science run amook-chimeras

[theist]

Who ever gave these scientists their first play chemistry set when they were kids shares in this.

------------------------

 

Scientists to make 'Stuart Little' mouse with the brain of a human

By James Langton in New York

 

 

It will look like any ordinary mouse, but for America's scientists a tiny animal threatens to ignite a profound ethical dilemma.

 

In one of the most controversial scientific projects ever conceived, a group of university researchers in California's Silicon Valley is preparing to create a mouse whose brain will be composed entirely of human cells.

 

Stuart Little, who is voiced by Michael J Fox

Researchers at Stanford University have already succeeded in breeding mice with brains that are one per cent human cells.

 

In the next stage they plan to use stem cells from aborted foetuses to create an animal whose brain cells are 100 per cent human.

 

Prof Irving Weissman, who heads the university's Institute of Cancer/Stem Cell Biology, believes that the mice could produce a breakthrough in understanding how stem cells might lead to a cure for diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's disease.

 

The group is waiting for a key American government-sponsored report, due this month, that will decide just how much science can blur the distinction between man and beast.

 

Last week, however, the university's ethics committee approved the research, under certain conditions. Prof Henry Greely, the head of the committee, said: "If the mouse shows human-like behaviours, like improved memory or problem-solving, it's time to stop."

 

He accepted that the project might seem "a little creepy", but insisted: "It's not going to get up and say 'Hi, I'm Mickey'. Our brains are far more complicated."

 

Biologists know such creatures as "chimeras", after the mythical Greek monster that was part-lion, part-goat and part-serpent.

 

Prof Weissman said that there was no way of knowing whether the "human-mice" would develop any human characteristics until after they were born. In previous experiments, pigs with human blood have been developed at a clinic in Minnesota. Last year, the University of Nevada produced sheep whose livers were 80 per cent human and could one day be used for transplants.

 

An inquiry into laying down rules for research using stem cells from human embryos was launched last summer by America's National Academies of Science. The government-sponsored report, said to be in draft form, will govern stem cell research in the private sector. It comes at a time of growing confusion in America over the limits of stem cell research.

 

President George W Bush halted government-funded research during his first term of office but several states, including California, have since passed laws that allow support for stem cell projects from local taxes.

 

At hearings in Washington last October, Prof Weissman argued strongly against a ban on "chimera mice". He believes that the mice would behave like any others, but said that he would monitor the experiment closely and destroy them at the slightest suggestion of human-like brain patterns.

 

Supporters of stem cell research at Stanford University include the actor Michael J Fox, who suffers from Parkinson's disease. Fox provided the voice for Stuart Little, Hollywood's version of the "human mouse'', who talks, has human parents and lives in a New York apartment.

 

Opponents of Prof Weissman's work accept that his mice are unlikely to show such obvious human traits, but voice concerns that the brain cells would begin to organise themselves in a way that was more human than mouse. There is growing unease over whether human stem cells could migrate to other parts of the animals, creating human sperm or eggs in their reproductive systems.

 

Should two such "chimera mice" mate, it could lead to the nightmarish scenario of a human embryo trapped in a mouse's womb. William Cheshire, a neurology professor from the Mayo Clinic in Florida and a Christian activist, has called for a ban on any research that destroys a human embryo to create a new organism.

 

"We must be careful not to violate the integrity of humanity or of animal life,'' he said. "Research projects that create human-animal chimeras risk disturbing fragile ecosystems, endanger health and affront species integrity.''

 

In a recent article for the conservative Weekly Standard magazine, Wesley Smith, a consultant for the Centre for Bioethics and Culture warned that "biotechnology is becoming dangerously close to raging out of control''.

 

He wrote: "Scientists are engaging in increasingly macabre experiments that threaten to mutate nature and the human condition."

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

"I'll find the rascal who did this to me"

[theist]

Scared me at first. Chubacabra??

[krsna]

"Origin of Specious Theories"

 

March 1, 1975

 

 

 

Srila Prabhupada: Try to understand this, that life is always there, as God is there. So these living entities, part and parcel of God, they are also there. That God has got multi-energies, potencies. Out of that, three potencies have been taken as very important.

 

Parasya saktir vividhaiva sruyate [Cc. Madhya 13.65, purport].

