Day: November 29, 2000

Only In America — Derrick Thomas’ s Mother Sues GM

In February of this year National Football League player Derrick Thomas was killed in an automobile accident. He was speeding on an icy road rushing to make a flight. He lost control of his car and both he and a passenger died when they were thrown out of the car — neither was wearing seatbelts. A third passenger, who was wearing his seatbelt, walked away from the crash with only minor injuries.

Since this is the United States the course for Thomas’s mother was clear — sue the maker of the car, General Motors, for her son’s irresponsible driving. And for good measure she’s suing the ambulance company that arrived on the scene as well as the hospital that tried to keep him alive.

Still not quite as bold as the blood sucking lawyers detailed in this San Francisco Chronicle story. In this scam, lawyers wait for a plane to go down, and then sue the airlines claiming they represent a Latin American child who the pilot or one of the passengers had fathered illegitimately. In one case the lawyers made a big mistake — the erson they accused of being the father turned out to be a gay man involved in a 20-year-long same sex relationship. Oops.

Eastern Europe’s Problems Worsening

A new report claims that 50 million children in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union live in poverty, and that more than 160 million people — a full 40 percent of the region’s population — live in poverty. In some former Soviet Republics, such as Kyrgyzstan, up to 88 percent of the population is in poverty. What happened?

The bottom line is that the transition from a communist dictatorship to democratic forms of government went very badly. European Children’s Trust, which issued the report, blames privatization and the lack of price controls, but the bottom line is that in large measure privatization Eastern Europe simply transferred assets from the state to the very same corrupt bureaucrats who were ran the economy before the collapse of the USSR. Corruption has been endemic in Eastern Europe as well.

Which is why the European Children’s Trust’s recommendation for more aid to Eastern Europe seems so bizarre. Have they bothered to look at what happened to the last large amount of foreign aid the West sent to Eastern Europe? Much of it ended up in the bank accounts of corrupt officials. Future aid would likely end up the same and only help prop up and reward such corruption.

Eastern Europe’s position is not going to get better until people there decide to throw the bums out, punish official corruption and require accountability of their political leaders.

Source:

Child poverty soars in eastern Europe. The BBC, October 11, 2000.

Poverty ‘Great Depression’ sweeps eastern Europe. CNN, October 12, 2000.

Anti-Biotech Forces Willing to Sacrifice Children for Anti-Science Views

Dr. Ingo Potrykus’ amazing work with genetically modified rice has been mentioned on this site before (see Genetically Modified Rice Could Save Hundreds of Millions of Lives and Monsanto to Give Genetically Modified Rice Away). Working in Sweden, Potrykus genetically modified a strain of rice so that it produces beta carotene in its seeds.

Beta carotene is an excellent source of vitamin A, and vitamin A deficiency is an enormous health problem in the developing world. Up to 124 million children do not receive enough vitamin A in their diets, contributing to an estimated 1 million deaths and 300,000 cases of childhood blindness every year.

The New York Times recently ran a profile of Dr. Potrykus on the trials and travails he’s had bringing the GM rice to poor people. You’d think this would be a win-win situation. He worked out arrangements with the companies who hold the patents on the genes and techniques he used to allow him to give his vitamin A-enriched rice to any farmer with an annual income less than $10,000 which covers most small farmers in the developing world. The rice is self-pollinating so once they farmers have the rice and are growing it, they won’t be forced at some later date to buy new seeds. And, of course, it could save millions of lives.

But pressure is so great against so-called “Frankenfoods,” especially in Europe, that Potrykus housed his rice plants in a grenade-proof greenhouse. That was probably wise since throughout Europe and the United States anti-biotechnology activists are destroying experimental crops right and left.

The activists see Potrykus’ rice as a publicity stunt by the biotech companies to gain widespread acceptance of genetically modified plants and animals, and so would sentence millions of children in the developing world to death and blindness to prevent scientists such as Potrykus from gaining the world’s appreciation — not to mention better understanding of the value of genetic engineering.

In Sweden, for example, anti-biotech forces are trying to pass a law that would make it illegal for corporations in that nation to export genetically modified organisms. That law, if passed, would make it illegal for the GM rice to be given to poor farmers in the developing world.

Leave it to extremists in the environmental movement to once again argue that people in the developing world must pay with their lives for the irrational anti-science views of a minority of First Worlders.

Golden rice in a grenade-proof greenhouse. Jon Christensen, The New York Times, November 21, 2000.

Researchers Cure Type I Diabetes In Mice

Researchers at Yonsei University in Korea and the University of Calgary in Canada recently announced they had developed a gene therapy cure for mice suffering from type I insulin. In type I insulin, which afflicts millions of people, the body doesn’t produce enough insulin because the insulin-producing beta cells within the pancreas are destroyed.

The genetic therapy cure involved injecting mice with a virus that contained a gene designed to spur insulin production. After receiving the treatment, the animals’ blood sugar levels remained stable for the eight month period of the study.

Because of differences in mouse and human physiology, there are still enormous obstacles that would have to be overcome before such gene therapy could be a viable treatment option in human beings. It is an important first step in that direction. It wasn’t too long ago that proof that genetically modified cells could be made to produce insulin was heralded as an important step forward. Now by demonstrating that complex organisms such as mice can be successfully treated in this way provides enormous hope that this century will likely be the last in which type I diabetes is a significant health problem.

Jerrold Olefsky of the University of California-San Diego, in a commentary on the research published in Nature, wrote that, “Despite these issues, the paper represents a good example of how basic research can applied to problems of clinical significance.”

And also a prime example of why basic research on animal models must continue.

Source:

Gene therapy used to cure rodents with diabetes. Reuters, November 23, 2000.

Liberal Columnists Judge Women by Their Looks

With all of the controversy in Florida over who go more votes than who, it was a sign of how far the United States has come toward sexual equality that it was a woman, Katherine Harris, who was at the storm of the controversy with her decision on whether or not to certify the election. The amazing (or not so-amazing, depending your point of view) thing was that the same liberal female columnists who advise us to treat women and men as moral equals, immediately degenerated into comments about Harris’ looks.

Some examples,

  • Washington Post writer Robin Givhan described a Harris press conference by writing that, “Her [Harris’s] skin had been plastered and powdered to the texture of pre-war walls in need of a skim coat. And her eyesl, rimmed in liner and frosted with blue shadow, bore the tell-tale homgeneous spikes of false eyelashes. Caterpillars seemd to rise and fall with every bat of her eyelid…” How, Givhan asked, will a “woman, who can’t use restraint when she’s wielding a mascara wand, … manage to use it and make sound decisions in this game of partisan one-upsmanship.”
  • Boston Herald columnist Margery Eagan argued that, “Most likely… [Harris] will be remembered for looking just ghastly Tuesday night. … Much as one would like to blame such nasty lookism on The Evil Patriarchy, I must admit it occurred to me instantly how old and hard she appeared. (Is she really just 43?)”
  • Time‘s Margaret Carlson wrote that Harris “is often compared to Cruella de Vil, snatching ballots rather than puppies…”
  • The Boston Globe‘s Joan Venocchi compared Harris to Lady MacBeth

I guess it turns out that looks do matter — at least for conservative women.

Source:

Venom directed at Harris aggravates national split. James P. Pinkerton, Los Angeles Times, November 27, 2000.

Sisterhood isn’t just powerful, it’s mean. Danielle Crittenden, The Wall Street Journal, November 27, 2000.