Jan 28, 2005
Jan 27, 2005
Rabbi bans singing in the shower
A FORMER Jewish grand rabbi Mordechai Eliahu has laid down the law on amateur operatics in the shower: you can hum but you can't sing.
"You will not sing in the shower," the former leader of Israel's Sephardic Jews instructed a listener inquiring about Talmudic laws on an ultra-Orthodox religious radio programme.
Rabbi Eliahu explained that the Hebrew language, holy to the
Jewish religion, was not to be sullied by use in a bathroom, Wednesday's edition of Yediot Ahronot newspaper reported.
But the rabbi, considered a religious authority in world Judaism, went on to soften his stand.
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"To hum without a word in Hebrew crossing your mind is acceptable," he said
"You will not sing in the shower," the former leader of Israel's Sephardic Jews instructed a listener inquiring about Talmudic laws on an ultra-Orthodox religious radio programme.
Rabbi Eliahu explained that the Hebrew language, holy to the
Jewish religion, was not to be sullied by use in a bathroom, Wednesday's edition of Yediot Ahronot newspaper reported.
But the rabbi, considered a religious authority in world Judaism, went on to soften his stand.
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"To hum without a word in Hebrew crossing your mind is acceptable," he said
Iowa bill seeks to ban flashy, spinning auto wheel covers
DES MOINES (AP) - A Council Bluffs lawmaker wants to stop spinning wheels from turning.
Rep. Doug Struyk wants to outlaw car and truck wheel covers fitted with flashy spinners that keep rotating after a vehicle has stopped. The Republican legislator says they can cause accidents.
The wheel covers, which have gained popularity in the past couple of years, are placed on pickups or refurbished older model cars as an accessory.
Struyk says they can make it difficult to tell whether a vehicle is moving or stopped.
His bill would make it a simple misdemeanor for a motorist to drive a vehicle equipped with the spinners, punishable by a fine of $10.
Struyk said he was nearly involved in an accident in November near Bentley, Iowa. He was driving a truck pulling a 16-foot trailer loaded with a dozen ladders. He approached an intersection as a car with the spinning wheel covers approached from another direction. He said the spinners made it appear as if the car might still be moving through the intersection, so he braked hard and the trailer nearly jackknifed.
He said he has noticed more of the spinners in recent months and that the more common they become, the more likely they are to cause an accident.
Spinning wheel covers are most popular with customers in their 20s, said Richard Riekeberg, manager of the Big O Tire store in Altoona. He said his store sells about six sets a year, at a cost of $2,000 per set.
"We do a lot of them for trucks, Suburbans, Tahoes, a lot of old-school cars with rear-wheel drive," said Brian Kaminski, a salesman for Wheel-One Inc. in St. Paul, Minn.
The company, based in Los Angeles, has 16 locations nationwide and sells tens of thousands of spinners a year, Kaminski said.
He said he didn't understand how the wheel covers could be considered dangerous.
"I've heard of people saying stuff like that," he said. "The way I think if it is, if you can't tell a car's not moving and you start going, maybe you shouldn't have a driver's license."
Struyk, who introduced the bill last week, said he knows law enforcement officers who agree with him and said lawmakers he has talked to see his point.
"I've talked to fellow legislators," Struyk said, "and haven't had anybody tell me I'm out of my mind yet."
Rep. Doug Struyk wants to outlaw car and truck wheel covers fitted with flashy spinners that keep rotating after a vehicle has stopped. The Republican legislator says they can cause accidents.
The wheel covers, which have gained popularity in the past couple of years, are placed on pickups or refurbished older model cars as an accessory.
Struyk says they can make it difficult to tell whether a vehicle is moving or stopped.
His bill would make it a simple misdemeanor for a motorist to drive a vehicle equipped with the spinners, punishable by a fine of $10.
Struyk said he was nearly involved in an accident in November near Bentley, Iowa. He was driving a truck pulling a 16-foot trailer loaded with a dozen ladders. He approached an intersection as a car with the spinning wheel covers approached from another direction. He said the spinners made it appear as if the car might still be moving through the intersection, so he braked hard and the trailer nearly jackknifed.
