(Do Not Alter)

CODE BREAKING

By Walter Witschey

Code breaking has recently become the most important human scientific endeavor since landing on the moon.

Each of us carries a marvelous coded message in our cells: in sugar-phosphate molecules called DNA, we carry the equivalent of 220 Richmond telephone books of information. Every cell in our body carries a copy.

A wide array of laboratories and researchers are working on breaking the code. This effort is the Human Genome Project, a 15-year international effort...

It was not until 1953 that Francis Crick and James Watson...demonstrated that DNA was a molecule that looked like a spiral staircase--the famous double helix.

The genetic code for humans has three billion steps, or base pairs. Long strings of these base pairs form genes--the individual messages about how to build and operate a human organism in all its complexity...

Of course, locating and identifying the 3 billion base pairs and the 60,000 genes they spell out is just the first step. Well into the next century researchers will be trying to decode the (entire genetic message). Richmond Virginia.

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"Living organisms and their constituent cells are not heat engines but are transducers which convert the chemical energy of foodstuffs--energy ultimately captured by green plants (see Isaiah 40:6-8) from SUNLIGHT--into electrical, mechanical, osmotic, or other forms of useful work.

Each living cell is equipped with an efficient and complex series of devices for transferring energy. THE RADIANT ENERGY OF SUNLIGHT IS THE MAJOR SOURCE OF ENERGY FOR ALL THE FLIFE FORMS ON THIS PLANET.

As their biological functions are performed, the energy ultimately flows to the environment in the dissipated, "useless" form of heat." Biological Principles and Processes, by C. Vilee...

...Which means that Life is merely passing through this universe, a fact reflected in the words: Become passers by. (Gospel of Thomas 42). The general law of Thermodynamics, by revealing what energy is doing, reveals what God is doing: Entering Their rest. In the process God (Nature) is transforming the entire Life-force of this universe into pure spiritual energy--pure Thought--and will at last draw the whole of it through the vortex of this world into the eternal world that lies beyond. The material world is the field (the illusion if you will) into which Life has descended, and through which Life is passing. We can see it more fully when we compare the almost purely spiritual dimensions of the Oracle (the Universal Tree of Life) with the Watson-Crick model of the DNA molecule, out of whose very interior the Code of Life has been passed from the beginning, from life-form to life-form, across the entire creation process, to this present day. It began with the words: Let there be Light (Life)...(Genesis 1:3).

ROCKS PUT LIFE'S ORIGINS BACK

A BILLION YEARS

Washington__Scientist studying Australian rocks have found evidence that primitive forms of life existed 2.7 billion years ago--a billion years earlier than had been previously shown.

"The molecular fossils we report are the oldest preserved biological molecules in the world," said researcher Jochen J. Brocks, of the University of Sydney And the Australian Geological Survey Organization.

"This age should provide a new calibration point for molecular clocks AND THE UNIVERSAL TREE OF LIFE," Brocks and fellow researchers report today in the journal Science.

The finding pushes back evidence of life to the Archean era, the period from the beginning of Earth to about 2.5 billion years ago. (See Genesis 1:1-3).

"It was unknown that complex molecules can survive such a long period of time on Earth," Brocks said in response to questions via e-mail. "We opened up a window into a time when almost nothing was known about life on Earth and provide a tool that will multiply our knowledge about this shadow land," he said. The Associated Press.

THE DESCENT OF CREATION, FROM THE LIGHTEST ELEMENTS OVER TIME TO THE HEAVIEST, FROM THE COSMOS TO THE GALAXY, TO THE FORMATION OF THE SOLAR SYSTEM AND OUR OWN PLANET EARTH.

THE GOD GENE GOVERNING THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN CONSCIOUSNESS, FROM ABOVE TO BELOW AND BACK AGAIN

From the moment of Creation (E = mc2), from the heavens (and eventually the Sun) above to the Earth below. (Each descent represents a separate dimension of human consciousness--Length, Breadth, Depth, AND HEIGHT). From the higher world of Emanation, through the descending worlds of Creation and Formation to the physical world, the world of Action, the Life-Force descended. The Tree of Life is a reflection (a map if you will) of that descent. It represents a single section cut out of the greater section of the Universal Code of Life.

 

The four nucleotides are held together by simple bonds of Hydrogen whose lightness further suggests the spiritual forces that also reconcile the Four corners of the Oracle to each other. And then all Four together are connected by a descending and ascending ladder, or spiral, called the Double Helix, whose attraction, again like the Tree of Life, is divided into positive and negative, or Male and Female sides; and whose genetic code was discovered to be--again like the Tree of Life--a Triple code. Which means that the Four nucleotides, A always pairing with T, and G with C, must always team up in pairs of Three (or in Three pairs) in order to transmit its complete sets of instructions to the next cell...

And just as the DNA molecule appears mysteriously out of the nucleus of the cell just before it is ready to divide, so the mystery of (the Tree of) Life is appearing to us again, just before this age splits and becomes the age-to-come...

FROM ONE, ANOTHER.

We understand the figure of Infinity, or eternity, here, as well as the figure of that number on the Tree of Life--Eight--which symbolizes, not only the events that will surround the birth of the coming age but the whole paradigm shift toward which the mind of humanity itself is presently moving.

"Science, the interpreter of the laws of nature and of the principles underlying them, cannot help us in our search to solve the mystery of time and space (into which the laws and precepts of biology are mirror images). The proper domain of science is the physical universe.

The modern archangel has no wings. An invincible giant, when her feet touch the earth. Her initiative, wisdom, and penetrating intelligence are all gone the moment she rises above the soil; and though it be only a few inches, upon this battlefield she is overcome at once--faint and almost inanimate in an unequal battle because she could not readjust her energies to new conditions. At present science is a child of the earth and waits for her redeemer, through whom she will be born-again a child from heaven." The Hidden Treasures of the Ancient Qabalah, by Elias Gewurz, p.74.

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"Moses, who had early reached the very summits of philosophy, and who had learnt from the oracles of God the most numerous and important of the principles of nature, was well aware that it is indispensable that in all existing things there must be an active cause, and a passive subject; and that the active cause is the Intellect of the Universe...superior to virtue and superior to science, superior even to abstract good or abstract beauty; while the passive subject is something inanimate and incapable of motion by an intrinsic power of its own, but having been set in motion, and fashioned, and endowed with life by the Intellect, became transformed into that most perfect work, this world. And those who describe it as being uncreated, do, without being aware of it, cut off the most useful and necessary of all the qualities which tend to produce piety, namely Providence...

"There are some people who have the world in admiration rather than the maker of the world, pronounce it to be without beginning and everlasting, while with impious falsehood they postulate in God a vast inactivity: whereas on the contrary we ought to be astonished at His (Their) powers...and not to assign to the (material) world a disprportionate majesty." Philo Judeaus, On the Creation.

Typical of these is John Rennie, the editor in chief of Scientific American, who, in a recent article in the same journal entitled "Answers To Creationist Nonsense" (July, 2002), says: "Opponants of evolution want to make a place for creationism by tearing down real science, but their arguments don't hold up." "This argument from design," he says disparagingly. And then: "...Science welcomes the possibility of evolution resulting from forces beyond natural selection. Yet these forces must be natural; they cannot be attributed to actions of mysterious creative intelligences whose existence, in scientific terms, is unproved." (p.82). (We can see Rennie looking at those around him, arms folded, shaking his head in self assuredness as if he had just solved by fiat the mystery of existence) "They lobby for creationist ideas such as Intelligent Design," he says haughtily . (p.83). "Intelligent Design offers few answers," he continues. "For instance, when and how did a Designing Intelligence intervene in life's history?...By creating the first D.N.A.? the first cell? the first human?" (P.85). "In short, creationists are not giving the scientific world good reason to take them seriously."

I'd say that the emergence of the Great Dragon, the Leviathan, is a good reason to take both creationists and the Creator serious. It forms the matrix out of which all biological life was formed:

Thus the lesson here for Science, and for all those who shall assist in governing the age-to-come, is a stern one. The World has seen with its own eyes, and experienced with its own senses, the things that have transpired in history, and what things have emerged from the Mind of Nature over the last six-thousand years (and more particularly over the last one hundred years), as a result of that single archetypal "transgression," when it is said that Adam and Eve took from the dark, or the forbidden side of the Tree of Life. (Please see chapter 3 of this work). By showing us the past (and we can plainly see the present), God has shown us the (possible) future. Our minds are now capable of not only imagining it, but of creating and expressing in every artistic and graphic way, what it could be like if we continue in the path of these present transgressions. What transgressions? Those coming to spiritual maturity know exactly what we mean. In fact almost everyone should be able to tell the difference now between "good" (or that which is in harmony with Life as God created it...and as God is creating it), and "evil" (which is not). In fact the soul that cannot see or comprehend the difference cannot proceed. (They shall be selected out, just as the dinosaurs were selected out, and as the ancient Atlanteans and all the other preceding empires of Western man were selected out). For we have not only returned to the Garden, to the place of the original transgression, where both disbelief and disobedience first found a place in the human heart, but we have returned once again to the words:

Of every Tree in the garden thou mayest freely eat: but the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, thou shalt not eat (or partake) of it: For in the day that thou eatest thereof, thou shalt surely die...(Genesis 2:15-17).

(Read this book, and fully understand why thousands upon thousands in the world today are protesting the vast scientific and technological powers that are being placed in the hands of unspiritual capitalists and technocrats, opportunists and profiteers, in our time. In short, into the hands of the children of Darkness when only the hands of the children of Light will do)

GENETIC MAP HAILED AS NEW POWER

By Tim Friend

WASHINGTON__In a historic breakthrough scientists from two competing projects to create a human genetic blueprint declared Monday that the job was essentially complete...In honoring the two, President Clinton said that the human genetic code will give medical science "an immense new power to heal" by attacking disease "at its genetic roots."...

The truce between the competing projects left both sides smiling (hmmm) and promising to publish their scientific results...later this year. If they do the public would likely benefit even more quickly from new gene-based drugs that target diseases at their most fundamental causes...

And ye shall say in that day, Physician heal thyself.

(Please notice the similarity in language between these scientific pronouncements, and the language of religion. The language is similar because everyone is now treading around inside of the Temple together...dimly lit as these hallways may presently be):

Know ye not that ye are the Temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

If any man defile the Temple of God, him shall God destroy; for the Temple of God is holy, which Temple ye are...(1 Corinthians 3:16-19).

...The only race we're interested in," said a spokesman for the joint project, "is the human race, and we want them to be the winners." (Amen! let it be true). USA Today.

THOU SHALT HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME...(Exodus 19:3; Psalm 82:6,7).

THE BOOK OF LIFE

DECIPHERING GENETIC CODE CALLED "HISTORIC POINT" IN HUMAN RECORD

By Paul Recer

WASHINGTON__Proclaiming a "historic point in the 100,000-year record of humanity," scientists announced that the human genetic code essentially has been deciphered, a monumental achievement that opens a dramatic new frontier in medicine.

Leaders of competing public and private efforts said at the White House ceremony that they have virtually completed assembly of what they called "The Book of Life"--nature's genetic instruction manual for making and maintaining human beings...

Tony Blair, (the Prime Minister of Britain) said mapping the genome "has implications far surpassing even the discovery of antibiotics." He said the achievement "carries humankind across a frontier and into a new era."

"WE HAVE CAUGHT A GLIMPSE OF AN INSTRUCTION BOOK PREVIOUSLY KNOWN ONLY TO GOD," said Dr, Francis Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute...

The goal of both teams is to identify and place into proper order the 3,12 billion chemical base pairs present in human DNA and to identify within that DNA the estimated 50,000 human genes. The Associated Press

It should be clear to all that just because Science has gained access to these secrets of Creation (or rather, just because God is revealing the most esoteric Laws of Nature and the secrets of Creation to humanity at this very time in history), it is no sign that Science may continue to unmindfully exploit such revelations, but rather A WARNING to stand back (for a time a deep reflection and contemplation), in awe of it all--fearful of it all--as it is written: The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. God has showed us what evils human technology is capable of. The secrets of Atomic Energy should come immediately to mind (please read The Morning of the Magicians by Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier), for unless the Western world (and America in particular) repents of the manner in which it has partaken of them, and immediately disarms, trusting God to do likewise, it stands ready to call all of these Destructive Powers right down upon its own heads...