 

God has multi-energy. Out of that, three energies have been taken as principal: material, spiritual, and marginal. The material energy is this material world. The spiritual world is the spiritual energy. And we living entities, we are also spiritual, but we are called marginal because we may live under the subjugation of material energy or spiritual energy.

 

So the living entities, they are eternal. Their only position is marginal, sometimes manifested here, sometimes manifested there. So in the material world the living entities are already there. You haven't got to create. That is foolishness. It is never created.

 

Simply in the material world it becomes manifest in four ways. Some of them are coming like trees, plants. And some of them are coming from perspiration... not coming, being manifested through fermentation, perception. And some of them are being manifested through eggs. And some of them are being manifested through embryo. The living entity were already there. Their struggle is going on, and they become manifest in the material world in four sources. In the spiritual world there is no such... They are eternally existing. There is no question of manifestation. So this is the science of living entities.

 

What do they know? Therefore I say they are rascals. They do not know anything, simply trying to create. What is the creation? It is already there. But they do not know what is this, and still, they are scientists, they are advanced education. All rascal. They do not know. Therefore through Bhagavad-gita we say they are rascals. Mudha. Now you tell these mudhas that,

 

"My dear sirs, you cannot create; neither it is created.

You find out how they are coming out, what is their source, who is the brain behind all this nature. That you find out. That is knowledge. So if you struggle for this and try to find out the original source of everything, then some day you may come to this platform, vasudevah sarvam iti sa mahatma su-durlabhah [bg. 7.19]. Then you understand that Krsna is the source of everything, and then your knowledge will be perfect."

 

This is the... Vasudevah sarvam iti [bg. 7.19]. Whatever we see, that is, the source is Vasudeva. Do you think this nice flower has come out without any brain, this nonsense philosophy? The so-called scientist will put some bombastic word, "this, that..." What is that explanation? Nobody can understand. It will be understood by them only. They will put some language in such a way that it is to be understood by them. Unless they explain, nobody will understand. They say it is automatically being done, nature. That's not the fact. Nature is an instrument. Just like this wonderful machine, computer. But still, there is operator. But they have no common sense even, that where is the machine that is working without any operator? Where is that machine within their experience? How they suggest that the nature is doing automatically?

 

Nature is wonderful machine, but the operator is Krsna. That is real knowledge. Because the machine is working wonderfully, there is no operator? Where is that experience? Have you got any experience, Dr. Wolf, like that?

 

Dr. Wolf: No, sir, I don't.

 

[Guest guest]

'I vaguely remember experimenting with little creatures in a laborotory, Now how on earth did I winde up feeling this strange.'

 

[krsna]

 

 

BY BRYN NELSON

STAFF WRITER

 

April 7, 2005

 

A virtual face-lift, two new jawbones and a partial set of teeth have solidified the stature of Chad's most famous fossilized resident, according to a pair of studies published today.

 

A nearly 7-million-year-old fossilized skull, nicknamed "Toumaï" and sometimes dubbed "the old man of Chad," made headlines in 2002 when researchers called it humanity's earliest known ancestor, pre-dating other human-like fossils such as Ethiopia's "Lucy" by millions of years.

Most scientists accepted Toumaï's new position on the family tree, solidly on the human branch but within evolutionary sight of the point at which apes and humans diverged from a common ancestor.

 

A few dissenters, however, argued that the skull described by French paleontologist Michel Brunet and colleagues was too fractured to yield any firm conclusions.

 

Two new studies by Brunet and colleagues in the journal Nature seek to settle the debate through examination of two lower jaws and assorted teeth also assigned to the creature, Sahelanthropus tchadensis, and through a computer-assisted reconstruction of its face.

 

Co-author Christoph Zollikofer, a paleontologist at the Universitat Zurich-Irchel in Switzerland, said the original skull is remarkably well preserved, if extensively fractured.

 

"It's as if you sit by accident on an Easter egg," he said. "So everything is fractured, and distorted, but everything is there."

 

Zollikofer said it's not possible to manually correct that distortion, so researchers analyzed the newly found bones and virtually reconstructed the old ones to determine the dimensions of the skull and face.

 

The team concluded that Toumaï's teeth were more human than ape-like, and its face was at a nearly vertical plane relative to the foramen magnum, a hole in the skull connecting the spinal cord to the brain.

 

That feature is more akin to modern humans than to apes, Zollikofer said. "And in a way, that's one consequence of bipedalism," or walking upright.

