Nanaimo is in British Columbia Canada. Last week it celebrated Gay Pride. Nanaimo’s GBLT ended a week of activities with a parade down main street. Folks turned out to cheer the participants, many of whom were costumed. My favourite was a bicycle rider who was decked out in glitter and a garment made of compact discs. Flag Raising Nanaimo Gay Pride is one of many such global annual events celebrating diversity and changing times.
Sadly in Florida at the weekend the LBGT community was attacked when an extremist killed at least 50 people at the Pulse Orlando dance club.
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Denise Ho, a popular Hong Kong entertainer, had her concert cancelled this week. The sponsor was the cosmetics giant Lancome. The concert scheduled to be held in the former British colony was abruptly cancelled when mainland Chinese media criticised her as “a poison of Hong Kong”. Ho is an outspoken supporter of the democracy movement in HK. In particular, she has spoken her support of the democracy demonstrations in 2014 called Occupy Central. In a brave move, she had posted a photo of herself and the Dalai Lama on her FB page. The concert dubbed Energizing Factory @POHO Made of Unstoppable Energy on her FB page seems to have drooped like a wet noodle in the face of pressure from the PRC. "This is not solely about me and Lancôme, nor only about Hong Kong. This is about suppression and self-censorship that is affecting global market and brands, and the white terror that is spreading among our societies, working to silence all," Ho wrote. Radio Free Asia L’Oreal is a French based cosmetic company with a large and growing market in the PRC. It is not alone in treading carefully in order to preserve access to the second largest economy. Holly wood films have changed plots to conform to censors in China. The self-censorship extends to the American Bar Association which declined to publish a book by human rights lawyer, Teng Biao, who is now residing in the US and is a visiting scholar at Harvard University. It has been alleged that the bar association did not want to upset the government in Beijing as the bar association is trying to establish an office in the PRC capital. They have denied this. Teng Biao is an outspoken critic of the anti-democratic trend in the PRC, citing the detention of Nobel Liu Xiabo and the disappearance of the Panchen Lama. Part of the rationale for allowing Communist China to rejoin the rest of the trading world was the argument that exposure to democratic ideals would move the country to allow more freedom for its citizens. The PRC has grown to be the second largest world economy and is increasingly repressive. Instead, it looks as if the global marketers are bowing to the pressure of the regime in order to preserve profits. Read More: Radio Free Asia NY Times Carr Center for Human Rights Policy A deadly new drug is showing up on British Columbia streets. It was first developed in 1981 in a University of Alberta lab. The object of the research was to find a better pain killer than opioids. At the university it was named W-18 and tested on mice. It was not what the researchers were looking for and was abandoned for that purpose. It was never tested on humans. W-18 is one of a group of synthetic compounds that may mimic more traditional street drugs. It appears that it is being sold as heroin or fentanyl, another known killer. W-18 is reputed to be 100 times more powerful than fentanyl and 10 000 times more active than heroin. Bottom line is that it is a killer. The first confirmed death from W-18 was in Calgary. It well may be that more deaths have occurred due to this drug, but cause of death has been blamed on fentanyl. Health authorities have tried to stem the epidemic of fentanyl deaths in Canada by preparing and distributing overdose kits. The kits are for addicts to have with them in case of a bad reaction. Because W-18 was never intended for humans, health care providers do not know if the kits will save lives of those who have taken W-18. In the murky world of illicit drugs, the chances of receiving strange and poisonous mixtures can be very high. Rumour has it that suppliers of W-18 know how deadly it is and are trying to palm it off as heroin. W-18 has been made illegal in Canada this week. It is not illegal in the US at this time. Most countries in Europe have outlawed it. W-18 is believed to be imported from China where it is still legal. The surge in this chemical has occurred shortly after the government of the PRC banned the uncontrolled manufacture of fentanyl. The control of these mind altering substances is rather like playing whack a mole. As one form of a synthetic is outlawed, a clever chemist can tweak a few molecules to produce something that can give the same desired effect, or death. And the law enforcement people have to start all over again. There is a legitimate lab in the US that produces chemicals against which the law enforcement people can compare seized goods. The advice of the person in charge of that lab would make any rational person stay far away from W-18. “We use all the same precautions in handling chemicals like W-18 that we would for a cyanobacterial toxin or aflatoxin (a fungal chemical that attacks the liver and can cause liver cancer),” says Maxey. Sources: CBC News Independent UK The Guardian Canadians suffering with Hepatitis C have new hope that they can get the medications they need. Currently there are over 300 000 people in Canada who have been diagnosed with the disease. There is medication available that will cure the disease, but only if they or their provincial health insurance will cough up the hefty amount needed. A 24 week course of the medication which produces little or no side effects and can eradicate the virus from the liver may cost up to $80 000 Cdn. This would be for about 24 pills. People who have some liver disease, but it isn’t at the stage to cause immediate failure cannot obtain the medication through their publicly supported health care system. Some people may obtain treatment if their condition is dire enough. While the medication marketed under the name Sovaldi is hugely expensive some countries reject the pharmaceutical company’s patent. Now an organization, Drugs for Neglected Diseases, has entered into an agreement with an Egyptian company to produce the drug. The course of treatment is predicted to be about $300 Cdn. Egypt is one of the countries hardest hit with the viral disease with approximately six million cases. Worldwide, there are about 140 million people with the disease. It kills about half a million people each year. To begin with, the drug will be sold in Malaysia and Thailand. Sufferers of Hepatitis C are hoping that the sales will begin in Canada as well. Hepatitis C is the leading reason for liver transplants in both the US and Canada. It has been described as a silent disease in that symptoms don’t usually appear until the liver begins to fail. There are numerous ways that a person may be exposed to this virus. Some of the routes follow:
Sources: CBC News Center for Disease Control About four years ago, research biologists discovered a special section in bacterial DNA that helps them fight viral infections. They saw the possibilities of applying the special sections to genetic engineering. The special sections are clustered regularly spaced short palindromic repeats or CRISPR for short. These sections can be used to snip genetic chains at specific sites, pop in genes programming for desirable traits and the organism will carry that trait down the cell line. Original work was done to make bacteria more resistant to viral attack, but soon other applications were investigated. The science of gene editing has reached a new plateau. This type of gene editing can be likened to editing a sentence with a word processor to delete words or correct spelling mistakes. One important application of such technology is to facilitate making animal models with precise genetic changes to study the progress and treatment of human diseases. Harvard University So a brave new world of specific treatments for replacing defective genes and curing disease is on the horizon. With tools now available that act like molecular scissors, specific and precise alterations can be made. Already the technique has been tried on the nasty virus that causes HIV. It’s not ready yet, but promising. The sunny picture starts to sour a little when the cell line being altered is in a human embryo. A paper was published in April about research done in China that used flawed(their words) human embryos to see if they could edit the gene that would confer immunity to HIV. While a recent international conference agreed that an altered human embryo should not be implanted into a human embryo, there is little agreement as to the ethics of using human embryos for experimentation. The simplicity of this new technique allows anyone with an oversized closet to edit genes. Some of the editing will be frivolous, but other tinkering not so. Editing a disease organism to change it from mild to lethal is every defense person’s nightmare. Of course this raises many ethical questions. In the next few years biology will transform our lives. Synthetic biology, gene editing, epigenetics are likely to become as commonplace as our currently offered GM products. If you look, you may see that tsunami rushing towards us. Sources: Wikimedia Harvard University Nature Science Fusion Net |
Barbara McPherson
Blogger, gardener, farmer. Working toward food security and a 30 foot
diet. Addicted to reading. Love this planet, especially my little corner
on Vancouver Island, Canada Archives
October 2016
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