What's New Friday November 16, 2007

WHAT’S NEW   Robert L. Park   Friday, 16 Nov 07   Washington, DC

1. DEATHBED CONVERSION: ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST. 
The glee with which many of the faithful pounce on breathless tales of 
deathbed conversions by famous atheists, from Thomas Paine and George 
Washington to Charles Darwin, can be humorous.  The just released, "There 
Is a God: How the World’s Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind," by 
Anthony Flew with Roy Abraham Varghese (HarperCollins, 2007) breaks new 
ground in the deathbed conversion genre.  Varghese composed Flew’s 
conversion for him without waiting for the inevitable.  In the New York 
Times Magazine, Mark Oppenheimer says Flew, 84, is suffering aphasia.  His 
conversion to deism is attributed by Flew to new findings about DNA: He 
can’t see where the first DNA came from.  Neither can anybody else - yet.  
Who voted Flew "the world’s most notorious atheist" anyway?  

2. STEM CELLS: THERAPEUTIC CLONING ACHIEVED IN PRIMATES.
Nature magazine yesterday carried the report of an Oregon group that 
created the world’s first cloned primate embryos from skin cells, allowing 
embryonic stem cells to be harvested.  This had previously been achieved 
only in the mouse, and after years of failure, some thought it would not 
be possible in humans.  There are practical problems, such as the need for 
human eggs, but it has increased optimism in the field.  Since the stem 
cells can only replace tissue in the donor, it should not rouse ethical 
concerns, but of course it will - witness yesterday’s defeat of the stem-
cell initiative in New Jersey.

3. THE BRAIN:  DOES THAT HURT?  WHAT ABOUT THIS?
"Pain," hospital staffs are told, "is what the patient says it is."  But 
the placebo effect and people faking it make the lack of a good metric a 
major obstacle in medical treatment and research.  That may be about to 
change.  According to Nature, researchers at the University of Oxford 
reported at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego last week 
that they’ve found a neural signal that correlates with pain.  Low-
frequency brainwaves picked up by electrodes positioned in the thalamus 
and the periaqueductal grey area seem to provide an objective measure of 
pain that correlates with subjective judgment.    

4. CLIMATE: UH, MAYBE WE SHOULD FIND OUT WHAT THE PROBLEM IS.
Warming is caused by atmospheric contaminants that change the energy 
balance with the sun.  Last week an "elite" group talked about sending up 
vast amounts of other contaminants to make it go the other way.  Yes, they 
really did.  Before we do that, maybe we should launch DSCOVR to measure 
the energy balance.  Built and paid for, the Bush administration is hiding 
it in a Greenbelt, MD warehouse.

THE UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND.
Opinions are the author's and not necessarily shared by the
University of Maryland, but they should be.
---
Archives of What's New can be found at http://www.bobpark.org
What's New is moving to a different listserver and our
subscription process has changed. To change your subscription
status please visit this link:
http://listserv.umd.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=bobparks-whatsnew&A=1