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Post by artemis on Nov 28, 2013 5:26:29 GMT -5
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Post by artemis on Dec 6, 2013 7:47:32 GMT -5
"Google's secret project: Android founder Andy Rubin reveals he is building robots
Aside from launching a range of new phones, building its latest operating system and even setting up a barge off the coast of San Francisco, Google has been stealthily building a robotics empire. Over the past six months Google has bought seven technology companies that each specialise in robotics or automated systems. These include Meka, which makes humanoid robots, and Industrial Perception, which specialises in machines that can package goods and load up lorries, for example. Google’s investment in these firms has been led by Andy Rubin, the founder of its Android operating system. While the firm is not expected to make these technologies available to consumers, it could instead use them to automate deliveries of goods, for example. According to the New York Times: ‘A realistic case, according to several specialists, would be automating portions of an existing supply chain that stretches from a factory floor to the companies that ship and deliver goods to a consumer’s doorstep.’ Other companies Google has acquired include Bot & Dolly, which makes cameras fixed to robots for use in Hollywood films such as Gravity and promotions for video games including Halo: Remember Reach. It also bought Bot & Dolly’s sister company Autofuss, which Google has worked with on various advertising campaigns. Redwood Robotics in San Francisco designs robotics arms used in hospitals and factories, while Holomni specialises in systems that accelerate vehicles in different directions. Google also bought Japanese firm Schaft that, like Meka, designs and makes humanoid robots. The company hasn’t confirmed, or denied, exactly what the robots will be used for but co-founder Larry Page wrote on Google+: ‘I am excited about Andy Rubin's next project. 'His last big bet, Android, started off as a crazy idea that ended up putting a supercomputer in hundreds of millions of pockets. 'It is still very early days for this, but I can't wait to see the progress.’ And it may take years for the plans to be fully announced, or even became available, as Rubin explained to he New York Times: 'Like any moonshot, you have to think of time as a factor. We need enough runway and a 10-year vision.' At the start of this week Amazon unveiled its own secret research project which it claims will be the future of home delivery - packages delivered by drones. The Internet shopping giant’s chief executive Jeff Bezos says that he wants to use octocoptors to replace postmen and cut delivery times to just 30 minutes. Customers would have their order dropped onto their front lawn by the machine which would fly through the air from a nearby warehouse with it clasped in a metal grabber." www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2518626/Googles-secret-project-Android-founder-Andy-Rubin-reveals-building-robots.html
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Post by artemis on Dec 12, 2013 7:30:32 GMT -5
"Kim Kardashain and the riddle of the nose: How reality star's profile has morphed over the years... despite her claims she's never had rhinoplasty
In the past she's gone to great pains to deny that she's ever gone under the knife, merely admitting to dabbling in a spot of Botox. But when Kim Kardashian showed off a rare profile angle while attending The Hollywood Reporter's Women in Entertainment breakfast on Wednesday, the difference in her facial features was hard to ignore. The 33-year-old's nose seems to have especially morphed over the years, despite her claims she's never had rhinoplasty.   Kim, pictured left at Wednesday's THR Women In Entertainment breakfast, revealed a very different profile in comparison to a photograph taken of the reality star in 2006, right
It's appears that at some point Kim has possibly had the bump on her bridge shaved down, to allow for a more flawless appearance. In an interview with ABC's News' Nightline back in 2010, Kim insisted that she was '100%' surgery free. 'I'm totally not against plastic surgery, I've tried Botox before. That's the only thing that I've done,' she claimed. 'I've never had my nose done,' she added defiantly. The Keeping Up With The Kardashians favourite admitted that she had toyed with the idea of having the procedure, but decided not to go through with it in fear of never looking 'the same'. 'What's funny about my nose, it's my biggest insecurity,' she explained. I always want to get my nose done . . . I went to the doctor, I had them take the pictures, he showed me what it would look like and it just didn't -- I wouldn't look the same.' Meanwhile, in the same interview with Nightline, Kim's mother Kris Jenner also denied that she nor any of her family members had treated themselves to rhinoplasty. 'None of us have had our nose done,' she asserted.   Changing face: Self-confessed plastic and cosmetic surgery advocate Kris Jenner, pictured on Wednesday, left, and back in 2006, right, has, like Kim, denied that she's ever undergone rhinoplastyOver the years, Kris, however, has become quite the advocate for cosmetic and plastic surgery. The Kardashian/Jenner matriarch isn't shy about talking about her penchant for procedures, and in recent times has let slip about the work she's had to turn back time. Most recently, when Kris welcomed surgery fan Joan Rivers on her ill-fated chat show in August she agreed with the comic that 'everybody looks better with plastic surgery.' Although Kris has claimed that most of her work has been less invasive than others, stating that she still has her own 'eyes, nose and mouth'. In 2011, Kris spoke on Australian radio about her decision to have a face lift ahead of Kim's wedding to Kris Humphries that year. 'I did have a little freshening up,' she revealed. 'Well after Kim used to start calling me "gobble, gobble", at Thanksgiving. I mean that's nice, isn't it,' she added sarcastically. 'Kim thought my chin was down to my waist. So I had a little lower... they take your chin and pull it up,' The star even had the procedure filmed by the ever-present camera crew for an episode of Keeping Up With The Kardashians. Also filmed for the show, was one of at least two breast enhancement operations that Kris is known to have had in her life. 'I thought it was such a great idea to film that,' Kris told the Today show at the time. 'The reason I went in and did that was because I had had my implants in for 152 years - you know, a long time, way longer than their shelf life.' Speaking at an event last year, Kris also said on the matter: 'I think you have to listen to your body, and after 25 years my body was telling me to switch it up.' When it comes to defending her decision for allowing her surgeries to have been filmed, Kris has said: 'I have cameras in my house 24/7. I can’t just go, "I’m going for coffee," and come back with new boobs.' " www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-2522212/Kim-Kardashain-riddle-nose-How-reality-stars-profile-morphed-years--despite-claims-shes-rhinoplasty.html
