Leading scientists urge President Obama's advisers to investigate ethical issues raised by creating highly infectious strain of bird-flu

Virus could easily be transmitted between people

Steve Connor 

 

 

 

 

 

A group of leading scientists has urged President Obama’s advisers to investigate the ethical issues raised by a decision to create a highly infectious strain of bird-flu virus that could be transmitted easily between people.

The scientists, who include a former UK Government chief scientist and a Nobel laureate, said that it is “morally and ethically wrong” to create a new type of influenza virus in the laboratory that is more lethal and transmissible than what actually exists in nature.

Two teams of flu researchers – led by Ron Fouchier of the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam and Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin-Madison – announced in 2011 that they had succeeded in mutating the H5N1 avian virus so that it could in theory be transmitted through the air between people.

They stopped the research last year as part of a wider voluntary moratorium following public outrage over the work. But they announced an end to the moratorium earlier this year, and even an expansion into new areas involving other viruses and diseases.

In a strongly-worded letter sent to the US Presidential Commission for the Study of Bioethical Issues, opponents of the research warned that there has not been enough debate over the threats posed by lifting the moratorium on increasing the transmissibility of highly lethal viruses such as the H5N1 strain of bird-flu.
They said that the 60 per cent mortality rate of the H5N1 virus – on the relatively rare occasions that it has infected humans – puts it in a “class of its own” and that attempting to make it more transmissible through laboratory experiments is tantamount to risking a devastatingly deadly flu pandemic.
“The accidental release of an artificial, laboratory-generated, human-transmissible H5N1 virus into the community has the potential to cause a global pandemic of epic proportions that would dwarf the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic that killed over 50 million people,” the scientists said.

“A majority [of life scientists] considers the creation in the laboratory of a pathogen more lethal than exists in nature is morally and ethically wrong. Indeed, a majority are of the opinion that there is no scientific justification that outweighs the moral and ethical problems,” they said.

The letter, sent at the end of last week, was organised by the Foundation for Vaccine Research, a private organisation based in Washington campaigning for better vaccines. It was sent to the Presidential Commission in order to bypass the powerful US National Institutes of Health, which has funded both research projects into H5N1 transmissibility and has controlled much of the debate over the issue.

Among the 17 signatories of the letter are Professor Lord May, a former chief scientist to the Prime Minister and an expert on disease transmission, Professor Marc Lipsitch, a communicable disease expert at Harvard University, and Sir Richard Roberts, who won the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his pioneering work in genetics.

Other signatories include Professor Robin Weiss, a distinguished British virologist working on HIV, Professor Michael Lederman of Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, and Joshua Plotkin of the University of Pennsylvania.

The scientists are particularly concerned that attempts of create more lethal forms of H5N1 in an attempt to study the threat posed to humans are just the start of further work on other potentially lethal viruses in what they term “gain of function” studies – where more lethal viral mutations are actively encouraged.
“The H5N1 studies represent the first of no doubt many such studies involving other potential pandemic pathogens. Gain-of-function studies with H5N1 virus are being conducted in China, and a team in The Netherlands is expanding their H5N1 studies to include studies with the H7N7 virus, and has announced plans to conduct similar gain-of-function studies with the SARS coronavirus,” the scientists said.

“Just ten days ago we learned that a team in Germany has conducted experiments to see what it would take for canine distemper virus to be transmitted from dogs to humans,” they said.

Professor Simon Wain-Hobson, an eminent virologist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris who was first to sign the letter, said that the WHO has essentially failed to take the lead by widening the ethical debate over an area of contentious research that has been controlled by vested interests.
“The recent calling off of the moratorium by 40 flu researchers alone – not funders, governments or international bodies – says it all. The flu community simply hasn’t understood that this is a hot-button issue that will not go away,” Professor Wain-Hobson said.

Flu researchers have argued that the laboratory work is necessary in order to study the kind of lethal mutations that could arise in nature, but Professor Wain-Hobson said that the artificial selection of dangerous viruses could result in mutants that would be very unlikely to ever exist in nature. He cites the example of the artificial selection of canine genes by dog breeders over the centuries. “Would nature have come up with the dachshund,” he asks?

 

How Do You Define Ethics?

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Thursday, May 23, 2013

By Ben Bycel

This column is the first in a new series dealing with ethical dilemmas. You, the reader, write in (anonymously) about a personal ethical issue you are confronting.

