Monitor The Strategic Trends

Introduction:

The threat of germ warfare has brought to the forefront long-forgotten diseases like plague, anthrax, and smallpox.  Recent television news programs have highlighted secret projects in the former Soviet Union to develop antibiotic-resistant strains of genetically engineered viruses and bacteria.  The U.S. launched a military attack against a drug manufacturing plant in the Sudan, accusing it of acting as a cover for the production of biological weapons.  The potential for a biological attack against the United States was actually increased with this action, rather than decreased because those involved in terrorism see it as a matter of honor to avenge their losses.

AIDS continues to decimate huge segments of the population in Africa, spreading from central into southern Africa.  Some doctors in the region claim that AIDS will kill from 20 to 30 percent of the populations, leaving nearly 8.2 million orphaned children in the wake.  Thailand also reports that the AIDS epidemic is far worse there than initially reported, nearly three times the original estimate.

A new resilient form of tuberculosis has struck in Russia, spreading especially rapidly through the unsanitary prison systems.  It has proven a serious health threat to many Russians, because of the closed environments during winter months which cause the disease to spread.  In addition, many doctors in Russia favor the old method of rest in a sanitarium, rather than using western drug treatments.  It remains to be seen which method will prove more successful.

South Africa has also suffered an epidemic outbreak of TB. Millions of poor, mainly black South Africans are infected with TB.  The epidemic is worse in the rural areas where sanitation is lacking.  It is feared that although the strain of TB in South Africa does respond to drug treatment, many patients stop taking their medication when they begin to feel better and risk incubating a new resistant disease.

The B.R.A.I.N. Project April 02, 2013

The Illusion Of The Cladogram February 26, 2013

Making A Whole New World February 26, 2013

The Genie In The Vessel February 26, 2013

Neanderthal Clones and Biotech January 22, 2013

Welding Machines and Man November 27, 2012

Viruses Viruses Everywhere October 02, 2012

The Astonishing Powers of "Junk" DNA September 04, 2012

Anthrax in Russia, Hantavirus in Yosemite August 28, 2012

Biometrics Go Form-Fitting August 21, 2012

Ultrasound Offers Breakthrough In Gene Therapy August 14, 2012

Ebola In Uganda, Jurassic Germs In Georgia July 31, 2012

First International AIDS Conferences Opens in D.C. Since 1990 July 24, 2012

Modifying Genes in Cows and Kids June 26, 2012

Building Powerful Robots With God's Materials June 19, 2012

Computer Chips Invented To Control Muscle Cells June 12, 2012

Preparing For An Outbreak, Zombie Or Otherwise June 05, 2012

Science & The Bible DNA: Encode in Code by Marc Hodges

Science & The Bible Epigenetics: Part 2 by Marc Hodges

Choose This Day: Life or Death by Mary Gehl

The Hybrid Age by Dr. Thomas R. Horn

Transhumanism and the Enhancement of Man More Than Human by Dr. Martin Erdmann

(Un)Natural: The Ethics Of Transgenics by Steve Elwart, Senior Analyst Koinonia Institute

Nanotech Vs. Superbugs by Amy Joy Hess, Research Analyst, Koinonia Institute

Biotechnology: Escaping the Laws of Sin and Death? by Patrick Wood, Research Associate/IDB and Editor of The August Review

Biotech Update: The Sorcerers New Apprentice? by Chuck Missler

The World's First Phony Stem Cells: Another Cloning ''Breakthrough'' by Wesley J. Smith

Biotech or Bioterror? Of Mice and Men by Chuck Missler

Behold a Pale Horse Avian Flu by Chuck Missler

Biblical Implications: Cloning Part 2 by Chuck Missler

Behold A Pale Horse: Emergent and Deliberate Diseases by Chuck Missler

An Unnecessary Epidemic? AIDS: The Untold Story by Dr. Stanley Monteith, M.D.