Revelation 18:1-8...(KJV).

The Day of the Lord shall come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up...(2 Peter 3:10).

(The movie "Fourth of July" notwithstanding. God is the most formidable of all alien powers and is not intimidated at all by the Western arsenal). There are several individuals who have been sitting across the street from the White House in Lafayette Park since 1981, maintaining an unceasing vigil as witnesses against this state of nuclear MADness which is America, calling in mind for the rest of us, the (almost) inevitable judgment that the leaders of the political and scientific communities in America, in their colossal defiance of the Power of God, are willing to visit upon the American people..

And then the fact that Science is presently, and just as unmindfully, engaged in a collective effort to create, or rather to recreate life in its own fallen image comes next (and might we add, just as ominously) to mind. The Human Genome Project, together with efforts in the fields of gravitation, superconductivity, virtual reality, and other exotic studies in the field of cybernetics, as well as in the psycho-biological sciences, do not only represent an ongoing and nearly concerted attempt (beyond the mere range of medicines and disease), to reorder life as we know it. Science is literally, and unwittingly engaged in a demonic human assault on heaven (the higher dimensions of reality) itself. (Of course the assault has already begun)...

USING LIGHT TO MANIPULATE MATTER

"When things suddenly fall apart, it can be useful to get the fragments to take one direction rather than another. A startled flock of sheep, for example, can be prevented from scattering over a hillside by a well-trained dog that herds them into a valley.

It may be difficult to train a dog to control sheep, but it's even more difficult, and certainly less common, to design lasers to control atoms from a molecule as it dissociates, or falls apart, using the strong radiation field produced by the laser light to drive the atoms into one particular direction of the field or another...

These lasers, designed and engineered by DiMauro and his group, provide light fields on the timescale of the movements of electrons or atoms, thereby allowing the experimenters to study AND MANIPULATE certain physical or chemical processes at a fundamental level." The Brookhaven National Laboratory.

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"Personally, I don't think we have to wait a century until our accelerators...will be powerful enough to probe the tenth dimension indirectly. Within a span of years, and certainly within the lifetime of today's physicists, someone will be clever enough to either verify or disprove the ten-dimensional theory by solving the field theory of strings or some other nonperturbative formulation. The problem is thus theoretical, not experimental.

Assuming that some bright physicist solves the field theory...and derives the known properties of our universe, there is still the practical problem of when we might be able to harness the power of the hyperspace theory." Hyperspace, A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and The Tenth Dimension, by Michio Kaku, p.189.

In the meantime...

TINY PATHOGENS' DNA IS YIELDING ITS SECRETS

by Nicholas Wade

HILTON HEAD, S.C.__Working in the shadow of the vast project to decode human genes, biologists are rapidly deciphering the genetic makeup of much smaller organisms, including microbes that cause disease.

The result these scientists say, is that the full DNA, or genomes, of many pathogens is likely to be decoded in the next several years, offering new drugs and vaccine strategies...

Aside from their medical importance, the small genomes are also of interest in two other arenas. Biologists hope that by comparing diverse genomes, they will be able to trace THE TREE OF EVOLUTION back to the origin of Life, or at least to its earliest branches. And "INDUSTRIAL CHEMISTS" are screening genomes from the poles to the deep sea in search of enzymes with special properties.

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LIFE AT MOST BASIC IS STILL COMPLEX PUZZLE

By Tim Friend

Scientists report today that they have taken new steps toward defining a bare-bones set of genes essential for life. The achievement might shed light on how to create life in a test tube one day, but, more immediately, it shows how far scientists have to go before they understand life at all.

"We wanted to know what is a minimal set of genes that a species would need to live and replicate itself," said Craig Venter of Celera Genomics, who led the study...at the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Md...

Using a complicated technique called global transposon mutagenesis, Hutchison and his colleagues began eliminating genes of the bacterium until they figured out which ones the organism could live without. The report in today's Science shows the minimum number of genes necessary to keep the bug alive is about 300,of which a third are completely unknown.

That bodes ill for people who think that understanding the human genome will come easily, the scientists say. "Here's the most minimal set of genes we can conceive of essential to biological function, and we don't have a clue what a third of them are or what their function is," Venter says.

Once those functions are determined, scientists will likely try to build a "Frankencell"--an organism built from scratch using raw DNA and specific strings of genetic code. It will take years, however, before scientists learn enough about genes, their arrangements, and how to manipulate the material between genes.

Nevertheless, creating life in this manner is not far-fetched, says bio-ethicist Arthur Kaplan...who was asked by Venter's group to evaluate ethical problems related to the research. (?)

One of the first questions that arose was whether the group is playing God.

"Religion understands that man will intervene in nature," says Kaplan. "The question is, to what end?" USA Today.

SCIENTISTS GET SOUGHT-AFTER CELLS FROM HUMAN CLONE

By Maggie Fox, Health and Science Correspondent
Thu February 12, 2004 12:00 AM ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - South Korean and U.S. researchers said on Wednesday they had cloned a human embryo and extracted from it sought-after cells called embryonic stem cells. The experiment, the first published report of cloned human stem cells, means so-called therapeutic cloning is no longer a theory but a reality. Supporters of medical cloning say it can transform medicine, offering tailored and highly effective treatments for diseases ranging from Parkinson's to diabetes. They say it could eventually lead to grow-your-own organ transplants.

The stem cells taken from the tiny embryos, known as blastocysts, have the potential to develop into any kind of cell or tissue in the body. "OUR APPROACH OPENS THE DOOR for the use of these specially developed cells in transplantation medicine," Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University in Korea, who led the study, said in a statement.

But critics say it involves destroying a human embryo, however tiny, and is thus unethical. The administration of President Bush and supporters in Congress are seeking to outlaw the technology both in the United States and worldwide. Writing in the journal Science, Hwang and colleagues said they created the clone using eggs and cumulus cells donated by Korean women. Cumulus cells are found in the ovaries and in some species have been found to work especially well in cloning experiments.

Scientists have cloned sheep, cattle, mice and other species but have had trouble cloning a human being. Last year a Massachusetts company, Advanced Cell Technology, said it had created a human cloned embryo but it had not grown enough to become a source of stem cells. The company is still trying but has not reported publicly on its progress.

MAY THE FORCE BE WITHIN YOU

By Scott Lajoie

A CALIFORNIA COMPANY TINKERS WITH THE CELL'S ENGINE. Walter Moos, CEO of San Diego-based MitoKor, hadn't planned to see "Stars Wars Epsode I: The Phantom Menace" until his father-in-law told him to go. At the theater, he got a shock as he watched actor Liam Neeson run a blood test on young Anakin Skywalker. The test revealed a high concentration of so-called midi-chlorians, which gave the boy the mystic power of the Force. "I just jumped out of my chair," recalls Moos. "That was our Mito-Load test."...

Like all biotech companies, MitoKor knows it will take decades to develop and sell new drugs. Until then, the company will generate revenues by contracting out its services, including its Star Wars-esque Mito-Load test, which analyzes a patient's mitochondria and determines his or her chances of getting Alzheimer's...Even by selling its services, MitoKor realizes it can not go it alone. The company recently signed a deal with pharmaceutical giant Pfizer that could bring $100 million...

Still the company's executives enjoy the irony of their current situation. Quips Michele LeGear, vice president for corporate development, about the Star Wars reference,"WE'RE JUST WAITING FOR THE ROYALTIES TO START COMING IN."

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CARNEGIE SCIENTISTS REPORT FIRST 'MORPHING'

IN PLANT ENZYME FUNCTION

"For the first time, biochemists have succeeded in 'morphing' a plant enzyme--using genetic manipulation to change a plant enzyme into another enzyme with a different function.

The achievement advances the prospect of 'designer' plants for renewable industrial raw materials, fuel and food. It also sheds new light on how plant enzymes evolved to perform different functions...

Enzymes are made of chains of amino acids, strung together in a certain order to create a specific architecture that determines its unique chemical function..." The Brookhaven National Laboratory.

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SCIENTISTS FIND WAY TO SLOW GRASS GROWTH

WASHINGTON__Don't throw away the lawnmowers yet, but scientists have found out a way to STUNT the growth of grass and other plants and keep them greener longer by tinkering with a single gene. (Are these the Chem-lawn scientists)? It could be a dream come true for suburbanites weary of the weekly mowing ritual.

The gene regulates production of a steroid hormone that causes plants to grow, much the same way similar steroids work in animals. (Well, DUH)? Scientists have now succeeded in manipulating the gene to create dwarf versions of standard plant species, according to research published today in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Plant breeders have long searched for ways to slow the growth of grass to reduce maintenance on golf courses, as well as lawns and parks. But conventional breeding by cross-pollinating different varieties is far more time-consuming and less exacting than engineering specific genes. (Hey! does this grass and these plants get into the food chain)?

Gene engineered grass also raises environmental questions. Dwarf plants could cross-pollinate with standard plants, and stunt the growth of their offspring, Hamblin said.

As for its safety, the researchers said that there should be no danger to children or animals from eating the grass (O thank heavens! I was worried there for a moment), since it is essentially the same as conventional grass. The Associated Press.

NO FOOLPROOF WAY IS SEEN TO CONTAIN ALTERED GENES

Study Cites Ill Effects of Unintended Spread

By Andrew Pollack

JANUARY 26, 2004...A new report commissioned by the government suggests it will be difficult to completely prevent genetically engineered plants and animals from having unintended environmental and public health affects. The report, released yesterday by the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, says that while there are many techniques being developed to prevent genetically engineered organisms or their genes from escaping into the wild, most techniques are still in early development AND NONE APPEAR TO BE COMPLETELY AFFECTIVE. (Remember Jurassic Park)?

"One of our big messages throughout the whole report is that there are very few biocontainment (get that word) methods that are well developed," Anne R. Kapuscinski, a professor of fisheries, wildlife and conservation biology at the University of Minnesota and a member of the committee that wrote the report, said at a news conference IN WASHINGTON yesterday.

Companies and scientists are now developing a wide range of genetically modified organisms: SALMON THAT GROW SUPERFAST, MOSQUITOS ENGINEERED NOT TO TRANSMIT MALARIA, CORN THAT PRODUCES PHARMACEUTICALS AND INDUSTRIAL CHEMICALS.

One concern about these TRANSGENIC PRODUCTS is that their genes or organisms could spread. Fast growing fish, if they were to escape into the wild, MIGHT BEAT OUT regular salmon for food or mates, DISRUPTING THE ECOLOGICAL BALANCE. Genes given crops resistance TO HERBICIDES or insects might spread to weeds, making the weeds harder TO ERADICATE. Pollen flow from CORN ENGINEERED TO PRODUCE A DRUG COULD ALLOW THE DRUG TO GET INTO CORN DESTINED FOR THE FOOD SUPPLY.

Much of the efforts to prevent these effects have involved physical containment, like growing fish in tanks rather than the ocean or growing crops in greenhouses. But the new report, commissioned by the Department of Agriculture, looks at biological methods of containment, WHICH IT CALLS BIOCONTAINMENT. These include measures like INDUCING STERILITY BY GIVING FISH AN EXTRA SET OF CHROMOSOMES OR EXPOSING INSECTS TO RADIATION. BACTERIA MIGHT BE GIVEN "SUICIDE GENES" THAT WOULD CAUSE THEM TO SELF-DESTRUCT IF THEY ESCAPED. Crop scientists are working on a variety of techniques, INCLUDING PUTTING THE FOREIGN GENES INTO THE CHLOROPLASTS RATHER THAN THE NUCLEUS BECAUSE CHLOROPLAST GENES USUALLY DO NOT GET INTO THE POLLEN....(Why go on)? The New York Times.

HUMAN-COW HYBRID ESCALATES ETHICAL QUESTION

By Elizabeth Neus

WASHINGTON__Pushing the debate over human embryo research farther than anyone had expected, a Massachusetts biotech firm announced it had produced embryonic human cells by fusing adult human cells with an empty cow's egg.