Here is where it gets interesting. I cannot give a definitive answer because there is none. There is no Ethics Jeopardy game with right and wrong answers, buzzers, and a host with the answers written on a card. But I can help frame the question, offer some ethical concepts and stimulate a discussion among readers interested in ethical problems.

The idea for an ethics column sounded modest when I proposed it to the editor until she asked, “So, how do you define ethics?” After having taught, written, and worked on ethical issues for decades this seemed like a simple task. After fumbling a bit, I realized I had not formulated a clear, concise definition that did not use the term ethics to describe itself. I had been a lawyer too long.

I re-read selected ideas and thoughts about ethics from a variety of voices: Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Kant, Bentham, Rand, the Bible, Rawls, Locke and numerous other heavy weight ethics thinkers. I reviewed meta-ethics, rational ethics, normative ethics, applied ethics, descriptive ethics, moral ethics, and scores of other philosophies that all used ethics in their titles.

I knew that the word “law” did not belong in the definition of ethics. Written laws, though they reflect societal values, are not ethical standards. Abiding by the law may keep you from going to jail, but it does not necessarily follow that your behavior is ethical.

The reverse is also true. Breaking a law, for example through civil disobedience, may put you in jail, but you may have acted ethically.

Ethics is a series of beliefs and principles held by a person or group about how to determine which human inter-actions they believe are right or wrong. These core beliefs are often interconnected and overlap with other value systems, religious views, legal systems, philosophies, social conventions and moral codes.
Each of us adheres, to a greater or lesser extent, to one or more of these ethical constructs. Most of the time, these beliefs define the ethical parameters of our thinking and behavior. We have few quandaries.

An ethical dilemma occurs when a person’s ethical beliefs do not provide a clear enough resolution to the problem he or she faces.

I want to have a conversation with you and other readers about those ethical dilemmas.

I look forward to hearing from you the readers about ethical issues such as the following:

You’re a well educated, experienced professional who has done considerable writing in your career. Your son wants to get into one of the UC schools. While a good test taker, he has never excelled at writing essays. He asks you to look at his essay. You think it’s dreadful. How much help do you give him? Point out obvious problems? Do an outline for him? Re-write the paper? Let him just hand it in and take his chances? Do you think that your help might allow your son to be admitted over another student with the same grades whose father and mother are not professionals and could not assist him with the essay?

This example illustrates a true ethical problem because the range of choices allows you to test your ethical beliefs against a concrete problem.
That’s what we will be doing in this column: examining our ethical beliefs by examining problems readers pose.

Benjamin Bycel is an attorney and writer. He was the founding Executive Director of the Los Angeles Ethics Commission and of the newly reconstituted Connecticut Ethics office. He serves as an expert witness in cases dealing with political and legal ethics.

How You are a Big Picture Thinker or Detail-Oriented Affects Your Values

Tools To Get The Job Done Fast

Are You a Big Picture Thinker or Detail-Oriented?

By Eva Rykrsmith | Posted on March 17, 2011

 

They say that there are two types of people – the ‘big picture people’ and the ‘details people.’ The big picture people tend to be creative, strategic, and visionary… but they can also be messy, disorganized, and forgetful. On the other hand, the details people are conscientious, planful, and exacting… but can lack perspective or fail to prioritize. These two types tend to complement each other and work together very well. You’ll often find this division in partnerships and many times the CEO is a big picture person while the COO and the CFO are the details people.

But what if your role requires both strategic thinking and attention to detail? Most people are naturally more skilled at one or the other, and there are a lucky few who do both equally well. Whether you have good attention to detail or whether you can see the big picture easily and clearly is generally part of your personality. But it can also be a learned skill, if you wish to develop it. There are systems and processes that can help you override your natural tendencies when needed.

In my next two blog posts, I will go over some tips on the systems and tools you can use to develop your missing skill. In the meantime, think about whether you are more skilled at the strategic thinking or paying attention to details. While you most likely know this already, here are some points that can promote that reflection:

Typical of the Big Picture Thinker

• You can quickly see patterns in complex problems.
• You like to come up with new ideas and new projects.
• You have a low tolerance for busywork, tedious errands, and filling out forms.
• You are great at outlining what needs to be done, but filling in the details can feel exhausting.
• You may have been described as right-brained.
• When you have taken the Myers-Briggs assessment, you were an N.