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Post by artemis on Dec 19, 2013 5:36:57 GMT -5
Smells Like BS in Here Kim Kardashian's face is not only different from her face back in '06, it's shockingly different -- and it took one single close-up to really seal the deal that it looks, smells, and sounds like a whole bunch of BS basically anytime Kim opens her mouth to say the words "all-natural." The photo on the left is Kim's face up in '06, back when Paris Hilton and Ray-J were the only people on the planet to give a crap about her existence. The photo on the right was taken earlier this week, and as you can see, the distinct difference -- especially in the nose, mouth, forehead, and FACE area -- is staggering."  |
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Post by beatlies on Mar 8, 2014 2:06:50 GMT -5
Mitohype: 3-Parent Designer Babies Who Will Change Human Evolution
Mar 6th, 2014 @ 01:14 pm › Ricki Lewis, PhD
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Mitochondria have their own genomes, but the nuclear genome dwarfs it.
If I turned in a 20,337 word article and the editor decided to replace 37 of those words, would I call her a co-author? Certainly not. So why does replacing 37 genes in a fertilized ovum destined to develop into a sick child conjure up images of ménages-a-trois in Petri dishes and mingling chromosomes? Those genes, most of which control energy metabolism, are delivered in mitochondria that replace their mutation-bearing counterparts.
To read some of the media coverage a week ago, you’d think that the February 25th meeting of the Cellular, Tissue, and Gene Therapies Advisory Committee at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) was to discuss creating monsters, not manipulating mitochondria. But it’s not really the media’s fault. One of the researchers who spoke at the session recently published a technical article entitled “Three-parent in vitro fertilization: gene replacement for the prevention of inherited mitochondrial diseases,” so I suppose some mitohype is to be expected.
ETHICAL OBJECTIONS
I listened to the first day of the FDA meeting on assignment for Medscape. The focus was the state of the science that might or might not support approval of a phase 1 safety clinical trial of mitochondrial replacement. Several experts told of their preclinical work, on human cells and embryos of mice, cows, and monkeys, and the day wrapped with discussion by the FDA committee, which includes clinicians, scientists, and bioethicists. But in between was a session of public comment.
Two approaches are being considered: introducing the male and female nuclei from a fertilized ovum into an egg from a healthy donor that presumably contains healthy mitochondria, and “spindle transfer,” which uses the apparatus that divides chromosomes to deliver the mitochondria that naturally gather around it to power cell division. (Recall from 10th grade biology that a mitochondrion is “the powerhouse of the cell.”)
I found it odd that bioethics wasn’t on the FDA’s agenda, but thought perhaps the technology would be deemed too soon or off limits based on the science alone. I expected that the public commentators might be from families with mitochondrial diseases, but to my surprise the 7 speakers focused on bioethics.
A statement earlier in the month from the Center for Genetics and Society that appeared, in part, in the previous Sunday New York Times as “Genetically Modified Babies” set the tone. While I agree with the statement’s conclusions that “more than 250 signatories” endorsed that the technology simply isn’t necessary, it included the sort of inflammatory language that has plagued the modern biotech industry from the start in the 1970s. Listening to the public comments, after a morning of experimental details involving spindles, mitochondria, and pronuclei, the switch to research described as “authorized intentional genetic modification of children and their descendants” might have been literally accurate, but I found it jolting and seemingly missing the intent and extent of the technology.
Although some of the public comments addressed mitochondrial manipulation, for the most part they veered down that oft-evoked slippery slope to clones and bizarre vegetables. Here are a few:
“Who is the mother? One cell is just getting a couple dozen mitochondrial genes, but the woman’s egg that is enucleated is getting 20,000 genes. The new individual is the product of a massive procedure, like a genetically modified tomato. This new individual is a genetically modified human being.” (Hank Greely’s “Heather Has Three Parents” at the Law and Biosciences Blog from Stanford Law School points out that our genomes are modified, quite naturally, all the time.)
“It is a gateway technology to use SCNT (somatic cell nuclear transfer) or other methods in human trials. We need to look more carefully at animal research on cloning.” (The FDA discussion was on manipulating oocytes, not somatic cells. But cloning was mentioned so often that I was reminded of the old marijuana-leads-to-heroin argument. And nuclear transfer has been around since the 1960s, to clone non-human animals.)
“This biotechnology could alter the human species.” (Health care routinely alters evolution of our species.)
One otherwise eloquent speaker uttered the following so fast I could barely keep up. She had “Grave concerns” about the “creation of GM children,” “perversion of the relationship between parents and children,” “alteration of the human species,” and “GATTACA-like classes of human beings and the dissolution of our humanity.”
