The so-called Real ID Act , which passed in both congressional houses last Thursday, states that DMVs can only issue national driver’s licenses to qualifying applicants who prove their legal presence in the U.S. and furnish a valid social security number.  

As expected, the act has roused debate throughout the nation, with one side vouching for the “Real IDs” promise to fortify national security, and the other side decrying the act’s oblique “infringements on civil liberty,” its requirement of extra personal documents to “prequalify” applicants for driver’s licenses. Detractors (many of whom are ACLU affiliates) also argue that the act does not target potential foreign terrorists on overstayed Visas as thought, but will intimidate harmless illegal residents, who will forego important driver’s training and licensing procedures for fear of being caught and deported.  

Toyin

“Understanding the connections between random instances of seemingly miraculous, unexplained survival in so-called clinically dead humans and our ability to induce — and reverse — metabolic quiescence in model organisms could have dramatic implications for medical care.  In the end I suspect there will be clinical benefits and it will change the way medicine is practiced, because we will, in short, be able to buy patients time.”  

— Mark Roth, lead researcher in study “Buying Time Through ‘Hibernation on Demand.’”

Researchers at the University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle have discovered a method for inducing a protracted hibernation-like state in mice.  If proven effective in all mammals, this method, termed “hibernation on demand,” could “buy time” for patients awaiting organ transplants and dramatically improve survival rates among cancer patients.  

Toyin

In a puzzling new study that destabilizes conventional knowledge on genetic inheritance, researchers have found that organisms can actually reject the genetic code they inherit from their parents and replace it with that of their grandparents.  

Published in the March 24 issue of Nature, an online scientific journal, the study shows that plants (particularly) and possibly other organisms, including humans, may possess an ability to control for healthier genes by replacing unhealthy sequences with stronger genes — in some cases, from their not-so-immediate forebears.  

“This means that inheritance can happen more flexibly than we thought in the past,” said Robert Pruitt, head of the study and a molecular geneticist at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.  “While Mendel’s laws … are fundamentally correct, they’re not absolute.”  

Pruitt and his colleagues found that in spite of two copies of malformed genes in parent Arabidopsis plants, they could still produce offspring that expressed the healthier traits of their grandparents and even great grandparents. Mendelian laws have stipulated that offspring inherit their parents’ mutations.  

“If the inheritance mechanism we found in the research plant Arabidopsis exists in animals too,” said Pruitt, “it’s possible that it will be an avenue for gene therapy to treat or cure diseases in both plants and animals.”  

Toyin

To Mr. Shea, author and director of The Training Institute for Suicidal Assessment, the single obstacle that stands between humans and sustainable happiness is knowledge of the “human matrix.”

In his book entitled Happiness Is. Unexpected Answers to Practical Questions in Curious Times, Mr. Shea conceptualizes happiness as a balancing act: our biologies, perspectives, relationships, environments, and spiritual quests are interacting processes, which, when healthily balanced, provide solutions for realizing ongoing happiness.  

Said the author: “I believe that the human matrix model opens a world of possibilities for transforming pain — from the pain of everyday frustration to the vastly intense angst of  darkenss — into an enduring sense of happiness.  Within its intracies, compassion, laughter and imagination are forever wed.”

Toyin

The most remarkable thing about Rwanda’s Parliament is not the war-damaged building that houses it … It is inside the hilltop structure, from the spectator seats of the lower house, that one sees a most unusual sight for this part of the world: mixed in with all the dark-suited male legislators are many, many women.”

— Marc Lacey, The New York Times

Marc Lacy reports that Rwandan women have claimed a victory few would have imagined possible ten years ago: they now comprise up to 48.8 percent of Rwandan parliament seats— a figure that surpasses most nations’ statistics on female political inclusion.  

“Before the genocide, women always figured their husbands would take care of them,” said Aurea Kayiganwa, the director of a national organization representing Rwanda’s many war widows. “But the genocide changed all that. It forced women to get active, to take care of themselves. So many of the men were gone.”

These milestones, however, do not reflect an equalization of gender roles in Rwanda. Patriarchal traditions still uphold male leadership as a dominant normative standard.

But women like Ms. Odette Nyiramirimo, coordinator of the Senate social affairs and human rights committee, have taken it up as a challenge:

“Men are watching us,” Ms. Nyiramirimo said. “They wonder if we’ll rise up to a higher level. We’re learning fast, because we have to. We say to each other that we can’t be as good as the men – we have to be better.”

Toyin

Kristin Ohlsen writes in “Love Doctors” (Utne magazine, January/February 2005) that in many psychology textbooks, case studies on altruism are only discussed in “those chapters that concentrate on abnormal behavior.” Yet, as Ms. Ohlsen acknowledges, skeptical treatments of research on selflessness and love as natural phenomena are not dominating research as much as they once had.

The Institute of Research Into Unlmited Love (IRUL), a Cleveland-based organization, awards grants to researchers who examine the origins and effects of altruistic love. Among their first objectives is to raise the scientific credibility of scholarship on love and inspire new ways of thinking about selfless behavior.    

“Is being selfless as much a part of being human as selfishness?” asks Stephen Post, director of IRUL and a bioethicist at Case Western Reserve University. “… Freud thought human nature was nothing but a seething, boiling cauldron of self-interest, and Skinner concluded from his rat studies that human motivation was based on pleasure stimulation. These viewpoints were based on bad science and jaded pedagogical speculation, but they created a tremendous burden of proof for anyone who wanted to say otherwise.”