Typical of the Details Thinker

• You think about things in great detail and sometimes miss the big picture.
• While you are certainly smart, others may joke that you lack common sense.
• You would prefer to edit or tweak a plan than to come up with it from scratch.
• Highlighting study notes doesn’t work for you, because you end up highlighting everything.
• You may have a tendency to over-think things.
• You have excellent attention to detail.
• You may have been described as left-brained.
• When you have taken the Myers-Briggs assessment, you were an S.

Eva Rykrsmith

Eva Rykrsmith is an organizational psychology practitioner. Her passion lies in bringing a psychology perspective to the business world, with the mission of creating a high-performance environment. Follow her @EvaRykr.

NaturalNews.com

Real News Powered by the People Naturally

A new measure of intelligence: Big-picture thinking trumps narrow-minded expertise Tags: World, People, Big picture

(NaturalNews) Observing the various realms of science, medicine, experts and world events, I've come to the conclusion that our modern definition of "intelligence" (IQ) is seriously lacking. The label of "high IQ" is typically assigned to those who are experts in narrowly-defined fields such as disease pathology, pharmacology, particle physics, mathematics or other so-called "hard science" areas. And yet, it's not uncommon to see a high-level mathematics professor with an IQ of 175 chowing down on a processed hamburger laced with toxic chemical additives, while wearing clothes washed in carcinogenic mainstream laundry detergent.

The professor may be brilliant in mathematics, in other words, but he's unknowingly bathing his entire body in cancer-causing chemicals at the same time.

Not too bright.

Similarly, a typical conventional doctor thinks he knows about health, but he buys breakfast cereals made with genetically modified corn and doesn't even know that GMOs are bad for your health. A quantum physics professor wears antiperspirant deodorant and cologne products that contain powerful cancer-causing chemicals that are absorbed right through the skin. A pharmacist who is an expert in the world of drugs and synthetic chemicals has no clue that the common mineral zinc is crucial for proper immune function.

Highly-intelligent architects for some reason don't question the collapse of the WTC 7 building on 9/11 even though the official explanation of the collapse violates the laws of physics (a subject in which architects are well-versed). Chemists don't consider the chemistry of the toxic shampoos they put on their hair every day. Nor do many scientists think realistically about the toxicity of mercury fillings or the fluorosilicic acid ("fluoride") dumped into the public water supply. I could go on...

The point of all this is that there exists a huge gap in practical intelligence among the so-called "smartest" people in our society. I've spoken with countless doctors and conventional health care providers who are brilliant in their own fields and yet don't even know the basics of nutrition. So how can it be that a guy is so smart he can be the world's best brain surgeon, but when he goes home at night, he bathes his own brain and body in a sea of toxic chemicals consumed as additives in his processed food dinner?

Most people can't assimilate the big picture

What's lacking in these so-called "smart" people is the ability to see the bigger picture by assimilating information from a large number of seemingly unrelated sources. Or, stated in another way, even some of the most high-IQ people around can't see the big picture because they get lost in the details.

Your typical oncologist, for example, almost certainly can't hold an intelligent conversation about nutritional therapies to support immune function because he only thinks of antioxidants as "interfering" with the toxicity of his cancer poisons. Likewise, a typical virologist persistently looks at viruses as the cause of disease but forgets that viruses are opportunists which can only propagate when the terrain is sufficiently vulnerable. Thus, the best defense against invading microorganism is to change the terrain (the person being infected) rather than to try to rid the immediate area of all viruses.

Memorization is not intelligence

See, the very concept of "intelligence" in our society is way off the mark. It isn't intelligent to be able to memorize and regurgitate a huge number of facts and figures, yet this is precisely the measure of academic aptitude assessed in modern educational systems -- especially in law school and medical school. To function as a crude human database of facts and figures is not very useful in an age where handheld computers and mobile computing devices can do the same thing.

But what computers and search engines can't accomplish -- something that is uniquely reserved for intelligent species -- is the ability to assimilate information into a larger picture. It is, in other words, the ability to "connect the dots" and see patterns and trends in what might seem like chaos to others.

My favorite physicist Richard Feynman (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman) was an especially gifted pattern assimilator. He was able to look far beyond the conventional boundaries of particle physics and grasp many of the non-intuitive interconnections between matter, energy and the nature of reality itself.

