| Insect brains to fight MRSA Cockroach and locust brains are a rich source of antibiotics powerful enough to tackle MRSA, researchers say. bbc.co.uk |
Lawmakers: protect embryonic stem cell research By JIM ABRAMS 2010-09-16T16:27:44ZWASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. Arlen Specter said Thursday that Congress should "get busy" on giving legal stature to the federal funding of human embryonic stem cell research to avoid giving a final say on the issue to a conservative Supreme Court.... hosted.ap.org |
US says sorry for 'outrageous and abhorrent' Guatemalan syphilis tests Experiments in 1940s saw hundreds of Guatemalan prisoners and soldiers deliberately infected to test effects of penicillinThe US today apologised for "outrageous and abhorrent" experiments in Guatemala by American doctors who infected hundreds of prisoners, soldiers and mental patients with syphilis in the 1940s.The experiments were intended to test the use of penicillin, then an early antibiotic. Medical researchers sought out prostitutes with syphilis to deliberately pass on the sexually transmitted disease to men through intercourse. Other men were injected. Conducted between 1946 and 1948, the experiments were led by John Cutler, a US health service physician who would later be part of the notorious Tuskegee syphilis study in Alabama in the 1960s.According to Susan Reverby, a Wellesley College professor who uncovered records of the experiment and thereby led to today's apology, Cutler chose Guatemala because he would not have been permitted to do the experiments in the US.The researchers were interested in whether penicillin could prevent, not just cure, early syphilis infection."Cutler and the other physicians chose men in the Guatemala national penitentiary, then in an army barracks, and men and women in the national mental health hospital for a total of 696 subjects."Permissions were gained from the authorities but not from individuals, not an uncommon practice at the time, and supplies were offered to the institutions in exchange for access," Reverby wrote in a research paper."The doctors used prostitutes with the disease to pass it to the prisoners (since sexual visits were allowed by law in Guatemalan prisons) and then did direct inoculations made from syphilis bacteria poured onto the men's penises or on forearms and faces that were slightly abraded when the 'normal exposure' produced little disease, or in a few cases through spinal punctures."Reverby said that the men were given penicillin after they had contracted the disease but it is not clear whether they were cured, and "not everyone received what was even then considered adequate treatment".The US apologised in a joint statement by the secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and the health secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, in which they described the experiments as "clearly unethical"."Although these events occurred more than 64 years ago, we are outraged that such reprehensible research could have occurred under the guise of public health. We deeply regret that it happened, and we apologise to all the individuals who were affected by such abhorrent research practices. The conduct exhibited during the study does not represent the values of the US, or our commitment to human dignity and great respect for the people of Guatemala."Guatemala said it would study whether there were grounds to take the case to an international court. "President Alvaro Colom considers these experiments crimes against humanity and Guatemala reserves the right to denounce them in an international court," said a government statement, which announced a commission to investigate.Guatemalan rights activists called for the victims' families to be compensated, but a US official said it was not clear there would be any compensation.The revelations have echoes of the Tuskegee study, in which over four decades from the 1930s, hundreds of African American men were left untreated after having contracted syphilis.GuatemalaUnited StatesMedical researchHuman rightsChris McGrealguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Morcombe inquest hears about persons of interest A coronial inquest on Queensland's Sunshine Coast has heard it would be an impost to DNA-test every piece of evidence in the investigation into Daniel Morcombe's disappearance in December 2003. abc.net.au |
