Author Thomas Kida identifies "the six-pack of problems" that leads many of us unconsciously to accept false ideas:
· We prefer stories to statistics.
· We seek to confirm, not to question, our ideas.
· We rarely appreciate the role of chance and coincidence in shaping events.
· We sometimes misperceive the world around us.
· We tend to oversimplify our thinking.
· Our memories are often inaccurate.
http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Believe-Everything-You-Think/dp/1591024080
This morning, I heard part of an interview with a scientist on Living on Earth. He is transferring a human gene plus scorpion DNA to a fungus to mosquitos to kill malaria microbes. He was coolly matter-of-fact about how safe this is because it is so well-targeted.
I think it is insane to release such genetic modifications into the wild. This man may be the greatest scientist who ever lived. He may know everything there is to know about genetic modification (I do NOT believe that). But evolution is relentless and he can’t possibly foresee what happens generations down the road – a very short time for microbes and mosquitos. We surely still have much to learn about genetics and evolution. Those lessons should not come from an unrecoverable disaster.
Kudos to Living on Earth for the interview and for posting the recording and the transcript for free. Another service of public media.
Living on Earth: Curing Mosquitoes of Malaria
GELLERMAN: As I understand it, you’re using a genetically modified fungus to kill the malaria parasite. Which fungus, and how does it work?
ST. LEGER: Yes, we are. It’s a fungus called Metarhizium anisopliae, and it infects insects through their skin. And, what we’ve done is we’ve taken a gene encoding a human antibody, and we also tried a gene encoding an anti-malarial toxin, and we put those genes inside the fungus. And so now we’ve got a fungus that acts like a contact insecticide.
It lands on the insect’s skin, penetrates into the blood of the insect, and then will produce human antibody against the malaria, and basically cure the mosquito of malaria within a couple of days of infection.
GELLRMAN: But you didn’t want to kill the mosquito, you want to kill the parasite that carries the malaria. Why wouldn’t you want to kill the mosquito?
ST. LEGER: Well, we can kill the mosquito. We can engineer the fungus to express insecticidal toxins from a spider, and they’ll kill a mosquito in a couple of days. But the problem we might have then is, the likelihood is that the insects will evolve resistance to the fungus as well. So we wanted to change the strategy: target the malaria inside the mosquito.
GELLERMAN: Now you’re genetically modifying the fungus with a scorpion toxin. How’d you come up with that?
ST. LEGER: Ah, well, that’s scorpine as it’s called – it’s a toxin which has been studied for a few years now by different groups. And, it’s quite interesting – it’s an antimicrobial toxin, and it was shown to be effective against plasmodium a couple of years back. Now the scorpine toxin is from the Imperial Scorpion, a great big scorpion, a huge scorpion in fact, which has got a rather placid personality, plays well with children. …
GELLERMAN: And safe? I mean, you’ve got this genetically modified fungus… is it safe in the environment?
ST. LEGER: Well the wild-type fungus, the original fungus, is very safe. It’s been used for a long time, and it’s hard to see any tangible risk from what we’re doing.
Living on Earth: Curing Mosquitoes of Malaria
I’m puzzled by this text in particular. Mosquitos might evolve resistance to the fungus, so why wouldn’t malaria evolve in less time?
Even the destruction of life by mad scientists has a funny side: Conservatives fear the doom of debt. They’ll never see the flying scorpions until it’s too late.
Six banks – Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley together paid income tax at an approximate rate of 11% of their pre-tax US earnings in 2009 and 2010. Had they paid at 35%, what they are legally mandated to pay, the federal government would have received an additional $13 billion in tax revenue. This would cover more than two years of salaries for the 132,000 teacher jobs lost since the economic crisis began in 2008.
Ultimately, the code is easy.
PC Training & Consulting Weblog » Improving Comments Across The Web – Facebook Developers
On December 16, 2009, I had one of my front teeth extracted, #9 to be exact. Ole Number Nine bore the brunt of my collision with a brick wall while riding a bike at age 7. The accident was caused by my pant leg getting caught in the bike chain – I’ve been very careful to avoid that since the day I staggered home, blood pouring from my mouth. It’s hard to say when #9 actually died, but it was dead by the time I turned 40 and had a root canal on it. That sufficed for more than 10 years, until the bone around the tooth eroded, requiring a bone graft, then an implant, with many months of healing in between. So, for the first half of 2010 I had a gap-toothed smile. I was only self-conscious around some strangers, in particular, when I was teaching a class. Eventually, I got a mis-named “flipper,” a temporary denture, something I would have done sooner had I realized it was more than cosmetic and actually preserved the space between my teeth. More than a year after the extraction, I got a temporary crown. And as of 3/4/11, I have my permanent crown.
In those 14 and a half months, we went to Guatemala, got a new dog (Luke!), drove from Miami Beach to Albuquerque, camped in Colorado, travelled to DC. And I wrote a book. An eventful year, in which I saw one dentist or another more times than in the 10 years before.
I was driving a car, possibly a convertible, at night, with Merri. We were crossing a big bridge when the car spun 180 degrees and I was driving backward. I had a moment of fear that the car would go off either side of the bridge. Mer said something and I responded that I was just trying to slow down without spinning again (foot off the gas and brake). We crested the bridge and picked up speed. I continued to hold the wheel steady, moving it just enough to keep in the lane. I can’t recall if I was looking in the rearview mirrors or over my shoulder. I yelled, “Lew, pull the emergency brake.” (Apparently both Lew and the emergency brake were in the backseat.) Lew didn’t hear me (maybe he wasn’t there), so Mer reached over the back of her seat and pulled the brake. It didn’t seem to have any immediate effect. We were driving downhill on an urban street reminiscent of Georgetown but without any traffic or pedestrians. We entered an intersection and suddenly the brake took effect and the car turned 90 degrees, but then moved forward on the next street. From an elevated distance, I could see the car was now on fire. Fortunately, the street we were now on was full of firefighters and fire trucks. The car stopped. I got out and staggered past a firefighter and said something to him (thank you?). I fell to my knees on the sidewalk, my face in my hands as I sobbed heavily.
 |
Album for scrapbook photos Date: Mar 2, 2011 |