And finally, “we all remember Jesse Gelsinger,” said a prominent speaker gravely. Indeed we do. Jesse was 18 years old when he died following a gene therapy procedure, as I discuss in depth in my book on that biotechnology. Although Jesse Gelsinger was once a fertilized egg, he was never an oocyte, the subject of discussion. I think the point was informed consent.
The emotion and hyperbole perhaps weren’t necessary. As more than one committee member pointed out, it was an astute FDA scientist (Frances Oldham Kelsey, MD) who averted a thalidomide disaster in the U.S. back in the early 1960s.
As we await further public comment, possible until May 9, here’s some interesting facts about mitochondria that didn’t make it into most news coverage.
COOL THINGS ABOUT MITOCHONDRIA
Gerald Shadel, PhD, director of pathology research at the Yale School of Medicine, delightfully opened the morning session introducing mitochondria as “double-membraned submarines that cruise around cells but are actually very complex, forming large elaborate dynamic networks.” The biology of these cell parts is highly unusual, and that’s perhaps why the public discussion kept returning to the more familiar cloning. But a mitochondrion has nothing much in common with a cloned somatic cell.
Ancestral complex cells swallowed simpler cells, which became mitochondria, like big fish swallowing little fish.
THE ENDOSYMBIONT THEORY Mitochondria look like bacteria, reproduce like bacteria by growing and splitting, and have their own DNA like bacteria. That’s because they likely descended from bacteria that were presumably swallowed up by the earliest complex cells. Today mitochondria are integrated parts of ourselves — the energy reactions that they house also require expression of genes from the nucleus.
MATERNAL INHERITANCE Eggs are packed with lots of stuff, including many mitochondria. Not so the streamlined sperm, whose mitochondria cling to its midpiece section, ready to fuel the long swim to the egg. Should an errant mitochondrion sneak into a sperm head and survive the cervical journey and make it into an egg, maternal molecules soon dismantle it. Meanwhile, most of the 1 in 200 eggs that have a mitochondrial mutation stop developing. Isn’t the female body amazing?
The enzymes that carry out cellular respiration are arrayed along the infoldings of the inner mitochondrial membrane, in the order in which they are deployed. (Maureen Heaster)
UNPREDICTABLE VARIABILITY Body (somatic) cells have 2 copies of each chromosome, and therefore 2 copies of each gene. But cells have many mitochondria, especially skeletal muscle cells, which can have thousands. That’s why a mitochondrial disease often causes great fatigue and weakness.
A mitochondrion has several copies of its tiny genome, each one a mere 16,569 DNA nucleotides, compared to the 3 billion or so in the nucleus. The genetic landscape of the mitochondria in a cell is more a population of gene variants than the 1:1 ratio seen in a person who is a carrier (heterozygote) of a nuclear gene.
If a woman is a heterozygote for a mitochondrial gene (has two variants), as the number of mitochondria whittle down from 100,000 to about 100 as the egg matures, some eggs end up with about equal copies of each gene variant, but most are skewed, getting all healthy versions or all bad ones. This unpredictable inequality, called heteroplasmy, means that a woman can be healthy, but have a child with a mitochondrial disease when the developing egg unluckily picks up many copies of a mutation.
Heteroplasmy also means that siblings may be affected to very different degrees, that symptoms may not start until enough cells with mutant mitochondria accumulate, and that mitochondria in one cell type may be packed with the mutation but not so others, complicating diagnosis based on symptoms and testing an accessible body fluid.
Heteroplasmy complicated forensic identification of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. (Armed Forces DNA Identification Lab)
TSAR NICHOLAS II On a July night in 1918, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family, the royal Romanovs, were shot, their bodies damaged with acid and buried in a shallow grave. In July 1991, two amateur historians found the grave and sent DNA samples for testing. Y chromosomes distinguished the males and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) identified the Tsarina and her three daughters.
But probing the DNA of descendants of the royals showed that the remains thought to be the Tsar differed at base 16169 in the mtDNA from that of his living great-grandniece Xenia. The Tsar’s mtDNA had T at the site in some samples, C in others.
Before we knew much about the changeability of the mitochondrial genome – it doesn’t repair itself like nuclear DNA and is splashed with oxygen free radicals from all those energy reactions – forensics researchers thought the Tsar’s strange DNA must have been due to a sequencing error. But then in yet another July, in 1994, researchers exhumed the body of Nicholas’s brother, Grand Duke Georgij Romanov. His mtDNA at position 16169, in bone cells, also went both ways, with a T or a C.
The heteroplasmy that confused forensic analysis of the Romanovs isn’t rare after all. Sequencing of many mitochondrial genomes has revealed that one in ten bases can differ within an individual.
Coenzyme Q, aka ubiquinone
COENZYME Q This molecule that takes part in the reactions of cellular respiration graces the shelves of health food stores, and is in dozens of clinical trials to evaluate treatment of a wide range of neuromuscular disorders, heart disease, and reproductive uses. It’s in phase 3 clinical trials to treat mitochondrial diseases.
TROUBLESHOOTING
After the expert presentations and public comments, the FDA committee members, including scientists, physicians, and bioethicists, listed the science-based problems with mitochondrial manipulation that had emerged:
Will mixing mitochondria and eggs from two populations be a problem? Carlos Moraes, PhD. of the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine offered the example of a Brit going to Australia and marrying an aborigine to make the point that it wouldn’t.