Honor Frost obituary Pioneer of underwater archaeology fascinated by the MediterraneanHonor Frost had many talents – as artist, ballet designer, scholar, writer and publicist, to name a few – but her consuming passion was the world beneath the oceans. Honor, who has died aged 92, initiated underwater archaeology as a serious field for study, and pioneered its pursuit as a scientific discipline.In the 1950s, she was the first diver to realise that it was essential not only to record shipwrecks of particular historical interest photographically, but also to represent them in meticulously detailed plans. From a modest start in 1956 on a wreck off the south coast of Turkey, she developed her technique throughout the Mediterranean. She organised the spectacular excavation and reconstruction of a Carthaginian warship at Marsala in Sicily, and led an underwater campaign investigating the ancient port of Alexandria.As she herself related in her first work (mischievously entitled Under the Mediterranean, Travels with My Bottle, 1963), Honor's entry into the underwater world happened by accident. Just after the second world war, she had attended a party given by a friend at a 17th-century house on Wimbledon Hill, in south-west London. In the garden was a well, and her host improbably provided her with a diving suit. Honor descended, and became entranced by the experience, moved in particular by the falling leaves drifting through the water around her. She was hooked, and thus began a lifetime's devotion to underwater discovery. As a keen diver, she sought out Jacques Cousteau (a world leader in the field) in the south of France, soon after he had developed the aqualung in the 1940s, and Cousteau's assistant Frédéric Dumas became her close friend and mentor.A chance encounter in the early 50s took Honor to the Middle East, where she worked for Kathleen Kenyon as an archaeological draughtsman at excavations in Jericho. There she drew plans of underground bronze-age tombs and their contents, cut into the fractured rock of the rift valley in Jordan. After the dig was over, Honor moved to Lebanon and, under the wing of the Institut Français d'Archéologie in Beirut, explored the ancient harbours at Tyre and Sidon, and along the Syrian coast, which became a lifelong preoccupation. This was also the start of her interest in stone anchors – she spotted a series of them built into the walls of the bronze age temple at Byblos, and then discovered similar anchors off the nearby coast.Her curiosity led her to explore the southern coast of Turkey, and in 1957 she arrived with her aqualung at Bodrum, then a sleepy little village, reached only by a dirt track. Here she met two like-minded divers, the American Peter Throckmorton and the Turk Mustafa Kapkin. The three of them hired a caique and discovered an ancient wreck. Besides photographing it, Honor had the inspiration to apply her Jericho experience with Kenyon to make a detailed plan of it. This was the genesis of scientific underwater archaeology.An only child, born in Nicosia, Cyprus, Honor lost both her parents in childhood, and became the ward of Wilfred Evill, a noted London solicitor. He was charged with her education, and over the years they developed a close, although sometimes stormy, friendship. On Evill's death, his ward inherited his estate and an extraordinary amalgam of works of art. As a collector, Evill's philosophy had been that art knew no boundaries, and if it had quality it could all be mixed up together. In his case it included the finest Regency furniture, antique glass, Chinese porcelain and contemporary paintings, with works by Graham Sutherland and Stanley Spencer.Honor inherited not only the collection, but Evill's offices in Welbeck Street, in a Georgian house which became her home. She resided on the top two floors, decorating them to her own taste, with crimson walls and marbled wallpaper, and a massive 17th-century Portuguese bronze knocker in the form of a dolphin on her front door. Her connections with the art world were significant, for she had studied at the Central School of Art, London, and the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford, then worked as a designer for the Ballet Rambert, and finally became director of publications at the Tate Gallery. She was also a close friend of Erica Brausen, director of the Hanover Gallery during its heyday and the first to exhibit Francis Bacon.Honor's fascination with the Mediterranean eventually led to her acquiring a house in Malta as a second home. She was a frequent and incisive contributor to the Mariner's Mirror, the journal of the Society for Nautical Research, often on her favourite topic, the stone anchor. Just as one cannot comprehend a motor car without studying its brakes, she saw the crucial role of ru for understanding shipwrecks, and in this she was once more a pioneer. Her exceptional skills were recognised by the Society of Antiquaries, of which she was elected a fellow in 1969.Later in life, Honor had two hip replacements, but maintained her inexhaustible energy. Just a few months ago, she was planning yet another season at Sidon and also to visit India for the first time, to see what she believed to be the largest stone anchor in the world. Honor had married once, but after her separation remained single – though not without her share of admirers – and was supported by her numerous friends of both sexes, young and old. She is survived by her niece, Alison Cathie.• Honor Frost, scholar, explorer and underwater archaeologist, born 28 October 1917; died 12 September 2010ArchaeologyPeople in scienceMiddle EastLebanonArtguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |