Monday, July 29, 2002|
There is now a criminal investigation underway in Korea regarding a claim that a woman there is pregnant with a cloned human embryo [here]. This is the second such claim this year. The first was reported in April by the Italian fertility doctor Severino Antinori. All ethics arguments aside, there is no law or step that can be taken to stop human cloning. The desire to reproduce exceeds fears of repudiation. The best we can do is to try and insure that cloning is done safely. Enforcing a cloning ban will be much like enforcing drug laws is today; it will cost a lot of money and ultimately be very ineffectual. The most we can hope to do is to keep the best interests of the cloned babies in the forefront and insure that cloning is performed as safely as possible. |
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The New York Times has taken the exciting step of digitizing every issue published since 1851 [here]. The digitized versions will be available to libraries for a subscription fee. This is a great step toward putting information at the world's finger tips. Now we just have to figure out how to fund making this information available on the web. 11:37:56 AM 
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Last night, I came home to find my cat up in a tree trying to get to some baby robbins in their nest. The baby robbins were not yet able to fly, but were fleeing the nest and dropping to the ground. I scared the cat away and contacted PAWS to see what I should do. To my surprise, I was told that I should put the birds back in the nest. Apparently it is an old wive's tale that parent birds will reject the babies if they have been handled by humans. In fact, birds have a poor sense of smell and can't tell that the babies have been handled at all. There is more information about songbirds [here] and what to do if you find a baby bird [here]. 11:26:56 AM
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Last update: 8/1/2002; 11:14:58 AM .