Heteroplasmy. It happens, but in non-human animal studies hasn’t been a problem.
Carryover. How can we know if some mutation-bearing maternal mitochondria get into the manipulated fertilized ovum? If it does, will it affect health? Over time, heteroplasmy does tend to shift towards favoring one gene variant. The risk of carryover is unknown.
Could the delicate fertilized ova be damaged or lose chromosomes? Sure. That’s a risk of IVF, but preimplantation genetic diagnosis (checking a cell of an early embryo) can get around that.
Could resulting children be damaged? Possibly. IVF increases the risk of Beckwith-Wiedemann Syndrome, an overgrowth condition that predisposes to cancer. The link took years to show up because the condition hadn’t been seen in animal models.
(NHGRI)
Katharine Wenstrom MD, a clinical geneticist from the Alpert Medical School of Brown University, summed matters up. “A lot of patients don’t develop symptoms until adulthood because it takes that long for abnormal mitochondria to accumulate. This makes me nervous to talk about a healthy blastocyst being good to go, or an animal model. There are so many aspects of mitochondrial disease that we don’t understand, such as tissue specificity, changes over time, and response to environmental stimuli.”
PRACTICAL MATTERS
I heard several people mutter “adoption” during the late-afternoon discussion as an alternative to creating a fertilized ovum with healthy mitochondria. Using a donor egg is another option.
I’d wondered why members of families with mitochondrial disease hadn’t been among the public commenters. Then, at the wrap-up, Sharon Reeder eloquently and non-hysterically put everything into perspective.
“How can we prevent when we can hardly diagnose? I was diagnosed 14 years ago. It took 16 years. My first symptom, when I was 18, was a droopy eyelid. They fixed it, and nobody asked why. I had a child when I was 35 and when I was 36 I was diagnosed. Pregnancy and giving birth were incredibly hard. I ended up in a wheelchair after I gave birth. I was negative in blood but positive in a muscle biopsy. I now have 10 doctors. Healthy people don’t go in to get their mitochondria checked.
I’m sitting here thinking, ‘Oh gosh! It would be so great if I was listening to all this research and it was about therapies for those of us with mitochondrial disease, helping those of us whose lives are severely affected. But this might be the gateway to that.”
At the risk of misinterpreting Ms. Reeder, the gateway that she mentions differs from the gateway to the slippery slope that would lead from research on mitochondrial replacement to the making of designer 3-parent babies that would disrupt the parental-child bond and alter the course of human evolution forever. I think she means that even if this particular biotechnology never makes it to clinical trials – for whatever reasons – what we learn from the journey could ultimately translate into treatments based on new understanding of the tiny genomes within the still-mysterious powerhouses of the cell.
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The Mitohype: 3-Parent Designer Babies Who Will Change Human Evolution by DNA Science Blog, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
Categories: Uncategorized
Tags: 3-parent IVF, bioethics, cloning, designer babies, FDA, mitochondrial disease, mitochondrial manipulation, stem cells
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Post by beatlies on Mar 18, 2014 14:29:41 GMT -5
Wall Street Journal: "March 14, 2014 7:30 PM The Future of Brain Implants How soon can we expect to see brain implants for perfect memory, enhanced vision, hypernormal focus or an expert golf swing?" m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304914904579435592981780528?mobile=y"The augmented among us—those who are willing to avail themselves of the benefits of brain prosthetics and to live with the attendant risks—will outperform others in the everyday contest for jobs and mates, in science, on the athletic field and in armed conflict. These differences will challenge society in new ways—and open up possibilities that we can scarcely imagine." "....It's impossible to predict. But, then again, it is not the business of the future to be predictable or sugarcoated. As President Ronald Reagan once put it, "The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave."" |
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Post by beatlies on Apr 20, 2014 14:17:30 GMT -5
Washington Post:
Cloning advance using stem cells from human adult reopens ethical questions
By Ariana Eunjung Cha, Published: APRIL 17, 8:36 PM ET
Scientists have grown stem cells from adults using cloning techniques for the first time — bringing them closer to developing patient-specific lines of cells that can be used to treat a whole host of ailments, from heart disease to blindness.
The research, described in Thursday’s online edition of the journal Cell Stem Cell, is a controversial advance likely to reopen the debate over the ethics of human cloning.
The scientists’ technique was similar to the one used in the first clone of a mammal, Dolly the sheep, which was created in 1996.
They “reprogrammed” an egg cell by removing its DNA and replaced it with that of an adult donor. Scientists then zapped the cell with electricity, which made it divide and multiply. The resulting cells were identical in DNA to the donor.
The first success in humans was reported last year by scientists at the Oregon Health & Science University and the Oregon National Primate Research Center. But they used donor cells from infants. In this study, the cells came from two men, a 35-year-old and a 75-year-old.
Paul Knoepfler, an associate professor at the University of California at Davis who studies stem cells, called the new research “exciting, important, and technically convincing.”
“In theory you could use those stem cells to produce almost any kind of cell and give it back to a person as a therapy,” he said.
