Category Archives: planetkillers

UK grants first license for GM embryos

Britain has given the green light to scientists to modify the genes of human embryos for research. Critics say it raises ethical questions over the future of “designer babies.”

Source: UK grants first license for GM embryos

Money, get back.
I’m all right Jack keep your hands off of my stack.
Money, it’s a hit.
Don’t give me that do goody good bullshit.
I’m in the high-fidelity first class traveling set
And I think I need a Lear jet.

Money, it’s a crime.
Share it fairly but don’t take a slice of my pie.
Money, so they say
Is the root of all evil today.
But if you ask for a raise it’s no surprise that they’re
giving none away.

How Scared Should You Be About Zika? – The New York Times

The point is, we should have anticipated that the large increase in mosquitoes would create a major health crisis. Just as we should have anticipated that a deadly hemorrhagic disease caused by the Ebola virus would emerge one day from the remote forests and threaten the vast slums of the rapidly growing megacities of Africa. We should now anticipate that the MERS virus will result in more deadly outbreaks outside of the Arabian Peninsula, as it did in Seoul, South Korea. We should anticipate that viruses such as Venezuelan equine encephalitis may spread from their jungle homes and be even more deadly than Zika.

Even more than these viruses, we should be afraid of a planet-wide catastrophe caused by influenza. The best way to avert a pandemic is to develop a game-changing universal influenza vaccine. All these crises are largely predictable and we can do much in advance to lessen the effects and diminish the spread. And believe me, the cost of acting now will be infinitely less than the cost of not acting in the long run.

Source: How Scared Should You Be About Zika? – The New York Times

Last-Ditch Resistance: More Countries, More Dire Results – Phenomena: Germination

Laurent Poirel and colleagues in Switzerland have identified an E. coli strain, recovered from an 83-year-old Swiss man who was hospitalized last month, that possesses both colistin resistance and also VIM resistance to the carbapenems, the family of antibiotics that was considered the last and toughest before colistin. The colistin-resistance gene shared a plasmid with genes conferring resistance to chloramphenicol, flofenicol and co-trimoxazole. The authors warn, “Such accumulation of multidrug resistance traits may correspond to an ultimate step toward pandrug resistance.”Our data suggest that the advent of untreatable infections has already arrived.Marisa Haenni and collaborators in France and Switzerland queried the Resapath network in France, which conducts surveillance for antibiotic resistance in animals, found that 21 percent of bacterial samples collected from veal calves on French farms between 2005 and 2014 carried the signal of mobile colistin resistance, the gene mcr-1. There were 106 positive samples (out of 517) and they came from 94 different farm properties. On seven of those isolates, the mcr gene lived alongside ones for ESBL resistance—that’s to penicillins and to the first three generations of cephalosporin drugs—and also genes for resistance to sulfa drugs and tetracycline.

Source: Last-Ditch Resistance: More Countries, More Dire Results – Phenomena: Germination

James Lovelock: ‘enjoy life while you can: in 20 years global warming will hit the fan’ | Environment | The Guardian

Humanity is in a period exactly like 1938-9, he explains, when “we all knew something terrible was going to happen, but didn’t know what to do about it”. But once the second world war was under way, “everyone got excited, they loved the things they could do, it was one long holiday … so when I think of the impending crisis now, I think in those terms. A sense of purpose – that’s what people want.”

Source: James Lovelock: ‘enjoy life while you can: in 20 years global warming will hit the fan’ | Environment | The Guardian

 

I’d like to think he is wrong, I really do. I think, however, that he is right and that we are already past the tipping point for changes that will force those left, after all all the eco-disasters to find a way of living in nature in a way that will enable us not to kill millions of humans because of shortsightedness, hubris and delusion.

Burns Paiute Tribe Reacts to Takeover of Ancestral Land by “Group of Clowns” – Native News Online

“We as a Tribal Council, believe it is important to set the record straight: the land prior to 1890 belonged to the Paiute, not ranchers as Bundy has stated,” said Cecil Dick, tribal council member.“WHAT WOULD HAVE HAPPENED IF A GROUP OF NATIVES HAD GONE OVER THERE TO TAKOVER THE LAND? I THINK PEOPLE NEED TO THINK ABOUT THAT AND WE DON’T NEED SOME GROUP OF CLOWNS TO COME IN HERE TO SPEAK FOR US…THEY NEED TO GET OUT. WE ARE HARD-WORKING PEOPLE. WE CAN STAND UP FOR OUR OWN RIGHTS,” STATED JARVIS KENNEDY, TRIBAL COUNCIL MEMBER AND  OF THE BURNS PAIUTE TRIBE.Charlotte Rodrique, tribal chairperson of the Burns Paiute Tribe. Photo from FacebookRodrique, who has been tribal chairperson of the Burns Paiute Tribe for the past five years, disputes that any group of ranchers were ever rigthful owners of the land. While the land was never ceded by the Paiute, she said the wildlife refuge land was part of a the Treaty of 1868 that was never ratified by the U.S. Senate, but both parties have  upheld the language fo the treaty.

Source: Burns Paiute Tribe Reacts to Takeover of Ancestral Land by “Group of Clowns” – Native News Online

DuPont’s deadly deceit: The decades-long cover-up behind the “world’s most slippery material” – Salon.com Ohio screwed again by upstream polluters!

On October 7, after less than a day of deliberations, the jury found DuPont liable for Bartlett’s cancer, agreeing with the defendant that the company had for years negligently contaminated her drinking water supply in Tuppers Plain, Ohio with a toxic chemical formerly used to make its signature brand of nonstick coating: Teflon.

Source: DuPont’s deadly deceit: The decades-long cover-up behind the “world’s most slippery material” – Salon.com

Australia approves huge coal terminal, off Great Barrier Reef | News | DW.COM | 22.12.2015 – {When the Oops Comes, the Reefs Will Die and…}

Australia’s federal government has formally approved a plan to construct the world’s largest coal terminal at Abbot Point in northern Queensland, just 19 kilometers (12 miles) from the Great Barrier Reef.Environment Minister Greg Hunt said the project could go ahead, but only under conditions aimed at protecting the reef marine park from the 1.1 million cubic meters of sludge that would have to be dredged to create the port.All sludge dug up during dredging would have to be disposed of on land rather than at sea, as was originally planned.Initial plans called for three million cubic meters of material to be dredged and dumped into waters around the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. However, this was later abandoned after protests.The Great Barrier Reef is just 19 kilometers out to sea, and coal transport ships will have to navigate a passage through.

Source: Australia approves huge coal terminal, off Great Barrier Reef | News | DW.COM | 22.12.2015

Tony Abbott needs ‘reality check’ over Islam comments, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells says – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Writing in today’s Australian newspaper, Assistant Minister for Multicultural Affairs Concetta Fierravanti-Wells described such comments as simplistic and lacking an understanding of the basic facts about Islam.Senator Fierravanti-Wells, who did not refer to Mr Abbott by name, said “megaphone politics” were a potentially dangerous distraction.”Recently we have seen calls for a reformation of Islam. This requires a reality check and some basic facts being instilled into the debate,” she said.”Our neighbour [Bali] is the largest Muslim country, where not only does moderate Islam prevail but the coexistence of the diversity of faiths and tolerance is a good example for others to follow.Media player: “Space” to play, “M” to mute, “left” and “right” to seek.VIDEO: Watch an excerpt of Tony Abbott’s interview (ABC News)”Megaphone politics not only distracts from this, but has implications for our relationships with our neighbours.”

Source: Tony Abbott needs ‘reality check’ over Islam comments, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells says – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Yahoo Shareholders Propose Plan To Cut 9,000 Jobs: SFist Greenmail deja vu with little care for people who would be fired to give them more money and power – trash men

Now another activist investor, New York hedge fund SpringOwl, has sent a lengthy 99-slide presentation — or list of demands, really — to Yahoo’s board. In order to save $2 billion a year, they argue, the company should lay off 9,000 employees, reducing staff to 3,000 full-time employees and contractors.

Source: Yahoo Shareholders Propose Plan To Cut 9,000 Jobs: SFist

Garbage Human Martin Shkreli Once Again Plans To Massively Raise Cost Of Lifesaving Drug: SFist

Much reviled pharma guy Martin Shkreli has yet again revealed himself to be operating from a place of questionable morality. The 70 percent owner of South San Francisco-based KaloBios Pharmaceuticals Inc. has announced plans to increase the two-month treatment price of a lifesaving drug from $100 to an estimated $80,000.Shkreli’s Turing Pharmaceuticals was in the news earlier this year, when the founder announced he would raise the price of a drug used by AIDS patients to treat parasitic infections from $13.50 to $750 per pill.Tech Times notes that the more recently proposed price increase, announced in an investor conference call last week, would target a drug used to treat Chagas disease, a particular parasitic infection that can be fatal.The two-month course of the drug, benznidazole, is currently available at the cost of $50 to $100 in Latin America, notes the Times, but at present is only available in the United States directly from the Centers for Disease Control (the CDC makes the drug available for free).Shkreli’s move, suggests the New York Times, is part of a larger scheme to acquire a FDA voucher for expediting the review process of another drug. By bringing benznidazole to the US commercial market, albeit at an exorbitant rate, Shkreli would be eligible for a voucher originally intended as a reward to encourage pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for neglected diseases. His company could then sell this voucher (vouchers have sold for as much as $350 million, notes the New York Times) to another pharmaceutical company.“It’s caused a lot of angst in the Chagas community,” says Dr. Sheba Meymandi, the director of a Chagas treatment center. “Everyone’s in an uproar.”It is estimated that 300,000 people in the United States suffer the disease.

Source: Garbage Human Martin Shkreli Once Again Plans To Massively Raise Cost Of Lifesaving Drug: SFist