Nanotech discussion advances in UK

Still no discussion in US about regulating this new technology BEFORE it gets all over the place. At least the discussion is happening in the UK, although as this article notes, not much else is being done about it, and meanwhile more and more nano-related products are being rolled out ...

Great Example of Big Business Corrupting Government and Science.

The link is to an article at an incisive progressive website that breaks it down. Click all the way through to read the source article in the New York Times (if you have a subscription to it duh).

Intriguing Space Shuttle Explosion Theory

Click title for link - was the Columbia brought down by anomalous high-atmospheric electrical activity?

Cannabis protects against Alzheimer's

Another unexpected scientific finding. Is the conventional wisdom ALWAYS wrong?

Non-native meteorite on Mars lends support to Exploded Planet Hypothesis?

Dear Dr. Squyres,

You are quoted in the press as suggesting the recently-discovered iron-nickel meteorite on Mars may have come from something like an exploded planet. Are you stating support, either directly or indirectly, for Dr. Tom Van Flandern's Exploded Planet Hypothesis for the origin of the asteroid belt?

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Jim Richardson and Allen Richardson

In Memoriam: Hunter S. Thompson

We named "Gonzo Science" after Hunter S. Thompson's "gonzo journalism." Like Hunter, we question the objectivity of our chosen subject matter, and recognize that the writer is part of the story - in fact, the story is ABOUT the writer - just like science is ABOUT scientists.

Hunter will always get mad respect from us for smartly bum rushing the system. Let the mourning begin with grapefruit halves doused with vodka. This one's for you, big guy.

Pot prohibition = stronger weed: duh

Click on the title for the link to the article. It's your basic drug-war hysterical hand-wringing about how today's kids are exposed to stronger weed and how it's a big problem. Attention drug warriors: cry me a river. The prohibition against pot is where that stronger weed came from in the first place. Pressure has been put on growers to breed stronger weed - since large outdoor crops are harder to grow without going to jail, small efficient hydroponics operations are where it's at to minimize risk, and to maximize their return, pot growers have been breeding stronger pot for thirty years. Summary: if prohibition had been avoided, stronger pot would be less of an issue and we'd be smoking the same shitty weed they had back in the sixties.

Vaccine issues: always interesting

Initially I found the article below (linked above too) good grist for vaccine skeptics, who have some good ammo already, i.e. reams of studies and data that contradict the rosy establishment view. Be that as it may, there doesn't seem to be much ammo here for the vaccine skeptic. Still interesting though, as we get a snapshot of a policy discussion unfolding in response to scientific data -- a feedback loop that has been cut in many cases by the you-know-who administration. In fact, the spokesepidemiologist from the CDC establishment comes off as the curmudgeon. Of course he's right to say a single study shouldn't change policy -- but then later, it is revealed that the study only confirms what everyone knows anyway -- so why not change the policy if that is so? It's a science vs. science SMACKDOWN!

Flu shots don't save lives of elderly, study says
Carla K. Johnson, Associated Press
February 15, 2005
CHICAGO -- A new study based on more than three decades of U.S. data suggests that giving flu shots to the elderly has not saved any lives.

Led by National Institutes of Health (NIH) researchers, the study challenges standard government dogma and is bound to confuse senior citizens. During last fall's flu vaccine shortage, thousands of older Americans, heeding the government's public health message, stood in long lines to get their shots.

"There is a sense that we're all going to die if we don't get the flu shot," said the study's lead author, Lone Simonsen, a senior epidemiologist at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases in Bethesda, Md. "Maybe that's a little much."

The study should influence the nation's flu prevention strategy, Simonsen said, perhaps by expanding vaccination to schoolchildren, the biggest spreaders of the virus.

[snip] ... the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta plans no change in its advice on who should get flu shots, saying the NIH research isn't enough to shift gears.

"We think the best way to help the elderly is to vaccinate them," said CDC epidemiologist William Thompson. "These results don't contribute to changing vaccine policy."

[snip]

Although the study, published Monday in the Archives of Internal Medicine, looks at data from the whole U.S. elderly population over time, it doesn't directly compare vaccinated to unvaccinated elderly, Thompson said. Previous studies that made that comparison have found the vaccine decreased the rate of all winter deaths.

It's also unlikely that a single study would trigger a change in policy, said CDC spokesman Glen Nowak.

But the former head of the nation's vaccine strategy, Dr. Walter Orenstein, said Simonsen's work "should make us think twice about our current strategy and [about] potentially enhancing it." Orenstein is former director of the CDC's National Immunization Program and now leads a program for vaccine policy development at Emory University.

A shift to vaccinating schoolchildren, the age group most likely to spread the flu virus, is advocated by colleagues of Orenstein's at Emory in a separate report to be published today in the American Journal of Epidemiology.


