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The perfect cognition enhancer
Nicholas D. Kristof reveals a plan to massively boost intelligence worldwide using a chemical additive.The additive is iodized salt. About 2 billion people worldwide suffer insufficient iodine intake, making it the most common cause of preventable mental impairment worldwide. About 18 million people are mentally impaired each year due to deficiency. Iodized salt is a…
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The root cause
On April 16 2007 a solitary gunman, Cho Seung-Hui, killed 32 of his fellow students at Virginia Tech, and injured many more http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/04/18/vtech.shooting/index.html . This came to mind again as I was listening to Radio 4’s Any Questions last Friday, when a questioner referring to the terrorist attacks in Mumbai asked whether we could ever…
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To Leak or Not to Leak?
Last Thursday, anti-terrorism police in the UK arrested the opposition minister for immigration, Damian Green (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/nov/29/whitehall-damian-green-civil-servant). He is suspected by the police of ‘conspiracy to commit misconduct in public life’, having published documents leaked to him by a junior civil servant. That official was himself arrested on 19 November, and has been suspended from duty.…
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Universal AIDS testing: should we save the many at the cost of harm to the few?
In a paper published in the Lancet yesterday, a group of WHO scientists have suggested that a radical change to HIV testing would be necessary to combat the epidemic. The authors published details of a mathematical model of “universal voluntary testing” and early drug treatment of all those found to have HIV in a country…
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Keeping Viagra in the bedchamber and out of the arena?
Viagra may not just be a performance enhancer in the bedroom, but also on the sports arena. Researchers are studying whether it helps dilate athlete’s blood vessels and improve their oxygen-carrying capacity. If it is found to improve performance it will likely be put it on the list of banned substances for athletes. But should…
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The reason why it’s time to be silent about the Englaro Case
While the right to die has been a prominent topic of discussion in the UK, it has also been exercising Italian courts and media. Eluana Englaro entered in an irreversible vegetative state seventeen years ago, after a car crash.
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The Future of Making Organs for Self-Transplantation
Scientists have been able to create a new windpipe using stem cells. They took a windpipe from a dead patient, removed all the cells, and placed stem cells from a patient onto the remaining scaffolding to create what was in effect a new windpipe, with the patient’s own cells. The patient had an irreparably damaged…
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Status quo bias and presumed consent for organ donation
Yesterday the UK organ donation taskforce released its report on a presumed consent (opt-out) system for organ donation. To the consternation of the chief medical officer and the Prime Minister the taskforce advised against the introduction into the UK of such a system. In an editorial in today’s Guardian, it was observed that both the…
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Animal experimentation: morally acceptable, or just the way things always have been?
Following the announcement last week that Oxford University’s controversial Biomedical Sciences building is now complete and will be open for business in mid-2009, the ethical issues surrounding the use of animals for scientific experimentation have been revisited in the media—see, for example, here , here, and here. The number of animals used per year in…