Global Pestilence: Outbreak! by Chuck Missler

News Sources

Tiny Robot Flies Like A Fly - A robot as small as a housefly has managed the delicate task of flying and hovering the way the actual insects do. “This is a major engineering breakthrough, 15 years in the making,” says electrical engineer Ronald Fearing, who works on robotic flies at the University of California, Berkeley. The device uses layers of ultrathin materials that can make its wings flap 120 times a second, which is on a par with a housefly’s flapping rate. This “required tremendous innovation in design and fabrication techniques,” he adds.

Scientists Create Hybrid Flu That Can Go Airborne - As the world is transfixed by a new H7N9 bird flu virus spreading through China, a study reminds us that a different avian influenza—H5N1—still poses a pandemic threat. A team of scientists in China has created hybrid viruses by mixing genes from H5N1 and the H1N1 strain behind the 2009 swine flu pandemic, and showed that some of the hybrids can spread through the air between guinea pigs. The results are published in Science1.

Brain-Computer Interfaces Inch Closer To Mainstream - “Some crude brain-reading products already exist, letting people play easy games or move a mouse around a screen.” But the products commercially available today will soon look archaic. “To really be able to understand what is going on with the brain today you need to surgically implant an array of sensors into the brain,” said John Donoghue, a neuroscientist and director of the Brown Institute for Brain Science.

Scientists Print Self-Assembling “Living Tissue” - Researchers have created networks of water droplets that mimic some properties of cells in biological tissues. Using a three-dimensional printer, a team at the University of Oxford, UK, assembled tiny water droplets into a jelly-like material that can flex like a muscle and transmit electric signals like chains of neurons.

Guiding Stem Cells Into Damaged Hearts With Mri And Ultrasonics - Stem-cell therapy for damaged hearts is a brilliant idea whose time has not yet come. The problem: no way to ensure against faulty initial placement of the stem cells. Stanford’s Sam Gambhir, PhD, MD, who heads Stanford medical school’s Department of Radiology may have found a way around it.

Israeli Sources: Chemical Weapons Used In Syria - Chemical weapons were used on civilians in Syria on Tuesday, Israel security sources confirmed. These sources did not, however, know whether it was Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime or the opposition forces fighting to topple him that used the weapons of mass destruction, after each party accused the other.

Pentagon’s Darpa Researchers Learn To Control Rat’s Brain Over Internet - Government mind control may not be as farfetched as it sounds: after 15 years of research, scientists have found a way to transmit information from one brain to another, thereby controlling the thoughts of its test subject. Scientists have successfully captured the thoughts of a rat in Brazil and electronically transmitted them through the Internet to the brain of a rat in the US.

New Retinal Implant Gives Sight To Nine Blind People - German and Hungarian researchers have brought sight to nine blind patients with hereditary retinal degeneration, using a subretinally implanted microelectronic chip with 1500 pixels. The chip size is approximately 3mm x 3mm and is surgically implanted below the fovea (area of sharpest vision in the retina). It provides a diamond-shaped visual field of 15 degrees diagonally across chip corners.

3D-Printed Ears That Look And Act Like The Real Thing - Cornell bioengineers and Weill Cornell Medical College physicians have created an artificial ear that looks and acts like a natural ear, giving new hope to thousands of children born with a congenital deformity called microtia. They used 3-D printing and injectable gels made of living cells to fashion ears that are practically identical to a human ear. Over a three-month period, these flexible ears grew cartilage to replace the collagen used to mold them. “The novel ear may be the solution reconstructive surgeons have long wished for to help children born with ear deformity”, said co-lead author Dr. Jason Spector, director of the Laboratory for Bioregenerative Medicine and Surgery and associate professor of plastic surgery at Weill Cornell.

Gene Therapy Cures Diabetes in Dogs - Researchers at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona (UAB) have succeeded in completely curing type 1 diabetes in dogs with a single session of gene therapy by introducing a "glucose sensor" into muscle. This is the first time the disease has been cured in large animals, a fundamental step towards applying the therapy in humans. The dogs recovered their health and no longer show symptoms of the disease. In some cases, monitoring continued for over four years, with no recurrence of symptoms.

