint, have they considered the
possibility that other people in the groups they're studying,
rather than being in need of support for real problems,
are also researchers?
John Dean's
review
of the new Nixon biography The Arrogance of Power:
I thought I knew a fair amount about Nixon. Yet I found myself reading page after page of jaw-dropping revelations and bizarre stories I had never heard, nor could have imagined.
I never expected to be buying a book because John Dean recommended it.
Certain forms of exercise can actually
damage
your lungs.
The particularly dangerous activities appear to be long-distance
running, cross-country skiing, and swimming. Cross-country
skiing is risky because it involves intense exercise in
very cold, dry air: Norwegian skiers,
who train in more humid air near the coast, have healthier lungs
than Swedes who train inland. The problem for swimmers is
chlorine in swimming pools;
your favorite ocean beach or swimming hole should be just fine.
Is NASA's continuing search for life on Mars a
distraction
from other research that is more likely to yield answers?
The trouble with science is that nature is honest. It doesn't always give you the answers you want. The US space administration NASA has confessed that its priority for future planetary missions to Mars is to look for life. Yet every attempt to find evidence for Martians so far has failed, and it is starting to look as though there might not be any needles in the haystack anyway.
James Lovelock, one of the originators of the Gaia hypothesis, has been skeptical about Martian life since before the Viking missions. He is urging researchers to study Martian geology instead of focusing on the search for something that may not exist.
John Buell and Etta Kralovec want to
abolish
homework entirely. They point out that there is no
evidence that grade-school students benefit from homework
in any way. Problems with homework are also a major reason
people drop out of school. Homework eats into free time children
could be spending with each other or their families, and it
diminishes the interaction between students and teachers.
So, why do we keep assigning more homework? Because we believe that it must work, so we'll increase the dose until it does? Apparently, a major reason for homework is to keep children from watching television--as if there's nothing else they could do with their free time, and nothing wrong with making learning into a tedious barrier between students and the chance to do what they want.
The researchers do think it's reasonable to ask older students to do projects outside of class--and that students should have access to libraries and other resources the need to do the reading and have a quiet place to work. I would add that it makes sense for a teacher to tell a class that they should read Hamlet by next Friday, so class time can be used explaining and discussing literature, not just reading it (though there's a lot to be said for in-class reading, especially if it's a play and you hand the parts around to different students).
Copyright 1999, 2000 Vicki Rosenzweig. Comments welcome at vr@redbird.org.
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