In their paper, Young Gie Chung from the Research Institute for Stem Cell Research for CHA Health Systems in Los Angeles, Robert Lanza from Advanced Cell Technology in Marlborough, Mass., and their co-authors emphasized the promise of the technology for new therapies. What they didn’t mention but was clear to those working with stem cells was that their work was also an important discovery for human cloning.
While the research published Thursday involves cells that are technically an early stage embryo, the intention is not to try to grow them into a fully formed human. However the techniques in theory could be a first step toward creating a baby with the same genetic makeup as a donor.
Bioethicists call this the “dual-use dilemma.”
Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Berkeley, Calif.-based Center for Genetics and Society, explained that many technologies developed for good can be used in ways that the inventor may not have intended and may not like.
“This and every technical advance in cloning human tissue raises the possibility that somebody will use it to clone a human being, and that is a prospect everyone is against,” Darnovsky said.
The research was conducted in California by a large team that included representatives from both academia and industry and was funded by a private medical foundation and South Korea’s Ministry of Science.
From a technical standpoint, the technique — called somatic-cell nuclear transfer — is far from perfect. Chung’s team attempted the cloning 39 times and only two tries produced embryos. At first they couldn’t get the cells to multiply. But it turned out that if the researchers waited two hours — instead of 30 minutes — before trying to coax the cells, it worked.
“We have reaffirmed that it is possible to generate patient-specific stem cells using [this] technology,” Chung said.
Shoukhrat Mitalipov, director of the Center for Embryonic Cell and Gene Therapy at Oregon Health & Science University, developed the method that Chung’s group built upon. He emphasized that the work involves eggs that have not been fertilized.
“There will always be opposition to embryonic research, but the potential benefits are huge,” Mitalipov said.
Seventeen years ago, news about Dolly’s birth led to impassioned calls for a ban on human cloning for the purpose of producing a baby who is a genetic copy of someone else. Several countries took measures to limit or outlaw such work. But in the United States, the issue became entangled in the politics of abortion, and Congress became deadlocked. Some lawmakers called for a ban on reproductive human cloning, but others refused to support such legislation unless it included a ban on human cloning whether it was for the purposes of reproduction or for the development of new therapies.
President George W. Bush brokered a compromise of sorts, restricting federal funding from stem cell research that results in harm to a human embryo.
At least 15 states have laws addressing human cloning. About half of them ban both reproductive and therapeutic cloning.
Since embryonic stem cell research began to take off 15 years ago, one of the main challenges scientists have faced is getting the material for their experiments. Many had been getting the cells from embryos left over from fertility treatments, but religious groups such as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops vehemently objected to this, arguing that it involves killing a human being because the research involved fertilized eggs.
About seven years ago, scientists discovered they could use a different, molecular approach, called induced pluripotent stem cells, that could turn ordinary cells into stem cells without the need for an egg. While this technique did not present the same ethical issues, researchers soon found that some of the new cells had glitches, and there is still debate over how significant the flaws are. The research conducted by Mitalipov and Chung provides a second way of producing those cells through laboratory techniques.
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Post by beatlies on Jun 13, 2014 20:05:55 GMT -5
Where are the eight octuplet children now? How are they doing?
'Octomom' Nadya Suleman faces new welfare fraud charge
By Alan Duke, CNN
updated 11:27 AM EST, Thu February 6, 2014
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
The mother of 14 is accused of taking welfare money while earning cash as a stripper
Prosecutors seek $26,000 in restitution
Her topless dancing and adult film work was no secret last year
Welfare fraud charges could bring more than six years in prison
Los Angeles (CNN) -- Octuplets mom Nadya Suleman faces a new criminal charge of welfare fraud, bringing the number of counts against her to four.
Prosecutors accuse Suleman, whose claim to fame is giving birth to eight babies in one day, of not reporting that she was making thousands of dollars as topless dancer and adult film actress when she applied for government aid last year.
An additional charge filed Wednesday alleges that she received nearly $10,000 in MediCal benefits she was not entitled to, the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said. The restitution they are seeking now totals $26,000.
Suleman has already pleaded not guilty to the first three welfare fraud charges, and she will return to court on March 11 for arraignment on the newest charge.
Did 'Octomom' commit welfare fraud? Octuplet mom: Porn video 'empowering' Inside octuplet mom's wild home Octuplet mom defends $500 hair bill
Los Angeles County District Attorney Jackie Lacey said that while Suleman applied for public aid, the mother of 14 children "allegedly failed to disclose that she was also getting checks for personal appearances and residuals from videos."
Suleman -- known in tabloids as "Octomom" -- allegedly did not report nearly $30,000 in earnings.
Her work was no secret, though. Suleman, 38, performed in adult videos and danced topless at a Florida strip club last year.
"This is not a new career for her," her rep, Gina Rodriguez, told CNN in June when asked about her stripping gig. "She is just promoting her new video." An adult video featuring Suleman was released in June.
Suleman revealed in April that she was so determined to build a future for her 14 young children that she would accept adult entertainment offers, although she would not touch another "human's flesh."
Suleman, who collected food stamps to feed her children, filed for bankruptcy in May, but the case was tossed out of court because of paperwork issues.
Suleman dreams of building a business "empire" that will pay for food, shelter and college educations for her 14 children, she told CNN's Nischelle Turner.
She ultimately hopes to become a role model for other women facing major struggles, she said.
