Daily Archives: June 12, 2006

Interesting Times Ahead

Mike Treder believes that we are approaching an era of “perilous geopolitical instability:”

when weapons of mass destruction will be more varied, more deadly, more available, cheaper to obtain, and easier to hide;

when the strength (and the ambitions) of regional powers will increase rapidly while the stabilizing might of the U.S. could be in decline;

when new technologies such as genetic engineering, robotics, nanotechnology, and possibly artificial intelligence could enable radical shifts in the balance of power;

and when global climatic conditions — including increased frequency and severity of killer storms, droughts, infrastructure damage, crop failures, and even whole ecosystem collapses — will contribute to growing tensions.

Now is Mike just allowing himself to get all worked up here, or should we be alarmed? Personally, I think each of these issues is serious and represents a certain amount of risk, but I also believe that each change represents new opportunities and new capabilities, including — potentially — new ways of dealing with these kinds of problems.

Anyhow, read the whole thing and decide for yourselves.

Cancer Vaccine

Here’s an encouraging development:

Washington, DC — More than twenty years of collaborative research in the Georgetown lab of Dr. Richard Schlegel has resulted in a major medical breakthrough — the world’s first cancer vaccine.

The vaccine’s technology was generated by a team of Georgetown University researchers in the early 1990s and licensed for commercial development. On June 8, the Food and Drug Administration approved the vaccine, which scientists say could eliminate most new cases of cervical cancer worldwide. Called Gardasil, the vaccine blocks four strains of HPV, including two that give rise to nearly 75 percent of cervical cancer cases and two other strains that cause about 50 percent of genital warts.

“It’s a researcher’s dream … to see something that started as a very cerebral idea in the laboratory to advance through animal and clinical trials, gain FDA approval and ultimately have a major global impact,” Schlegel said. “It’s highly unlikely but extremely gratifying to see it through so far.”

So that’s one down, many to go. A good start!

Hat-tip: Boulder Future Salon

Back in the Game?

It looks as though, in spite of the federal funding ban, the US may not quite be out of the running in the race to produce stem cells via cloned embryos:

Harvard scientists join human cloning race

Research aims to create stem cells for treating blood disease

Harvard-affiliated researchers said Tuesday they have begun efforts to create stem cells by cloning human embryos, joining the race among a small group of scientists in this controversial pursuit.

The work at Children’s Hospital Boston, the main pediatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, is aimed at eventually creating stem cells for treating blood diseases like sickle-cell anemia, leukemia and other blood disorders.

Dr. George Daley, a leading expert in blood diseases, is overseeing the work at the hospital. Daley, an executive committee member of the Harvard Stem Cell Institute, said he had begun experiments but declined to describe the results of his work so far.

Let’s see here: you’ve got cloning, stem cells, and the creation of embryos that will be killed in the process of carrying out the research. Anybody care to guess whether this announcement will generate controversy?

We’ll take it real slow announcing any breakthroughs resulting from this research, bearing in mind what happened last time around.