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Eliminating babies with disabilities...in
some studies, up to 90 percent of women found to be carrying a Down baby
had an abortion...
Group
Recommends Down Syndrome Testing
by Lauran
Neergaard
“There’s
a big change coming for pregnant women: Down syndrome testing no longer
hinges on whether they’re older or younger than 35.
“This
week, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists begins
recommending that every pregnant woman, regardless of age, be offered a
choice of tests for this common birth defect.
“The main
reason: Tests far less invasive than the long-used amniocentesis are now
widely available, some that can tell in the first trimester the risk of
a fetus having Down syndrome or other chromosomal defects.
“It’s a
change that promises to decrease unnecessary amnios—giving mothers-to-be
peace of mind without the ordeal—while also detecting Down syndrome in
moms who otherwise would have gone unchecked.
“The new
guideline is published in the January issue of the journal Obstetrics
& Gynecology.
“About
one in 800 babies has Down syndrome, a condition where having an extra
chromosome causes mental retardation, a characteristic broad, flat face
and small head and, often, serious heart defects....”
Associated Press/Washington Post – December 31, 2006 (free
registration required)
The medicalization of everyday life....
What’s Making Us Sick Is
an Epidemic of Diagnoses
by H. Gilbert Welch, Lisa
Schwartz and Steven Woloshin
“For most Americans, the
biggest health threat is not avian flu, West Nile or mad cow disease.
It’s our health-care system.
“You might think this
is because doctors make mistakes (we do make mistakes). But you can’t be
a victim of medical error if you are not in the system. The larger
threat posed by American medicine is that more and more of us are being
drawn into the system not because of an epidemic of disease, but because
of an epidemic of diagnoses.
“Americans live
longer than ever, yet more of us are told we are sick.
“How can this be? One
reason is that we devote more resources to medical care than any other
country. Some of this investment is productive, curing disease and
alleviating suffering. But it also leads to more diagnoses, a trend that
has become an epidemic.
“This epidemic is a
threat to your health. It has two distinct sources. One is the
medicalization of everyday life. Most of us experience physical or
emotional sensations we don’t like, and in the past, this was considered
a part of life. Increasingly, however, such sensations are considered
symptoms of disease. Everyday experiences like
insomnia, sadness, twitchy
legs and impaired sex drive now become diagnoses:
sleep disorder, depression,
restless leg syndrome and sexual dysfunction.
“Perhaps most
worrisome is the medicalization of childhood. If children cough after
exercising, they have
asthma; if they have trouble
reading, they are dyslexic; if they are unhappy, they are depressed; and
if they alternate between unhappiness and liveliness, they have
bipolar disorder. While these
diagnoses may benefit the few with severe symptoms, one has to wonder
about the effect on the many whose symptoms are mild, intermittent or
transient....”
Dr. Gilbert Welch is the author of
Should I Be Tested for
Cancer? Maybe Not and Here’s Why (University
of California Press). Dr. Schwartz and Dr. Woloshin are senior research
associates at the VA Outcomes Group in White River Junction, Vt.
The New York Times – January 2, 2007 (free registration required)
But many consumers may not be
convinced...
FDA: Cloned Livestock Is Safe to Eat
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Cloned dairy
cows share hay at a Maryland farm.
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“Meat and milk from cloned
animals may not appear in supermarkets for years despite being deemed by
the government as safe to eat. But don’t be surprised if ‘clone-free’
labels appear sooner.
“Ben & Jerry’s, for one,
wants consumers to know that its ice cream comes from regular cows and
not clones. The Ben & Jerry’s label already says its farmers don’t use
bovine growth hormone.
“‘We want to make sure
people are confident with what’s in our pints,’ company spokesman Rob
Michalak said. ‘We haven’t yet landed on exactly how we want to express
that publicly.’
“For food that does come
from clones, the Food and Drug Administration is unlikely to require
labels, officials said.