"I've got to win the battle," she said. "But right now, people don't understand that."
Suleman faces up to six years and four months in prison if convicted, the prosecutor said.
Octuplets mom Suleman books stripper gigs to save home
CNN's Rosalina Nieves contributed to this report.
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The Conception
2012 Film
Initial release: 2012
Directors: Manzie Jones, Kevin Clark
Genre: Horror
Cast: Nadya Suleman
Producers: Kevin Clark, Kristopher Michel, Manzie Jones
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Post by beatlies on Aug 10, 2014 4:06:46 GMT -5
www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/07/17/did-you-know-human-cloning-has-made-strides-recently-why-some-conservatives-are-calling-it-very-troubling/Did You Know Human Cloning Has Made Strides Recently? Why Some Conservatives Are Calling It ‘Very Troubling’ [only "conservatives"?!] Jul. 17, 2014 3:55pm Liz Klimas Share This Tweet This While the possibility of the “three-parent embryo” has gotten recent press in the U.K., and the U.S. government is also looking into the safety concerns over such a method that could eliminate the possibility of certain genetic conditions, there are some who consider its techniques highly similar to human cloning and say that its allowance would create a slippery slope. Within recent years, human cloning has occurred but the embryos have not been brought to full term. (Photo credit: Shutterstock) Dr. David Prentice, a senior fellow for life sciences at Family Research Council, a conservative lobbying group, said Thursday that the creation of three-parent embryos involves much of the same techniques as cloning and noted that the scientists expressing interest in that field are the same ones conducting human cloning research. “You’re creating new individuals. You’re not even making a treatment for any existing individual, and it has little chance of success,” said Prentice, who has a background in biochemistry and spent nearly two decades as a life sciences and medical and molecular genetics professor. The creation of three-parent embryos and human cloning research, Prentice said at an event hosted by the Family Research Council, is “ethically troubling, very troubling.” In the last two years, researchers have made early-stage human embryos from adult cells and created cloned embryos that could produce stem cells. He noted some safety issues that could come with obtaining enough eggs from women in order to conduct such research. One of these risks is ovarian hyperstimulation syndrome, which can be associated with bloating, kidney problems and shortness of breath. Some also linked egg donation with death. “[It] uses them. [Women are] essentially as a factory so you can harvest their eggs so you can do the cloning and do your supposed treatments,” Prentice said. Prentice also noted how some research involves inserting human genes into animal cells, such as a cow or rabbit. While some states have bans of varying degrees on human cloning research, the federal government currently does not allow the creation of a human embryo for research purposes, through any method, using tax dollars. Other countries, like France, Germany and Russia, ban human cloning all together, even for therapeutic, non-reproductive proposes. The United Nations General Assembly approved a declaration that called upon its member states to ban all forms of human cloning as well. With these countries and the U.N. opposing human cloning, Prentice said it shows that it’s not just something that “religious zealots” are against. Rep. Andy Harris (R-MD) believes the U.S. government should ban human cloning and is the lead sponsor of the Human Cloning Prohibition Act of 2012. “We can gain all scientific knowledge we need from doing somatic cell nuclear transfer on non-human species,” Dr. Harris, who is on the House appropriations committee, said. “This is almost a technique waiting a purpose, we don’t know what the uses are.” Harris acknowledged that one of the possible advantages for this type of research is that the use of the cells from cloned human embryos could eliminate some of the rejection risk that can come with other types of cells or organs. Instead of focusing on embryonic stem cells from cloned humans, Harris encouraged scientists to focus research on how to create and effectively use adult stem cells. “You can do it without cloning,” he said. Without the passage of the legislation, Harris said “scientists will go ahead and clone humans. That’s just the way it is.” — Front page image via Shutterstock.
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Post by beatlies on Nov 19, 2014 3:20:40 GMT -5
From "The Guardian":
Mammoths are a huge part of my life. But cloning them is wrong
Tori Herridge
Instead of the romantic idea of bringing an ice age animal back to life, shouldn’t we put our best efforts into saving endangered elephants?
'Does the potential benefit to humanity of cloning a mammoth outweigh the suffering an Asian elephant surrogate mother might experience?'
Photograph: Andrew Nelmerm/Getty Images/Dorling Kindersley
Tuesday 18 November 2014 08.14 EST
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In 2013 a remarkably well-preserved mammoth was excavated from the permafrost on Maly Lyakhovsky island, northern Siberia. It was May, and a balmy -10C. Snow lay on the ground. But when the team cut into the frozen carcass, a dark red-brown fluid oozed out. A fluid that looked exactly like blood.
Nothing like this had ever been seen before, and hopes ran high – still run high, in fact – that this might hold the key to mammoth cloning.
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For a while, the likelihood of anyone getting anywhere at all with such a project was so remote it seemed pointless to worry – why talk about “should”, when there was no “could”? But two groups with two different approaches – Sooam in South Korea and George Church’s lab in the US – are committed to taking their cloning efforts from the theoretical to the actual, from the lab to the tundra. As these cloning efforts gather steam, it’s time to have a serious conversation about the ethics of cloning.
I’m a paleobiologist at the Natural History Museum in London, and I live, sleep and dream mammoths. I doubt that there are many people in the world who would like to see a real-life woolly mammoth as much as I do. And yet I think cloning one would be ethically flawed.