The technique used by Advanced Cell Technology, a company expert in cloning cows, is very similar to that which produced Dolly the sheep, cloned in 1997 from an adult sheep's cell that reverted to its embryonic, ready-to-grow state.

Researcher Jose Cibelli took 52 of his own blood cells and cells scraped from the inside of his cheek, and fused each with a cow egg that had been emptied of its bovine genetic material. Only one of the resulting embryos grew, according to the New York Times; it divided five times and developed cells resembling human embryonic stem cells...

Company president Michael West said in a statement, "We will not use this technology to clone human beings."

Scientists, biotech experts and ethicists were thunderstruck. They still are struggling with the ethics of human cloning using human genetic material, as well as with the implications of two studies published in respected journals in the last week in which scientists reported culturing human embryonic stem cells--the original, primordial cells that grow into specific parts of the human body...

The National Institute of Health was not clear where the human-cow report fit into the human embryo research controversy, and was looking into that..."It's difficult science," said spokeswoman Ann Thomas.

The last thing anyone expected, said one prominent ethicist, was for a lab to be mixing human and animal cells.

"One of the things you heard frequently as a horror scenario...was the possibility of creating a human-animal chimera," said Thomas Murray, a bioethicist who served on President Clinton's National Bioethics Advisory Commission. Gannet News Service.

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MADE TO ORDER SHEEP BEING CLONED

By A.J. Hostetler

Using laboratory techniques that are by now standard, researchers have created cloned lambs whose DNA was precisely altered to carry specific, and human genetic changes.

PPL Therapeutics Ltd., the Scottish outfit that brought us Dolly just four years ago, and other biotech companies are racing to find easy, profitable ways to create and re-create mammals with special traits, especially those engineered to churn out human proteins in their milk. This was the first time this gene targeting has been done in a mammal other than a mouse...

Cloning experts have previously inserted human genes into fertilized eggs to create genetically altered livestock clones, but they had no control over the new gene. This technique also failed to allow for specific changes in the animal's own genes. The new approach largely solves those problems. Richmond Times-Dispatch

LAB YIELDS LAMB WITH HUMAN GENE

By Gina Kolita

The scientists in Scotland who produced Dolly, the sheep that was cloned from an adult sheep, announced today that they had taken a major step in the genetic engineering of animals. Using a method much like that used to produce Dolly, they created a lamb that has a human gene in every cell of its body.

Cloning experts say the work is a milestone. Animals with human genes could be used, in theory, to produce hormones or other biological products to treat human diseases and used to test new treatments. And genetically altered animals might also produce organs that could be transplanted into humans with less chance of rejection than now exists...

"It's very exciting," said Dr. Stephen Squinto, a vice president of research at Alexion Pharmaceuticals in New Haven. "If what I'm hearing is true, it's another leap."..

"We are getting closer and closer to human beings now, too," he said. "All of this can be passed over to human beings. Genetic engineering of human beings is now really on the horizon." The New York Times.

CHANGING SEX OF FETUS NEAR

By Joe Nicholson

A top researcher says scientists within two or three decades will be able to reach into a woman's womb and use genetic therapy to change the sex of her fetus.

"I think it's an issue that's going to have to be addressed by society," said Edward R.B. McCabe, a professor of pediatrics and molecular genetics at Baylor College--who told the Daily News that such a capability could be frightening "if it is misused."

The identification of a gene that can reverse the sex of a male fetus and turn it into a female fetus is reported by McCabe in the current issue of the journal Nature Genetics.

The mysterious gene is called DSS--"dosage sensitive sex reversal"--and it turns gonadal buds that would otherwise become testes and a penis into a vagina and ovaries.

McCabe said he has identified the gene based on what it does, and that his next step will be to isolate it. He expects that to take up to two years. The New York Daily News.

Thus many are already at the business of engineering reality to fit their own (might we use the term diabolical) scheme of things. But the impending Day of Judgment and Atonement releases them from their own crazed determination to be as God--with the power to determine without regard to God, or even the larger ethical questions, the course of human history--or from their continued servitude to others who have come to consider themselves gods, and who have already completed their personal pact with the "devil" as it is. (The motion picture The Ninth Gate is a fitting and timely metaphor, as is, of course, Jurassic Park and Lost World). By breaking all of the economic and political ties that bind them to their present masters, and their present institutions of "higher learning," scientists will be freed to pursue what is truly good, and what is truly in the interest of Life. That which is good, with its aim to heal all, as well as to liberate all, re-creates nothing in its own image--its own imagination that is. That which is good possesses concern for God and a deep reverence for all that God is. (The word is "all"). It serves the absolute interest of all, and not the individual interests of the few, or the narrow commercial, political, or military interests of those in whose present hands it is to wield the power of technology, and in so doing to attract and manipulate the media, thus the language of debate, thus truth itself, and thus to confuse our collective and common sense of what is good for all. We refer also to those pharmaceutical companies that are criminally withholding generic medicines from the general public for instance, under the pretext of certain legal protections, to further their own selfish interests and to increase their own profits. And those bio-technology companies that are so brazen as to think it is their legal right to patent [own] various sequences of DNA information for their own private and commercial use)...

WE SHARE A SINGLE BLUEPRINT

THE ASCENT OF MAN

By Ellen Goodman

WASHINGTON__They all talked about it as a book, although e-book is a better analogy. If the human genome actually were printed out on paper it would rise as high as the Washington Monument. (Hmmm, 555.5 feet).

On Monday, to enormous fanfare, competing scientists from Celera Genomics Corp. and the federal Human Genome Project jointly announced the publication of The Book of Life. FOR THE FIRST TIME, WE HAVE A WORKING DRAFT OF THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL FOR ,MAKING AND GROWING A HUMAN BEING...

Using only four chemical letters--G,A,T,C--this book of life promises to affect the way we think about ourselves as much as any scientific achievement in human history. If Galileo pushed us out of the center of the Universe (And for a very good reason. There is Consuming Fire and an enormous Singularity there. God alone is there), if Newton gave regularity to a world ruled by whim and gods, if Darwin gave us our origins, the human genome alters our identity in conflicting new ways.

The mapping of the human genetic code tells us that we share a common blueprint. We are genetically a small band of descendents of the same people. We are 99.9 percent the same as each other.