3-D Printing At The Nano-Level - Nanoscribe GmbH, a spin-off of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), has developed the world's fastest 3D printer of micro- and nanostructures, the German company claims. With this printer, three-dimensional objects, often smaller than the diameter of a human hair, can be manufactured with minimum time consumption and maximum resolution. The printer is based on a novel laser lithography method. Nanoscribe systems are used to print polymer waveguides reaching data transfer rates of more than 5 terabits per second.

Humans Aren't Just Large Lab Rats - Biomedical researchers have long used mice in the laboratory to learn about human diseases and to test treatments. A new study finds, though, that mouse models do not accurately reflect the complexity of human responses, especially to serious inflammatory stress. One of the authors of the new study, Harvard Medical School professor Ronald Tompkins, said the results do not mean that mice should not be used in lab research, but rather that "we need to recognize that simple model systems do not reproduce complex human disease."

Chinese Biologists Derive Neural Stem Cells From Urine - Biologists in China have published a study detailing how they transformed common cells found in human urine into neural stem cells that can be used to create neurons and glial brain cells. The find holds huge potential for the rapid testing and development of new treatments for neurodegenerative disorders. In one experiment the pluripotent stem cells formed in Petri dishes after 12 days, which is about half the time it normally takes for them to form. Eventually, neural progenitor cells were cultured to become neurons and astrocyte and oligodendrocyte glial cells. Though the team did not definitively prove that the cells would have less mutations in the long run, it did suggest the method could provide a good alternative to using embryonic stem cells to build new neurons.

Controversial Bird Flu Research To Begin Again - Bird flu experts on Wednesday ended a voluntary halt on research into how to make the deadly H5N1 avian influenza capable of spreading to mammals, and perhaps rapidly to people. The international moratorium began last year following uproar over two studies that looked at genes that might make the bird flu readily transmissible between ferrets, a mammal model for infection from person-to- person. But 40 experts from nine nations now say they're ending the moratorium, citing international research safeguards that are in place against the release of their flu bugs to the public.

Gene Therapists Treating Children With Deadly Brain Disease - Children born with a rare, genetic brain disorder that causes severe atrophy and often leads to death within three years, are still alive 7 to 10 years after being treated with an experimental gene therapy, a study showed. The findings, published today in the journal Science Translational Medicine, described the procedure of inserting a virus containing healthy genes into the children's brains through holes drilled into their skulls. The 13 children, the youngest of whom was 3-months-old and diagnosed with the disorder while in the womb, were treated at the Cell and Gene Therapy Center at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in Stratford. The children are among only about 600 people in the world with the disorder, called Canavan disease, a nerve cell-destroying condition marked by brain atrophy, seizures, vision loss, physical disability and ultimately death. There is no treatment or cure.

Nose Cells Help Paralyzed Dogs Walk - The pets had all suffered spinal injuries which prevented them from using their back legs. The Cambridge University team is cautiously optimistic the technique could eventually have a role in the treatment of human patients. The study is the first to test the transplant in "real-life" injuries rather than laboratory animals. For decades scientists have thought OECs might be useful in spinal cord repair. Many of the dogs that received the transplant showed considerable improvement and were able to walk on a treadmill with the support of a harness.

Emory University Holds Conference on 'Zombethics' - Neuroscientist Karen Rommelfanger's husband got her hooked on a TV series about zombies, "The Walking Dead." She had resisted, but finally succumbed during an episode on zombie neurobiology set at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. "He called out to me, 'You've got to see this,'" said Rommelfanger, who directs the Neuroethics Program at Emory University's Center for Ethics in Georgia. Fictional scientists onscreen were gathered around a glorified brain scanner, discussing the "you" part of a brain, where thoughts reside, and whether that part was gone. Harvard psychiatrist Steve Schlozman will be among the panelists at the Emory conference. In a whimsical video, he describes what a zombie brain autopsy might look in terms of modern scientific knowledge. "This is exactly the kinds of questions we talk about in neuroethics," Rommelfanger said. "Is the brain the seat of personhood? What does 'brain dead' really mean?" It wasn't long before the Center for Ethics coined the term "zombethics" and created a public forum to discuss the issue.