On a more practical level, people like Gerald Celente and even Alex Jones are also phenomenally gifted pattern assimilators. It's not that they are ridiculously good at remembering a lot of facts and figures in one very narrow area of science or knowledge; rather it's the fact that these types of people are able to see patterns in world events and thereby interact with the world around them at a far higher level of understanding than most other people.

Whereas a typical journalist sees a headline that says, "GMO restrictions called unscientific" and thinks it's merely a story about how un-educated GMO opponents are, a more intelligent "pattern assimilator" person sees the same headline and understands the far deeper meaning it holds: That the GMO propaganda campaign is being framed in the language of "science" as a way to label reasonable opponents of GMOs as being somehow uneducated or stupid. But behind the fake science curtain, it's really just gimmicky marketing and a profit-driven agenda.

The pattern behind all that, of course, is the agenda to control the world's food supply and, soon thereafter, charge monopoly prices for seeds (TM) that farmers used to be able to save for free.

A few people are able to see the story behind the story. These people are the "meta-analyzers" of the world around them. They have what I call a "wide angle view" (a big picture view) where they can bring in observational data from a very large data set of observable events in order to infer greater understanding of the world around them.

Here are just a few of the many pattern assimilators who are better known:

Gerald Celente can see the big picture of world finance. He sees the signs of the slipping value of the dollar, the leveraged debt of world banks, the actions of the Fed, the Wall Street bailouts, the news propaganda from the financial sector, and so on -- and from all that, he correctly infers that a global debt bubble is approaching catastrophic collapse.

Many of his colleagues, on the other hand, even though they may achieve high scores on an IQ test, are scribbling away with their noses buried in the arcane mathematics of derivatives calculations, and they miss the big picture because their minds are too narrowly focused on a tiny slice of what's really happening. When the big financial collapse comes, they will be caught with their pants down, holding their pencils in their hands.

Author John Perkins is also another big-picture genius, in his own way, for being able to see the patterns of government actions on a global scaled. He's the author of the popular book "Economic Hit Men" (and also "Hoodwinked"), and he sees patterns in the world that nearly everyone else misses. You can see my interview with Perkins, by the way, at: http://naturalnews.tv/v.asp?v=83B1AF93091799E7CEB88C5C459A530B

On the nutrition front, Dr Richard Kunin is one of the most remarkable pattern assimilators you'll ever find. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Kunin) Here's a genius the world has largely overlooked.

Alex Jones is one of the more astonishing assemblers of patterns out of chaos. His ability to see the underlying patterns behind world events is truly amazing, and whether you agree with his conclusions or not, his mind is able to amass an extraordinarily large amount of data from many sectors (health freedom, police state actions, legislative efforts and so on) and then identify patterns that most other people would miss. You can find Alex on www.PrisonPlanet.com

Seeing the bigger picture doesn't make you any more popular

This list is by no means exhaustive. There are many genius-level pattern assimilators in our world. They are rarely recognized for their talents, however. If anything, those who "get" the big picture are often derided or criticized for doing so. Connecting too many dots, it seems, is dangerous for your reputation. Those who have the most success in the sciences (in particular), are the ones who keep their heads down and focus on their own tiny little corner of study without asking any of the really big questions like, "Hey, where did this grant money really come from?"

I consider myself something of a pattern assimilator, as I see patterns from one area of knowledge often reflected in another. For example, if our global economy is like a world body, what would fit the definition of a cancer tumor engaged in angiogenesis? The answers is corporations, because corporations hijack their own supply of resources (much like cancer tumors build a new blood supply), then grow to a large and dangerous size at which point they begin to replicate and set up branch offices all over the world where the tumor cycle is repeated. And just like cancer tumors, corporations ultimately threaten the lives of their hosts.

As an avid reader and student of human history, psychology and even quantum mechanics, I feel competent to discuss the history of philosophy as much as, say, the modern-day repeating of patterns of tyranny from World War II.

The most promising and fascinating area of human discovery about to be achieved, in my opinion, relates to the superposition of quantum physics and human consciousness. This will result in a paradigm-shattering shift in understanding the nature of our reality, with ripple effects that resound throughout our modern world. Once Earth's people come to realize, for example, that matter is consciousness (and that all consciousness is connected), the implications will require profound rethinking of things such as compassion for animals, religious beliefs and self identity. This is the really exciting stuff that's headed our way.

