Matching Sport with DNA

This is an article about DNA is used to figure out which sport a kid should play. The parents would by a kit that costs $160 and then swab some DNA on a q-tip. Then, they would send it into a lab where they would test if it has this one particular ACTN 3 Gene which directly corresponds to fast-twitch explosive muscles. There is controversy because many people think this is a scam.

Question: Would you do something like this if you had your child?

UK Medical Body Lobbies Free Funerals For Organ Donors.

A medical group in Britain has stated through reports that the Parliament (the U.K.'s government) pay for the funeral or organ donors. The medical group hope that this will boost the shortage of organ donors in the U.K. The report's co-author Keith Rigg told the CBS, "We have ruled out giving people a direct financial incentive to donate," CBS has stated that there is very little difference from how medical schools often cover burial or cremation costs of people who donate their bodies to science. The only difference is the controversial issue of organ donation. For this reason no decision has been reached. Do you think it's fair that the cost of burial or cremation of people who donate their bodies to science is covered yet the cost for organ donors is not? Do you think people should be organ donors?

FIrst U.S. Conviction for organ trafficking.

An Israeli man, Izhak Rosenbaum has been convicted for organ trafficking. The donors were paid $10,000. The operations were performed in American hospitals including  Johns Hopkins. Rosenbaum's expertise in coaching donor to deceive the hospitals that the donations were voluntary.

Would you be a Donor? Why or why not?

Killing the Willing

On Thursday (Oct 20), 38-year-old Christopher Johnson was executed by lethal injection in an Alabama prison after only four years on death row. The average time between sentencing and death in the US is currently about 14 years, but Johnson consistently declined to appeal or ask for clemency. He had murdered his six-month-old son to spite his estranged wife.

Opponents of the death penalty said that Johnson was an example of death penalty “volunteers” who are using execution as a kind of assisted suicide.

Do you think murders are used as assisted suicides when they are sentenced to be executed?

Mississippi debates personhood in abortion battle

Proposition 26 on the Mississippi ballot believes that personhood begins at conception and that abortion should no longer be allowed. This proposition would ban all abortions even tjose from rape or incest. The republican candidate for the Governor of the state of Mississippi is co-chairman of Prop 26 and the democratic representative says that he will support the proposition as well. Supporters of the prop are hoping that the members of the Supreme Court will see the embryo as a person and therefore make abortion into murder. This is their hope and they have a strong belief that this will happen.

Why are people not allowed to get an abortion even in the conception came from rape or incest?
Do you think the supreme court will pass this?

Augmentation Debate Takes On a New Level as it Influences a New Video game

A new video game has been created called Deus Ex, in which the player lives in a scientifically dominated world in the year 2027. Where the world is obsessed with this idea of transhumanism, or using technology to transcend homo sapiens. In the game, a human can get brain enhancements that can assist them in social interactions. This game was created with the assistance of scientists who described many of the actual scientific advancements everyone should be prepared to see in 2027 and even earlier.

Do you believe scientific advancements that improve the human being not only physically but now mentally will help society grow or hinder it? Does the possibility that this strange and almost unbelievable video game becoming reality scare you or excite you?

Stem cell clinics ripping off patients, bullying scientists

The article re-visits the controversy that is in the study of stem cell research. Stem cell research is a now profitable process where many scientists offer stem cells for all medical processes. Recently, a 36 year old man was treated with esophagus cancer as he was given an entirely new windpipe made of stem cells. Even professional athletes turn to stem cells for quick recoveries and physical therapies. Scientists now seeing the supply and demand of stem cells, are now overcharging patients for stem cell treatment. Patients are being bullied as they are now over paying for stem cells that may not even guarantee the results promised by doctors and scientists. However, the need to feel young and healthy has been consumed by the modern people. Millions of dollars are spent around the world as people will way whatever it takes to feel young, causing themselves to be ripped off by stem cell researchers.

Why is modern society obsessed with being young and willing to pay so much money for non guaranteed treatment?