HOME – Yann Arthus-Bertrand

HOME is a beautiful documentary by Yanns Arthus-Bertrand. Narrated by Glen Close, the story of how life began and how humans changed the environment as civilisation progress is beautifully told.

Example on Sustainable Development – Oil Palm and Orang Utans

This article in New Scientist provides a good overview of how parties with apparent different agendas can collaborate to create a win-win outcome.

Excerpt from the article:

Banking on Biodiversity
Biodiversity-rich, cash-poor countries are coming up with ways to make conservation sustainable.

In 2008, Malaysia became the first such nation to launch a scheme to allow private investment in the rainforest that would generate “conservation dollars” – money specifically set aside for conservation. The scheme is voluntary, but the government is considering making such investment a requirement for land developers.

The Malua Biobank, which differs from the biobanks established in other countries to bank genetic material, covers a 34,000-hectare forest reserve in Sabah, in Malaysian Borneo, which buffers virgin rainforest from palm oil plantations. It sells conservation certificates for 100 square metres of forest at $10 each, making a total possible fund of $34 million. Of this, 20 per cent will create an endowment fund to restore the previously logged forest, says Darius Sarshar of New Forests, an international environmental investment management group with offices in Malaysia that advises Malua Biobank.

Buyers can either “retire” their certificates, effectively making a donation, or put them into a trading account. Once the endowment fund is secured, any additional profits will be split between the investors and the government.

The scheme is unlikely to compete with traditional stock markets, however, and so far the biobank has relied on companies wanting to reinvent their environmental image. Initial sales have been sluggish – it has sold 21,500 certificates for a total of $215,000, all to logging companies – but that will change if the government makes the scheme mandatory.

Embryonic Stem Cell Therapy Causes Cancer in Teenage Boy

From Discover Blogs, 80 beats

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new study shows that teenage boy developed cancerous tumors because of the stem cell therapy he received years ago for a rare genetic condition. The boy, now 17, suffered from ataxia telangiectasia, or AT, a neurodegenerative disease that interferes with the part of the brain that controls movement and speech. AT patients do not usually live past their teens or 20s, and the Israeli boy, whose identity was not publicly revealed, was taken to Russia for experimental treatment. The first neural stem cells, taken from fetuses, were first injected into his brain and spinal cord when he was nine, and he received further injections at ages 10 and 12.
His condition deteriorated and he was using a wheelchair by age 13, when he also began to complain of headaches. Tests showed two growths, one pushing on his brain stem and the other on his spinal cord. The tumors were removed in 2006 and his health has since remained stable. But scientists at Tel Aviv University who wanted to determine the origin of the cancer have been in the lab ever since, and their findings have just been published in PLoS Medicine. The team found that the tumor could not have arisen from the boy, because he [has two disease-causing versions of the gene] that causes AT, while the DNA from the tumor cells carried only the normal version [The Scientist].The tumor studied was the one removed from the spinal cord; they could not test the growth that appeared in the brain, but believe it was also caused by the injected tissue. Donor-derived cells might have been able to spark tumours in this patient because people with ataxia telangiectasia often have a weakened immune system, say the researchers. It is not clear whether the stem cell therapy helped his genetic condition [BBC].
The case raises a number of ethical questions. For all the promise, researchers have long warned that they must learn to control newly injected stem cells so they don’t grow where they shouldn’t, and small studies in people are only just beginning [AP]. And, because the patient’s immune system was impaired, it’s not yet clear whether the increased risk of cancer is specific to patients with suppressed immune systems, something particular to the procedure done in Moscow, or a danger with neural stem cell transplantation in general, said Uri Tabori, a pediatric hematologist and oncologist…. “It’s a cautionary tale for studies currently being done in the US and elsewhere,” said [Arnold] Kriegstein [The Scientist], a U.S. stem cell researcher.

Clarifying cloning

This is a good summary from Genetics Policy Center on how cloning is achieved and its uses.

Dr James Watson retires admist controversy

From BBC news:

A Nobel laureate who claimed Africans were less clever than Europeans has retired from his post at an American research institution.

James Watson, 79, and the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York announced his departure on Thursday.

The DNA pioneer triggered an international furore over his remarks in a British newspaper interview.

In his retirement statement, Dr Watson said his decision was “more than overdue” because of his age.

The scientist added: “The circumstances in which this transfer is occurring, however, are not those which I could ever have anticipated or desired.”

Suspended

Eduardo Mestre, chairman of the board of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, said in a statement: “The board respects his decision to retire at this point in his career.”

The laboratory, based in Long Island, suspended him after his comments appeared in the Sunday Times Magazine of London on 14 October.
He was quoted as saying he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours – whereas all the testing says not really”.

He said that while he hoped everyone was equal, “people who have to deal with black employees find this is not true”.

The Chicago-born academic also said people should not be discriminated against on the basis of race, because “there are many people of colour who are very talented”.

Speaking engagements were cancelled in the aftermath of the interview’s publication. He later apologised for the comments.

Dr Watson was a joint winner in 1962 of the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA, the molecule that lies at the heart of heredity in living organisms.

RGS Philosophy Blog

The philosophy department has started this nifty blog on philosophy. An excellent resource if you want a splitting headache.

Here it is – RGS Philosophy Blog

Bioethics Resource

Principles of Bioethics from University of Washington School of Medicine.

Principles of Bioethics

The commonly accepted principles of health care ethics include:
1. the principle of respect for autonomy,
2. the principle of nonmaleficence,
3. the principle of beneficence, and
4. the principle of justice.