Fifty years to the day from the discovery of the structure of DNA, one of its co-discoverers has caused a storm by suggesting that stupidity is a genetic disease that should be cured.

Watson of "Watson and Crick" provides undeniable proof that intelligence cannot be measured on a single graduated scale.

Stupidity should be cured, says DNA discoverer - New Scientist

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The William Leonard Pickard Website

Dedicated to helping Leonard win his freedom

It has been over two years since Leonard was arrested for allegedly manufacturing LSD at a missile silo in Kansas. His trial has finally started with jury selection on January 13, 2003.

Since Leonard was arrested he has a newborn child with his young wife. Leonard has chosen to pursue the case at great risk. If he wins the case he will go free, and if he loses, he will serve life in prison. Leonard has chosen this difficult task so that he might have the chance to live the rest of his life with his wife and child.
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Free William Leonard Pickard

RUSSELS -- Last week I went to lunch at the Hotel Schweizerhof in Davos, Switzerland, and discovered why America and Europe are at odds. At the bottom of the lunch menu was a list of the countries that the lamb, beef and chicken came from. But next to the meat imported from the U.S. was a tiny asterisk, which warned that it might contain genetically modified organisms — G.M.O.'s.

My initial patriotic instinct was to order the U.S. beef and ask for it "tartare," just for spite. But then I and my lunch guest just looked at each other and had a good laugh. How quaint! we said. Europeans, out of some romantic rebellion against America and high technology, were shunning U.S.-grown food containing G.M.O.'s — even though there is no scientific evidence that these are harmful. But practically everywhere we went in Davos, Europeans were smoking cigarettes — with their meals, coffee or conversation — even though there is indisputable scientific evidence that smoking can kill you. In fact, I got enough secondhand smoke just dining in Europe last week to make me want to have a chest X-ray.

Ah, Those Principled Europeans

] LONDON (Reuters) - Scientists are turning to desktop
] printers in an effort to produce three-dimensional tubes
] of living tissue and possibly even entire organs.
] Instead of using a degradable scaffold and covering it
] with cells to produce tissue, scientists in the United
] States are modifying ink jet printers and using cells to
] create 3D structures.

Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage

] "CULVER CITY Gov. Gray Davis announced plans
] Thursday for economic and education programs to help more
] Californians find jobs in biotech and to ensure the
] lucrative industry keeps a strong presence in the state.

] California must work to ensure the state's 2,500 biotech
] companies are not lured to other states or countries, the
] governor said.

] "Fully one-third of biotech companies and their employees
] are in this state, and we want to keep it that way,"

SignOnSanDiego.com News Business -- Governor announces plan to boost biotech jobs

I thought a few people here might be interested in this book.. It's released on February 1st, 2003.

Amazon.com: Books: Sequence Analysis in a Nutshell

] "Raëlians are followers of Raël, a French-born former
] race-car driver who has said he met a four-foot space
] alien atop a volcano in southern France in 1973 and went
] aboard his ship, where he was entertained by voluptuous
] female robots and learned that the first humans were
] created 25,000 years ago by space travelers called
] Elohim, who cloned themselves"

Ok, so they say that the first human "clone" has been born. Frankly, I don't believe them, and I won't even if the tests say that it is a clone, unless they show the full genome sequences of both the mother and the child, which they won't. The test they are probably going to use is most likely the same one they use in forensics to prove someone is innocent of a crime. The test involves using restriction enzymes to cut at Variable Number Tandem Repeats (VNTRs) which are segments of repeated sequences in our genome. What makes it useful for forensics is that it creates a "genetic fingerprint", due to the fact that we all have a different number of VNTRs. But the reason why I won't believe the results if it says it is a clone is the same reason why this test cannot prove that someone is guilty...only that someone is innocent of a crime. If investigators take a genetic sample from a crime scene and do this test on that sample versus samples from several suspects, it makes it easy to rule out some of those suspects based on the fact that their results are very different from the crime scene sample. But there may be a few suspects whos results look similar to the crime scene sample because it is possible for two unrelated individuals to have similar numbers of VNTRs. Therefore, guilt cannot be labelled from this test, and clones cannot be labelled from this test either.
Another point is that if this is a real clone, then the scientists responsible for a cloned human must have been working covertly for many years. Cloning of mammals is not as easy as the media makes it out to be. I find it hard to believe that if this baby is a clone, it is truely healthy, as they say. This cloned child will grow up with many problems, starting with the fact that it will have the same problem that Dolly the cloned sheep has with her telomeres, cell growth and aging.
I am angered by these so called scientists and their quest for cloning human beings. I see no purpose in it, only greed on the part of the people involved....greed for recognition. They claim they are "aiding infertile couples to bear children", but there are other, safer, moral ways of helping infertile couples have children. These scientists are not progressing science, but instead, are retarding the progress of science. There is a difference between reproductive cloning and therapuetic cloning, but after this, there is bound to be more restrictions on research being done in therapuetic cloning areas, although it may aid in tissue engineering one day.
I am very skeptical of the fact that this is a true clone, but on the off chance that it is, I am, to say the least, horrified.

Religious Sect Announces the First Cloned Baby

] "NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Human stem cells
] transplanted into mice eventually developed into working,
] mouse-sized human kidneys, researchers report in a new
] study"

Yahoo! News - Stem Cells Become Working Human Kidneys in Mice

A great transcription of Richard Hamming's 1986 talk on what it takes to do great work. All I can say is: wow. I'm doing lots of thinking on this now, having read this. Speaks very deeply to my mind of things involved in the work I do. Brilliant paper.

You and Your Research

Tim Lawrence has found a drug that is far more effective at controlling the symptoms of his Parkinson's Disease than any prescribed by a doctor.

The only problem is that it is Ecstasy, the illegal and dangerous stimulant much favoured by night-club ravers.

His discovery could overturn 30 years of medical thought, and eventually lead to a new treatment for Parkinson's.

BBC News | HEALTH | Ecstasy 'relieves Parkinson's Disease'