Polio Alive and Kicking In Nigeria - On the occasion of the World Polio Day this Wednesday, the globe celebrated a 63 percent decline in the number of new cases of the Wild Polio Virus (WPV), from 467 at this time last year to 171 this year. Polio cases have decreased by over 99 per cent since 1988, from an estimated 350,000 cases in more than 125 endemic countries to 650 reported cases in 2011. In 2012, only parts of three countries in the world remain endemic for the disease - the smallest geographic area in history - and case numbers of WPV Type 3 (WPV3) are down to lowest-ever levels. However, the situation in Nigeria is different. Nigeria is the only country out of the three remaining polio endemic countries to record increase in cases with 36 percent - from 62 cases this time last year to 97 cases today.

UK Identifies New SARS-Like Virus - A new respiratory illness similar to the Sars virus that spread globally in 2003 and killed hundreds of people has been identified in a man who is being treated in Britain. The 49-year-old man, who was transferred to a London hospital by air ambulance from Qatar, is the second person confirmed with the coronavirus. The first case was a patient in Saudi Arabia who has since died. A doctor at the UK's Health Protection Agency said there was no specific evidence of the virus spreading from person to person and he had no advice for the public or returning travellers.

"3-Parent" Babies Consultation Starts - A public consultation has been launched in the U.K. to discuss the ethics of using three people to create one healthy baby. About one in 200 children are born with faulty mitochondria - the tiny power stations which provide energy to every cell in the body. Most show little or no symptoms, but in the severest cases the cells of the body are starved of energy. It can lead to muscle weakness, blindness, heart failure and in some cases can be fatal. Mitochondria are passed on from the mother's egg to the child - the father does not pass on mitochondria through his sperm. The idea is to add a healthy woman's mitochondria into the mix when the mother's mitochondria are defective, in a sense giving children three parents. Since mitochondria have their own DNA, the genetic blueprints that actually make the baby would involve only the mother and father. The consultation will run until December 7th and the conclusions will be presented next spring

Child in Colorado Diagnosed With Bubonic Plague - The parents of 7-year-old Sierra Jane Downing thought she had the flu when she felt sick days after camping in southwest Colorado. It wasn't until she had a seizure that her father knew something was seriously wrong and rushed her to a hospital in their town of Pagosa Springs. She had a 107-degree fever, and doctors were baffled by the cause. The Downings eventually learned their daughter was ill with bubonic plague, a disease that wiped out one-third of Europe in the 14th century but is now exceedingly rare and treatable if caught early. Federal health officials say they are aware of two other confirmed cases of plague in the U.S. (in New Mexico and Oregon) so far this average year. None were fatal.

The Efficient Storage Capacity of DNA - Harvard scientists have broken the record for the data storage density in DNA, having "successfully stored 5.5 petabits of data - around 700 terabytes - in a single gram of DNA, smashing the previous DNA data density record by a thousand times." Nothing made by humans can approach these kind of specs. Who would have thought that DNA can store data more efficiently than anything we've created. But DNA wasn't designed - right?

NIH Traces Killer Bug - Researchers unraveled a medical mystery that left six patients dead last year at the National Institutes of Health's elite research hospital, demonstrating that gene sequencing can help in the fight against hospital-acquired infections. The NIH researchers' sleuth work - they stalked a deadly strain of antibiotic-resistant Klebsiella pneumonia through 18 patients at the agency's 243-bed Clinical Center in Bethesda, Md - was detailed in a study published online Wednesday by Science Translational Medicine. The scientists sequenced the genes of the microbial invader to reveal its exact path from patient to patient until the deadly outbreak was contained in December.

West Nile Virus On The Rise - West Nile virus is spreading faster than it has in years, and the pace of the mosquito-borne disease is getting worse, health officials report. Texas is getting the worst of it. Sixteen people have died of West Nile virus this summer in Texas - out of 381 cases of the illness in the state. "We're on track to have the worst year ever," says Christine Mann, spokeswoman for the Department of State Health Services in Austin. Nationwide there have been at least 693 cases and 28 deaths, according to the CDC and state numbers released Tuesday. That's up from 390 cases and eight deaths last week.

