人与神

Nobel Prize for Medicine: Silence is golden for US laureates - AFP

U.S. scientists win Nobel for medicine - Reuters

(Extract from Reuters)

....won the 2006 Nobel Prize for medicine on Monday for their discovery of how
to switch off genes, a potential road to new treatments for diseases from
AIDS to blindness and cancer.

Through experiments with worms, the two showed that a double strand of ribonucleic acid, or RNA, the genetic messenger of the cell, can "silence" targeted genes in a process known as RNA interference (RNAi).

RNAi has grown quickly into a hot area of research for pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies, who see it as a promising way of tackling a range of conditions.

"Craig's and my work (concerned) why some genes get turned off," Fire told Reuters.
"We were trying to manipulate them and we found certain things could turn them off very efficiently ... Knowing the genes doesn't tell you what they do, so if you start to turn them off you can start to learn what they do."

The discoveries may lead to methods to stop gene expression in diseases such as cancer, slowing tumour growth.

"The discovery is already being used in clinical trials for viral diseases, for eye diseases, for cardiovascular metabolic diseases," Bertil Fredholm, a member of the
prize-giving Nobel Assembly of Stockholm's Karolinska Institute, told Reuters.

"But even more importantly, it is being used in every drug industry as a fundamental research tool," he added, saying RNAi has "invaded" laboratories
worldwide.

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I have to agree. This is another milestone since the discovery of the structure of DNA.

The possibility of a X-men might be within my life time.... Maybe not. From test tube babies, to designer babies, to cloning and now this. Men can and will enter a new stage of evolution. But as per all instances of Men trying to play God, this will be a start of a downward spiral. Call me a pessimist on this issue if you will.

Power corrupts the minds of petty beings.

Ignorance is a sin

Bishops reject Vatican abuse cover-up allegations

Monday October 2, 4:24 PM

By Deborah Haynes

LONDON (Reuters) - Roman Catholic bishops in England and Wales rejected as "false and entirely misleading" a BBC documentary about what it said was a cover-up of child sexual abuse under a system enforced by Pope Benedict XVI in his previous job.

Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, head of the Catholic Church in the two countries, plans to write to Mark Thompson, director general of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) this week to protest about the programme, aired late on Sunday.

The documentary, by "Panorama", the BBC's flagship current affairs show, examined what it described as a secret document written in 1962 that sets out a procedure for dealing with child sex abuse within the Catholic Church.

The document, called "Crimen Sollicitationis", imposes an oath of secrecy on the child victim, the priest dealing with the allegation and any witness. Breaking that oath would result in excommunication, the BBC said.

"The procedure was intended to protect a priest's reputation until the church had investigated, but in practice it can offer a blueprint for cover-up," the BBC documentary said.

"The man in charge of enforcing it for 20 years was Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the man made Pope last year," reporter Colm O'Gorman said in the programme "Sex Crimes and the Vatican".
Ratzinger was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Vatican department that enforces doctrine, from 1981 until his election as Pope in April, 2005.

The Vatican said on Monday it was studying the transcript of the show but had no immediate comment.

Responding to the documentary, Archbishop Vincent Nichols of Birmingham, central England, said the BBC should be "ashamed of the standard of the journalism used to create this unwarranted attack on Pope Benedict XVI".

He said there were two strands to the documentary, one highlighting cases of child abuse by priests -- a crime the Catholic Church dealt with seriously, carefully and with transparency -- the other attacking the Vatican.

"This aspect of the programme is false and entirely misleading," Nichols said in a statement endorsed by the bishops of England and Wales.

"It is false because it misrepresents two Vatican documents and uses them quite misleadingly in order to connect the horrors of child abuse to the person of the Pope." The second document cited by the BBC was a 2001 update of the original text.

The public broadcaster defended its documentary.

"The protection of children is clearly an issue of the strongest public interest," it said in a statement, responding to the bishops' criticism. "The BBC stands by tonight's 'Panorama' programme, and invites viewers to make up their own minds once they've seen it."
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By making and broadcasting this programme, BBC had lent weight to the conspiracy theorists who have long accused the Catholic Faith of covering up for their clergy over their abuses.

Accuracy of accusations and the supporting documents will be unlikely to see the light unless there is a law suit. But then, there is no guarantee that the outcome will be the truth. The Catholic Faith is a powerful corporation which transcends a lot of jurisdiction. And many people have a lot of vested interest to maintain the integrity of this system. In the unlikely event that of a verdict for BBC, the lawsuits and backlash against the Faith would be tremendous.

The Faith by itself is innocent, just that its name is tainted by the people who managed the Faith. What else is new.

People like to quote that “ignorance is bliss”. I, for one, am sure that this is only a fallacy for people who, for some reasons, cannot handle the truth and its consequences. It’s a human tendency to ignore matters that does not affect them but does that mean we should let the affected suffer on their own ?

Running away will only cause the issue to come back and bite your ass.

This story is one such good example.

Related Link : Bishops condemn BBC abuse claim (2/10/06)