-- Below is the bit about how everyone already knows vaccinating the elderly won't do as much good -- which the CDC seems clueless about, and resistant to the very idea of, even in the face of this latest study --


"It's been recognized quite a while the (flu) vaccines are not optimal in older and high-risk patients," said Baylor College of Medicine flu researcher Paul Glezen.

Last year, when the federal government issued recommendations that flu shots be set aside for high-risk groups, Glezen argued against rationing the vaccine. He said the best way to protect the community from an outbreak was to vaccinate children and as many adults as fast as possible.

"As people get older, they respond less well to the vaccine," he said Monday. "There's no certain age when this drops off, but this is related to chronic underlying illnesses (that weaken the immune system)."

A study co-authored by Glezen in the current issue of the scientific journal Vaccine supports the strategy of vaccinating children in order to protect others. In that study, close to 15,000 children within the Scott and White Health Plan HMO in Temple and Belton were recruited for free vaccinations over three years.

That community was compared to another Scott and White site (Waco, Bryan and College Station) where schoolchildren weren't actively recruited.

"What we found is, when schoolchildren are immunized, people over 35 have significantly lower illness rates," Glezen said. The study showed that vaccination of 20-25 percent of eligible children resulted in indirect protection of 8-18 percent of adults older than 35.


-- So really it's a story of some very interesting science vs. some very boring institutional resistance. Boring because it never ends...

Unidentified tracks seen by Duluth hikers

I don't think I'm betraying any confidences by spilling this cryptozoological scoop so here goes. Three people me and Allen work with were hiking about three miles into the woods around Grand Marais this weekend. They were making their way to a cabin out there and snoeshoeing a thin trail through waist deep snow around one or two AM. They wore headlamps, and even with snowshoes on they were sinking a foot and a half or so into the snow.

Apparently they came upon some large tracks, with a roughly four-or-five-foot stride, along a trail running perpindicular to theirs. It spooked them all pretty good on account of the great length of stride, which persisted as far up and down the trail as their lights were able to see. The tracks also left no kicked up snow like snowshoes leave, implying great height in whoever made the tracks. One of the people assured me that the tracks were bipedal and not moose tracks or anything. He was also the one who inspected it closest of the two I talked to (I have yet to take the report of the third person). He said that he could discern, in his close examination, that it was a large footprint.

This one person is really pretty certain that nothing identifiable made those tracks, and leans towards a bigfoot explanation. The other two guys are hedging their bets a little more, but not much. The one person I haven't spoke with yet is apparently making the case that it could have been some crazy snowshoer because they were roughly sized like swowshoe prints. Neither of the people I spoke with were very happy with that explanation. They're both being good skeptics though and saying the tracks are "unidentified." So there's a definite mixture of opinion among them although I want to talk to the third witness. What can be said with some certainty is the experience spooked them all, and the two I spoke with had clearly not come down from it yet.

So there you have it. The legend of the Minnesota Bigfoot lives on in reports like these. You be the judge.

Wrong on so many levels

(http://www.guardian.co.uk/gmdebate/Story/0,2763,1408821,00.html)

Canada Backs Terminator Seeds
By John Vidal
The Guardian U.K.
Wednesday 09 February 2005

An international moratorium on the use of one of the world's most controversial GM food technologies may be broken today if the Canadian government gets seed sterilisation backed at a UN meeting. Leaked documents seen by the Guardian show that Canada wants all governments to accept the testing and commercialisation of "terminator" crop varieties. These are genetically engineered to produce only infertile seeds which farmers cannot replant. Jointly patented by the GM company Monsanto and the US government, the technology was condemned in the late 1990s by many African and Asian governments who called for a permanent ban. Monsanto and other GM companies which were developing similar technologies voluntarily pulled out of research after concerns were also raised about the "terminator" genes spreading to non-GM crops, and international outrage that poor farmers would not be able to use seeds from their crops, as they have always done.

But leaked instructions to Canadian government negotiators at the Bangkok meeting of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical and Technological Advice, a group which advises the UN's Convention on Biological Diversity, show that Canada will request today that all countries open their doors to the technology. The papers, leaked to the environment group ETC, also show that the Canadian government will attack an official UN report critical of the potential impact of "terminator" seeds on small farmers and indigenous peoples. The report recommends that governments prohibit the technology.

The Canadian government team in Bangkok was last night unavailable for comment.

I bet they were.

The only reason the politicians are pushing for this is that scientists beholden to corporations are assuring them it is safe. The corporations and the government see big dollar signs here and so are marching obediently in lock step.

The amazing failure of reason here is that these folks are ignoring / actively covering up evidence that "terminator" tech COULD spread to organisms in the wild. The extinction of all life would sure put a crimp in their stock portfolios, but that's just too long term for them to worry about. Bastards. And launched from the backs of poor farmers to boot.

We've said it before: This GM stuff is the biggest abuse of technology ever, in an upset.

Welcome to the Gonzo Science Blog.

I'm your host, Jim Richardson, and this is my little brother, Allen.