But we'll never get to a higher understanding of consciousness if we remain "experts" limited to our tiny alcoves of knowledge. To really function as intelligent members of a race that has been advertised as "advanced," we must expand not just the depth of our knowledge but the breadth of our understanding.

And that, of course, means understanding the interconnectedness of our being-ness. It is the interconnectedness that really matters, quite literally (ahem).

Let us hope that more members of the human species can learn to recognize the interconnectedness among not just people, plants and animals, but at another level the interconnectedness of mind, matter and energy, too. To gain understanding of this interconnectedness is -- to paraphrase quite a number of scientists and philosophers from human history -- to become closer to God. He who can see all interconnectedness in life and the cosmos is, of course, God Himself.

To see and recognize the patterns in the reality we apparently inhabit is, in my view, the most important next step necessary for the advancement of human intelligence. Importantly, this advancement cannot come from the sciences alone. It must involve a so-called "quantum leap" in consciousness.

Atheists Rejoice! Pope Francis Says You're O.K.

Salon / By Mary Elizabeth Williams

 

Atheists Rejoice! Pope Francis Says You're O.K.

 

It's not about being right, it's about being loving, the unusually tolerant Pontiff tells his flock.

 

 

 

Photo Credit: Emipress/Shutterstock.com

 

 

 

May 23, 2013  |  

 

It likely doesn’t matter much to the atheists of the world that — of all people — Pope Francis is on their side. But he is. And that’s a cool thing for all of us.
In a message delivered Wednesday via Vatican Radio, the new pontiff distinguished himself with a call for tolerance and a message of support – and even admiration – toward nonbelievers.

Naturally, a guy whose job it is to lead the world’s largest Christian faith is still going to come at his flock with a Jesus-centric message. But he’s taking it in an encouraging new direction. In his message, Francis dissed the apostles for being “a little intolerant” and said, “All of us have this commandment at heart: Do good and do not do evil. All of us. ‘But, Father, this is not (a) Catholic! He cannot do good.’ Yes, he can. He must. Not can: must.”

And the pope spoke of the need to meet each other somewhere on our on common ground. “This commandment for everyone to do good, I think, is a beautiful path towards peace. If we, each doing our own part, if we do good to others, if we meet there, doing good, and we go slowly, gently, little by little, we will make that culture of encounter: We need that so much. ‘But I don’t believe, Father, I am an atheist!’ But do good: we will meet one another there.” It was a deeper affirmation of his comments back in March, when he declared that the faithful and atheists can be “precious allies… to defend the dignity of man, in the building of a peaceful coexistence between peoples and in the careful protection of creation.”

That’s a message that’s vastly different from Catholicism’s traditional “We’re number one!” dogma. Six years ago, the Vatican reasserted the church’s stance that while there may be“elements of sanctification and truth” in other faiths, “that fullness of grace and of truth… has been entrusted to the Catholic Church.” In other words, close but no cigar, everybody else.

The pope was not, of course, addressing the non-believers of the world in his Wednesday sermon, or trying to win them over. Instead, he was telling his Catholics about the importance of cutting outsiders slack. And it’s a hugely important message for Christians to hear. It’s not about being right. It’s about being loving. And it’s a necessary concept, one that needs to be expressed again and again, in a world in which the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor  in Virginia is justifying his repulsive hate speech against gays and lesbians because “I’m a Christian, not because I hate anybody, but because I have religious values that matter to me.” Coming within a week when atheists have been stepping into the spotlighthere in America with their own messages of live-and-let-live tolerance, it’s downright refreshing to get a similar message from the biggest Christian in the world.

 

There are plenty of atheists out there who will no doubt take the pope’s message with a grain of salt or even flat-out disdain. The last thing somebody who doesn’t believe in heaven could possibly need is some guy in a funny hat telling them that they’re okay in God’s eyes anyway. But maybe, whatever we believe or don’t believe, we can consider that the man is on to something when he speaks about “the culture of encounter.”

Francis notes that the apostles were “closed off by the idea of possessing the truth,” an arrogant certainty that no one group currently has a monopoly on. Where we find each other is in practicing tolerance for our differences, and in finding the commonality of our values. “Doing good,” Francis says, “is not a matter of faith.”

It’s not that faith, for the faithful, doesn’t matter. It’s that belonging to a church isn’t what saves us. It’s belonging to each other.

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub.