Science pieces
Feb. 15th, 2006 02:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidThe first humans have been implanted with RFIDs. And though the company that did this says that it's just like having a passcard, that it's only to allow access to restricted areas, it's not a big leap to imagine more sinister applications, tracking people more closely. (And while this experiment was completely voluntary, it's also easy to imagine scenarios where corporations require implantation as a condition of work, or the government requires it when someone attains majority, etc.) The possibilities I most easily imagine are negative ones, so this squicked me some.
Theory: some of the "missing women" who weren't born in the 1980s was partly because carriers of hepatitis B are more likely to have boys (note: NYTimes requires registration). Once the vaccine for hepatitis B was available in areas where it had been rife, the ratio of male : female births normalized. This happened in Alaska, but it's not worked as well in some other locations. Part of this is because after the 1980s it became easier to determine gender before birth, with the parallel rise in terminating undesirable gender foetuses (read: female) before birth in a number of countries.
This sounds like science fiction to me: the field of pharmacogenomics, also known as pharmacogenetics, which studies individual genetic differences to tailor drugs to individuals. There's already published research (see The Pharmacogenomics Journal). Very cool, though there's also the concern about getting a genetic workup done to show how one is different from the norm, and having that used by health insurers to deny coverage of something.
Not science: I just ran across this group, Co-op America, which seems like a clearinghouse of information about greener living.
Theory: some of the "missing women" who weren't born in the 1980s was partly because carriers of hepatitis B are more likely to have boys (note: NYTimes requires registration). Once the vaccine for hepatitis B was available in areas where it had been rife, the ratio of male : female births normalized. This happened in Alaska, but it's not worked as well in some other locations. Part of this is because after the 1980s it became easier to determine gender before birth, with the parallel rise in terminating undesirable gender foetuses (read: female) before birth in a number of countries.
This sounds like science fiction to me: the field of pharmacogenomics, also known as pharmacogenetics, which studies individual genetic differences to tailor drugs to individuals. There's already published research (see The Pharmacogenomics Journal). Very cool, though there's also the concern about getting a genetic workup done to show how one is different from the norm, and having that used by health insurers to deny coverage of something.
Not science: I just ran across this group, Co-op America, which seems like a clearinghouse of information about greener living.
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no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 07:30 pm (UTC)Small world.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 07:43 pm (UTC)If you want to check one out first, I believe that the outlaws are members and should have a copy somewhere.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-15 07:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-02-16 02:22 am (UTC)Nah, just in the US. This is old news, internationally. For example, here (http://edition.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/europe/06/09/spain.club/index.html) is (http://edition.cnn.com/2004/TECH/10/05/spark.bajabeach/) CNN reporting from 2004 about the Baja Beach Club in Barcelona, where you need to get an implanted RFID chip to get VIP status.
no subject
Date: 2006-02-16 05:29 am (UTC)I don't care about a lot of status symbols, but at least I understand why they are such; getting surgery for VIP status I really don't grok.