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Any attempt to clone a mammoth would probably require a living elephant – likely to be Asian – to act as a surrogate. To go through 22 months of pregnancy, carrying an animal of a completely different species as part of the experiment. An intelligent, social animal, at the brink of extinction, and one we know doesn’t do all that well in captivity.
And not just one elephant. In reality, many surrogates would be needed before a successful baby mammoth was born.
There are very good reasons for using animals in scientific research, but there are also strict ethical codes of practice that demand that the potential benefits of the research outweigh the suffering to the animals involved.
Does the potential benefit to humanity of cloning a mammoth outweigh the suffering an Asian elephant surrogate mother might experience? I’ve yet to hear a convincing argument that it does.
So, why should we clone a mammoth? Because it would be cool to see one? That’s not going to cut it, I’m afraid.
Because it advances technology and the sum total of human knowledge? OK – but why a mammoth? Why not some other extinct creature that could be born of a surrogate better suited to life in captivity, or one that requires no animal surrogate at all? Church’s group are also trying to bring back the passenger pigeon, for example, and here it’s only the eggs that are manipulated in the lab. Granted, that’s not possible for mammals, but maybe a mouse would be a better starting point. For some reason, however, cloning an obscure species of extinct rodent doesn’t seem to capture the imagination.
An Asian elephant born at Whipsnade zoo. Photograph: Paul Gilham/Getty Images
What about the advances that could be made in understanding elephant reproductive biology? After all, zoo breeding programmes for elephants aren’t hugely successful, and Asian elephants are on the brink of extinction. So why not just put the effort in to doing the research into the reproductive biology of those living species where the results may be more directly transferable? If the reason is that it’s easier to get funding for cloning a mammoth, then all of us need to take a good long look at our priorities.
Because by bringing back the woolly mammoth, we could restore the ecosystem of the mammoth steppe and potentially stabilise the tundra terrain in the high Arctic? The idea being that this would mitigate the risk of permafrost melt, and the release of huge amounts of methane gas stored there, which would be bad news for our already warming planet. The problem here is that we don’t yet fully understand the role of the woolly mammoth as an ecosystem engineer, and it is unclear still whether the mammoth steppe disappeared as a result of the loss of the mammoth or whether the mammoth disappeared because its habitat was lost, along with its ice age world. It’s a big gamble to put your climate-change mitigation hopes on a herd of woolly mammoths – and if it did work, it would require numbers in the hundreds of thousands to have an effect. That’s going to take a long time, and a lot of surrogate elephant mums, to achieve. And have you seen the rate at which climate change seems to be progressing?
It will make a huge amount of money for the person who clones – and maybe patents – the woolly mammoth. After all, for all my protests, I’d pay to see one if it was there, wouldn’t you? This might justify the economic outlay, but an ethical justification it is not. I think that the real reason – the only reason really – that people want to clone a mammoth is the hope of salvation.
There’s a reason the terms “de-extinction” and “rewilding” are so powerful and that’s because they imply a return to a time, a state of grace, a place that was somehow unspoiled. Cloning a mammoth offers us the hope of undoing the excesses of humanity, bringing back the creatures whose extinction we helped bring about. I see it in people’s eyes when I explain that Church’s CRISPRs method isn’t cloning exactly, more just making a genetically engineered elephant that can handle the cold – this just isn’t as emotionally satisfying as the Sooam approach: taking an actual mammoth cell nucleus, DNA intact, and popping that into an elephant egg. People want to believe they are getting back the “real thing”. I get it. Sometimes the ice age world is so real me that my throat aches and my eyes sting a little when I think about what we’ve lost, the animals we will never see. But here’s the irony – if we feel like that about the mammoth, just think how our kids might feel about the elephant if we let it become extinct. We really ought to be focusing on that, and doing everything we can to stop it from happening.
• Tori Herridge took part in the autopsy of the Maly Lyakhovsky Mammoth (aka Buttercup), which can be seen in Woolly Mammoth: the Autopsy, on Channel 4 on 23 November at 8pm
Cloning Biology Genetics Endangered species Conservation More…
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Post by beatlies on Dec 8, 2014 21:09:23 GMT -5
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Post by beatlies on Feb 27, 2015 23:49:43 GMT -5
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Post by beatlies on Apr 15, 2015 0:59:24 GMT -5
www.blacklistednews.com/Billionaires_Scramble_For_Immortality_(Literally)/43372/0/38/38/Y/M.html"....Peter Thiel and the tech titans who founded Google, Facebook, eBay, Napster and Netscape are using their billions to rewrite the nation’s science agenda and transform biomedical research. As The Washington Post reports, their objective is to use the tools of technology — the chips, software programs, algorithms and big data they used in creating an information revolution — to understand and upgrade what they consider to be the most complicated piece of machinery in existence: the human body. While most are rightly skeptical about achieving immortality; science and technology could help us live longer, to, say, 150 years? The entrepreneurs are driven by a certitude that rebuilding, regenerating and reprogramming patients’ organs, limbs, cells and DNA will enable people to live longer and better. The work they are funding includes hunting for the secrets of living organisms with insanely long lives, engineering microscopic nanobots that can fix your body from the inside out, figuring out how to reprogram the DNA you were born with, and exploring ways to digitize your brain based on the theory that your mind could live long after your body expires. “I believe that evolution is a true account of nature,” as Thiel put it. “But I think we should try to escape it or transcend it in our society.” Oracle founder Larry Ellison has proclaimed his wish to live forever and donated more than $430 million to anti-aging research. “Death has never made any sense to me,” he told his biographer, Mike Wilson. “How can a person be there and then just vanish, just not be there?” And now, as RT reports, perhaps the ultimate 'fix' for an ailing body is about to come true... Doctors seem to be a step closer to performing a breakthrough surgery: transplanting a human head onto another body. A Russian man with a rare genetic muscle-wasting disorder has volunteered to be the first to try the procedure...."