 

"If a dog puts himself on his hind legs, its head looks toward the sky," he said, but the orientation would be awkward for animals that normally walk on two legs. "The evolutionary solution is to make the face more vertical relative to the skull."

 

Toumaï's brain case is only slightly larger than a chimp's, however, suggesting it lived relatively soon after apes and humans went their separate ways.

 

Timothy White, a paleontologist at the University of California at Berkeley who wasn't involved in the research, said more fossils are needed to determine whether Toumaï walked on two legs. But he said the studies help confirm the hominid as the oldest yet found.

 

"It's already taken a few anatomical steps toward us, and that's how we can place it on the family tree," he said. "I think they are very close ... to what this animal looked like when it died. And it looked like nothing that had been previously found."

 

Family ties

 

Clues that "Toumai" (fossil and reconstruction are shown here) might be an ancestor to humans, not chimps:

 

Face is angled forward, a feature common in animals that walk on two legs.

 

Lower jaw juts out less than that of chimps.

 

Canine teeth are short, like humans. Chimps' canines are longer than front teeth.

 

Cranium is bit bigger than in chimps, suggesting it was just beginning to evolve away from chimps. Its estimated height, 3'5" to 4', also is closer to chimps.

 

Timeline of human evolution

 

"Toumai" (Sahelanthropus tchadensis) 7 million years ago

 

"Lucy" fossil (Australopithecus afarensis) 3.5 million

 

Australopithecus robustus 2.5 million

 

First stone tools

 

Homo habilis 2 million

 

Homo erectus 1.5 million

 

First use of fire

 

Neanderthals 130,000

 

Modern humans

 

Wheel invented

 

Dates are approximate

[theist]

 

Ooga booga man after first known humanoid trip to hairstylist, and now looking for Lucy.

[Guest guest]

He just needed a little therapy and understanding to allay those jungle anxieties.

 

That was after his makeover.

I think he might have knocked off someone elses fur and skin t'boot.

The things we'll do to attract the opposite sex.

Too bad if Lucy rejected him

 

 

A little too long in the material jungle I fear.

[theist]

puttin' the move on Lucy. He looks like the first lounge lizard also. It's not shown but I bet he was wearing a big astrological sign medallion with a half buttoned big collared shirt.

 

Seriously why is our hypothosis any worse then these knucklehead bone hounds?

[Guest guest]

[theist]

would say that we are that future.

 

Why do they insist on claiming their origin from dust, cosmic soup and apes over being a emanation from Krsna The Beautiful?

 

They should flip that coin again.

[Guest guest]

Theist, I have my doubts that they will ever flip the coin. Imagine, all textbooks would have to be rewritten; everything you thought you knew is suddenly bunk - which it was in the first place - the professors are ignoramuses overnight; the university is a sham.

can you see it happen? Not in a thousand years, unless WE come with proof of our paradigm - the Vedic one. If we have faith like Arjuna and strength of purpose, we could conquer the world in 18 days! That, my dear friend, is but a pipedream, for who has that kind of faith, today?

VdK.

[theist]

Yeah they have too much invested and more than just money their flippin' pride and status as the great thinkers of all time.

 

We just can present an alternative view. We are spiders trying to aid Hanuman in building his bridge to Sri Lanka. We are insignificant and laughable but we must do our best anyway.

 

Kick that sand brothers and sisters. /images/graemlins/smile.gif

[Guest guest]

 

The ring of consciousness emanates from the centre prabhus. It takes a while for those ripples to spread to the outer distance. But eventually it will be felt by all no matter how thick, as much as they are resisting, the internal currant is continuing too, for it is the fundamental wave of bhakti and nothing can check it. Just see in 30 or 40 years what impression it has made on the western world in every field, it got thru our defence system didn't it?

Mahaprabhu has His will and His master plan and it is all powerful and merciful, what chance do they stand with their petty chemistry sets.

jaa sri hanuman ji

[krsna]

: THE HONEST THIEVES

 

After stealing some property, a group of thieves assembled together and the leader said, "Let us divide this booty honestly and religiously."

 

MORAL: They are thieves. What is the question of honesty? Similarly, scientists say, "Whatever cannot be proven by science is not a fact." But this is a reflective statement, because this criterion of truth cannot itself be proven by science. The above statement cancels itself out by its own condition.