He said he has noticed more of the spinners in recent months and that the more common they become, the more likely they are to cause an accident.
Spinning wheel covers are most popular with customers in their 20s, said Richard Riekeberg, manager of the Big O Tire store in Altoona. He said his store sells about six sets a year, at a cost of $2,000 per set.
"We do a lot of them for trucks, Suburbans, Tahoes, a lot of old-school cars with rear-wheel drive," said Brian Kaminski, a salesman for Wheel-One Inc. in St. Paul, Minn.
The company, based in Los Angeles, has 16 locations nationwide and sells tens of thousands of spinners a year, Kaminski said.
He said he didn't understand how the wheel covers could be considered dangerous.
"I've heard of people saying stuff like that," he said. "The way I think if it is, if you can't tell a car's not moving and you start going, maybe you shouldn't have a driver's license."
Struyk, who introduced the bill last week, said he knows law enforcement officers who agree with him and said lawmakers he has talked to see his point.
"I've talked to fellow legislators," Struyk said, "and haven't had anybody tell me I'm out of my mind yet."
Taking thihgs too far
Animal-Human Hybrids Spark Controversy
Maryann Mott
National Geographic News
January 25, 2005
Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras—a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.
Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.
In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.
And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.
Scientists feel that, the more humanlike the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing "spare parts," such as livers, to transplant into humans.
Watching how human cells mature and interact in a living creature may also lead to the discoveries of new medical treatments.
But creating human-animal chimeras—named after a monster in Greek mythology that had a lion's head, goat's body, and serpent's tail—has raised troubling questions: What new subhuman combination should be produced and for what purpose? At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have?
There are currently no U.S. federal laws that address these issues.
Ethical Guidelines
The National Academy of Sciences, which advises the U.S. government, has been studying the issue. In March it plans to present voluntary ethical guidelines for researchers.
A chimera is a mixture of two or more species in one body. Not all are considered troubling, though.
For example, faulty human heart valves are routinely replaced with ones taken from cows and pigs. The surgery—which makes the recipient a human-animal chimera—is widely accepted. And for years scientists have added human genes to bacteria and farm animals.
What's caused the uproar is the mixing of human stem cells with embryonic animals to create new species.
Biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin is opposed to crossing species boundaries, because he believes animals have the right to exist without being tampered with or crossed with another species.
He concedes that these studies would lead to some medical breakthroughs. Still, they should not be done.
"There are other ways to advance medicine and human health besides going out into the strange, brave new world of chimeric animals," Rifkin said, adding that sophisticated computer models can substitute for experimentation on live animals.
"One doesn't have to be religious or into animal rights to think this doesn't make sense," he continued. "It's the scientists who want to do this. They've now gone over the edge into the pathological domain."
David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University, believes the real worry is whether or not chimeras will be put to uses that are problematic, risky, or dangerous.
Human Born to Mice Parents?
For example, an experiment that would raise concerns, he said, is genetically engineering mice to produce human sperm and eggs, then doing in vitro fertilization to produce a child whose parents are a pair of mice.
"Most people would find that problematic," Magnus said, "but those uses are bizarre and not, to the best of my knowledge, anything that anybody is remotely contemplating. Most uses of chimeras are actually much more relevant to practical concerns."
Last year Canada passed the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, which bans chimeras. Specifically, it prohibits transferring a nonhuman cell into a human embryo and putting human cells into a nonhuman embryo.
Cynthia Cohen is a member of Canada's Stem Cell Oversight Committee, which oversees research protocols to ensure they are in accordance with the new guidelines.
She believes a ban should also be put into place in the U.S.
Creating chimeras, she said, by mixing human and animal gametes (sperms and eggs) or transferring reproductive cells, diminishes human dignity.
"It would deny that there is something distinctive and valuable about human beings that ought to be honored and protected," said Cohen, who is also the senior research fellow at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics in Washington, D.C.
But, she noted, the wording on such a ban needs to be developed carefully. It shouldn't outlaw ethical and legitimate experiments—such as transferring a limited number of adult human stem cells into animal embryos in order to learn how they proliferate and grow during the prenatal period.