Yet as we build a catalogue of human variation from these letters we also learn the ways in which each of us is genetically different, wholly individual. WE SHARE THE BOOK, BUT HAVE A PAGE, OR MAYBE A SENTENCE, OF OUR OWN. (Which means that each of us are a part owner of the Book, and thus each of us have an equal say as to how the Book will be read and interpreted...a power each of us can defer back to God's Anointed Ones)...

Eric Lander, from the Whitehead Institute, a crucial partner in this project, uses a different analogy to explain the shared book of life. "IT'S LIKE A FAMILY BIBLE THAT'S BEEN PASSED DOWN THE GENERATIONS. There are little spelling differences, small puncuation differences, but it's the same Bible. The Genome reminds us how close we are.

There is, he says, "so much to unite us. Our ancestors left so many stories in the DNA." We'll be able to tell if we share an ancestor 50,000 years ago. INDEED, WE'LL BE ABLE TO TELL HOW MUCH WE SHARE WITH THE REST OF NATURE, from yeast to mouse...

This is why a publication day filled with toasts to what president Clinton described as a "stunning humbling achievement" was also filled with warnings. (Hollow warnings I perceive). The two team leaders...seconded each other in warning about about genetic discrimination...

At a deeper level, as Lander says, we need to stretch our minds as far as the lengthy curve of DNA. "The whole notion of differences between us has been about ranking people," he says "We need to get that out of our heads." Difference has been a way to describe who's up and who's down, who's in and who's out. Using another analogy from another Good Book, Collins added, "WE ARE ALL FALLEN CREATURES AT THE DNA LEVEL."

So we enter a new age. "We can see, literally, in the DNA, how we are connected through human history and separated by our own individuality. But there is no gene that can can predict the human sequel (The author says). WE HAVE THE BOOK, BUT HOW WILL WE READ IT? The Boston Globe.

THE TOWER RISES

The mapping of the human genome amounts to a decoding of a language. Science can now recognize the letters and the words--or at least most of them--but it cannot understand the meaning. (Try Gematria, Notiriqon and Atbash). Over the next few years scientists will learn how to apprehend secrets heretofore shrouded in mystery...

The sheer immensity of the project underscores the rarefied context of modern inquiry. Machines of nearly unrivaled computational power have been working around the clock for years simply to decode the genetic map; computers reading DNA strands have been sending more than 10,000 genetic strands per hour into the public database. And the hard work has not even begun.

A parallel situation in physics requires the expenditure of tremendous energy--and money--to identify ever-smaller bits of matter. Similarly, putting man on the surface of Mars requires a great deal more than putting a man on the moon. The temptation is to wonder whether science proceeds on an asymptotic curve, (that is, never actually approaching the Light of True Reason), with each advance more difficult than the one before.

A more optimistic view of things sees science as a magnificent tower reaching towards the heavens. Adding to its height requires more and more work, but with each level added humanity sees that much farther over the horizon. The Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Now this is an analogy we have heard before. Secular science does not like to humble itself before God. It likes to do exactly as it pleases. It does not understand limits. But wholistic science listens with rapt attention to the Voice of dissent, to the lowliest indigenous voices in the earth for these are the true stewards of Life (and for signs from the Heavens and the Earth itself). The present quality as well as the sanctity of Life on Earth does indeed hang in the balance. Those who are presently in charge of the world, those who are bringing this age inexorably to its day of Judgment, even if they are allowed by God to pass into the age-to-come with the children of Life they will no longer be able to do just as they please, but will be made at all times to make a full account of themselves and their work to the world, and to those who serve in the highest interest of the peoples of the world.

We are, nevertheless, awed at the powers that have been conjured up by these modern sorcerers and wizards, and even thank them in many ways for facilitating the work of Creation as they have to this point, as we thank the Creator for all things, but we have also suffered enough of their academic and intellectual, as well as their political insolence. Balance will be restored. They will sanctify themselves by sitting and listening to those who speak on behalf of the Earth below, and on behalf of God above. What is forbidden them they will not touch: The Law will proceed from Zion, not from laboratories, corporate boardrooms, or the halls of this world's present governments.

DR. FRANKENSTEIN, PLEASE CALL YOUR OFFICE

By John Markoff

In the space of three short decades the computer chip industry has come to resemble the Sorcerer's Apprentice.

The exponential growth in computing power has produced stunning advances in a range of sciences and engineering fields ranging from decoding the human genome to the design of machines that can outplay the best human chess player.

And that in turn has led to exuberant predictions of a dawning of vast new information age utopias. Sentient intelligent machines are as close as three decades away, many industry leaders believe; smart materials that can repair themselves and genetically coded immortality may also be just around the corner.

Given the hype and relentless optimism, perhaps it is not surprising that serious scientists and researchers have begun to explore darker, less inviting visions of the future. (As in the movie Jurassic Park). This month an unlikely new doomsday prophet has emerged. In an essay in Wired magazine, a popular forum for high-technology boosterism, Bill Joy, the chief scientist at Sun-Microsystems, warns that the human species may be on the verge of collective suicide. "The 21st-century technologies--genetics, nanotechnology and robotics--are so powerful that they can spawn whole new classes of accidents and abuses," he writes.

Mr. Joy is hardly a Luddite, but his gloomy pronouncements fit squarely into a long tradition of apocalyptic warnings about technology run amok, dating back to ancient Greeks, and voiced more recently in a millennial laundry list of threats, including nuclear winters, global warming, and ozone depletion...

As harrowing as those threats may have appeared, for Mr. Joy and others the worst is yet to come. The new danger, they argue, is self-replication, the technique at the heart of both modern biotechnology and the relatively new field of "material sciences" (the creation of advanced materials such as new ceramics or liquid crystal displays), which has the capacity for tremendous good as well as destruction. The fears fall in three broad areas.

ROBOTICS

Consider a future world in which robots operate with microprocessors a million times more powerful than today's. Hans Moravec, a robotics scientist at Carnegie Mellon University, conjures images in his writings of totally automated factories and networks that will emerge as soon as 2020. These robotic systems will be able to program themselves and compete vigorously with humans for resources, perhaps creating self-sufficient artificially intelligent economies that could squeeze humans out of existence. (Think about a factory that decides to create an army of Robocops).

