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Tuesday, December 28, 2004 |
Are Dead Bodies Dangerous?
Alas, all Slate had to do to answer this question is link to an article from 1999.
A corpse is only a danger to public health if the victim died of an infectious disease. (In that case, the disease organisms can infect living people who come in contact with the cadaver.) But when someone dies of trauma, as most earthquake victims did, the decomposition process is harmless, if disgusting. Bacteria within the body--especially E. coli from the gut--immediately start to consume the flesh. Maggots hatched from eggs laid in the corpse also eat the cadaver, as can wasps, beetles, and other insects. Larger animals such as birds, rats, and dogs pick at unguarded corpses.
The bacteria involved in decomposition are not dangerous, because living people already carry identical germs in their own bodies. The maggots and other insects, though revolting, also constitute no threat to public health. Rats do host fleas, which can transmit typhus, typhoid fever, plague, and other diseases. But rats endanger public health wherever they mingle with people: They are no more harmful when they feed on corpses than at any other time.
6:03:40 PM Permalink
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Another Interview With Ray Kurzweil
Another Interview With Ray Kurzweil: "CNet is running an interview with Ray Kurzweil on the topic of his approach to healthy life extension. His regimen for longevity is not everyone's cup of tea (preferably green tea, Kurzweil advises, which contains extra antioxidants to reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer). And most people would scoff at his notion that emerging trends in medicine, biotechnology and nanotechnology open a realistic path to immortality--the central claim of a new book by Kurzweil and Dr. Terry Grossman, a physician and founder of a longevity clinic in Denver. 'I am serious about it,' said Kurzweil, a wiry man with few lines on his face for a 56-year-old. 'I think death is a tragedy. I think aging is a tragedy. And going beyond our limitations is what our species is all about.' The scoffing is something that we advocates must continue to work on - the science behind the path to much, much longer lives (if not immortality in the traditional meaning of the word) is very sound. Still, having serious people talk seriously about immortality is, I think, very good for the wider healthy life extension movement. It provides a much better outrageous extreme, a topic I explored..."
(Via Fight Aging!.)
5:43:52 PM Permalink
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Pat Buchanan jumps ship
Pat Buchanan jumps ship: "Writing in his syndicated column this week, Pat Buchanan asked President Bush to tell the American public the ‘Unvarnished Truth’ about the current situation in Iraq. For starters, Buchanan would like the President to tell us why we are really there. Referring to ‘One of the greatest bait-and switches in the history of warfare,' Buchanan again reminds us of the now-discredited reasons Bush and his neocon advisers at the Pentagon used as a pretext to war with Iraq: WMDs, ties to 9/11 and al-Qaida. Since the initial invasion, we have suffered over 1,300 servicemen and women killed, over 10,000 wounded, and enormous setbacks to our prestige and national reputation as a result of prisoner abuse scandals. Our risk of suffering another terrorist attack is greater than ever."
(Via Salon.com.)
4:24:07 PM Permalink
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Remembering Our Past
Remembering Our Past: "Few recall it now, I'm sure. But at a time when the U.S. Geological Survey is truly proving its worth--and when we should thank our stars that unlike poor countries, we have a way of tracking earthquakes and their consequences--it's worth recalling that the Gingrich Republicans actually wanted to dismantle this agency. I went on to Factiva and pulled down a Seattle Post-Intelligencer news story from February 20, 1995 about this. Here's an excerpt:
Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt is trying to save the federal agency that studies and forecasts the West's natural disasters from being swept away by a political earthquake.
Babbitt spent a rainy Saturday at the David A. Johnston Cascades Volcano Observatory here, seeking to spark resistance to plans by the House Republican leadership to eliminate the U.S. Geological Survey.
The Clinton administration's chief voice on public lands turned the tables on Republicans, who charged the Democrats with waging a 'war on the West' as they campaigned in last fall's election.
Babbitt argued here that the House Republican leadership, drawn from the East and South, is blind to the value of research into such Western perils as earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, and the effects of volcanic ash on aviation safety.
'The notion of abolishing the U.S. Geological Survey, for someone who lives in the West, is crazy,' Babbitt said. 'We have seen Mount St. Helens. We have experienced the Northridge (Calif.) earthquake. We have seen what happened in Kobe (Japan).
'These hazards are part of what the West is about, part of life on the Pacific Rim. We live with a rugged, restless earth, an earth created by volcanic and seismic activity. To me it is incomprehensible that the agency which studies these activities is on the hit list.'
It's incomprehensible to me, too, but these people were actually running Congress. Actually, come to think of it, they still are."
(Via Chris C. Mooney | The Intersection.)
3:54:46 PM Permalink
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© Copyright 2005 Steve Michel.
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