Irv Weissman, director of Stanford University's Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine in California, is against a ban in the United States.
"Anybody who puts their own moral guidance in the way of this biomedical science, where they want to impose their will—not just be part of an argument—if that leads to a ban or moratorium. … they are stopping research that would save human lives," he said.
Mice With Human Brains
Weissman has already created mice with brains that are about one percent human.
Later this year he may conduct another experiment where the mice have 100 percent human brains. This would be done, he said, by injecting human neurons into the brains of embryonic mice.
Before being born, the mice would be killed and dissected to see if the architecture of a human brain had formed. If it did, he'd look for traces of human cognitive behavior.
Weissman said he's not a mad scientist trying to create a human in an animal body. He hopes the experiment leads to a better understanding of how the brain works, which would be useful in treating diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.
The test has not yet begun. Weissman is waiting to read the National Academy's report, due out in March.
William Cheshire, associate professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic's Jacksonville, Florida, branch, feels that combining human and animal neurons is problematic.
"This is unexplored biologic territory," he said. "Whatever moral threshold of human neural development we might choose to set as the limit for such an experiment, there would be a considerable risk of exceeding that limit before it could be recognized."
Cheshire supports research that combines human and animal cells to study cellular function. As an undergraduate he participated in research that fused human and mouse cells.
But where he draws the ethical line is on research that would destroy a human embryo to obtain cells, or research that would create an organism that is partly human and partly animal.
"We must be cautious not to violate the integrity of humanity or of animal life over which we have a stewardship responsibility," said Cheshire, a member of Christian Medical and Dental Associations. "Research projects that create human-animal chimeras risk disturbing fragile ecosystems, endanger health, and affront species integrity."
Maryann Mott
National Geographic News
January 25, 2005
Scientists have begun blurring the line between human and animal by producing chimeras—a hybrid creature that's part human, part animal.
Chinese scientists at the Shanghai Second Medical University in 2003 successfully fused human cells with rabbit eggs. The embryos were reportedly the first human-animal chimeras successfully created. They were allowed to develop for several days in a laboratory dish before the scientists destroyed the embryos to harvest their stem cells.
In Minnesota last year researchers at the Mayo Clinic created pigs with human blood flowing through their bodies.
And at Stanford University in California an experiment might be done later this year to create mice with human brains.
Scientists feel that, the more humanlike the animal, the better research model it makes for testing drugs or possibly growing "spare parts," such as livers, to transplant into humans.
Watching how human cells mature and interact in a living creature may also lead to the discoveries of new medical treatments.
But creating human-animal chimeras—named after a monster in Greek mythology that had a lion's head, goat's body, and serpent's tail—has raised troubling questions: What new subhuman combination should be produced and for what purpose? At what point would it be considered human? And what rights, if any, should it have?
There are currently no U.S. federal laws that address these issues.
Ethical Guidelines
The National Academy of Sciences, which advises the U.S. government, has been studying the issue. In March it plans to present voluntary ethical guidelines for researchers.
A chimera is a mixture of two or more species in one body. Not all are considered troubling, though.
For example, faulty human heart valves are routinely replaced with ones taken from cows and pigs. The surgery—which makes the recipient a human-animal chimera—is widely accepted. And for years scientists have added human genes to bacteria and farm animals.
What's caused the uproar is the mixing of human stem cells with embryonic animals to create new species.
Biotechnology activist Jeremy Rifkin is opposed to crossing species boundaries, because he believes animals have the right to exist without being tampered with or crossed with another species.
He concedes that these studies would lead to some medical breakthroughs. Still, they should not be done.
"There are other ways to advance medicine and human health besides going out into the strange, brave new world of chimeric animals," Rifkin said, adding that sophisticated computer models can substitute for experimentation on live animals.
"One doesn't have to be religious or into animal rights to think this doesn't make sense," he continued. "It's the scientists who want to do this. They've now gone over the edge into the pathological domain."
David Magnus, director of the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics at Stanford University, believes the real worry is whether or not chimeras will be put to uses that are problematic, risky, or dangerous.
Human Born to Mice Parents?
For example, an experiment that would raise concerns, he said, is genetically engineering mice to produce human sperm and eggs, then doing in vitro fertilization to produce a child whose parents are a pair of mice.
"Most people would find that problematic," Magnus said, "but those uses are bizarre and not, to the best of my knowledge, anything that anybody is remotely contemplating. Most uses of chimeras are actually much more relevant to practical concerns."
Last year Canada passed the Assisted Human Reproduction Act, which bans chimeras. Specifically, it prohibits transferring a nonhuman cell into a human embryo and putting human cells into a nonhuman embryo.
Cynthia Cohen is a member of Canada's Stem Cell Oversight Committee, which oversees research protocols to ensure they are in accordance with the new guidelines.
She believes a ban should also be put into place in the U.S.
Creating chimeras, she said, by mixing human and animal gametes (sperms and eggs) or transferring reproductive cells, diminishes human dignity.
"It would deny that there is something distinctive and valuable about human beings that ought to be honored and protected," said Cohen, who is also the senior research fellow at Georgetown University's Kennedy Institute of Ethics in Washington, D.C.
But, she noted, the wording on such a ban needs to be developed carefully. It shouldn't outlaw ethical and legitimate experiments—such as transferring a limited number of adult human stem cells into animal embryos in order to learn how they proliferate and grow during the prenatal period.
Irv Weissman, director of Stanford University's Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology and Medicine in California, is against a ban in the United States.
"Anybody who puts their own moral guidance in the way of this biomedical science, where they want to impose their will—not just be part of an argument—if that leads to a ban or moratorium. … they are stopping research that would save human lives," he said.
Mice With Human Brains
Weissman has already created mice with brains that are about one percent human.
Later this year he may conduct another experiment where the mice have 100 percent human brains. This would be done, he said, by injecting human neurons into the brains of embryonic mice.
Before being born, the mice would be killed and dissected to see if the architecture of a human brain had formed. If it did, he'd look for traces of human cognitive behavior.
Weissman said he's not a mad scientist trying to create a human in an animal body. He hopes the experiment leads to a better understanding of how the brain works, which would be useful in treating diseases like Alzheimer's or Parkinson's disease.
The test has not yet begun. Weissman is waiting to read the National Academy's report, due out in March.
William Cheshire, associate professor of neurology at the Mayo Clinic's Jacksonville, Florida, branch, feels that combining human and animal neurons is problematic.
"This is unexplored biologic territory," he said. "Whatever moral threshold of human neural development we might choose to set as the limit for such an experiment, there would be a considerable risk of exceeding that limit before it could be recognized."
Cheshire supports research that combines human and animal cells to study cellular function. As an undergraduate he participated in research that fused human and mouse cells.
But where he draws the ethical line is on research that would destroy a human embryo to obtain cells, or research that would create an organism that is partly human and partly animal.
"We must be cautious not to violate the integrity of humanity or of animal life over which we have a stewardship responsibility," said Cheshire, a member of Christian Medical and Dental Associations. "Research projects that create human-animal chimeras risk disturbing fragile ecosystems, endanger health, and affront species integrity."
Senator Wants Boxing Gloves on Chickens
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - A state senator has a plan for saving Oklahoma's gamefowl industry now that cockfighters are legally prohibited from pitting birds fitted with razor-like spurs.
State Sen. Frank Shurden, a longtime defender of cockfighting, is suggesting that roosters be given little boxing gloves so they can fight without bloodshed. The proposal is in a bill the Democrat has introduced for the legislative session that begins Feb. 7.
"Who's going to object to chickens fighting like humans do? Everybody wins," Sen. Frank Shurden said.
Oklahoma voters banned cockfighting in 2002. The practice is still legal in Louisiana and New Mexico.
Removing the blood from the sport takes away the main argument animal rights groups have against cockfighting, Shurden said.
"Let the roosters do what they love to do without getting injured," Shurden said.
In his search for a new way to let gamecocks fight, Shurden learned about a California man who is an attorney for Gamecock Boxing Inc., which was formed to promote a nonlethal form of cockfighting.
"The company has a patent now pending on this game and the equipment designed to score the 'hits' of these sparring live gamefowl," Californian John R. Cogorno wrote in a letter to Shurden.