Gonorrhea Strain Resistant To Almost All Antibiotics - Federal health officials took steps Thursday to head off the emergence of a new gonorrhea "superbug" that's resistant to standard antibiotics. Gonorrhea, a sexually transmitted disease that infects 700,000 Americans a year, already has become resistant to all but one class of antibiotics and could soon become untreatable, federal health officials warned. The new CDC guidelines call for withholding a potent oral antibiotic now commonly used to treat the infection. Instead, doctors should use an injectable form to which the gonorrhea bacteria seems less likely to develop resistance, along with a second type of antibiotic pills.

Neurosurgeons Stopped From Experimentally Infecting Patients - A prominent UC Davis neurosurgeon was banned from performing medical research on humans after he and an underling were accused of experimenting on dying brain cancer patients without university permission. Dr. J. Paul Muizelaar, who earns more than $800,000 a year as chairman of the department of neurological surgery, was ordered last fall to "immediately cease and desist" from any research involving human subjects, according to documents obtained by The Sacramento Bee. Also banned was the colleague, Dr. Rudolph J. Schrot, an assistant professor and neurosurgeon who has worked under Muizelaar the past 13 years. Documents show the surgeons got the consent of three terminally ill patients with malignant brain tumors to introduce bacteria into their open head wounds, under the theory that postoperative infections might prolong their lives. Two of the patients developed sepsis and died, the university later determined.

First Complete Computer Model of Bacterial DNA - A microbe that causes sexually transmitted infections now has a much more awe-inspiring claim to fame: It has become the first organism to be completely simulated by a computer model. The bug in question, Mycoplasma genitalium, is a good candidate for scientists to reconstruct using a computer, because it is truly tiny, with only 525 genes. (By comparison, humans have about 20,500 genes.) This accomplishment opens the door for creating more complicated virtual organisms, potentially accelerating research and making it possible for bioengineers to use computers to design organisms, said lead researcher Markus Covert, a professor of bioengineering at Stanford University.

A Lotion That Can Fix Your Genes - Future genetic therapy could be as simple as applying a topical lotion, with nanoscale compounds soaking through your epidermis to tweak your DNA. This new class of nucleic acid structures could guard against some types of skin cancer, according to researchers at Northwestern University. While a skin cream can be a useful way to target certain skin-related disorders, it can only go so deep. This new breakthrough from Amy S. Paller and Chad Mirkin at Northwestern combines chemistry and dermatology to break on through. It uses agglomerations of nucleic acids, each about 1,000 times smaller than the diameter of a human hair. When dispersed in a topical lotion, the nucleic acid clumps can breach all the skin's layers. Once they're inside the cells, they can selectively turn off disease-causing genes.

2nd Airborne Avian Flu Paper Published - The H5N1 virus, which has killed nearly 60% of about 600 people known to have been infected since 2003, could pose a great public-health risk if an airborne version of it gets loose, able to spread rapidly from human to human. Two of the mutations the scientists created already circulate in birds and people, researchers said. The findings appear in the journal Science, which last Thursday published several papers and commentaries about the virus—also known as H5N1. The genetic-alteration paper in Science is one of two experiments whose planned publication sparked fears it would give terrorists a blueprint for making a biological weapon. The first such paper described an alternative genetic technique for creating a pandemic version of H5N1 and appeared in Nature in May.

BioTech: The Sorcerer's New Apprentice - Audio CD - Chuck Missler Updated April 2006! Chuck Missler surveys some of the most promising prospects and reviews the types of ventures emerging. He also reveals some of the concerns emerging among the informed, and includes some of the provocative Biblical implications. Click for more information - Audio CD with MP3

BioTech: The Sorcerer's New Apprentice - Audio CD - Chuck Missler Updated April 2006! Chuck Missler surveys some of the most promising prospects and reviews the types of ventures emerging. He also reveals some of the concerns emerging among the informed, and includes some of the provocative Biblical implications. Click for more information - Audio CD with MP3