“The FDA gave preliminary
approval Thursday to meat and milk from cloned animals or their
offspring. Federal scientists found virtually no difference between food
from clones and food from conventional livestock....”
The Associated Press/CNN.com – December 28, 2006
Chasing toddlers at age 70...
Spaniard, 67, Becomes
World’s Oldest Mum with Twins
“A 67-year-old Spanish woman
became the world’s oldest new mother on Saturday when she gave birth to
twins, a Barcelona hospital said.
“The woman, who became
pregnant after receiving IVF treatment in Latin America, gave birth by
caesarean section, a spokeswoman at Hospital de la Santa Creu i San Pau
told Reuters.
“Both the woman, from the
southern Spanish region of Andalucia, and her babies were in good health
the hospital said, though she added doctors had put the babies in an
incubator....”
Reuters/Alertnet – December 30, 2006
Are Transhumanist ideas becoming
mainstream?
UK Report
Says Robots Will Have Rights
“The next
time you beat your keyboard in frustration, think of a day when it may
be able to sue you for assault. Within 50 years we might even find
ourselves standing next to the next generation of vacuum cleaners in the
voting booth.
“Far from
being extracts from the extreme end of science fiction, the idea that we
may one day give sentient machines the kind of rights traditionally
reserved for humans is raised in a British government-commissioned
report which claims to be an extensive look into the future.
“Visions of
the status of robots around 2056 have emerged from one of 270
forward-looking papers sponsored by Sir David King, the UK government’s
chief scientist. The paper covering robots’ rights was written by a UK
partnership of Outsights, the management consultancy, and Ipsos Mori,
the opinion research organisation.
“‘If we make
conscious robots they would want to have rights and they probably
should,’ said Henrik Christensen, director of the Centre of Robotics and
Intelligent Machines at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
“The idea
will not surprise science fiction aficionados. It was widely explored by
Dr Isaac Asimov, one of the foremost science fiction writers of the 20th
century. He wrote of a society where robots were fully integrated and
essential in day-to-day life.
“In his
system, the ‘three laws of robotics’ governed machine life. They decreed
that robots could not injure humans, must obey orders and protect their
own existence – in that order....”
Financial Times – December 19, 2006
Promise, with caution, in the developing
field of regenerative medicine—using adult stem cells...
He Turns Patients’ Cells to Body Parts
by Catherine Clabby
WFU scientist pushes his team to lead way to lead bioengineering
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Staff Photos
by Corey Lowenstein
Atala’s team
coaxes cells to stick and grow on finger-bone scaffolds.
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“Expect to be startled by
what grows inside the research institute Dr. Anthony Atala is building
in this old tobacco town. Everything is man-made, but it’s very much
alive.
“Human blood vessels pulse
inside sterile plastic boxes. Hunks of bone grow to shapes resembling
fingers. Strands of muscle get exercised by small metal arms.
“Atala, a Wake Forest
University doctor-scientist, is pushing hard to engineer functional
organs, tissue and other body parts with patients’ own cells. If he
succeeds, North Carolina might find itself at the forefront of a
high-impact, high-dollar biomedical field that offers hope to amputees,
paralysis victims and people needing organ transplants.
“Recruited from Harvard
University in 2004, Atala is already a science star. A urologist by
training, he disclosed this year that he had safely implanted the first
bioengineered replacement organs – bladders – into disabled children and
teenagers.
“Three national science
magazines labeled his achievement a top breakthrough for 2006 because of
its potential to save lives and lessen suffering....
“So Wake Forest is pouring
millions of dollars into Atala’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine.
Private investors are betting tens of millions more on a Pennsylvania
company, Tengion, trying to move Atala’s bladders into the medical
marketplace. Scientists from other states are moving to Winston-Salem to
work on Atala’s team....”
The News &
Observer – December 24, 2006
This was a
year of modest changes...
Illegal
Drug Use Among Teenagers Continues to Fall
By
Christopher Lee
Prescription Abuse Persists, Survey Finds
“Federal officials are
concerned that teenagers are abusing prescription medications and
over-the-counter cold remedies even as their use of illegal drugs has
generally declined over the past five years, according to a government
survey released yesterday.
“Illegal drug use by
teenagers has fallen 23 percent since 2001, but their use of
prescription narcotics, tranquilizers and other medicines remains
‘relatively high,’ government investigators said.
“For the
first time researchers asked whether teenagers were using
nonprescription cough or cold medicines to get high and found reason for
concern. Over-the-counter medicines often contain the cough suppressant
dextromethorphan, which alters mood and consciousness when consumed in
high doses and can cause brain damage or even death, officials said.
“About 1
in 14 12th-graders, or 7 percent, said they had taken such medicines to
get high in the past year. Among eighth-graders, the figure was 1 in 25,
or about 4 percent.
“‘This is
now an area of drug abuse that we need to pay more attention to,’ said
Lloyd D. Johnston, the University of Michigan researcher who led the
annual ‘Monitoring the Future’ survey, now in its 32nd year....”
Washington Post – December 22, 2006 (free registration required)
“Without good brain
function, living to age 100 is not an attractive proposition...”
How to Live to a Ripe Old
Age Without Losing Your Marbles
“A gene variant that is linked to long life also helps to preserve
mental lucidity in old age, scientists have discovered.
“An Israeli
study involving 158 people who lived to 95 or beyond has found that
those who inherit a particular version of the gene CETP are twice as
likely to have a sharp and alert brain when they are elderly.
“They are also
five times less likely than people with a different version of CETP to
develop Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, according to
the study by a team at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at
Yeshiva
University.
“The insights
into how ageing affects the brain could lead to ways of protecting
cognitive function in old age.
“If drugs could
be developed which mimic the protective function of the CETP VV variant
they could transform the quality of life of the ageing population....”
The
Times – December 26, 2006
Worth Considering...
From A
Clash Within the West?
by Nathan Gardels
“…Increasingly, pragmatic
Americans speeding toward the future are looking to traditional religion
for moral and ethical guidance as they commit to their mutation in the
new age of biology. This is not surprising: New advances in science seem
to have resurrected the religious imagination by raising anew all the
questions of origins and destiny.
“Leon Kass, the chairman of President Bush’s
Council on Bioethics, for example, has returned to a study of the Biblical
book of Genesis for answers about bioethics in the 21st century. In his
book, The Beginning of Wisdom: Reading Genesis, he sees genetic
engineering as our contemporary equivalent to the limitless hubris of the
Tower of
Babel, which God struck down.
“What is paradoxical is that the great European voice of secular
reason, Jürgen Habermas, has arrived at a similar conclusion. In a
conversation with Cardinal Ratzinger before he became the Pope, Habermas
asked whether ‘modern democracies of necessity must draw from
moral—especially religious—sources that they cannot themselves produce.’ He
concludes that liberal democracies must leave a wide open space for
religious expression and religious forms of life, particularly when
confronting issues at the frontiers of science. ‘A liberal political culture
can even expect that secularized citizens will participate in the efforts
required to translate relevant contributions from religious into popular
language.’
“In a new book, A Time of Transitions, Habermas is even
clearer, saying that ‘the West’s Judeo-Christian heritage is the ultimate
foundation of liberty, conscience, human rights and democracy—the benchmarks
of Western civilization. To this day we have no other options. We continue
to nourish ourselves from this source. Everything else is postmodern
chatter.’ Habermas goes on to contest ‘unbridled subjectivity’ which he sees
as clashing with ‘what is really absolute; that is...the unconditional right
of every creature to be respected in its bodiliness and recognized in its
otherness as an ‘image of God.’”
Nathan Gardels is editor of
New Perspectives Quarterly.
This essay appeared in the Fall 2006 issue and is available
online.
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