The IRUL, which has awarded millions in grant awards since its formation in July 2001, appears unstopped by burdens of proof they may face.  Most recently, they hosted a three-day conference entitled “The Love That Does Justice” with the Ford Foundation’s Governance and Civil Society Unit.

Says Stephanie Preston, a grant recipient and psychologist at the University of Iowa: “… the overarching goal of learning about how people can feel love for other people is new and could have great implications for society.”

Toyin

At the Kalmunai Base hospital in Columbo, Sri Lanka, “Baby 81” is the center of a heated conflict between nine women, who each claim that he is their child.  

Since the tsunami on December 26th when “Baby 81” (whose real name is unknown) was admitted as the 81st patient to the hospital, the women have threatened doctors and each other in hopes of securing the infant.  

“Most of the parents who came and claimed that this is their baby are really believing that this is their baby,” Dr. K. Muhunthan, an obstetrician, told Sky TV. “Maybe they are not lying, because they have lost a baby of the same age and all the babies they look at look like their own child,” he said.  

Needless to say that in Sri Lanka, where 40 percent of the tsunami deaths involved children, the emotional impact of the disaster on parents has been tremendous. Here, losing a child, particularly a boy, could mean losing one’s prospects of relative economic security in the future.  

Nurses, in the meantime, are attending to the child, and hospital authorities have requested access to DNA tests from local officials. “Baby 81” will remain at the hospital in the interim.

Toyin

To readers who prefer visceral and unfiltered accounts of the tsunamis and their aftermath in south Asia, the ChiensSansFrontiers Web log is a welcome information source.

Among the entries are reflective articles, one of which argues that the tsunamis may be something other than a natural disaster.

Readers are invited to respond to the entries.

A new study suggests that the virus that causes AIDS spreads rapidly through the head and neck areas after oral exposure, and may result in a greater number of infections than previously thought.  

In this study, researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern at Dallas administered oral injections of SIV (the simian version of HIV) to rhesus monkeys, and found that the virus very quickly invaded all of the surrounding lymphoid tissue.  

If the findings are confirmed, they will challenge the messages we impart about the relative safety of breastfeeding and oral sex.  

For more information:

University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas
http://www8.utsouthwestern.edu/utsw/cda/dept37389/files/197419.html

Toyin

Sixteen-year-old Ateqeh Rajabi was accused of engaging in premarital sex, and was subsequently hanged in Neka, Iran, last August. Her story remains unknown to most and is passively handled by those who seem reluctant to choose between universal “rules” of human rights and the exceedingly permissive standards of cultural relativism.  

According to court sources, Ateqeh, who was denied access to a lawyer, told the religious judge who presided over her case that he should punish the perpetrators of moral corruption rather than the victims. She then removed her headscarf, and declared that she was the victim of an older man’s advances. Immediately after her testimony, Ateqeh became the tenth child “offender” to receive a death sentence since 1990 in Iran.  

Following her execution, the presiding judge publicly announced that he had endorsed and pushed for the death warrant because Ateqeh possessed a “sharp tongue and had undressed [removed her headscarf] in court.” Ateqeh’s co-defendant, an older male, was sentenced to 100 lashes and was released once his punishment was completed.  

While numerous human rights organizations including Amnesty International have decried the tragic fate of Ateqeh, the story has largely been cast aside, placed on the fringes of mainstream media.  

It is an outrage, a worldwide shame, that our selective interests in keeping our words and positions neutral can render the murder of a female child not quite newsworthy enough.  

Toyin

“There’s a presumption out here — and pardon me, I hope it’s not one you embrace, because I’m gonna call it a stupid presumption — that any time you pass a law regulating conduct, you diminish freedom. I would ask people to think about the state of nature with no laws at all … and you decide to pass a law that says you cannot commit murder; you can’t kill somebody. Are you freer after the law was passed or before the law was passed?”

— Former Attorney General John Ashcroft to an Atlantic Monthly reporter.

Ashcroft’s departure comes as a positive relief to world citizens who recognized his sophistic arguments as mere covers for a power crusade. Who would agree that life without The Patriot Act boils down to lawlessness and Hobbesian destruction?  

Now we may look forward, knowing that critical engagement — as always — is one measure we may take against paternalistic policies and misinformation.

Toyin

Like many of his liberal counterparts, Mr. Anthony Romero may have grudgingly conceded to President Bush’s victory last Wednesday — but not without a subversive plan. As executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, Mr. Romero is heading a national campaign to mobilize Americans against government-sanctioned infringements on civil liberty.

Last week in The New York Times, the ACLU called on civil libertarians to intensify their efforts to oppose the Bush administration’s “unrelenting assault” on citizens’ rights. Among the claims listed were that President Bush and Attorney General Ashcroft have destabilized checks and balances by labeling American citizens and others as “enemy combatants,” and furthermore, have imposed government-funded religion by subsidizing faith-based programs with taxpayer money.

Mr. Romero issued a statement shortly afterward addressing the administration’s purported deception of American citizens.  “The Bush administration has cynically used the American people’s genuine concern for safety to limit and erode fundamental rights most Americans don’t know they’ve lost,” Mr. Romero said. “Even republicans like Bob Barr agree with the ACLU that this administration has gone too far, too fast, in eroding our freedoms in the name of national security.”

Within a single day, the advertisement yielded more than $65,000 from unsolicited donors — and perhaps, helped to establish groundwork for the next four years of liberal activism.