Another computer scientist, Vernor Vinge, SAYS MACHINE INTELLIGENCE WILL AWAKEN SOMETIME BETWEEN 2005 AND 2030, a date he calls "THE SINGULARITY." Dr. Vinge argues that this evolutionary watershed might accelerate progress beyond human control.

The Internet

Others suggest that the Internet may someday reach a critical mass of interconnections that at the least might exhibit some kind of chaotic behavior, perhaps even some kind of sentience. The problem, of course, is that such a system might be intelligent but not rational, thrashing around like a newborn baby--turning off power systems or launching missiles at random.

NANOTECHNOLOGY

Nanotechnology refers to mechanical engineering on a molecular scale. The holy grail for nanotechnologists are sub-microscopic chemical or mechanical machines called assemblers that can reproduce and repair themselves...

Mr. Joy believes that within several decades similar advances will lead to incredibly low-cost solar power, vastly more powerful computers and cures for everything from the common cold to cancer.

But here's the catch: in the wrong hands, or perhaps accidentally, nanotechnology could open up a Pandora's Box. This nightmare has long been the stuff of science fiction...

In real life it might be possible to create tough omnivorous bacteria that could out-compete real bacteria. Spread by the wind, like blowing pollen, they could be designed to replicate swiftly and reduce life on earth to dust in a matter of days...

GENETIC ENGINEERING

While both robots and nanotechnological weapons are at least a generation away, genetic weapons are not...

"Much (notice the Freudian slip here) of the talk about information-based weapons is baloney," said Edward Feigenbaum, the former chief scientist of the United States Air Force. "But biological terrorism is real and the government is beginning to take steps to defend against it." (The government is mostly the cause of it. All judgments proceed from God).

Some scientists are worried both about the specter of genetic experiments accidentally escaping into the population (as the AIDS virus did) and also what Mr. Joy calls a "white plague" (a reference to another science fiction novel, by Frank Herbert)--genetically engineered bioweapons that could be targeted on a specific region of race.

It doesn't end there--there are even more exotic technological threats. Last year a brief media frenzy broke out over the speculation that the Brookhaven National Laboratory's Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider could create an artificial black hole that would devour the earth in a matter of minutes. Scientists insisted that such fears were unfounded, yet as Armageddon scenarios go, it was a doozy. Earlier this month several physicists filed suit in federal court to stop the experiment. The New York Times, March 19, 2000.

MAP OF LIFE

by Lee M. Silver

Take a stroll down one of your own DNA molecules away from this unbelievably ancient message, and you will come to a spot bearing actual scars of a war that took place almost yesterday between your mother's genes and your father's genes. A truce was called, and you were born. But different battle scars on your maternal and paternal DNA are still there for you to see...

The hereditary information in each gene--the genome--can be views as a "Book" containing about three billion characters of text written into molecules of DNA. This is no metaphor. The text of my genome is as real and discrete as the text of this review (which as I write, exists only as a string of bits on a computer disk). Over the last two decades scientists have created machines that automatically "read" text from DNA and "write" it into computer memory. The Human Genome Project is a scientific effort to read the whole book of three billion characters and place them all in their right order. It will soon be completed...

In addition to genetic messages (in our own gene sequences) that once helped an ancestor but typically serve no purpose today, there are huge tracts of the human genome that never helped anyone. These regions teem with genetic parasites that hitchhike onto your chromosomes and pass themselves into your children. At least 95 percent of your genome is occupied "BY THIS USELESS BAGGAGE." Just as amazing, the 5 percent actually required to bring you into existence is itself a battlefield of conflicts "between parental genes and childhood genes, or between male genes and female genes." As Ridley says, these ideas have shaken the philosophical foundations of biology, but they are little known outside of a small group of evolutionary biologists...

Ridley also explores the most contentious area of genetics--human behavior. He has nothing but contempt for those who deny the role played by genes in personality, sex and intellectual differences...Behavioral genetics is so contentious because, more than any other area of science, it has direct impact on political theory and practice. If we accept a significant influence of genes on behavior and ability, we are forced to concede that genes would be of the utmost importance in determining who wins or loses in an idealized meritocracy where environments and opportunities are all equalized. And in a court a defendant's genes would have to be considered the same way that "mental status" is today in determining whether someone is fully responsible for their actions...Ridley believes that a quest for social justice must start with an accurate understanding of human biology. A Review of Genome, by Matt Ridley, The New York Times Book Review.

SCIENTISTS PONDER "WHAT TO DO" WITH DNA LEFTOVERS

By Seth Borenstein

WASHINGTON__The human genome, the 3.15 billion-letter instruction book for our cells, seems pretty elegent. But it turns out to be chock-full of typos, gibberish, repetitions and redundancies, and scientists don't know why.

"Junk DNA," some call the residue, and it takes up an amazing 97 percent of our genome. So last week's announcement that the human genome was fully mapped is tempered by a monumental mystery: What is this junk doing in our DNA?

It's suddenly a hot topic in genomics, splitting the field into scientists who think the mystery material is useless and those who say it has some not-understood-but-vital-purpose. (Let's see now. What side of this controversy do we fall down on)?

"This is something we tend to think a lot about after we've had a lot of beers," said Rick Wilson, professor of genetics and co-director of the Genome Sequencing Center at Washington University in St. Louis. "You want to believe that the system is designed to be as efficient as possible. So way does it have all this other stuff?"...

The DNA needed to produce the proteins that do all the cell's work amounts to only 3 to 5 percent of the human genome, biologists say.

"There's a lot more going on than that," concludes Ken Dewar, a research scientist at the Massachusettes Institute of Technology...The rest of the genome is technically called noncoding, or, because it gets in the way of decoding, "nonsense." Cells themselves delete it when they reproduce DNA.

Scientists say there are two major types of junk DNA. One is expressed as a repetitive sequence that keeps popping up in the DNA strand.

"For the life of me, I can't figure out why it's anything like a benefit" to have all these repetitions, said Steven Scherer, director of mapping at Baylor College...

