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elfsI have this dream, you know. I understand that one of the premises of Ayn Rand's famous book, Atlas Shrugged, is that the "productive" people of the world all take themselves away to some desert colony and let the rest of the world, bereft of leadership and vision, waste away.
I dream of a Darwin Shrugged. That someday, all of the gifts of evolutionary biology be withheld from those who claim not to believe in its efficacy. That we deny them all access to antiobiotics, vaccines, cancer angiogenetic antagonist drugs, anti-obesity medicines, modafinil. That we withdraw from their markets (and their markets only) inexpensive fibers and bright colorful dyes.
That we make food as dear to them as it ever was in the depth of a Lamarkian winter.
I think I subject myself too much to the utter stupidity of the anti- evolutionists. The "We're fighting Darwinism" has now fallen over into smug "We've beaten Darwinism" in the fundie churches, who congregants still vaccinate their kids and use antibiotics, all produced by scientists who scratch their heads and say, "Uh, what... ?"
Sigh I guess I'm just too bloody minded today. Damn allergies kept me up all night, I got maybe four hours of sleep. My car's gonna cost me a kilobuck, probably, to keep running for another two or three years, and all that stressy crud.
I dream of a Darwin Shrugged. That someday, all of the gifts of evolutionary biology be withheld from those who claim not to believe in its efficacy. That we deny them all access to antiobiotics, vaccines, cancer angiogenetic antagonist drugs, anti-obesity medicines, modafinil. That we withdraw from their markets (and their markets only) inexpensive fibers and bright colorful dyes.
That we make food as dear to them as it ever was in the depth of a Lamarkian winter.
I think I subject myself too much to the utter stupidity of the anti- evolutionists. The "We're fighting Darwinism" has now fallen over into smug "We've beaten Darwinism" in the fundie churches, who congregants still vaccinate their kids and use antibiotics, all produced by scientists who scratch their heads and say, "Uh, what... ?"
Sigh I guess I'm just too bloody minded today. Damn allergies kept me up all night, I got maybe four hours of sleep. My car's gonna cost me a kilobuck, probably, to keep running for another two or three years, and all that stressy crud.
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Date: 2008-02-29 03:30 am (UTC)I just got back from a seminar presented by Professional Engineers Ontario (in Canada) on medical applications of engineering. One presentation was on making artificial hip or knee joints with porous ceramic soaked in stem cells, instead of the current titanium and polyethylene. Within a year or two of implantation, it's been replaced by natural bone and is self-repairing like a natural joint. Currently artificial joints wear out and have to be replaced every 10-15 years.
One comment that the presenter made was that research in Canada has greatly benefited from all the scientists migrating north so they could include stem cells in their research without losing funding.