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Post by beatlies on Sept 4, 2015 22:34:32 GMT -5
From December 2012: nypost.com/2012/12/02/cloned-dogs-run-wild-in-central-park-attacking-other-pets-and-people/Cloned dogs run wild in Central Park, attacking other pets and people
By Kate Briquelet December 2, 2012 | 5:00am Cloned dogs run wild in Central Park, attacking other pets and people Gary Rintel walks with his cloned dogs Retro and Cosmo on W. 96th St. towards Central Park with a leash before taking the leash off further down the block. Photo: Helayne Seidman Beware the canine clones! An Upper West Side man loved his pet, Astro, so much, he made a hat out of the pooch’s fur — and cloned him into two more dogs. Now he defiantly lets his copycat collies run around Central Park without a leash — and neighbors say dogs are terrorizing the Upper West Side. “This is a tragedy waiting to happen,” said one man who claims the dogs charged at his puppy and bit his hand. “The city knows about this problem and does nothing. The law has no teeth, so to speak.” Gary Rintel walks with his cloned dogs without a leash.Photo: Helayne Seidman The clones’ elusive master, Gary Rintel, 45, who often dawdles a block ahead of or behind his marauding mutts, readily admits he flouts the leash law and has paid $2,000 in tickets in the past year. “If you were a dog, would you want to live with a rope around your neck?” he told The Post. “I don’t think most people care about their dogs’ happiness. Sometimes I’m guilty of breaking that law.” A single writer and self-described trust-fund layabout, Rintel was featured on a reality show for his worship of Astro, a short-haired collie/Great Pyrenees mix. Rintel had Astro’s DNA frozen twice and then paid $140,000 four years ago to a lab to insert the DNA into a donor egg that would be implanted into a surrogate. That’s how Cosmo and Retro were born 3 1/2 years ago. Parkgoers have been fuming over the dogs’ bad behavior — and Rintel’s — ever since. “The second I see that guy, I make sure to cross the street,” said Jarrod Mittan, 29. “He ignores his dogs as they’re bounding down the sidewalk, and he screams at them as though they understand what he’s saying.” Neighbors say the clones have bolted into buildings along West 96th Street to chase down other pooches, and doormen are always pushing the troublemaking twosome out. “They look like lions in the jungle. They roam free,” said one super. “We call them ‘the clones,’ ” said a dog owner who claims the two pooches came out of nowhere and attacked his black Lab puppy in Central Park. When the man tried to intervene, one of the clones bit his hand, he said. Rintel eventually walked over to apologize, the victim said. “The guy said to me, ‘I’m sorry, my dogs have never done anything like that before,’ ” said the park user. “Then he walked away — with the dogs still off the leash!” Park rules mandate that dogs must be on leashes between 9 a.m. and 9 p.m. Rintel’s former dog-walker Melinda Pillon told The Post she broke that rule in July, and the clones bit a cyclist. But Rintel defended his dogs as “good boys” and said the walker wasn’t paying attention to them. He denied that the Labrador’s owner had ever been bitten. “It seems like dirty pool to manufacture an incident just because you’re upset my dog jumped on yours,” said Rintel, who takes the collies for daily, three-hour jaunts through the park so they can chase rats and squirrels. “They’re not threatening or dangerous dogs. They’re playful and they’re under check,” he said. “The idea that two dogs are savaging the Upper West Side isn’t true.” |
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Post by beatlies on Nov 23, 2015 18:32:47 GMT -5
new.spectator.co.uk/2015/11/here-come-the-cloned-pets/"....When most of us last thought about it, cloning was an off-putting and futuristic prospect. Dolly the sheep was the poster girl, and things didn’t turn out too well for her. But times change, science creeps on, and last year a Brit called Rebecca Smith had her beloved dachshund, Winnie, cloned in South Korea. The going rate for Mini-Winnie would have been £60,000, but Rebecca won a competition and so — except for the obligation to appear in a TV documentary about the process — Mini came for free. £60,000 sounds steep, but costs will almost certainly plummet, as they do with any new technology. And one reason we can be sure that cloning is the future is that it’s already very much in the present. Cloning is banned in the racing world — there’s too much cash at stake, and too many opportunities for scams. But in polo, cloning a prized pony is becoming increasingly popular. One of the world’s top players, Adolfo Cambiaso, has cloned dozens of his favourite horses with great success. Cambiaso is so keen that he has become a partner in a cloning company, Crestview, which has its own laboratory near Buenos Aires. One day, he’s said, he’d like to play in an entire match that involves only cloned horses. They are turning out to be in hot demand. In 2010, a clone of one of Cambiaso’s best horses, Cuartetera, sold for $800,000."
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