The other type of junk is introns, seemingly random repetitions in the middle of real protein instructions. It's as if in this sentacgtcaaagtcaaaence, the letters "acgtcaaagtcaaa" were stuck in the middle of the word "sentence." When the DNA replicates, the cell edits out the "acgtcaaagtcaaa" and just copies the word "sentence."

"The cell has to go to a lot of trouble because the introns are there," said Rex Chisholm, professor at Northwestern University in Chicago. Introns seem tied to evolution, he said. The more highly evolved species, such as humans, tend to have more and longer introns than less-evolved life-forms, such as yeast...

Scientists who think of noncoding DNA as garbage simply say that cells are inefficient. Junk DNA, especially introns, may have been relevant in earlier evolutionary stages or it could have been a harmless mistake. (Say! Well maybe they're waiting there for future use. Or perhaps that "which is not" is needed to define "that which is." If they are not carried over from the parent cell to the new cell, how do they get there?)...

Rudolph Raff of the Indiana Molecular Biology Institute compares the junk DNA to someone adding empty file folders with blank paper to a filing cabinet. "It doesn't matter, and that's the way I think our human genome is to a large part," he said. Others think it has a purpos that hasn't been discovered.

"I don't think there's anything that is junk DNA," said top government genomics researcher Ari Patrinos..."We just don't know (the use for it). For us to be arrogant about making presumptions about what is and what isn't necessary is pretty human."

Early research is finding that when the seemingly nonsense parts of DNA are removed, cells multiply a bit, but don't function as well as they do with full-length genomes.

This is why biologists who've mapped the genome are only on "the beginning of a wonderful voyage," Patrinos said. "The clicks and whirrs of the human cell, it's a fascinating mechanism. The reality is we don't understand much of it." Knight Rider Newspapers.

GENETIC DECISIONS BEST LEFT TO

THE EXPERIENCED ONE

The USA Today column, "Wonders of genetics also carry some risks,"...brought to light some of the warnings we should be recognizing in the biogenetic game...

The writers' phrase "a Rubik's Cube from hell" describes what many biotechnicians are eager to dive into before they have evaluated the risks and before they have evaluated the larger ethical picture.

It is one thing to delve into the marvels that God revealed to the human mind; it's another to begin to use them irresponsibly.

Surrogacy and donated sperm and eggs have already created a legal mess that even lawyers can't figure out.

That's old news; so now they move on to prove they can engineer a superior generation of humans.

The questions include: Superior by whose standards? Who selects the characteristics? What is the generic trade-off? Finally, where does the child's freedom of choice come in? Maybe there are some things that still belong in God's hands...

As much as I love and respect my parents' judgment, I would not have wanted them to be the ones to select my genetic traits. Yet that judgment is what we will put into the hands of young parents (and their bio-capitalist sorcerers) if we allow genetic engineering to charge forward unmonitored. Timothy A. Bickel.

Milk - Something Very Bad Has Happened
And We May Never Learn The Truth From The FDA
By Robert Cohen
notmilk@earthlink.net
1-23-04

Something Very Bad Has Happened and we may never learn the truth from FDA. I often see the clues, hear the rumors, and examine the facts long before newspapers get the first inkling of a story. My advice for you today is sell Monsanto stock short. Good news for consumers is bad news for Monsanto.

Very shortly, perhaps in just a few weeks, cows sent to slaughter will have to be separated into two lines--those treated with the genetically engineered bovine growth hormone and those not receiving injections of Posilac. USDA will mandate this because of some very serious news. The first rumors came out of the state of Kentucky on Monday. Representatives of dairy co-ops have been telling dairy farmers that cows treated with Posilac have been developing bone cancers. I have received this news from a very good authority, although I am not at liberty to reveal my source. Let's call him Mr. W.M.

What could be worse? I have a copy of a letter that Monsanto mailed to its dairy farmer customers on December 19, 2003. On that date, Monsanto shocked farmers by alerting them to the fact that Posilac would be in limited supply until: "Conditions and improvements in manufacturing are made..." Monsanto is accepting no new customers, and anticipated their "shortfall" to last for "several months."

I have just learned (another rumor) that Florida farmers are being warned that Monsanto will cut back Posilac distribution to 50% or less on or about March 1, 2004. All of genetic engineering and biotechnology was based upon the safety of Posilac. We naive Americans have been part of an experiment, and are learning that Posilac may have compromised the safety of rbST-treated cows and humans who consume hormone-rich body fluids from these cows.

Ex-Surgeon General C. Everett Koop was hired by Monsanto to tell Americans on February 6, 1994: "Milk from cows given supplemental bovine somatotropin is the same as any other milk...Unfortunately, a few fringe groups are using misleading statements and blatant falsehoods as part of a long-running campaign to scare consumers about a perfectly safe food." The following day, Monsanto scientist Bernard Violand submitted a paper to the Journal of Protein Science admitting that Posilac contained many different "freak amino acids." That paper was stamped "received" by the journal on Thursday, February 10, 1994, and published on July 6, 1994.

Monsanto fixed the errors. FDA now knows of those mistakes because my whistle broke windows. During the process of developing a new technology to filter out those freak amino acids, Monsanto never alerted FDA as to the nature of their error. Had they done so, such honesty would have cost Monsanto over $500 million. Monsanto should have repeated the research because every scientific paper submitted to FDA was performed on animals with a different formula than the one currently on the market. Monsanto's actions are criminal. So are FDA's. We know the perps. Look at your kids. Look at your friends and relatives. They are the victims.

Robert Cohen http://www.notmilk.com

__________

For the earnest expectation of the creation (the whole of humanity...no the whole of all living things), waiteth for the manifestation of the sons and daughters of God. (If we could check the genes of the children of Light, the physical frame of those who have overcome the world, it is certain that there would not be any notable difference between them and all others. The difference lies in the heart and mind, in the transformation from the natural man to the spiritual. The God-gene can overshadow the genetic makeup, transmute and altar the natural condition of the human soul whenever and wherever it will. It functions according to its own Dynamic Will. It is the secret alchemy of the higher world enjoined to and governing the living fabric of the physical world).

For the creation was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but by reason of Them who have subjected the same in hope.

Because the creation itself (every individual soul, whether in this lifetime or another) also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

For we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth together until now.

And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our Body...(Romans 8:19-23).

THE GOD-GENE