Day: August 22, 2001

Courtesy of Morons.Org comes this report about, well, morons in California’s justice system.

Two armed men busted into a San Francisco loft where Detrick Washington, 25, and four other people were hanging out. Washington noticed that one of the intruders had laid down his gun will attempting to tie up some of the loft’s occupants. Washington grabbed the gun, and within a few minutes both would-be robbers (who still had knives and a machete) were shot dead.

Police call Washington a hero, but he’s now in jail for his actions. Washington was on parole for a drug conviction and his parole carries explicit conditions that he is not even supposed to touch a gun, much less use it to kill an armed intruder.

A spokesman for the Department of Corrections said that Washington will remain locked up until the department finishes its own investigation of the shooting.

According to the BBC, researchers at the UK’s Southampton University were touting ongoing research their conducting to genetically modify the tilapia species of fish to both grow faster as well as produce an important blood clotting agent.

Funded by the UK’s Department for International Development, the researchers hope to modify the fish to grow three times as fast as the naturally occurring tilapia.

Norman Maclean, a professor of genetics working on the project, also told the BBC that they hope to turn the species into a biological factory for an important, but currently expensive blood clotting agent. Maclean told the BBC,

We are currently working with an American bio-tech company to produce this blood-clotting agent called ‘factor seven’, which is very important in the treatment of someone who has, for example, been involved in a road accident. At the moment, factor seven is being used, but it is very expensive, and this research should help reduce the cost of its production.

Certainly the usual suspects in the animal rights movement will be horrified at the idea of using a genetically-modified fish to save people’s lives.

Source:

‘Superfish’ to ease food shortage. The BBC, August 16, 2001.