Shurden said electronic sensors can record the number of hits by each gamefowl to determine which rooster won the boxing match.
Gamecocks would wear sparring muffs, which are padded gloves placed over their natural spurs.
"To me it answers everything. It saves the industry, takes blood sport out and generates revenue for Oklahoma," Shurden said.
Janet Halliburton, an attorney who led the initiative petition drive to ban cockfighting, said, "What this is going to do is make a platform for him to continually try to amend the existing ban. They don't want electronic cockfighting any more than anybody else does, or they'd be doing it."
Shurden said he's not trying to amend the existing cockfighting ban, something he tried the past few years without success.
Shurden's legislation would create the Oklahoma Pari-mutuel Gamecock Boxing Act.
The Oklahoma Horse Racing Commission, which has jurisdiction over pari-mutuel horse racing, would have jurisdiction over this gamecock boxing.
Shurden believes it could be incorporated into horse racing, providing the boxing between horse races.
Some of the money earned from wagers on gamecock boxing matches would go to the state.
"I guarantee it would work," Shurden said of the nonlethal fighting of roosters.
State Sen. Frank Shurden, a longtime defender of cockfighting, is suggesting that roosters be given little boxing gloves so they can fight without bloodshed. The proposal is in a bill the Democrat has introduced for the legislative session that begins Feb. 7.
"Who's going to object to chickens fighting like humans do? Everybody wins," Sen. Frank Shurden said.
Oklahoma voters banned cockfighting in 2002. The practice is still legal in Louisiana and New Mexico.
Removing the blood from the sport takes away the main argument animal rights groups have against cockfighting, Shurden said.
"Let the roosters do what they love to do without getting injured," Shurden said.
In his search for a new way to let gamecocks fight, Shurden learned about a California man who is an attorney for Gamecock Boxing Inc., which was formed to promote a nonlethal form of cockfighting.
"The company has a patent now pending on this game and the equipment designed to score the 'hits' of these sparring live gamefowl," Californian John R. Cogorno wrote in a letter to Shurden.
Shurden said electronic sensors can record the number of hits by each gamefowl to determine which rooster won the boxing match.
Gamecocks would wear sparring muffs, which are padded gloves placed over their natural spurs.
"To me it answers everything. It saves the industry, takes blood sport out and generates revenue for Oklahoma," Shurden said.
Janet Halliburton, an attorney who led the initiative petition drive to ban cockfighting, said, "What this is going to do is make a platform for him to continually try to amend the existing ban. They don't want electronic cockfighting any more than anybody else does, or they'd be doing it."
Shurden said he's not trying to amend the existing cockfighting ban, something he tried the past few years without success.
Shurden's legislation would create the Oklahoma Pari-mutuel Gamecock Boxing Act.
The Oklahoma Horse Racing Commission, which has jurisdiction over pari-mutuel horse racing, would have jurisdiction over this gamecock boxing.
Shurden believes it could be incorporated into horse racing, providing the boxing between horse races.
Some of the money earned from wagers on gamecock boxing matches would go to the state.
"I guarantee it would work," Shurden said of the nonlethal fighting of roosters.
Jan 24, 2005
CROSS-DRESSING FISH
SCIENTISTS have found the first example of a male that wins a mate by CROSS-DRESSING.
Male giant Australian cuttlefish outnumber females by four to one — so the girls are picky.
To compete, wimpy fellas hide their fourth arms — a male characteristic — and change colour to copy the females’ mottled skin.
Then they trick their way past the female’s partner and often succeed in mating with her.
The only trouble is that other dominant males sometimes get frisky with THEM.
US scientists in Massachusetts said: “We found female mimickers could successfully deceive the consort male.”
Male giant Australian cuttlefish outnumber females by four to one — so the girls are picky.
To compete, wimpy fellas hide their fourth arms — a male characteristic — and change colour to copy the females’ mottled skin.
Then they trick their way past the female’s partner and often succeed in mating with her.
The only trouble is that other dominant males sometimes get frisky with THEM.
US scientists in Massachusetts said: “We found female mimickers could successfully deceive the consort male.”
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